Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

An Activist's Guide To Lesbian History: A Companion To The Video Not Just Passing Through, Polly Thistlethwaite

Publications and Research

This guide, designed to accompany the video Not Just Passing Through, contains guidelines for conducting oral history, forms for donating material to mainstream and community based archives, and lessons for engaging lesbian history with activism.

Beyond Pluralism: Foucault's Strategic Counter To Heterosexist Categories, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Most nonheterosexuals want to be guaranteed civil rights without regard to sexual practices; nevertheless, quite often, gay and lesbian activists formulate demands in ways that de-emphasize practice and emphasize identity. For example, instead of saying, "My having sex with women is irrelevant to the question of whether I should have custody of my child," a lesbian activist might say, "My lesbian identity is as moral and healthy as heterosexual identity and therefore should not prevent me from having custody of my child." The general claim is that lesbian or gay personhood is as good as heterosexual personhood, so lesbians and …

Connecting To Communities: Transformational Leadership From Africentric And Feminist Perspectives, Joan L. Arches

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Twenty female administrators in human service agencies serving diverse ethnic communities were interviewed to provide an understanding of their struggles and leadership styles. Applying both Africentric and feminist theoretical frameworks to inform the political frame advanced in theories of transformational leadership, connecting with community and community building were strategies for providing leadership.

Review Of Queer Science: The Use And Abuse Of Research Into Homosexuality. Simon Levay. Reviewed By Carol Tully, Tulane University., Carol Tully

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Simon LeVay, Queer Science: The Use and Abuse of Research into Homosexuality. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996, 364 pages, $25.00 hardcover.

Conceiving Identity: Bisexual, Lesbian And Gay Parents Consider Their Children's Sexual Orientations, Carrie Yang Costello

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This study demonstrates the inadequacy of the traditional theory of childhood socialization and identity formation, which holds that children are socialized to internalize the key parameters of their parents' identities. The lesbian, gay and bisexual parents studied were willing actively to foster a sexual identity different from their own in their children. This illustrates that parents may seek to shape the process of internalization so that their children are able to develop identities fundamentally different from their own. The implication for social work is that adoptive or birth parents may successfully instill identities in their children which differ from their …

A Note From The Development Director, Stephanie Grant

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

During the past two years, CLAGS has been educating itself about organizational development and fundraising. Grants from the New York City Lesbian and Gay Funding Collaborative and the Rockefeller Foundation have enabled board members and staff to attend workshops and conferences designed to expand our knowledge about non-profit management and to increase our fundraising and organizational skills.

Ackerman Lecture, Suzanne Iasenza

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

The First Annual Dr. John Patten Memorial Lecture was held November 14 at the Hunter College of Social Work. CLAGS agreed to cosponsor the lecture, developed to honor the life and work of Dr. John Patten, faculty member of the Ackerman Institute for Family Therapy, Medical Director of the Institute's AIDS Project, and co-founder and co-director f the Institute's Gay and Lesbian Family Study Project. Dr. Patten was also co-founder and senior editor of In The Family Magazine, a family therapy-oriented magazine for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and their relations. He died of AIDS on October 4, 1995.

A Letter From The Executive Director, Jill Dolan

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Working with CLAGS this last year at our quarterly Board meetings, at our monthly committee meetings, and with the daily operations of our office, I'm continually impressed by the sophistication of our programs, the depth of our discussions, and the passion of our arguments about gay and lesbian and queer studies and its relationship to our diverse communities. After a productive year of four conferences and our monthly colloquia, amplified by co-sponsored events that sometimes didn't even make it onto our annual calendar, I'm proud of the richness of the work we've sponsored and presented.

Colloquium Addresses Queer Pedagogy, Harriet Malinowitz

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

On Saturday, March 8, CLACS held a one-day event called Queer Pedagogy: A Colloquium on Sexuality and Curriculum. The colloquium addressed questions about the purposes, methods, language, applications, contexts, affiliations, and performance of queer studies in academic classrooms.

A Note From The Board Chair, Framji Minwalla

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

This has been a difficult, yet especially productive year for CLAGS. As most of you know, Jill Dolan stepped into Marty Duberman's shoes, becoming our first new Executive Director since the founding of the organization seven years ago. And while we all miss Marty, Jill has accomplished a daunting task brilliantly.

Graduate Students Explore Forms Of Desire, Jay Plum

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Last April, QUNY (the association for queer students at the CUNY Graduate Center) and CLAGS co-sponsored Forms of Desire: The Seventh Annual Queer Graduate Studies Conference, showcasing the research of more than 100 graduate students from across the country and around the world. With panels on such topics as "Sexuality and the State," "Pre-Modern Sexualities," "Lesbian Erotics," "Reading Bisexualities," "Queer Ethnographies," "AIDS and Its Narratives," "Queer(ing) Masculinities," and "Homo Hollywood," the conference approached the growing field of lesbian/gay/queer studies from a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives.

