Volume 6, Number 2
President’s Report
Vivian Pollak
The opening tea; the first board meeting; the first brown bag; the excitement over the presidential election; the dinner at Talayna’s with AWN, our sister group at the medical school; the e-mails I received from the membership throughout the year, some of them asking whether it would be appropriate to forward message X to the group as a whole; the chancellor’s reception for women faculty; the excitement over the work of the committees; Sally Goldman’s communiqués about our website; thinking about a mini-board retreat for next fall—as I look back over our work together this year, I recall the purpose of our organization, as set forth in our constitution, which, thanks to Sally, is conveniently online. We are engaged in facilitating professional and social interactions among faculty women on the Danforth Campus, although we traditionally have at least one brown bag with women administrators as well. As I write this final announcement, I look forward to the last brown bag of the school year, this one on Elder Care, and to our closing dinner: the traditional potluck where we announce results of our election and present awards to graduate students from Arts & Sciences, University College and the professional schools. We will also be presenting a special Appreciation Award to Helen Power, as she steps down as coordinator of Washington University’s Women’s Studies program after many years of distinguished service. The dinner is on Monday, April 30, from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Women’s Building, and I hope to see you there.
Mainly, though, I would like to say what a pleasure it has been interacting with the people who have contributed their time and talents in 2000-01: the membership; the board members; Mary Ann Dzuback, who keeps our membership list; and an unsung heroine, IRIS WRIGHT, without whom I could not have kept the organization going. Iris volunteered to help our group when Fatemeh Keshavarz was president. She graciously agreed to assist me this year and what a fabulous job she did: keeping all the records I am sure I would have misplaced, sending out mailings to the membership, arranging food for our events, paying bills, reminding me of deadlines and just generally being there as a cheerful and efficient presence whenever I felt daunted by detail. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Iris on behalf of the board and the membership, and we will be presenting her with a small token of our appreciation at the closing dinner.
Overall, then, I wish you a productive and happy summer and look forward to working with our incoming president to facilitate a smooth transition and more generally to my continuing affiliation with the AWF. I am honored to have served as president this past year, and please feel free to communicate with me until July 1, when, according to our constitution, the new president takes over. I am still expecting reports from the Mentoring Committee and from the Non-tenure-track Committee, and it has been a pleasure working with the leaders of AWN, including Dr. Nancy Baenziger, their representative to our board. We hope to continue having a representative at their board meetings next year and to continue sharing newsletters and information about our mutual events. Susan Rotroff attended several of their board meetings this year. So long for now, and I hope you will be able to attend the April 30 business meeting and dinner.
Committee Reports
Non-Tenure-Track Faculty
Ginger Marcus
During the fall semester the 12 members of AWF Non-tenure-track Faculty (NTTF) Committee met to set goals and determine implementation strategies for the academic year. Committee members requested policy statements concerning NTTF from their respective Danforth departments and schools, studied those of other institutions and examined the AAUP document on The Status of NTTF and its recommendations to set minimum professional standards designed to protect all faculty, tenured or nontenured.
At its meeting early in the spring semester, the committee reviewed the existing policy statements it received from the Danforth departments and schools and discussed relevant chapters from Teaching Without Tenure: Policies and Practices for a New Era (Baldwin and Chronister, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). Later in the semester, representatives of the committee met with a small group of department chairs to seek their support in the development of policies affecting full-time NTTF. Currently, representatives of the committee are drafting recommendations for clearly articulated policies regarding NTTF employment.
Brown Bag Lunches and Round Table Discussions
Alison Wylie
This past year, AWF has sponsored six meetings on a range of topics and in a variety for formats. Here are some retrospective details and some proposals that have been made for the future.
The first meeting of the year was a Brown Bag Luncheon on “Gender and Teaching Practices,” convened by Akiko Tsuchiya and Cindy Brantmeier. It drew such interest, we organized a second afternoon session on teaching in January, this one convened by Nancy Pope on “Teaching Around the Edges: Interactions with Students.” Just two loyal AWF members turned out for Nancy’s session; it looks like January is to be avoided! One other afternoon roundtable did prove to be very successful: Mary Ann Dzuback’s presentation of her historical work on the mentoring networks that sustained women when they first began to enter the Social Sciences, “Academic Women and Mentoring: Passing the Torch.”
Early in the spring semester, we scheduled what is fast becoming an annual event: a lunch meeting that brings together members of AWF and WABBL (Women Administrators Brown-Bag Lunch). This year we set a topic, “Careers in Administration,” which generated an animated discussion of issues women face balancing competing demands of university administration. There was a great deal of enthusiasm for arranging a joint meeting in the fall as well as in the spring and, although discussion ranged widely, it seemed to work well to take a particular topic as a point of departure. One of the issues that figured prominently in this discussion was that of elder care; it became the topic of our final Brown Bag Luncheon meeting of the year, a session on “Elder Care” convened by Liz Childs.
