Women's Studies Colloquium May 1 (F)

Women's Studies Colloquium Series Spring 2009
May 1 (F) 12:30-2:00 Saunders 541

One of Women's Studies faculty members, Dr. Ruth Dawson is retiring at the end of this semester. This special talk by Dr. Dawson is followed by a reception to celebrate her accomplishments and a new start. Please come and join us!


"Framed! A Gendered take on Words and Images"

by Ruth Dawson (Women's Studies, UHM)

Abstract: Using examples that range from Hawaii, modern and ancient, to 18^th-century Germany, this talk explores gendered narratives of looking and being looked at and asks us to think how these acts are represented in a mural we walk past almost daily, in transcripts of abortionist trials, and at other sites where words and images interact.

Ruth Dawson is a professor of Women’s Studies, a position she reached after many years in the non-tenure-track wilderness in which increasing numbers of UHM faculty will probably soon be confined. She earned her Ph.D. in Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan, and, as her three thick personnel folders in the Dean’s office attest, has probably been terminated more often from the University of Hawaii than all her Women’s Studies colleagues combined—after all, lecturers get ceremonially terminated every semester! In addition to the varied teaching, which she loves, her research focuses on the rediscovery and reassessment of eighteenth-century German women writers, the analysis of representations of Catherine the Great of Russia and of Catherine as an early woman celebrity, and critiques of the exploration texts that resulted from the Cook voyages in the Pacific.

April 24 (F) 12:30-

Women's Studies Graduate Certificate capstone presentation

Mapping Convergence: Feminism, Nationalism, and Indigenous Women Writers

Sarah Smorol (American Studies, UHM)

Abstract: “Mapping Convergence” is a talk that explores the places where feminism has been integrated into Nativist/Indigenist and Nationalist movements through literature by women writers from the Chicana, Native American and Native Hawaiian communities. Particular attention is placed on the period from the late 1970s to early 1980s when a plethora of books were published focusing on contributions from Native women writers.

Speaker bio: Sarah Smorol is a second-year PhD candidate in American Studies and working towards the Advanced Women’s Studies Graduate Certificate at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Previous education includes a B.A. in Language and Cultural Studies from the State University of New York Empire State College and an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies (Cross-Cultural Arts and Literature) from San Diego State University.

Room: Saunders 541

Open to public

WS Colloquium April 17 Friday

Japanese Women's Participation in Transnational Women's Activism, 1870s-1880s

Rumi Yasutake (Konan University, Japan)

--Co-sponsored with Center for Japanese Studies--

April 17 (Friday)

12:30pm-1:30pm, Saunders 541

Abstract

This paper examines interaction among American and Japanese men and women in the Tokyo-Yokohama area during the 1870s and 1880s, focusing on the inception of a Japanese women's union in Tokyo of the World Woman's Christian Temperance Union(WWCTU), the largest women's organization in turn-of-the-century America. The Japanese women's union was formed through
efforts of Mary C. Leavitt, a "round-the-world missionary” dispatched by the WWCTU. By that pivotal moment, Japan had fully recognized the need to Westernize and modernize itself to sustain its integrity from the threat posed by the Western powers. Preceding Leavitt were American missionary women, who had arrived in Japan along with government officials, traders, and industrialists. The presence of American women in Japan, which demonstrated material wealth and advanced technology of America, were welcomed by Japanese men and women in the 1870s and 1880s when Japan looked up to the Western nations for its model for civilization. From a macro-point of view, American women, who came to Japan for the expansion of their religious beliefs or of their moral movement, looked to be effective agents of American, especially cultural, imperialism. However, when you closely examine interactions between American and Japanese men and women, the seeming expansion of American cultural values and customs appears to be far more complex and illusive. This paper investigates collaboration and contention among American and Japanese men and women who responded to
Leavitt's call to organize a WCTU union in the Tokyo-Yokohama area in the 1880s.

Rumi Yasutake is a professor in the Faculty of Letters, Konan University in Kobe, Japan.
She is the author of the book Transnational Women's Activism: The United States, Japan, and Japanese Immigrant Communities in California,1859-1920 (New York: New York University Press, 2004).

