Volume 8, Number 1
President’s Report
Ginger Marcus
A new academic year is always full of promise. New students, new courses, new colleagues, new ideas, new plans, new approaches. This academic year was particularly significant for me. I marked its beginning by attending the convocation ceremony for the Class of 2006, which counts my oldest son among its members. I watched the students stomp and cheer as they celebrated the start of their new lives. Their exhilaration was infectious; I, too, was eager to get started. It was in this spirit that I met with the AWF board the day before classes began to discuss plans for the upcoming year.
This year’s board is dedicated and energetic, and, I am happy to report, is represented by most of the schools on the Danforth Campus. It includes past-president and treasurer Susan Rotroff (Arts & Sciences); long-time board member and “webmaster” Sally Goldman (School of Engineering & Applied Sciences) (www.artsci.wustl.edu/~awf); Alison Wylie (Arts & Sciences), our secretary; Liz Childs (Arts & Sciences), who has organized an outstanding Brown Bag series for the year; Heather Corcoran (Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts) who has redesigned our newsletter and directory; and Councillors-at-large Sunita Parikh (Arts & Sciences) and Judi McLean Parks (Olin School of Business). Marilyn Friedman (Arts & Sciences), on leave this fall, will join in the spring term.
AWF currently has 126 members, eleven of whom are new to the organization. On behalf of the board, I would like to extend a warm welcome to all the new women faculty on campus and encourage all of you to become involved in the work of our committees. The association provides a network for women faculty to meet each other and share common concerns. Since its inception in 1995, AWF has striven for equality between female and male faculty through its work in such areas as pay equity, mentoring, childcare, parenting, elder care and family leave policies. We have tried to raise awareness concerning issues faced by women faculty in both their professional and family lives. We also give annual awards for women graduate students to acknowledge their academic achievements and leadership potential.
AWF-sponsored events are meant to attract a broad spectrum of participants. Our two annual fall events, a tea to welcome new women faculty and a dinner with the Academic Women’s Network of the Medical School, provided a much-needed venue for professional and social interaction among women faculty from a wide range of disciplines. We also held three well-attended Brown Bag Forums during the fall semester. I am grateful to those members who graciously volunteered their time and expertise to make these forums informative and productive. I would also like to express my gratitude to Liz Childs for all of her hard work and boundless energy in organizing these forums. A word of thanks also goes to Maggie Garb for coordinating and editing copy for this newsletter.
I look forward to the upcoming spring semester and to the new calendar year, and I hope that more members will take an active role in AWF by participating in our spring events.
Member News
Lisa Baldez (Political Science) will be at Harvard University’s Department of Government as a visiting assistant professor, where she will teach “Women’s Movements in Latin America.” She also has an article in Comparative Politics titled “Women’s Movements and Democratic Transition in Brazil, Chile, East Germany and Poland.”
Nancy Berg (ANELL) convened a symposium in honor of her former undergraduate mentor in Hebrew literature, Edna Coffin, who recently retired from the University of Michigan. Colleagues came from across the country and Israel to present papers on translation in Professor Coffin’s honor. The topics of the papers characterized the breadth of her interests and accomplishments in linguistics, language pedagogy, literary translation and scholarship. The event was co-sponsored by the department of ANELL, the programs in JINES & Comparative Literature, and the School of Arts & Science.
Cindy Brantmeier (Romance Languages and Literatures) has just published two articles and a book review: “Second Language Reading Strategy Research at the Secondary and University Levels: Variations, Disparities and Generalizability,””The Effects of Passage Content on Second Language Reading Comprehension by Gender Across Instruction Levels” and a review of “Reading and Writing in More Than One Language: Lessons for Teachers.” She has two more articles coming out soon and also presented papers at three recent conferences.
Mary-Jean Cowell (Performing Arts) and Alice Bloch (Lindenwood College dance faculty) presented a lecture-workshop on integrating theory and history with the technical work in studio dance courses at the National Dance Education Organization conference in Providence, R.I., in June. Mary-Jean choreographed and performed “On Location I” for “Dance Close-up,” the dance faculty showcase in September. She also attended the National Association of Schools of Dance conference, an annual meeting for dance program administrators, in Tucson, Ariz.