Thanks to everyone who participated in these sessions and especially to those who convened them. It was a great pleasure to meet so many AWF members and hear one another’s thoughts on such a wide range of topics. It was especially nice to have the kind of sustained discussion that periodic meetings make possible. In fact, this was one of the suggestions that came up repeatedly in the course of the year: that we consider establishing a regular schedule of Brown Bag Luncheons and afternoon roundtables roughly once a month through the year. If the dates are set in advance, we’ll all know when we can count on seeing one another, and the topics can be specified as the year unfolds. I look forward to future discussion!
Nominating Committee
Akiko Tsuchiya
The AWF Nominating Committee is pleased to present the following slate of candidates to represent the membership next year.
- President: Susan Rotroff, Classics
- Secretary: Sally Goldman, Computer Science
- Treasurer: Vivian Pollak, English
Councillors-at-Large:
- Liz Childs, Art History (NEW!)
- Marilyn Friedman, Philosophy (NEW!)
- Ginger Marcus, ANELL (NEW!)
- Angela Miller, Art History (Continuing)
- Sunita Parikh, Political Science (NEW!)
- Akiko Tsuchiya, RLL (Continuing)
Ballots will be circulated shortly and should be returned to Akiko Tsuchiya, Box 1077, by Friday, April 20.
The board represents women from a diversity of disciplines and departments at Washington University. In the future, we hope to enlist board members from other fields and schools in which women are underrepresented, such as the sciences, and the Schools of Engineering, Business, Architecture, and Art. The AWF depends on the support and cooperation of all of its membership, and those of us on the board hope that more AWF members, particularly those representing the disciplines mentioned above, will be willing to serve on the board in the future.
Welcome to the incoming board members, and many thanks to outgoing ones who have served tirelessly in many capacities! Special thanks to Vivian Pollak, our current president.
Child Care and Family Responsive Committee
Three members of the Child Care and Family Responsive Committee—Mane Lagos (chair), Kim Norwood and Nancy Berg—were on the University Childcare Commission headed by Executive Vice Chancellor Richard Roloff. This commission was created and charged in direct response to the AWF Report on the Status of Women (Dzuback and Epstein, 1999). After assessing the supply, range and costs of child care options available in the area, focus groups and surveys were used to determine present and future needs and priorities. The commission met with a number of experts in the field (and even toured local facilities). A multi-pronged solution including an exciting joint venture with UCCC (University City Children’s Center) was proposed to the chancellor and is currently in the early stages of implementation.
As a reminder: One of our benefits as Washington University employees is the prepaid referral service provided by the Child Day Care Association for both child- and elder-care resources. Call (314) 531-1412 for more information and referrals. (This benefit is also in response to the Dzubak Epstein AWF Report on the Status of Women.)
The AWF Web Page
Sally Goldman
One of the roles that AWF can play is to help in the task of information sharing. The AWF webpage has been designed to help address this task. One can reach the web page directly at http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~awf, or, alternatively, by looking under “Resources for Faculty” on the Washington University homepage.
Created and maintained by Sally Goldman of the Department of Computer Science in the School of Engineering, the AWF webpage provides information on the founding of AWF, the full text of the AWF Constitution and information on past and future events of interest to AWF members. The AWF Newsletter, from Volume 1, Number 1 (February 1996) to the present issue can be accessed through the webpage, as can an html version of the AWN Family Resource Handbook. Finally, the AWF webpage offers links to other web pages that AWF members have found useful, including pages on elder care and childcare and resources on caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s.
The AWF webpage is continually being updated and feedback from AWF members is very valuable to its development. In particular, if you have found a webpage that has been useful to you and you feel it may be helpful to other AWF members, please send the URL to Sally Goldman at sg@cs.wustl.edu. Other suggestions, and volunteers in particular, are warmly welcomed!
News from Women’s Studies
Linda Nicholson
Helen Power, who has been coordinator of Women’s Studies since 1991, will step down from this position as of this summer. After a sabbatical in the fall, she will resume her position as senior lecturer in the program. Linda Nicholson, the Susan E. and William P. Stiritz Distinguished Professor of Women’s Studies and Professor of History, will take over the position of coordinator.
Women’s Studies will be adding a new assistant professor this fall. Sara Friedman will be joining the program with a joint appointment in Anthropology. Sara Friedman received her PhD from Cornell University in 2000. Her dissertation was titled, “Reluctant Brides and Prosperity’s Daughters: Marriage, Labor, and Cultural Change in Southeastern China’s Hui’an County.” During 2000-2001, Dr. Friedman was an An Wang Postdoctoral Fellow at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University.
Barbara Baumgartner will continue as lecturer in Women’s Studies. Dr. Baumgartner developed the first course on women’s health for the program, a course that is always oversubscribed. Dr. Baumgartner brings a unique background to her teaching, combining a RN degree with a PhD in English from Northwestern University.