Michael C.P. Ryan Bequest, James Wilson

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

CLAGS has received a generous bequest from the from the estate of Michael C.P. Ryan. The executor of Mr. Ryan's estate, Ana-Mita Betancourt, announced that the $60,000 bequest will fund the Michael C.P. Ryan Latino/Latina Colloquium Series, a five-year program exploring political, cultural, and artistic questions facing lesbian and gay Latino/as in the United States and Latin America. The bequest follows an earlier gift from the Ryan estate that helped fund the historic conference. Crossing National and Sexual Borders: Queer Sexualities in Latin/o America, in October 1996.

Crossing Boundaries: Land And Sea In Jane Austen's 'Persuasion', Laura Vorachek

English Faculty Publications

Jane Austen suggests in Persuasion the pressures that the increased mobility of the middle class placed on the established aristocratic society in her time. Anne Elliot especially brings to light the inherited assumptions of her society. She can marry within her social rank (Mr. Elliot or Charles Musgrove) or marry below her (Wentworth at age 23), but either is a choice within the limits established by her society. One owns land or one does not. But when Wentworth returns a man of name and wealth, he is not a member of the landed gentry nor is he below Anne in …

Out Yet Unseen: A Racial Critique Of Gay And Lesbian Legal Theory And Political Discourse, Darren L. Hutchinson

Faculty Articles

The symbolic meaning of the phrase "tongues untied" has grown to identify a small, yet expanding, cultural, intellectual, and artistic "movement" aimed at revealing - or ending the silence around - the interactions of race, class, gender, and sexuality, what one participant in the movement described as "the transformation of silence into language and action." The work of this movement contrasts starkly with that of the "dominant" gay and lesbian culture and scholarship, where issues of racial and class subordination are neglected or rejected and where a universal gay and lesbian experience is assumed. The work of this movement highlights …

Women In A Divided Church: Liberal And Conservative Catholic Women Negotiate Changing Gender Roles, Christel Manning

Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

The Catholic Church in America is deeply divided, and gender issues (especially reproductive choice and women's ordination) have become a symptom of this division. This paper examines the language used by liberal and conservative Catholic women to talk about gender. It is argued that although similar divisions over gender exist within Protestantism and Judaism, Catholic women are in a unique position to confront them, Unlike conservative Protestants and Jews who have separated themselves from their more liberal counterparts by forming independent Evangelical and Orthodox denominations, conservative Catholics co-exist with liberals in the mine church. The paper shows that being forced …

Ua12/2/1 College Heights Herald, Vol. 72, No. 7, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Administration Documents

WKU campus newspaper reporting campus, athletic and Bowling Green, Kentucky news.

Regular features include:

• Just a Second
• Campus Line
• For the Record / Crime Reports
• People Poll
• Sports
• Diversions
• Movie Reviews
• Classifieds

Articles in this issue:

• Hall, Jason. Admissions Changes Chiefs
• LaBelle, Charboneé. Iraq’s Message Echoes on Hill
• Lega, Stephen. Alternatives: Hemp Task Force’s Research Went Up in Smoke
• Bynum, Benjamin. Grammy Award Winner Coming to Western – George Winston
• Faculty, Staff Gun Policy Long Overdue
• Adams, Tim. Writer Uninformed
• Esposito, Mike. Same-sex Marriage Shouldn’t be Denied
• Simmons, Darryn. Gangsta Lifestyle Bad for Tupac Shakur
• Lega, Stephen. Third Parties Offer …

A Message From The New Executive Director, Jill Dolan

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

I'm honored and pleased to be succeeding Marty Duberman as Executive Director of CLAGS. I taught in theatre and drama and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before I accepted my present position in the PhD Program in Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center. At Madison, teaching and writing in lesbian performance theory, the fact that a national center for lesbian and gay studies had been established in New York gave me a sense that the field in which I worked was arriving, securing its legitimacy and its vibrancy and insisting on its visibility. In my two years at …

An Exploratory Study Of Gender And The Process Of Negotiating Academic Contracts Among Sociologists, Miriam M. Newton

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

Ample evidence supports the existence of the gender wage gap. One explanation for the gender wage gap in academia may be men's and women's different experiences of the process of negotiating academic contracts. Past literature on gender differences in negotiation suggests that males are more likely to initiate negotiations and are more successful in negotiations than women. This study investigates the process of negotiating academic contracts through a survey of recent PhD graduates in sociology. The research is guided by two questions: (1) What are the experiences of new faculty regarding the process of negotiating academic contracts; and (2) What …

A Tale Of Two Hannas: Observations On Israeli And Palestinian Women's Resistance To Occupation (1991-1995), Christina Pratt

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

An observer reviews the successes and failures of grassroots strategies of non-violent resistance to military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Particular attention is paid to the role of women's groups and peace organizations in Israel as well as in Israeli Occupied Arab Territories.

