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Cindi Katz

City University of New York, Graduate CenterKatz Poster

Writing on the Wall: From Disaster to Doing Something

Thursday, February 7, 2008
7:00 p.m. – Holland Union Building, Social Hall

Hurricane Katrina scoured the political economic landscape of New Orleans revealing the toll of decades of disinvestment in and ‘hostile privatism’ toward social reproduction in a city riddled with corrosive inequalities around class, race, and gender. Business and government have failed to address the social and economic needs of poor and working people in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina. The toll can be seen in the unevenness of neighborhood and infrastructural recovery, the difficulty of establishing a stable workforce of residents, and the deepening of ongoing neoliberal tendencies toward privatization in education, healthcare, and housing. Focusing on these issues, we will look at the sorts of activism these failures have spurred. The discussion will center on community based political groups working to redress this situation in New Orleans, but will also connect their work to groups working elsewhere to draw out a ‘countertopography’ of activisms that interrogate the underlying politics and policies–explicit and implicit–that have undermind the social wage and produced this situation not just in New Orleans but all Read more

Daniel Desmond

Deputy Secretary of the Office of Energy and Technology Deployment, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection

Focus the Nation: Global Warming Solutions

Focus the Nation
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium – 7:00 p.m.

Keynote Speaker for “Focus the Nation”
Co-sponsored by Environmental Studies Department and Dickinson SAVES

Visit this link for more information on Dickinson’s Focus the Nation programs.

Issue in Context
Global warming is a phenomenon believed to occur as a result of the build-up of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Over the past 200 years, the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil has caused the concentrations of heat-trapping “greenhouse gases” to increase significantly in our atmosphere. These gases prevent heat from dissipating, somewhat like the glass panels of a greenhouse.
Greenhouse gases are necessary to life as we know it, because they keep the planet’s surface warm. But, as the concentrations of these gases continue to increase in the atmosphere, the Earth’s temperature is climbing above previously recorded levels. According to NASA data, the Earth’s average surface temperature has increased by about 1.2 to 1.4°F in the last 100 years. Eleven of the last twelve years rank among the warmest years recorded since 1850, with Read more

Haya Bar-Itzhak

Fulbright Scholar, School of Humanities Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg.

Eve and Lilith: Men and Women Telling the Myth of the Creation of Woman

Friday, November 16, 2007
The Clarke Forum, 12:00 p.m.
This program is open to Dickinson faculty, staff and students by reservation only. Space is limited – email flinchbk@dickinson.edu to reserve a seat. Lunch provided.

Prof. Bar-Itzhak will discuss the Lilith myth as crystallized in Jewish tradition. She will show how this myth reinforced the sacred patriarchal order of the society by creating Lilith as the worst enemy of “good” women.
The Lilith stories from ancient Jewish sources were all written by men. She will also present the story as told by women from Jewish traditional society, for whom Lility is still a living myth.

Co-sponsored by Judaic Studies. Read more

Rory Kennedy


Pandemic: Facing AIDS

World AIDS Day

Monday, December 3, 2007
7:00 p.m. – Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium
The scope of the global AIDS epidemic is staggering. Over the last 20 years, the disease has killed nearly 22 million people. Behind these statistics are the stories of millions of people, each of whom must face the challenge of AIDS in their own way. Rory Kennedy followed the lives of five people living with AIDS in different parts of the world–India, Russian, Thailand, Uganda and Brazil. Their experiences put faces behind the numbers, and connect audiences with the heartache and triumph of living under the extreme conditions that AIDS involves.
Co-sponsored by the Intrafraternity Council, Panhellenic, Student Activities, Dean of Students, Student Senate, The Zatae Longsdorff Women’s Center, Community Studies, Sociology, Institutional and Diversity Initiatives and Learning Communities Program, Health and Wellness Committee and MOB.