Member News
Lisa Baldez (Political Science) reports that her manuscript, “Why Women Protest: Women’s Movements in Chile,” has been accepted for publication by Cambridge University Press.
Milica Banjanin (Russian) has the following publications this year, “The City as Framed Spectacle in the Works of Elena Guro” in Twentieth-Century Russian Literature, ed. by Karen L. Ryan and Barry P. Scherr (McMillan Press Ltd, Houndmills, Hampshire, England, 2000); and, “The Mutual Reflection of Scene and Spectator in the Works of Aleksandr Blok,” New Zealand Slavonic Journal. 2000.
Darrell M. Berg (Music) has recently published an article, “The Death and Return of the Composer: C. P. E. Bach as Author of His Works,” in Essays on Music and Culture in Honor of Herbert Kellman, ed. Barbara Haggh (Tours: Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, 2001).
On March 30, 2001, she delivered a paper, “Die Quellen der Claviersachen C. P. E. Bachs als Spiegel seiner Didaktik” (“The Sources of C. P. E. Bach’s Keyboard Works as a Reflection of his Didacticism”) in Subice, Poland, as part of the biennial conference on Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach held in Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany, and nearby cities. Following the conference, she attended Berlin and Leipzig meetings of the Executive Board of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Collected Works, an edition of which she has been appointed executive editor.
Cindy Brantmeier (Romance Languages and Literatures) participated in a number of conferences and workshops this spring. At the American Association of Applied Linguistics, held in St. Louis, she presented the research “Language Skills or Passage Content? A Comparison of Native and Non-Native Male and Female Readers.” “Does Gender Make a Difference? Interacting Variables in L2 Reading,” was the title of her presentation to the 46th Annual International Linguistic Association Conference at New York University. And, at the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, she presented a paper on “Challenges in Second Language Reading Research: Implications for L2 Researchers.” Additionally, she has had a number of articles published, including “Second Language Reading Research on Passage Content and Gender: Challenges for the Intermediate Level,” Foreign Language Annals, 2001; and, “The Effects of Passage Content on Second Language Reading Comprehension by Gender Across Instruction Levels,” invited chapter of special issue for American Educational Research Association, Fall, 2001.
Elizabeth Childs (Art History) has seen a number of her publications concerning Gauguin and exoticism appear this year. Her essay “The Colonial Lens: Gauguin, Primitivism and Photography in the Fin-de-Siecle” was published in an anthology Policing the Boundaries of Modernity: Antimodernism and Artistic Experience (University of Toronto Press, 2001), edited by Lynda Jessup. Her essay “Seeking the Studio of the South: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Avant-Garde Identity” appeared in the catalogue to the exhibition Vincent Van Gogh and the Painters of the Petit Boulevard, which opened at the Saint Louis Art Museum in February 2001 (Rizzoli Press). She will be giving a symposium paper, “The Artist’s Pen: Gauguin as Writer” this spring in conjunction with that exhibition. She will also be giving three public lectures on the exhibition, both here in St. Louis, and at a Van Gogh lecture series at Wofford College, S.C. Her review of Stephen Eisenman’s book Gauguin’s Skirt will appear in the anthropological journal Pacific Review, vol. 22, no. 4 (May, 2001).
Mary Ann Dzuback (Education) led a seminar focusing on tenure issues with junior colleagues in the history of education at the American Educational Association Annual Meeting in Seattle in April.
Marilyn Friedman (Philosophy) presented a paper entitled “From Delightful to Depraved: The Diversity Continuum,” at the Pacific Division meetings of the American Philosophical Association, San Francisco, March 30, 2001. She presented “Diversity and Moral Character: Cultivation or Suffocation?,” at a conference on “Moral Cultivation” at the University of Santa Clara, in Santa Clara, Calif., April 14, 2001. And, she commented on Kok-Chor Tan’s “Cosmopolitanism and Compatriotism: Finding an Equilibrium,” at the Young Scholar Weekend, Center for Ethics and Public Life, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., April 28, 2001.
Naseem Hines (ANELL), recipient of the American Institute of Indian Studies’ Senior Research Fellowship, has made periodic trips to India to collect the manuscripts of a thirteen-century Sufi allegorical poem “Chandayan” composed in 1379. Through funding provided by the Olin Library, she was able to obtain a copy of the manuscript from the University of Manchester, U.K., which will become part of Olin’s Special Collections. “This is a matter of great prestige for our university,” Hines notes, “because prior to this there was only one page of Chandayan manuscript available in the United States (in the Hoffer Museum, Mass.). Over the next few years Hines will work on an English translation of “Chandayan.” Activities this spring include serving as a guest speaker at the fundraising dinner for the earthquake victims in India and participation in the Conference on Sufi Literature in South Asian Vernacular Languages held in California. From June through August, she will teach Intensive Elementary-level Hindi at Berkeley, where she will be able to continue working on a Third-Year Hindi Reader with Professor Usha Jain. Forthcoming publications include “In Quest of the Correct Combination: The Homecoming Episode in Maulana Daud’s Indo-Sufi Masnavi ‘Chandayan’,” in The Banyan Tree: Essays on Early Literature in New Indo-Aryan Languages, 2 Vols.