The Influence Of Higher Education And The Perceived Effects On Women And Their Interpersonal Relationships With Significant Others, Tracy L. Conn

Masters Theses

This study of professional women holding advanced degrees examined the influence of doctoral education and the perceived effects on women and their interpersonal relationships with significant others. It was found that half of the women believed that their level of education affected their relationship status. Though there were a group of women who reported that their level of education limited them in their interpersonal relationships, the majority of the women reported being in gratifying relationships with supportive significant others. Therefore, it is not surprising that the majority of the women reported that their significant other was one of the greatest …

Black Nations/Queer Nations Conference, Cathy Cohen

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Black lesbian and gay men have made significant accomplishments but continue to confront a number of urgent challenges, such as AIDS, unemployment, racism, and homophobia. Our future survival turns on our ability to break new ground toward overcoming these challenges. It is therefore necessary for us to dialogue, debate, and develop new strategies of resistance and community education that will advance the politics of lesbian and gay people of African descent, our communities, and society as a whole. To this end, we will sponsor an unprecedented three-day conference.

Asses And Wits: The Homoerotics Of Mastery In Satiric Comedy, Mario Digangi

Publications and Research

This essay explores master-servant homoeroticism in three seventeenth-century satiric comedies: Ben Jonson's Epicoene and Volpone and George Chapman's The Gentleman Usher. Whereas "sodomy" always signifies social disorder, "homoerotic" useful for describing same-sex relations that are socially normative or orderly. Thus homoerotic master-servant relations become "sodomitical" only when they are perceived to threaten social order. In Epicoene, the character associated with the disorder of "sodomy" is neither Dauphine or Epicoene, but the "unnatural" Morose, even though he has not literally had sex with the boy he marries. The erotic master-servant relationship in Volpone is sodomitical because it transgresses against …

An Economic Profile Of Women In Massachusetts, Randy Albelda

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

This report provides a profile of women's current economic position in Massachusetts. It examines the age, race, and geographical distribution of women and girls across the state; family structure, income and poverty; and women's labor force participation, occupational and industrial distribution in jobs, and earnings. When relevant 1990s Massachusetts data are compared to national data and to Massachusetts data from the 1970s.

Women across the Commonwealth have experienced tremendous changes in their lives over the last two decades as a result of changes in the economy and family structure. For women, the changes provide new opportunities, but they also exacerbate …

The Lesbian And Gay Past: An Interpretive Battleground, Polly Thistlethwaite

Publications and Research

The lesbian and gay past is an interpretive battleground that mainstream archives have refused to enter, assuming few risks in collecting, naming, or identifying archival collections. At the same time, libraries offer up worlds to those who work to unearth the secrets there.

The New York Public Library's 1994 "Becoming Visible" exhibit trumpeted The Arrival of lesbian and gay history to New York's cultural mainstream. The NYPL exhibit denies the library's role in secreting lesbian and gay history, and diminished the contributions of community-based archives to the exhibit.

Steinbeck's Portraits Of Prostitutes: Progression Of An Author's Vision, Rhonda Jenkins

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

No abstract provided.

Gays And Lesbians In Library History, Polly Thistlethwaite

Publications and Research

Summarizes gay and lesbian activism in librarianship and the role of libraries in supporting gay and lesbian movements.

Report From The Chair, Esther Katz

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

The year 1992 proved to be an extraordinarily successful one for CLAGS. We mounted a series of exciting panels, conferences, and special events, and launched an ambitious program of grants and fellowships for scholars and students. A good portion of the credit for the success of these activities goes to CLAGS's hardworking Board of Directors which undertakes the myriad tasks required to plan and implement our various programs.

Women Of Color Reclaiming Power, Cheng Imm Tan

Trotter Review

The following is the address that was given at the Sixth Annual Women of Color Day Celebration at the University of Massachusetts at Boston on March 5, 1993.

In a racist and sexist world, our realities are hardly ever alluded to, let alone affirmed; the way we see ourselves and the way we experience the world is hardly ever reflected in the images we see around us or in the stories we read. We constantly have to translate information in order to make it relevant and applicable to our lives. Our realities, experiences are often discounted, overlooked and ignored. Both …

Beyond Sugar And Spice: Labeling Female Genitalia, Ethel E. Hellman

Institute for the Humanities Theses

Previous studies have indicated that, in our culture, female genitalia are unlabeled, mis-labeled, and/or negatively labeled, while male genitalia are not.

Twenty-five mothers of young children were interviewed to determine what labels they were teaching their children for sexual body parts. The women later met in small groups to discuss the i r reactions to a soft-sculpture of female genitalia.

The study found that twice as many male children were taught common designations for their own genitalia than were female children. In addition, a greater proportion of female children were given a label for male genitalia, than male children were …

Report From The Cochairs, Esther Katz, Cheryl Clarke

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

It has been a busy but exceedingly productive year for this CLAGS Board. Along with the creative series of public conferences, panels, and monthly colloquia mounted by the Program Committee, we have taken on the new challenges of a Fellowship Program generously funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as cosponsorship of the Stonewall History Project. Indeed, as CLAGS continues to develop and expand, we are working overtime to keep up with our success.