Issue in Context
AIDS is one of the most destructive epidemics in history. UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Program for AIDS, estimates that there are currently 33.2 million people worldwide living with HIV. This figure has greatly increased over the past two years. The most striking increases have occurred in East Asia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Sub-Saharan Africa, accounting Read more

Guerrilla Girls

Monkey Business

Guerilla Girls posters
Performance
Thursday, November 29, 2007
7:00 p.m. – The Depot
The Guerrilla Girls are feminist masked avengers in the tradition of anonymous do-gooders, like Wonder Woman and Batman. They use facts, humor and outrageous visuals to expose sexism, racism and corruption in politics, art, film and pop culture. Co-sponsored by Women’s Studies and The Zatae Longsdorff Women’s Center.

Issue in Context
Sexism and racism are pervasive throughout the world of art and popular culture. Women artists and artists of color are greatly under-represented in art museums. In the National Gallery of Art, 98% of the artists displayed are male and 99.9% are white. Galleries and art collectors generally buy art from white men and when they do buy art from women or artists of color, it often ends up hidden in the gallery’s storage facility.
Women and people of color are also under-acknowledged and under-appreciated in the film industry. A female director has never won an Oscar and only three have ever been nominated. In all of the Oscars for acting, only 3% have gone to people of color.
The film and music industries continue to portray women as sexual objects or in a stereotypical fashion without depth Read more

Karin Morin

Associate Professor, social/gender geography, Bucknell University.

Women, Religion and Space: Making the Connections

Karin Morin Poster
Thursday, November 15, 2007
4:30 p.m. – Stern Center, Great Room

In this talk, Karen Morin ‘triangulates’ among the scholarly domains of geography, women’s studies, and religious studies, suggesting ways to draw out the geographical implications of the study of women and religion. The talk highlights the ways that religions regulate women spatially, and how religious women negotiate and define spaces and their sense of themselves in them. Co-sponsored by the anthropology and religion departments.

Issue in Context
In the 17th century, Medieval Roman Catholic nuns benefited from the mobility of being allowed to work outside of their convents and within their communities, and of participating in missionary activities. However, in 1662, laws were passed in accordance with the Counter-Reformation that restricted the nun’s movement and often imprisoned them to their cloisters. The construction of gates and high walls around convents, the grills used to separate the nuns from the laypeople, and the use of the turntable to receive goods were just some of the limitations imposed on their lives. Nuns no longer had the right to play an active part in the church or in the Read more

Selma James

Wednesday, November 7, 2007Selma James Poster
7:00 p.m. – Stern Center, Great Room

Sex, Race and Class

Selma James, activist, author strategist. How can we defeat sexism, racism, and other violent destructive power relations among us all internationally? What are the economic connections and what do they have to do with class? A development of Sex, Race & Class, her classic of the anti-racist women’s movement. Co-sponsored by the anthropology and sociology departments.

Issue in Context
Should women be paid for their housework duties? According to the United Nations, women do two-thirds of the world’s total labor, from raising children to working in hospitals, yet they only receive five percent of the world’s assets. In a recent interview, Selma James explained that women are working even harder today than in the past, “Women are the carers, the nurturers, put the food on the table, make sure that shirts are clean for the next day, keep the children alive and have them lined up when the men come home. But still their work is not included in the GNP (gross national product). It still doesn’t count.” As the Coordinator of Global Women’s Strike, James continues to struggle for the recognition of women’s lives Read more

Lisa Sherman ’79

Metzger-Conway Fellow, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Logo TV.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007Sherman poster
7:00 p.m. – Stern Center, Great Room

Changing Hearts and Minds: Media as a Bridge Builder for LGBT America

For the past several decades, the media has been an important and powerful tool for humanizing LGBT Americans, gradually replacing stereotypes and caricatures with authentic portrayals and depictions of LGBT people characters. In the past several years, media specifically for the LGBT audience has come to the forefront, notably with the launch of Logo, the new 24/7 ad-supported television and broadband channel from MTV networks. Lisa Sherman will discuss gays and lesbians in the media as well as the context for Logo’s place in the media landscape and how it is helping to advance a sense of an electronic community for many LGBT Americans. Co-sponsored by the psychology department.

Issue in Context

Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people are frequently excluded and misrepresented. Gay men are often represented as overly ‘feminine,’ while lesbian women are depicted as ‘masculine.’ LGBTs are also classified as excessively sexual, and it is assumed that they will make advances towards all members of the sex to which they are attracted. Such Read more