Emma Kafalenos (Comparative Literature) coorganized (with Gerald Prince and James Phelan) the four-session Contemporary Narratology Seminar at the SSNL Narrative Conference held in Houston, Tex., March 8-11, 2001. She chaired the first session, on Ambiguity and Readerly Agency, in which Gerald Prince, David Richter, and Brian McHale spoke, and in the third session presented a paper titled “Oxymoronic Focalization: Narrativity and the Representation of Desire.”
Fatemeh Keshavarz (Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures) delivered a lecture on the personality of Shirin, the heroine of the Medieval Persian Romantic Epic “Khusrow va Shirin,” at Emory University on March 19 and addressed a general audience in the speakers series organized by the Middle East Center on Peace, Culture and Development at Georgia State University on March 20th at Atlanta. The talk was entitled “Why does Rumi’s Poetry Speak to All?” and was followed by a book signing session.
She also delivered the keynote address “The Future of Women of Color at Work and at Home” to the Women of Color conference here at Washington University on March 31.
Pauline Kleingeld (Philosophy) has two articles accepted for publication: “Kantian Patriotism” will appear in Philosophy and Public Affairs, and its sister article “Kant’s Cosmopolitan Patriotism” will appear in Kant-Studien.
Mané Lagos (Romance Languages and Literatures) had an article on U.S. Latina writers published, “Deconstrucción del estereotipo hispánico en narraciones de Julia Alvarez, Cristina Garcia y Esmeralda Santiago,” Studies in Honor of Myron Lichtblau, Fernando Burgos, ed. Juan de la Cuesta, 2000. She presented a paper, “Saga familiar a dos voces: The House on the Lagoon by Rosario Ferré” at the Internacional Congress of Americanists in Warsaw, Poland, in July 2000. In March 2001, she participated at a panel at Brown University on the works of Diamela Eltit. Her presentation was entitled “Mujer, escritura y dictadura”. On campus, March 27, she was the facilitator for “A Conversation with Diamela Eltit,” a writer from Chile who is currently distinguished visiting professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.
Linda Lindsey (Social Thought and Analysis) has been selected for inclusion in the 2000-2001 edition of Who’s Who in America. Along with her co-author Stephen Beach (Associate professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Kentucky Weslyan College), she has written the second edition of Sociology published last month by Prentice Hall. The first edition was published just last year.
Angela Miller (Art History) lectured in February at Michigan State University in connection with an exhibition on American landscape art; she also spoke on 19th and 20th century images of nature from the perspectives of the new environmental history, for the Maryville University speakers’ series. On April 5, she presented recent research on American art of the 1940s, in the lecture series developed in conjunction with the art gallery’s “Caught by Politics,” featuring scholars from around the nation. She has support from the Mellon Foundation to assist in completion of her collaborative history of the arts in America, focusing on themes of cross-cultural encounter.
Elizabeth Oyler (ANELL) made a presentation entitled “Biwa Hoshi at the crossroads: founding legends, heike biwa and the guild in medieval Japan” at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies held in Chicago in March. This work continues her study of blind, lute-playing performers of the war narrative “The Tale of the Heike.” In April, she will present a paper entitled “Tomoe, woman warrior” at the Midwest Japan Seminar at Berea College.
Rebecca Rogers (Education) is currently working on a research project studying the linguistic patterns across contexts of adults enrolled in a literacy program in St. Louis city schools. Rogers is also a research associate with the Center for English Learning and Achievement, exploring the consequences of integration on student learning and achievement. Rogers has presented papers in a number of conferences, most recently the Qualitative Research Conference (QUIG) in Georgia, where she presented “Problematizing reflexivity in research.” She currently is organizing a symposium for national and international scholars using critical discourse analysis in their work. The working colloquium is called “Framing a Research Agenda for Critical Discourse Analysis” and will be held on the Washington University campus. Two of her articles that are representative of her research are: “Multiple forms of evidence: A case study of student learning and achievement,” with G. Goatley, National Reading Conference Yearbook; and, “Ethnographic Intentions: Multi-vocal representations of literate subjectivities.”
Rachel Roth (Political Science) had several articles published in popular venues, including: “Policing Pregnancy,” The Nation (October 16, 2000), and “Adding Insult to Injury: New York Charges Battered Mothers with Neglect,” Salon.com (September 14, 2000). In addition, she presented work at the annual meetings of the Law & Society Association and the Western Political Science Association on the politics of fetal rights and on prisoners’ abortion rights.
