Spring 1997 Program Schedule

Unless noted, all programs are free and open to the public. Newcomb College Center for Research on Women is located in Caroline Richardson Hall, the funky 1950s-style building just inside the Willow Street entrance to Newcomb College (between Broadway and Calhoun; Audubon Blvd. runs into the College entrance). During the week, very limted parking is available in front of the Center. Except on weekends, visitors are advised to park along Broadway or in the public spaces under the Reilly Recreation Center on Ben Weiner Drive. Please phone (504) 865-5238 if you have questions about any of the events listed below.

Martha Tanner and Lisa Verner, graduate students in the Tulane Department of English, will continue a discussion begun at last November's brown bag lunch with Meredith Miller. Martha Tanner will speak on "The Grammar of Selfhood" in the fourteenth century anchorite Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love, and Lisa Verner will examine the possible subversive strategies of the early fifteenth century laywoman Margery Kempe and compare them to the methods of an Early Modern successor of these mystics, the seventeenth century Baptist Anne Wentworth. The rhetorical voices that emerge from these mystical writings demonstrate greater diversity and sophistication than perhaps has been generally assumed for female mysticism in the Middle Ages.

Women's studies faculty, faculty associates and interested faculty and staff, students and Center friends are invited to drop in for a piece of King Cake and check out our improved library, classroom and meeting facilities.

For one whole year, five very different 16 year-old girls were interviewed and filmed at home, in school, at work and with their friends. The result was the acclaimed feature documentary Talk 16. Three years later the filmmakers went back and filmed a follow-up, intercutting between old and new footage. The result is Talk 19, a sometimes funny, sometimes sad portrait of growing up female in our society. (48 minutes/1995)

Dreamworlds II powerfully illustrates the systematic representations of women in music video, and how these representations tell a narrow set of stories about what it means to be male or female; stories which impact how women think about themselves sexually, and how men think sexually about women. Dreamworlds offers a critical distance from images which have become so ubiquitous and normal that they are almost invisible. Originally produced in 1991, Dreamworlds was updated in 1994. It is written, edited and narrated by Sut Jhally, Professor of Communication, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. (60 minutes/1994)

Although women constituted a significant proportion of revolutionary activists, they are practically invisible in the dominant narratives of 1917. In this context, what can it mean that one aspect of the evolving popular political narrative of the 1917 Russian revolutions cast the events as a family crisis threatening the health and well-being of "Mother Russia"? This talk will analyze the representations of women during the Revolution and Civil War (1917-1921) to explore the "woman question" in Russia during this period of upheaval.

A one-day conference sponsored by the Tulane Law Women
Events are free and open to the public; registration begins at 1:00 p.m. in the first floor lobby of the Law School. Please call the Tulane Law Women (504 865-8876) or Dr. Terry O'Neill (504 865-5936) for further information.

Schedule:
1:00 Registration
1:20-2:20 a) panel on sexual harassment; b) panel on crime on the Internet/privacy issues
2:30-3:30 1) judges panel; b) children's advocacy panel
3:40-4:40 women in the media panel
4:40-5:00 book signing by Patricia Ireland
5:00-6:00 Keynote address by NOW President Patricia Ireland

Supported by a grant from Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceuticals to the U.S. Public Health Service Office on Women's Health and the Society for Advancement of Women's Health Research, this video covers a broad range of wellness issues affecting college-age women today. Following the screening, Kim Nolte, M.P.H., C.H.E.S., Head of Health Education at the Tulane Student Health Clinic, will lead a discussion about the video and about wellness resources available on the Tulane campus and on the Internet.

This event is a fund-raiser for the 15th anniversary of the National Women's History Project. It will feature cake, drinks, and a staged reading of the traditional Women's History Month short play, Womanspeak, presented by students in the drama program at McMain High School. The event is co-sponsored by the New Orleans AAUW, Newcomb College Center for Research on Women, The New Orleans League of Women Voters, and the Louisana Coca-Cola Bottling Company. Call the New Orleans branch of the AAUW for information: (504) 365-3028.

A donation of $15.00 is suggested ($3-5.00 for students, the underemployed or those on a fixed income). Even if you cannot donate, please come!