Rebecca DeRoo (Art History and Archaeology) co-chaired a panel at the 2002 College Art Association conference, titled “Creating Community: Feminist Art and Exhibitions of the 1970s.” In June, she presented a paper, “Projected Images: Race and Gender Identity in the Photographs of Lorna Simpson” at the International Photographic Institute (IPI), Columbia University. Her essay “Colonial Collecting: French Women and Algerian Cartes Postales” appeared in Colonialist Photography: Imag(in)ing Race and Place (Routledge 2002). She co-authored two Hampton and SSHRC grants, totaling $80,000, which she used to co-organize two international conferences that brought together world-renowned scholars researching art after World War II, the Second World War: Reconstruction, Consumption, Contestation: Art and Critical Debates in France 1945-1972, held in Vancouver, Canada; and Transatlantic Exchanges: Art and Critical Debates in France and the United States 1945-72, held in Paris, France.
Mary Ann Dzuback (Education) delivered her presidential address to the History of Education Society entitled “Gender and the Politics of Knowledge” in Pittsburgh in November. The address was based on her book in progress on women social science scholars in the academy between 1890 and 1940.
Marilyn Friedman (Philosophy) will have an article titled “Diversity and Moral Understanding” in Setting the Moral Compass: Essays by Women Moral Philosophers, Cheshire Calhoun, ed.
Peggy Guest (Women and Gender Studies) spoke on women and relationships at the Town and Gown lecture series for the Washington University Women’s Society. Her talk was about feminist psychology’s recent contribution to women’s relationships.
Jennifer Jenkins (History) has just published a new book titled Provincial Modernity: Local Culture and Liberal Politics in Fin-de-Siecle Hamburg with Cornell University Press.
Cathy Keane (Classics) organized and guest-edited the fall 2002 issue of the journal Classical and Modern Literature. The volume is called Satiric Intersections and features comparative and theoretical essays by American and British scholars of classical and modern satire. She contributed an essay titled “The Critical Contexts of Satiric Discourse” as well as the volume’s introductory essay.
Rebecca Messbarger (Romance Languages and Literatures) had a book published this month titled The Century of Women: Representations of Women in Eighteenth-Century Italian Public Discourse.
Rachel Roth (Political Science) attended a conference on women immigrants in the United States at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, where she is spending the year. Of particular interest were presentations on the problems of female live-in domestic workers who suffer either domestic violence or abusive treatment from their employers because they are afraid to come forward and jeopardize their ability to remain in the country. For more information, visit http://wwics.si.edu/NEWS/digest/womimmig.htm.
Rachel also gave presentations last summer at the American Political Science Association and the Law & Society Association on “A ‘Right to Procreate by FedEx’?: Men, Women and the Reproductive Rights of U.S. Prisoners.” Her recent publications include “The Perils of Pregnancy: Ferguson v. City of Charleston” and “Class and Reproductive Rights.”
Jacqueline Tatom (Urban Design Program) participated in a panel discussion on “Urbanism and the University” as part of the conference “Horizontal Urbanism: The Role of the Urban University in Design,” at the University of Colorado’s College of Architecture and Planning in October. The conference focused on the role of the university in confronting problems associated with the uncontrolled “horizontal” growth of “second tier” American cities such as Denver, Houston and Phoenix, as opposed to the centralized density of New York, San Francisco or Boston.
She also moderated a panel on “Public Works Projects: Collaboration, Evolution and Process” at St. Louis’ Sheldon Art Galleries. Held in conjunction with an exhibition of plans and models for the Cross County MetroLink Extension, the talk featured architects and public artists discussing the processes and demands of creating vibrant public spaces.
Akiko Tsuchiya (Romance Languages & Literatures) has begun her appointment as coeditor of the Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, a major scholarly journal on Hispanic literatures, cultures and film. She has published the following articles: “Gender, Sexuality and the Literary Market in Spain at the End of the Millennium” and “The ‘New’ Female Subject and the Commodification of Gender in the Works of Lucía Etxebarria.” She has recently been awarded a Faculty Research Grant for summer 2003, as well as a grant from the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and U.S. Universities, to conduct research on her book project: “Gender and Deviance in Nineteenth-Century Spain.”
Conevery Valencius (History) just published a book on the medical and environmental history of the U.S., The Health of the Country: How American Settlers Understood Themselves and Their Land.