Akiko Tsuchiya (Romance Languages and Literatures) read a paper entitled: “Gender, Sexuality and the Literary Market in Spain at the End of the Millennium,” at the Modern Language Association Convention in December 2000. She also presented a lecture entitled “Peripheral Subjects: Policing Deviance and Disorder in Galdós’s Nazarín and Halma” at Johns Hopkins University in February 2001. She recently traveled to the International Galdós Conference in Las Palmas, Canary Islands, as an invited speaker to participate in a seminar on “Hispanic Studies on Galdós and His Epoch” and presented a paper on “The Contributions of Feminist Criticism to Galdós Studies.” She published the articles: “La anarquía sexual: el adulterio femenino como metáfora de la crisis finisecular en Realidad de Galdós,” in Homenaje a Alfonso Armas Ayala (Las Palmas: Cabildo Insular de Gran Canaria, 2000) and “Seducción y simulación en Una primavera per a Domenico Guarini de Carme Riera” in a bilingual (Spanish/Catalan) anthology published on the Catalan author Carme Riera by Ediciones Destino (Barcelona, 2000). Her review article, entitled “Discourses on Gender and the Question of ‘Woman’s Identity in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Spain” appeared in the first issue of the newly-launched Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies.
Alison Wylie (Philosophy) has been asked to present a lecture designated for a section on “The Gender of Science and the Science of Gender” in a series of lectures on “Positions of Knowledge: Some Critical Thresholds,” sponsored by the Portuguese Minister for Science and Technology.
Comings and Goings
The AWF Membership is pleased to learn of the recent appointments of a number of new women faculty. We are also eager to welcome back colleagues returning from leave and to celebrate with those preparing for leave. Those leaving the university who have enriched our programs and our lives have our fondest farewells. The following provides an overview of some of the comings and goings of women faculty on the Washington University Danforth Campus:
The English Department will welcome a new faculty member, Lara Bovilsky, coming from Duke this fall. Her field is Renaissance Drama, and her dissertation is called “Barbarous Play: Race on the Renaissance Stage.”
Sara Friedman joins us with a joint appointment in Anthropology and Women’s Studies (See the Women’s Studies Report above.)
History has hired Maggie Garb in U.S. urban history.
Sophia Hayes will be joining the Chemistry Department as an assistant professor. Most recently, Dr. Hayes has been an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow with the Department of Physics at the University of Dortmund in Dortmund, Germany. Prior to this, she was a postdoctoral student with the Department of Chemical Engineering at U.C. Berkeley. Her research interests include the study of optically and electronically active materials such as semiconductor quantum dots, quantum wells and molecular switches.
Kathleen Keane will be joining the department of Classics in the fall. She is currently a postdoctoral student at Northwestern and received her PhD in Classics from Penn. Her specialty is Latin poetry, in particular, Roman satire.
Erin McGlothlin, PhD, University of Virginia, will be joining the German Department as an assistant professor. She works on literature by children of the Holocaust survivors and children of perpetrators. She is also interested in theater.
Shanti Parikh will be joining Anthropology and African & Afro-American Studies; her research is on AIDS in Africa.
On Susan Rava’s Retirement
Nina Davis
Susan Rava, Senior Lecturer in French in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, is retiring after 23 years as a faculty member at Washington University. After completing her dissertation on Proust and Flaubert here in 1978, she was hired as a full-time French faculty member. Over the years, she taught a range of undergraduate language and literature in translation courses, created the Romance Languages and Literatures Teaching Development Program for graduate students, and developed both the introductory graduate pedagogy seminar and an advanced graduate seminar on technology and foreign language curriculum. Susan Rava won the hearts and admiration of her students in repeated courses and was the recipient of numerous teaching awards, including the Emerson Electric Excellence in Teaching Award for Higher Education in 1994 and the Washington University Council of Students of Arts & Sciences Teaching Award during three separate years. She published actively in a range of foreign language journals and served on numerous university committees, inspiring her colleagues with her great commitment to students and the university.
“Susan Rava’s wisdom, expertise and sense of humor will be missed outside of the Romance Languages and Literatures Department, as well,” Nancy Berg (ANELL) has noted. “In addition to her departmental pedagogy duties — TA training, seminars and general mentoring — she has always made herself available to those of us outside of her department. One of my first years here, she was generous in agreeing to offer language teaching workshops to us in the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures and has continued to be generous with her help and advice. From her, we’ve learned more about O’Maggio and Rivers proficiency and cultural competency than from any ACTFL conference. And because of her, we’ll continue to learn about language teaching and continue to become better language teachers.”
Harriet Stone (RLL) observes: “A brilliant teacher whose efforts have been celebrated by three teaching awards, Susan Rava has been a leader in bringing innovative pedagogy to the classroom. Her dedication, professionalism and generous service to the university, the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures Department and to her many generations of devoted students mark her extraordinary career. She has mentored graduate students and colleagues alike by her knowledge of the classroom and especially by her own outstanding example.”
Akiko Tsuchiya (RLL) adds: “Susan has made a significant contribution as a mentor for our TAs, especially through her “Teaching Methodology” courses and has also played a major role in spearheading curricular design and development in our department.”
