09-25 Sonia Amin Public Lecture

SONIA NISHAT AMIN: Revisiting the Trauma of 1971: Selina Parveen in the Killing Fields of Rayer Bazaar

UHM Women’s Studies Colloquium Series Fall 2009
A presentation and discussion by:
Professor Sonia Nishat Amin
Department of History at the University of Dhaka and the Arthur Lynn Andrews Chair at the UHM School of Pacific and Asian Studies

Friday, 9/25/09
12:30pm-2:00pm
Saunders 637

This paper attempts to reconstruct the struggle of poet, journalist, editor and Freedom Fighter, Selina Parveen leading up to her tragic death at the hands of the Pakistani army and their collaborators in Bangladesh's War of Liberation, 1971. Selina Parveen is one of the few women who have been honoured by the commemorative stamps issued by the state in remembrance of the 'Martyred Intellectuals'. Yet her life story is often obliterated by the amnesia of historians who tend to gloss over the role of women in history. In this paper I would like to briefly reconstruct the trajectory of Parveen's life and struggle as part of the Bengalee Resistance in 1971 - from the start of her career as an independent journalist to the last moments of her brutal death in the killing fields of Rayer Bazaar.

Fall 2009 Women's Studies Colloquium Schedule

Fall 2009 Colloquium Series

09/11 Kimberlee Bassford (filmmaker) discusses Patsy Mink: Ahead of the Majority

* co-sponsored with the Center for Biographical Studies, the Bridge to Hope Program, UHM Women’s Center, the UHM Archives Department and the UHM Political Science Department

09/18 Anne Keala Kelly (filmmaker) discusses Noho Hewa: The Wrongful Occupation of Hawai`i

10/02 Michael J. Shapiro (UHM-Political Science) “Mother’s Talk and Mother’s Arms: Edward P. Jones’ Washington, DC”

· co-sponsored with the Political Science Department

10/16 Kathryn Davis (UHM-Second Language Studies) TITLE TBA

10/23 Elyssa Faison (University of Oklahoma-History) “Gender and Labor in Korea”

· co-sponsored with the UHM Center for Korean Studies

11/13 Brianne Gallagher (UHM-Political Science) “The Blog of War: (Re)producing U.S. Soldiers in an Age of Terror”

· co-sponsored with the Political Science Department

12/04 Women’s Studies Capstone Presentations

TITLE(S) TBA

All colloquia take place at Saunders Hall, Room 637 from 12:30-2pm on the (Friday) date noted above. Please contact Bianca Isaki (bisaki@hawaii.edu) for more information.

More pictures from Ruth Dawson's retirement reception

We are going to miss you Ruth!

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.