May Belle Chellis Women's Events

Events sponsored by WAGS and Chellis House

Spring 2013

Body Parts - Gensler Family Symposium on Feminism in a Global Context, April 8 to 12, 2013

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmdDFHzSWLM

Why do we associate breasts with women and muscled forearms with men?  Why do we think six-pack abs are masculine and carefully manicured nails are feminine?  Are we the sum of our body parts?  Who decides what our body parts mean?  These and other questions about our bodies guide the 2013 Gensler Family Symposium on Feminism in a Global Context to be held at Middlebury College during the week of April 8-12.  Through an array of events -- student panels, performances, film screening, formal presentations – this year’s symposium explores how some body parts come to stand in for our sexed and gendered identities.  (go/bodyparts)

Mon, April 8, Crossroads Café, 7-9 p.m. - Lips and Hips! 

Student-led conversation on our bodies, our selves. Nosh on some sweet potato fries while you chime in.

In this insightful documentary, three fat activists speak candidly about growing up overweight, and the size discrimination they have faced.

This documentary investigates the underworld of modern eunuchs in America. Each year in the United States hundreds of men voluntarily choose to be castrated and reinvent their sexual identity for reasons other than sex reassignment.

“Body Parts: How a Comparative Theology Assists a Feminist View of the Human Being.”  

 Thu, April 11, Hillcrest 103, 6 p.m. - “Race(d) Body Parts”

Midd alums Ofelia Barrios ’93 and Morgane Richardson ’08 will talk about  "Women, Gender and HIV Prevention" and "Women of Color: Taking Media into our Own Hands."

Ramunto's Pizza will be served!

Friday, April 12, RAJ, 12:30-4:30 p.m.

E. Frances White (New York University), “Something Out of Kilter: Black Women’s Breasts, the Missing Link, and Black Feminist Resistance.”

Bernadette Wegenstein (Johns Hopkins University), “The Cure: The Culture and History of Breast Cancer.”

Peggy McCracken (University of Michigan), “The Wild Man’s Penis: Gendered Anatomy and Becoming Human.”

Darla Thompson (Middlebury College), “Technologies of the Body: Iron Collars, Chain Gangs, and Enslaved Black Women in Antebellum Louisiana.”

Banu Subramaniam (University of Massachusetts-Amherst), “Global Citizenship?: Genomes, Nations, and the Politics of Belonging.”

Lunch and light refreshments will be served.

Sponsored by the Gensler Family Fund, the Program in Women and Gender Studies, Chellis House, American Studies Spiegel Family Fund, the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity, the Office of the Dean of the College, Ross Commons, Women of Color, Feminist Action at Middlebury, Queer Studies House, Middlebury Open Queer Alliance, the Institutional Diversity Committee, and the Departments of Sociology/Anthropology, Theater, and Religion.

 

Monday, March 18

Dai Jinhua - After the Post-Cold War

The period that Professor Dai calls “After the Post-Cold War” commences in 2008 with the Beijing Olympics, the Sichuan earthquake, the global financial crisis, and discourses of “China’s rise.” Dai’s talk will address how this period of Chinese and global history can be understood and critiqued.

Dai Jinhua, one of China’s most prominent feminist cultural critics, is a Professor at Peking University’s Institute of Comparative Literature and Culture, and is the Director of the University’s Center for Film and Media Studies. Dai’s publications include Film Theory and Criticism (电影理论与批评, 2007) and Emerging from the Horizon of History: A Study of Modern Chinese Women’s Literature (浮出历史地表: 现代妇女文学研究, coauthored with Meng Yue, 1989). Her English-translated publications include Cinema and Desire: Marxist Feminism and Cultural Politics in the Work of Dai Jinhua (Verso, 2002) and a forthcoming volume from Duke University Press.

The talk will be in Chinese, translated by Rebecca Karl (New York University). Karl’s works include Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World (Duke, 2010) and The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory, co-edited with Dorothy Ko and Lydia Liu (Columbia University Press, 2013).

4:30 p.m., Robert A. Jones ’59 Conference Room 

Sponsored by the Chinese Department, the History Department, the John D. Berninghausen Professorship, the East Asian Studies Program, the Women and Gender Studies Program, and the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs.

Thursday, March 14

Girls Rising (Richard Robbins, 1 hour 44 minutes, PG 13)

This movie is sparking off a movement! Academy Award winner Richard Robbins focuses on nine girls around the world who rose above bad circumstances through schooling. The film demonstrates that the removal of barriers to girls’ education – such as early and forced marriage, domestic slavery, sex trafficking, gender violence and discrimination, lack of access to health care, school fees – means not only a better life for the girls, but a safer, healthier, and more prosperous world for all.

7:30 p.m., MBH 216

Sponsored by Stop Traffick, Sister-to-Sister and Feminist Action at Middlebury.