Erin Mackie Accepts Post in New Zealand
Guinn Batten
Erin Mackie, an associate professor in the English Department, will be leaving Washington University on May 30 to accept a tenured position in the English department at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand (south island). She will be teaching 18th-century literature and eagerly anticipates involvement in the newly instituted Cultural Studies degree program.
Miriam Bailin, chair, English Department is joined by her colleagues in noting: “Erin Mackie’s departure is a great loss for the English Department and for Arts & Sciences generally. Because of her own broad interests, she has offered a wide range of courses that have been an important and neglected part of our curriculum. In addition to courses in 18th-century British literature and culture, she has taught courses in “Youth Culture,” in the British West Indies, in contemporary feminist theory and Cultural Studies. Her friends and colleagues in the English Department will miss her very much.”
Helen Power, coordinator, Women’s Studies Program: “Erin Mackie has enriched the Women’s Studies program by teaching several key courses and by participating in the program’s executive committee. Her intellectual contributions have been major. Working with her has been a great pleasure. We’ll miss her in many ways.”
Naomi Lebowitz, professor emeritus, English Department: “I have admired Erin as a teacher and writer who knows how to play boldly in the wide fields of literature and literary thought, fairly dancing through myriad landscapes with the characteristic grace and humor of her mind.”
Guinn Batten, Department of English: “Erin Mackie has been the ideal colleague, mentor and friend: brilliant, enthusiastic and gracious in her efforts to help a junior colleague better herself as a scholar and a teacher. I cannot imagine the department without her vivid, gorgeous presence. Erin is irreplaceable.”
Ingrid Monson accepts appointment as Quincy Jones Professor of Music at Harvard University
Robert Snarrenberg
Associate Professor and Chair of Department
The Department of Music rejoices with Ingrid Monson on her recent appointment as the first Quincy Jones Professor of Music at Harvard University. We will miss her very much.
Ingrid joined the music faculty of Washington University in 1996. Her research on jazz is highly regarded by academics and jazz musicians alike. She brings the insights of a jazz insider into productive engagement with cultural theory. Her first book, Saying Something, is an ethnographically-based study of the nature of interaction within the rhythm section in jazz ensembles. She interweaves close technical analysis of musical acts within a broader project of showing how improvisational interaction articulates identity, politics and culture. In her forthcoming book she explores how the practice of jazz was situated in the Civil Rights movement.
In addition to popular courses on jazz, Ingrid has regularly taught courses on musics from around the world, music of the African diaspora and American popular music. She is largely responsible for developing an undergraduate program in jazz studies that combines practical training with historical, cultural and theoretical study.
Dolores Pesce, professor, Head of Musicology, notes: “Ingrid is a fine colleague. She helped energize our department, for which we’re grateful. We wish her the best at Harvard.” Craig Monson, professor, observes that Ingrid’s presence “transformed the character of the undergraduate and graduate programs in music…Ingrid also worked tirelessly and selflessly on the north side of Forsyth Blvd., contributing to college-wide and university-wide concerns.” And Darrell Berg, visiting associate professor, adds: “In my brief acquaintance with Ingrid Monson, I have admired her intellectual ability and integrity, her devotion to scholarship and her commitment to teaching. She will be missed by the Music Department.
Academic Leave
Fatemeh Keshavarz (ANELL) will be returning from research leave this fall. Additionally, Andrea Friedman (History and Women’s Studies) will be returning from leave, after spending the spring with her brand new baby, Corey, born December 4.
The following AWF Members will be on leave this coming academic year: Pamela Barmash (ANELL and JNE), Nancy Berg (ANELL), Beata Grant (ANELL and Religious Studies-Fall), Marilyn Friedman (Philosophy-Spring), Pauline Kleingold (Philosophy-Fall), Helen Power (Women’s Studies-Fall) and Alison Wylie (Philosophy).
Tenure and Promotion
Sally Goldman (Engineering) has been promoted to full professor.
Pauline Kleingeld (Philosophy) has been promoted to associate professor with tenure.
Other reports of AWF Comings and Goings will be reported in the next newsletter, so please keep us informed of what is happening in your departments.
Honors and Awards
Barbara Schaal Installed as the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Biology
By Susan Rotroff
On March 1, Barbara Schaal was installed as the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Biology. After the ritual of her investiture, when Chancellor Mark Wrighton and former Chancellor William Danforth presented her with a medal and summarized some of her most outstanding achievements, Barbara delivered a short account of her work and of the path that led her to her present position. The child of immigrants who arrived from Germany when she was very young, Barbara benefited from the accessibility of public higher education and, as she put it, “the kindness of strangers:” benefactors who endowed scholarships like the one she won to Yale for her graduate studies. Her work in plant science has earned national recognition, and she spoke about some of the weighty and controversial issues involved in the development of new plant strains. Her sensitive comments made one hope that she will be a major consultant to the decisions that are made in that arena. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, she is one of America’s most distinguished scientists. Through her research, teaching and service provides a powerful role model, particularly for young women in the sciences.