Third Annual Access to Equal Justice Conference
Susan Appleton
The 3rd Annual Access to Equal Justice Conference was held at the Washington University School of Law on October 9, 2002, coordinated by Professor Karen Tokarz, Director of Clinical Education. The goal of this annual conference is to provide a forum for university faculty, staff and students, lawyers, judges, community leaders, and government officials to collaborate on improving access to justice and the delivery of legal services in our region. As was true the past two years, over 175 participants were in attendance at the conference.
Professor Mary E. Becker of DePaul College of Law presented a keynote address entitled “Law and the Emotions of Battered Women.” Professor Becker is co-founder of the Illinois Clemency Project for Battered Women and coauthor of Cases and Materials on Feminist Jurisprudence: Taking Women Seriously. Becker, a former clerk for D.C. Circuit Judge Abner Mikva and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, also frequently writes and lectures on feminist theory, family law, and gay and lesbian issues.
During the conference, the Washington University School of Law Clinical Education Program presented the 2002 Access to Equal Justice Awards to honor individuals making exceptional contributions to enhancing access to justice in our region. The following women were recognized:
Sandra Moore is the president of Urban Strategies, Inc., which partners with McCormack Baron & Associates to provide comprehensive neighborhood planning and management to insure long-term sustainability of poor communities. She is a member of the Washington University School of Law National Council and a former member of the Washington University Board of Trustees. She taught Pre-Trial Practice & Procedure at the School of Law for several years and has supervised clinic students in the Washington University Civil Rights and Community Justice Clinic (formerly Employment Law Clinic). She currently serves as chair of the Washington University School of Law Interdisciplinary Environmental Clinic Community Advisory Board.
Miriam Miquelon is the newly appointed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois. She is the first woman to hold that position. Prior to her appointment by President Bush earlier this year, she was an assistant U.S. attorney in the criminal divisions of the eastern district of New York and southern district of Illinois offices for 11 years. She is an adjunct professor at the School of Law, where she has taught Trial Practice & Procedure for eight years and Legal Ethics for the past two years.
Marie Kenyon is the managing attorney for the Catholic Legal Assistance Ministry in St. Louis, where she has served for the past 15 years, working with mothers and children to improve social and legal services to the children of incarcerated women. She is a founding member of the Missouri Clemency Project, a coalition of law schools, universities and colleges in Missouri. She previously supervised clinic students in the Washington University School of Law Civil Justice Clinic; she currently supervises students in the St. Louis University Law School Family Law Clinic.
Beverly (“Bevy”) Beimdiek is an assistant public defender in the Missouri Public Defender’s Office. She currently works in the Capital Unit and tries capital punishment cases throughout the state. She is an adjunct professor at the School of Law, where she has taught Trial Practice & Procedure for the past five years and supervised students in the Criminal Justice Clinic and the Capital Punishment Clinic.
Brown Bag Lunches
Liz Childs
We had three Brown-Bag gatherings this fall. The first involved several full professors who gave advice to associate-level faculty on balancing the many demands of research, teaching and committee work while working toward promotion. The second event offered information on parenting resources and leave policy at Washington University to both current and prospective parents. A third panel was comprised of recently tenured women from a variety of schools and disciplines who offered advice to current tenure-stream faculty on both surviving and thriving during the tenure process.
Events for the spring are being planned. A Brown Bag will feature safety advice, especially for women, from a university police officer who teaches self-defense courses on campus. The dates of future Brown Bag events will be announced soon. We also look forward to the spring dinner in April at the Central Institute for the Deaf. We will share this event with AWN and our speaker will be Joan Williams, Professor of Law at American University and Director of the Program on Gender, Work & Family. She is author of Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What To Do About It (Oxford University Press, 2000).
New Hire
Laura Rosenbury, who most recently served as an associate in the Litigation Department at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York and as an adjunct professor at Fordham University School of Law, joined the law school this fall as an associate professor. She is teaching Trusts & Estates, Children & the Law, and a seminar in Feminist Legal Theory. Next year, she will also teach Employment Discrimination.
Laura graduated from Harvard-Radcliffe College with an A.B. in Women’s Studies and received her J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she was primary editor of the law review. She clerked for Judge Carol Bagley Amon, United States District Court, Eastern District of New York, 1997-1998, and for Judge Dennis Jacobs, United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, 1999-2000. In addition to her research and teaching interests in family law, feminist theory and anti-discrimination law, Rosenbury practiced in the areas of criminal, antitrust, securities and consumer law. Her pro bono practice included defending WE CAN, a non-profit bottle redemption center that benefits the homeless.