This documentary weaves together two parallel stories: the evolution of underground networks that helped women find safe abortions outside the law, and the intensive efforts by activists and legislators who dedicated themselves to legalizing abortion. Rare archival footage brings history alive through documenting the actions of those who broke the silence, saved women's lives and fought to end the shame which surrounded abortion when it was a crime. (60 minutes/1995)

Joselina da Silva was born and raised in predominantly Black and low-income area on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. She has many years of experience as a teacher and organizer and has been active in Brazilian political and cultural organizations serving the Black community, especially those concerned with the needs of women. She is a founding member of the Black Women's Association of Baixada Fluminese and currently works in the women's section of the Centro de Articulacoes de Populacoes Marginalizadas, a networking center for grassroots organizations especially for low-income communities, where she coordinates the "A Dream, A Passport, A Nightmare" campaign against the trafficking of women. da Silva's commitment to women's issues developed from her involvement with the "Movimento Negro." Her work to promote a consicousness and affirmation of Afro-Brazilian culture, she recognized the need to apply a similar process of "conscientizcao" for black women. As a filmmaker, da Silva has produced the first of a series of videos titled "Black Women in the Diaspora." She is involved with using poetry as a tool to create consciousness of Black history.
Joselina da Silva's visit to campus is co-sponsored by the Tulane Office of Multicultural Affairs, the Latin American Studies Program, African Diaspora Studies, and the Newcomb College Center for Research on Women.

The event is free, but please call 865-5238 to register

Dr. Farnham's lecture will address the question of whether contemporary concepts of femininity deterred or promoted higher education for young women in the South during the antebellum period. Equality was a strong and growing component of American values during this time, but how was this squared with gender differences that society also valued? In arguing that the South did undertake to advance women by tying ideas of femininity to equality, Farnham will also consider whether this strategy holds any lessons for women today.

Christie Farnham was graduated from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill with highest honors in history and went on to graduate school in history at the University of Chicago, where she completed her MA before moving with her husband to Berkeley, California in the 1960s. She completed her Ph.D. in 1977 after the birth of her fourth child, then took a number of visiting teaching positions before becoming Director of Women's Studies and Assistant Professor of Afro-American Studies at Indiana University. In 1990 she became a faculty member in the history department of Iowa State University where she teaches Black history and women's history.

She is a founding editor of the Journal of Women's History, and author of various works on women and African Americans, including The Education of the Southern Belle: Higher Education and Student Socialization in the Antebellum South, which received a 1995 Critics Choice award from the American Education Association. She is presently completing the editing of Women of the American South: A Multicultural Reader, and is also at work on a history of African-American women, as well as a study of images of Africa among African Americans.

This seminar on feminist historiography and the practice of women's history is open to all Tulane University students and faculty with an interest in the field.
Dr. Farnham suggests that seminar participants read the Anne Firor Scott essay "Unfinished Business" in the Summer 1996 issue of the Journal of Women's History. This essay is available on reserve in the Center's Vorhoff Library. If you wish to participate in the seminar, please call 865-5238.

It sounds so easy, yet it's so hard to do well! What are some effective strategies for teaching about women's studies topics using popular culture texts? What is the pedagogical value of "teaching popular culture"?
Suggested readings TBA.
Please call 865-5238 if you wish to participate.

Reception to follow in the Newcomb Faculty Lounge
This event is made possible in part by grants from the Newcomb Foundation and the Ford Foundation

Dr. Dale Spender, a recent Member of the Order of Australia, is a researcher, broadcaster, public speaker, teacher, author and editor of more than thirty books which integrate the fields of language, communication, writing, editing, publishing and gender equity. Her works, such as Women of Ideas Ð And What Men Have Done To Them and The Writing and The Sex have focused on how women have been excluded from the canons of literature and history. Most recently, she is author of Nattering on the Net: Women, Power and Cyberspace (Sydney: Spinifex Press, 1995) and initiator of WIKED, an international database on Women's Studies. According to Spender, "...the computer is not a toy; it is the site of wealth, power and influence, now and in the future. Women Ð and indigenous peoples, and those with few resources Ð cannot afford to be marginalised or excluded from this new medium. To do so will be to risk becoming the information-poor. It will be to not count; to be locked out of full participation in society in the same way that illiterate people have been disenfranchised in a print world" (Nattering On The Net, xvi).

Nancy O'Brien and her husband Michael moved to Cincinnati in 1985, the same year filmmaker Lynn Estonin began working for Planned Parenthood. The O'Briens formed a militant anti-abortion organization, Project Jericho,and soon Cincinnati became the national testing ground for anti-choice tactics. Planned Parenthood's clinic was firebombed. Nancy convinced Jerry Falwell to pledge a million dollars to the movement. For two years, Lynn Estonin recorded on video the weekly harangues and confrontations outside the clinic. Then Nancy disappeared from public view. Five years later, Lynn tracked her down and made this portrait of an articulate woman searching hard for her own answers. (28 minutes/1991)

Gasaway-Hill will discuss how candidates such as Mike Foster and Mary Landrieu reveal their political alignments through particular pronoun choices and rhetorics of belonging.