Rachel Roth (Political Science) reports that her Making Women Pay: The Hidden Costs of Fetal Rights (Cornell University Press 2000) was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year.
Rebecca Rogers (Education) received the National Reading Conference Outstanding Research Award last year for “Ethnographic Intentions: Multi-vocal representations of literate subjectivities;” and she was a finalist for the International Reading Association Outstanding Dissertation of the Year Award (2001).
Faculty Mentor Awards
A number of AWF Members received a certificate of special recognition for excellence in mentoring as part of the second annual Outstanding Faculty Mentor Awards. The awards, which were presented on Tuesday, April 17th, 2001, were created by graduate students in the senate to honor faculty members whose commitment to graduate students and excellence in graduate training has made a significant contribution to the success of graduate students in Arts & Sciences at Washington University. Among those named are AWF members: Guinn Batten, English (also honored last year); Margaret Lou Brown, Anthropology; Rebecca Copeland, ANELL; Marilyn Friedman, Philosophy; Fatemeh Keshavarz, ANELL ; Erin Mackie, English; Kathryn Miller, Biology; Vivian Pollak, English; Barbara Schaal, Biology; Gerhild Scholz Williams, German (for the second year).
Events of Note at Washington University
Numerous events—special lectures, exhibits, and performances—are held at Washington University every semester that are of particular interest to AWF members. Unfortunately, not all of us are able to attend each event. The following provides highlights of a few of the notable events held over the spring semester.
Virginia Valian and the Advancement of Women
Adele A. Abrahamsen
Virginia Valian, Professor of Psychology and Linguistics at Hunter College and CUNY Graduate Center, spent two busy days on campus March 8 – 9, 2001, meeting with students, faculty and administrators at the Medical Center but also on Danforth Campus. She met with AWN, AWF and Women in Neuroscience and gave two lectures: a major address at the Medical School (March 8, 4:00 p.m.) and a talk on her research on language acquisition (March 10, 3:00 p.m.). Thanks go to Karen O’Malley (Professor of Neurobiology) and Melanie Leiter (Postdoctoral Fellow in the Neuroimaging Laboratory) for including so many Danforth Campus events on the schedule.
Professor Valian’s major address on March 8 had the same title as her well-received 1998 MIT Press book, Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women. Her diagnosis of the problem of slow professional advancement is that gender schemas produce small disparities of behavior and interpretation which accumulate: a minor slight may seem like a molehill, but an accumulation of such molehills creates a mountain of disadvantage for women. Gender schemas often involve unconscious expectations (e.g., men act; women emote) and therefore can produce disadvantage even in the absence of intentional discrimination.
In her talk, Professor Valian explained this diagnosis, presented some consciousness-raising empirical studies (e.g., of differences in gaze patterns when women and men converse), summarized a few of the numerous statistical studies of disparity that were reviewed in her book and suggested two avenues of remedy: (1) educating students, faculty and administrators about the processes that produce disadvantage despite their good intentions; (2) putting accountability in place up and down the administrative ladder.
The book Why So Slow? is available at the Medical Campus bookstore (Euclid at Children’s). Professor Valian also distributed an enormously useful 13-page handout at the lecture that included academic employment statistics, annotated bibliography, guidelines for future action and strategies for individuals. Copies are available from Adele Abrahamsen (adele@twinearth.wustl.edu ).
Only a few members were able to make the AWF meeting on Thursday morning, but we had a very productive discussion. For example, Professor Valian gave some of the history of how she got engaged by this topic that lies outside her own research area and brought up the greater difficulty of producing change in elite research universities. As examples of actions we can take, she noted the importance of mobilizing sympathetic men and paying attention to gender when organizing colloquium series and similar events. Adele Abrahamsen brought up the MIT report and what gets institutions to want to change. Liz Childs made connections to the “culture of professionalism” that she wishes to reform (this also was a focus in the brown bag discussion of elder care that she led on April 9). Cindy Brantmeier raised questions of special concern to new tenure-line faculty. We all left with a renewed sense that there is important unfinished business involving gender in the academy, and that Professor Valian’s own efforts must be amplified through local efforts at hundreds of colleges and universities.
Those who want short reviews of the book may access amazon.com.
Does Science Discriminate Against Women? Evidence from Academia, 1973-1997
On March 26, Donna K. Ginther (Department of Economics and Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta) presented her paper “Does Science Discriminate Against Women? Evidence from Academia, 1973-1997.” This paper is available online from the Federal Reserve Board in Atlanta.
In her study, Donna concludes that, nationwide, there is a statistically significant difference in pay between men and women in the sciences. The trends in the sciences are very different from what she observed in the humanities. More to the point, Donna found that nationwide the problem was more pronounced at medical schools, particularly at the rank of full professor. Donna noted that most of the observed difference was not due to difference in “endowments” but rather to differences in coefficients, a difference that is often interpreted as bias.
