spring 2004 events

Please not that Caroline Richardson Hall, Richardson Hall, and Richardson Memorial Buiding are NOT the same building. Caroline Richardson Hall is located between the Student Health Service and the Woldenberg Art Center just inside the Willow Street entrance to the Tulane campus. The other Richardson Buildings are located on the Tulane front quad close to St. Charles Avenue.


All are welcome. There is no charge to participate in any of the events listed below. Note the many events happening in the Anna E. Many Lounge on Wednesdays at 4 pm. Come wind down on Wednesday with a dose of women's studies, and bring friends and colleagues. If you would like to discuss ideas for our Spring 2005 afternoon lectures series, please contact Crystal Kile – ckile@tulane.edu or 865 5248.


Ellen Gilchrist is the 20th
Zale Writer-in-Residence

and Distinguished Tulane Mellon Professor
in the Humanities, Spring 2005

Back in the 1970s, Ellen Gilchrist ran away from New Orleans to Fayetteville, Arkansas to “join the poets.” She ended up winning the National Book Award for fiction, and emerged as one of the most distinctive voices - female or male - from the postmodern U. S. South. To date, she has published 25 volumes of work. In Fall 2001, she began teaching as Associate Professor of Creative Writing in the Department of English at the University of Arkansas. Her intention while in residence at Newcomb/Tulane is “to be wise for all the students,” and to share the best of what she has learned so far.

On Sunday, February 20, Ellen will celebrate her 70th birthday with a free public reading as the 20th Zale Writer-in-Residence. The reading will take place at 4 pm in McAlister Auditorium. The public is invited. There is no charge for admission.

On Friday and Saturday, March 11-12, Gilchrist will convene the Spring 2005 Tulane Mellon symposium focused on the topic of balance, wellness, and creativity featuring writers Ethan Canin, Molly Giles, and several more special guests. The Symposium will celebrate publication of The Writing Life, her new collection of essays to be published in March by the University Press of Mississippi. Final details will be available soon at nccrow.tulane.edu


The Zale Writer-in-Residence Program was established by Dana Zale Gerard, Newcomb 1985, and has been supported by annual gifts from from the M. B. and Edna Zale Foundation of Dallas, Texas. The program is facilitated on campus by a committee of students, faculty, and staff organized through the Newcomb College Center for Research on Women.





Beverly Guy-Sheftall is the Tenth Adele Ramos Salzer Lecturer April 14

In their recent collaboration, the book Gender Talk: The Struggle for Women’s Equality in African American Communities (One World/Ballantine 2003), Beverly Guy-Sheftall and former Spelman College president Johnetta Cole offer an impassioned and arguably necessarily harsh critique of gender relations between black men and black women. Why do hip-hop lyrics and videos reduce black women to “bitches” and “hos”? Why do blacks overwhelmingly support black men convicted of crimes against women? Why are the achievements of black women diminished? Most pertinently, why has the black community virtually ignored violence against black women, while black-on-black crime between men is discussed in depth? Such questions, autobiographical truths, and the legacies of black feminism will come together as the topic of her Salzer Lecture.

Beverly Guy-Sheftall is the Anna Julia Cooper Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Spelman College in Atlanta. In 1981, she became founding director of the college’s Women’s Research and Resource Center, the first of its kind on a historically black college campus. She also is an adjunct professor at Atlanta’s Emory University’s Institute for Women’s Studies, and, since 1983, founding co-editor of SAGE: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women, the only journal devoted exclusively to the experiences of women of African descent. We are most honored to welcome our distinguished colleague to Newcomb.

The public is invited to Dr. Guy-Sheftall’s lecture at 7 pm, Thursday 14 April in the Myra Clare Rogers Chapel, Newcomb College, Tulane University. There is no charge for admission.

Adele Ramos Salzer, N 1940, a great and active friend of Newcomb College Center for Research on Women, instituted this lecture series before her death. Her family perpetuates it in her memory as a celebration of her life and generous, inquisitive spirit.



Listening Party: Eve Ensler's "The Good Body" Wednesday 19 January

Join us at the Newcomb College Center for Research on Women for a Good Body listening party and discussion at 4 pm, Wednesday, January 19 in the Anna E. Many Lounge. Bring snacks to share with at least one person; we will provide drinks. Audio of Eve Ensler performing The Good Body is courtesy of Random House’s women’s studies outreach project.

About The Good Body: Whether undergoing Botox or living under burkhas, women of all cultures and backgrounds feel compelled to change the way they look in order to fit in with their particular culture, in order to be accepted, in order to be good. In The Good Body, Ensler explores their experiences with monologues representing women from Bombay to Beverly Hills. Delivering narratives collected in locker rooms, cell blocks, boardrooms, and bedrooms, Ensler frames their stories with her own personal journey from a self-loathing teenager to a (sometimes) self-accepting adult. Interspersed throughout are riotous excerpts from Ensler’s lifelong dialogue with her belly?a sassy and conniving antagonist in its own right.



 NCCROW Mardi Gras gathering February 2

At 3 pm on Wednesday 2 February 2005 at the annual NCCROW King Cake tasting and open house, the assembled will collaborate on a conceptual pop altar. The concept: femininity, feminism, and being a woman at Mardi Gras. Bring photos, other 2-D art, smallish inert objects, et cetera.