Tues., March 12

Mothers Inc: Visions of Transnational Surrogacy

In this presentation, Professor Sujata Moorti (WAGS) will examine the visual culture that has emerged around the transnational surrogacy industry located in India.

12:15 p.m., Chellis House

Tuesday, March 12

Women Report from Abroad: Personal Stories of Foreign Aid Success

Mary Marchall, Advisor, Aid Effectiveness Partnerships at Oxfam America, and Marsha Wallace, president and founder of Dining for Women, will be discussing Dining for Women's core mission of investing in women and girls in developing countries, how it pays off, and why that is good policy for the U.S. as well.

7:30 – 9pm, Axinn Center 229

Sponsored by Chellis House

Friday, March 8th

Women's History Month Dinner sponsored by Women of Color.

Great food and performances. If you would like to attend, please click here to register.

Time TBD, Crossroads Café

 

Fri., March 8

Pussy Riot, Putin and the Sexual Politics of Contemporary Russia

A conversation with Russian journalist Masha Gessen, director of Radio Liberty, Moscow.

Masha Gessen is one of Russia's most important journalists. She has contributed to The New York Times, The New Republic, New Statesman, Granta, Slate and Vanity Fair, and US News & World Report. Gessen has written seven books ranging on subjects from the Russian intelligentsia to a biography of her grandmothers.

12:15 p.m., Chellis House

 

Fri., March 8

Masha Gessen on her biography of Vladimir Putin, "Man without a Face"

Acclaimed Russian journalist and author Masha Gessen will discuss her biography of Vladimir Putin, "Man without a Face" and the state of contemporary Russian politics

4:30 p.m., Robert A. Jones '59 House

 

Wed., March 6

Fraker Prize Ceremony
Established in 1990 by Drue Cortell Gensler '57, Middlebury College trustee, this award honors the memory of Alison G. Fraker ’89, a much-beloved, vocally feminist student who was killed in a car accident a few weeks short of her graduation. The prize is awarded to a student whose essay on a topic specifically concerning women’s and gender studies is judged the best.

7:00 p.m., Chellis House

Tues., February 26 

"The Makers: Women Who Make America" film screening

Over the last half-century, America has seen one of the most sweeping social revolutions in its history, as women have asserted their rights to a full and fair share of political power, economic opportunity, and personal autonomy.  It’s a revolution that has unfolded in public and private, on grand stages like the Supreme Court and Congress, and in humbler ones like the boardroom and the bedroom. No individual and no aspect of American life has been unchanged.

MAKERS: Women Who Make America tells this remarkable story for the first time in a comprehensive and innovative way. Come and watch Gloria Steinem and Alice Walker, Oprah Winfrey and Katie Couric and Middlebury alum Dena Simmons!  Here's a link:

http://www.makers.com/blog/power-being-surrounding-makers?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000031&ts=1361474571

Come to see the entire documentary or just some of it. We'll have popcorn and cider!

Coltrane Lounge, 8 to 11 p.m.

Thurs., February 21

"Female Power in Politics: Our Time on the Elizabeth Warren Campaign and in the White House"

Talk by Anna Esten ’14 and Luke Carroll Brown ’14.5

Students Anna Esten and Luke Carroll Brown recently interned at the White House. In their talk, they will focus on gender dynamics in the highest echelons of government, and, in Luke’s case, also on the campaign trail.

Lunch will be served. Please help yourself as you enter the room.

Due to time limitations at Robert A. Jones ’59 Conference Room, this event will start promptly at 12:30 p.m. and finish at 1:15 p.m.

12:30 p.m., Robert A. Jones ’59 Conference Room

Sponsored by the Program in Women and Gender Studies and Chellis House, Women's Resource Center

Wednesday, February 20, 4:30 – 5:30 p.m., Dance Theater

Hair Trigger

Lecture-demonstration by Catherine Cabeen (Dance Program)

Hair Trigger is a condensed solo version of the evening-length Fire!, which was originally inspired by Catherine Cabeen's research into the life and work of artist Niki de Saint Phalle, and cascaded through the creative process into a meditation on gendered expectations around taking up space, aggression, desire, and beauty.

Sponsored by the Dance Program

 

Thursday, February 21, 12:30 p.m., Robert A. Jones ’59 Conference Room

"Female Power in Politics: Our Time on the Elizabeth Warren Campaign and in the White House"

Talk by Anna Esten ’14 and Luke Carroll Brown ’14.5

Students Anna Esten and Luke Carroll Brown recently interned at the White House. In their talk, they will focus on gender dynamics in the highest echelons of government, and, in Luke’s case, also on the campaign trail.

Lunch will be served. Please help yourself as you enter the room.

Due to time limitations at Robert A. Jones ’59 Conference Room, 

this event will start promptly at 12:30 p.m. and finish at 1:15 p.m.

Sponsored by the Program in Women and Gender Studies and Chellis House, Women's Resource Center