Antinous, Desire and Manhood among the Romans
Susan Rotroff
“Antinous, Desire and Manhood among the Romans” was the topic of a recent lecture by Natalie Boymel Kampen, the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Women’s Studies and Art History at Barnard College. Kampen is among the leading scholars in her field exploring issues of gender and sexuality in Roman art. Her lecture focused on Antinous, the young lover of the emperor Hadrian, and forms part of a broader study (under completion) of the personal and public meanings, and social functions, of homosexuality among the Roman elite.
The Women’s Studies Reading Group
Mané Lagos
The Women’s Studies Reading Group in Feminist Criticism has been in existence for more than 10 years. In the fall of 1988, when I came to Washington University from upstate New York, I was eager to work with the Women’s Studies program and to continue keeping abreast of the developments in feminist criticism with other faculty members, as had been the case in the two institutions where I had taught previously: Dartmouth College and SUNY Binghamton. In both places, there had been seminars or reading groups of faculty interested in feminist inquiry. I approached Joyce Trebilcot with my proposal to create a reading group, and she directed me to Helen Power, then the assistant coordinator of the program. Helen agreed to the idea, and the reading group began meeting in the Fall of 1989. Since then, the group has benefited from Helen’s unfailing support. The main goal has been to keep engaged intellectually with the latest developments in feminist thought in the various fields. After meeting for one year, there was a short interlude followed by increased interest in fall 1991 as more women faculty on tenure-track positions were hired at the university. At one point or another most women faculty have participated in the reading group and many graduate students. Among the most faithful participants through the years have been Britt-Marie Schiller, who has guided us through the intricate philosophical writings of Luce Irigaray; Emily Guignon from Romance Languages; and, of course, Helen Power. Marilyn Friedman helped us with Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble and made many suggestions for further readings in feminist philosophy. The reading group offers a wonderful opportunity to keep up-to-date on new trends in disciplines other than one’s own, which is of particular importance in Women’s Studies because of the interdisciplinary nature of the field. Books and articles are chosen from suggestions of the participants and ordered through a local bookstore (normally Left Bank, which gives us a discount). The group meets four or five times a year. Once in a while, we have read works of fiction and texts that have become classics in the field, such as those by Irigaray. The rewarding experience of the reading group prompted Helen and me to organize a faculty seminar on feminist criticism in the disciplines in the spring of 1996. The latest books we have read include Judith Butler’s Antigone’s Claim and Excitable Speech, Judith Halberstam’s Female Masculinity, Rachel Roth’s Making Women Pay: The Hidden Costs of Fetal Rights, Uma Narayan’s Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions and Third World Feminism. Most recently, Andrea Friedman, Rachel Roth, Linda Nicholson and Britt-Marie Schiller have served as facilitators. The Women’s Studies program sends flyers to interested faculty announcing every session. The next meeting will take place in September.
Film Review
Dr. T. and the Women
Fatemeh Keshavarz
Altman’s lucid portrayal of American upper-class women dancing on the edge of alcoholism and madness is, in fact, a parody of male behavior. Dr. T., played by Richard Gere, is a successful gynecologist adored by a community of beautiful and rich women patients who happily surrender themselves to hypochondria to get his attention. Admiring their saintly innocence, hiding from their noisy presence and attending expertly to their reproductive organs, the “lucky” doctor does not come close to seeing the female persons who scream to be noticed. In the constant deafening buzz in the lushly decorated “beehive” that forms his waiting room, no voice stands out to be recognized. The female presence is angry, confused and meshed into a loud and frustrated humdrum. To appease their frustration, these upper-class goddesses over shop, over drink and regress to childhood to be freed from the pretense of sexual intimacy that like modes of contact fails to overcome loneliness.
When Bree—the assistant golf instructor—appears on the scene, Dr. T. is thrown off-balance. The shock is caused by the simple fact that Bree does not think, dress or act like a “woman.” She feels free to “take” him when she desires, leave him when she needs to travel and make long-term “plans” in which he has no room. In the end, it is she who up provides the good doctor counseling, as he appears unable to cope with the possibility that his daughter, soon to be wed, is a lesbian.
This parody of upper-class male behavior is an exciting feminist statement, told with humor, warmth and frankness. “Dr. T. and the Women” is a film worth watching more than once.
Noticeable Trends
The percentage of women entering law schools has increased to 49% of the 2001 entering class and is expected to surpass 50% in fall of 2002 (as reported in the New York Times and The Chronicle of Higher Education).
A note on the AWF News Editors
This issue of the AWF Newsletter was compiled by Rebecca Copeland (ANELL). Angela Miller (Art History) and Nancy Berg (ANELL) served as editorial advisors. The next issue of the AWF News will be published in the fall. Special thanks to all those who contributed articles, reports and news items to this issue. We look forward to receiving more of the same in the fall!