V-WEEK 2005: Watch nccrow.tulane.edu for details about Newcomb/Tulane V-Week 2005 February 14-18 featuring performances of the all-student production of Eve Ensler’s "The Vagina Monologues" on February 16, 17, and 18. Last year, the Newcomb/Tulane production donated over $4000 to the Metropolitan Battered Women’s Program.



The Emily Schoenbaum Research Grants Program deadline: 18 February

The Emily Schoenbaum Research Grants Program is designed to encourage and support projects that will benefit the lives of women and girls, particularly those in the New Orleans metropolitan area. Projects may contribute to scholarly knowledge or to the general public’s understanding of women’s lives and experiences. We are especially interested in projects that have the potential to bring about change in women’s lives or effect public policy so as to improve the well-being of women and girls.

The Program was founded in 1999 by Emily Schoenbaum, a 1988 graduate of Newcomb College, and is administered by the Newcomb College Center for Research on Women.

Who May Apply
Individuals or nonprofit, IRS tax-exempt institutions and organizations in Louisiana are eligible to apply. Applicants may be students, faculty or staff members of any Louisiana college, university, primary or secondary school, as well as community scholars and activists.

Recipients will be notified within one month of the deadline.



Women’s Studies Research Grant Program deadline: 25 February

Current Newcomb and Tulane undergraduates and Tulane graduate students researching topics relating to women may apply for funds to help with the cost of conducting original research as part of a class project, independent study or thesis. The program annually awards grants averaging $300 each to up to five students per semester. The program is supported by the Jesselyn Zurik Fund for Research, and by Friends of the Center. More that $2000 was awarded to students during 2003/2004

You may access and print out an application form from http://www.tulane.edu/~wc/text/researchgrantapp.html, or pick one up on the second floor of the Newcomb College Center for Research on Women.


We invite you to visit www.tulane.edu/~wc/text/rschsupport.html to access application guidelines and forms for each of the Center’s research support programs



Drag Kinging: Politics, Performance and Community

A talk by Alana Kumbier,
Ph. D. student in Comparative Studies, The Ohio State University
4 PM, Wednesday 16 March, Anna E. Many Lounge

(Alana’s talk was postponed due to Hurricane Ivan.)


Kumbier’s presentation will focus on specific moments in North American drag king cultural practice in order to consider the ways in which members of contemporary drag king communities are negotiating the boundaries and tensions involved in forming drag/genderqueer performance communities. The practice of interrogating the meaning(s) and purposes of drag king performance as a site of pleasure for performers and audience members, as well as a site for political practice and action is a central aspect of community experience, and will provide the basis for her discussion.

Alana Kumbier is pursuing a Ph.D. in Comparative Studies at Ohio State University, where she is working in the areas of critical archival studies, science studies, disability studies, and visual culture. She is currently collaborating with Cristina Hernandez to develop the New Orleans Drag King Collection Project at NCCROW. Alana performs king and femme drag, and has been active in drag king culture(s), for over six years; after learning from kings in Columbus, Ohio, she moved to New Orleans and co-founded the drag king troupe Fe-Male Trouble in 2000. In 2001, Alana returned to Columbus, where she has been performing with the Royal Renegades. She has been involved in the International Drag King Extravaganza since its debut in 1999, and is currently serving as a member of the IDKE steering committee.






Still more happenings in the works this Spring at NCCROW >> Bookmark nccrow.tulane.edu and watch for event calendar updates!

> An April lecture about women’s microenterprise projects and the global economy by Dick Adams, U.S. coordinator of the Zimbabwe Womens Art Project, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Lewis and Clark College, and father of Tulane Women’s Studies instructor Jessica Adams. (An art sale, too!)

> A lecture by LSU professor Eileen Meehan, feminst media scholar and editor of such works as Sex and Money: Feminism and Political Economy in the Media and Dazzled by Disney?: The Global Disney Audiences Project.




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and from our colleagues in the New Orleans Women's Studies Consortium



INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence Presents...

THE COLOR OF VIOLENCE III:
STOPPING THE WAR ON WOMEN OF COLOR!

March 11-13, 2005
Historic Treme Community, New Orleans, LA

The many forms of violence experienced on a daily basis by women of color around the world amount to nothing less than a global war on women of color. Color of Violence III will provide an opportunity for women of color to develop and share organizing strategies to address this global assault on women of color. We will share strategies on how to stop this war on all fronts, including: domestic violence; sexual violence; denial of reproductive rights; police brutality; the “War on Terror”; poverty; violence against bisexual, lesbian, intersex, transgender, and Two Spirit women of color; attacks on immigrants’ rights and Indian treaty rights; gentrification and denial of affordable housing.

INCITE! is a national activist organization of radical feminists of color advancing a movement to end violence against women of color and their communities through direct action critical dialogue and grassroots organizing.

More information: www.incite-national.org or contact Janelle White, University of New Orleans Women’s Center at 504 280-7285 or cov3_2005@yahoo.com




Rebecca Walker to lecture at Loyola April 7

Rebecca Walker is a co-founder of the Third Wave Foundation, the only national, activist, philanthropic feminist organization for young women between the ages of 15 and 30. She is editor of the anthology To be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism, which has become a standard text for women’s studies courses throughout the nation. Her first book Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self is an intimate portrait of growing up biracial in a racially divided world. Her latest project, the anthology What Makes A Man, brings together the diverse and rich voices of men discussing how they struggle with masculinity.

Walker’s talk will be free and open to the public. 7 pm, location TBA. For additional information, contact the Loyola Women’s Resource Center at 504 864 7880.


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