Women's Studies Colloquium April 16

April 16:

“A Japanese in Every Jet” Gender, Mobility, and Modernity in Postwar Japan

By Dr. Christine Yano (Professor, Dept. of Anthropology, UHM)
Date: Thursday April 16
Time: 3:00 pm—4:30 pm
Location: Korean Studies Auditorium, East West Rd (opp. Moore Hall)

(Refreshments Provided)

See attached flyer for more information.

Abstract:
In 1964, the Japanese government lifted international travel restrictions, opening the floodgates for international travel. By May 1967, Life magazine proclaimed, “Newest Stewardess Fad: A Japanese in Every Jet,” featuring Japanese stewardesses on eleven international carriers.

This paper examines the “Japanese-in-every-jet” phenomenon through the experiences of Japanese stewardesses who flew for the world’s premier carrier, Pan American World Airways.
It suggests that the job took elite Japanese women out of the national home and into the corporate sphere of Pan Am’s global cabin and foreign ports of call.

Free and open to the public.

WS colloquium March 20, 2009

Battle of the Sexes in the New Millennium

Examining Sport and Gender

Trina Kudlacek

(UHM, Office of Student Athlete Academic Services)

March 20 (Friday)

12:30pm-1:30pm, Saunders 541

Abstract

The 1970’s were a pivotal decade for the empowerment of women and women’s involvement in sport reflected the spirit of the times. In 1972, Title IX was passed and in 1973 Billy Jean King played Bobby Riggs in the “Battle of the Sexes”. Now, 36 years later, both women and men, are becoming more aware of how traditional gender roles shape and restrict their participation in sport as in larger society. This talk will examine the importance of sport, as a socially constructed and gendered institution, through which hegemonic masculinity is reproduced and reinforced.

Trina Kudlacek received her Doctorate of Education in Sport Psychology and Counseling from Temple University in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. Her academic focus has been on diversity issues in athletics with particular emphasis on race, ethnicity, and gender. She has worked in academic support services with college student-athletes for 17 years and currently has a position as an academic adviser for the Office of Student Athlete Academic Services at UH Manoa. In addition to academic advising, Trina currently teaches two courses on line at Oregon State University, one in the Exercise and Sport Sciences entitled "Power and Privilege in Sport" and the other "Women in Sport" through the Women's Studies Department. She also teaches a course in the sociology of sport in the Kinesiology and Rehabilitation Science Dept. at UH Manoa. She is the author of a textbook chapter on sychosocial issues of college student-athletes and has also presented at national and international conferences on coach/athlete relationships, diversity issues for student-athletes of color, and academic support strategies for student-athletes.

Rainbow bridge academic fair

Women's Studies participated in the Rainbow Bridge Academic Fair.
More on the Rainbow Bridge Program:

The Rainbow Bridge program will familiarize prospective community college transfer students with the Mānoa campus, inform them on policies and procedures which affect their enrollment at Mānoa, showcase various academic and student service programs, and provide opportunities for students to network with Mānoa faculty and staff.


If you are transfer students to Manoa and would like to know more about Women's Studies, please contact 956-7464, or email any of our faculty members.

WS colloquium March 13 (F) Legal Responses to World War II Sexual Violence: The Japanese Experience

Legal Responses to World War II Sexual Violence: The Japanese Experience

Yuma Totani

Department of History, UHM

--Co-sponsored with Center for Japanese Studies--

March 13 (Friday) 12:30pm-1:30pm, Saunders 541

Abstract

Since the establishment of international tribunals in the 1990s, there have been debates concerning the extent to which justice systems can help victims and perpetrators of mass atrocity begin the process of confronting the past and restoring the fabric of torn communities. This paper explores how rape, sexual slavery, and other forms of sexual violence that accompanied the Japanese conduct of war were documented at WWII war crimes trials on the one hand and the present-day civil lawsuits on the other. By comparing the two types of legal proceedings, Totani considers the possibilities and limitations of the judiciary in achieving justice, establishing accountability, and restoring the dignity of the victims of atrocity.

Yuma Totani obtained her Ph.D. in History at the University of California at Berkeley, in 2005. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Harvard University, in 2005-2006. She is currently an assistant professor of History at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Her representative publication is The Tokyo War Crimes Trial: The Pursuit of Justice in the Wake of World War II (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008). The Japanese edition, Tōkyō saiban: dai 2-ji taisen go no hō to seigi no tsuikyū (Tokyo: Misuzu shobō, 2008), is translated and revised by the author.