Posts from — March 2009

The SJSU Master’s Program in Mexican American Studies is accepting applications for Fall 2009 admission.  Department chair Marc Pizarro said, “We are committed to training the next generation of Chicana/o Studies scholars and activists to take on the vast array of issues facing academia and our communities today.”

Prof. Pizarro also mentioned exciting work being done throughout the department:

• “Many of our students are doing very exciting work in applied Chicana/o Studies,  including:
  • Developing strategies for helping deaf education programs to better understand and address the needs of deaf students who come from non-English speaking families,
  • Creating programs for Latina teens to help them understand the factors leading to teen pregnancy and how to make informed decisions about sexual behavior,
  • Building an organization to analyze and confront the obstacles keeping Latino males from attaining educational success in the university,
  • Exposing the ways in which raza communities engage in environmental justice work and how they help us envision more holistic eco-justice strategies to benefit communities.
• We are continuing to develop our Curriculum, and have recently added new courses that emphasize Policy Analysis and Comparative Ethnic Studies respectively.  As new faculty join us, we hope to continue to increase our graduate offerings. [Read more →]

John Hope Franklin, a prolific scholar of African-American history who profoundly influenced thinking about slavery and Reconstruction while helping to further the civil rights struggle, died Wednesday in Durham, N.C. He was 94.

…Dr. Franklin also taught at some of the nation’s leading institutions, including Harvard and the University of Chicago in addition to Duke, and as a scholar he personally broke several racial barriers.

…He often argued that historians have an important role in shaping policy, a position he put into practice when he worked with Marshall’s team of lawyers in their effort to strike down segregation in the landmark 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed the doctrine of “separate but equal” in the nation’s public schools.

“Using the findings of the historians,” Dr. Franklin recalled in a 1974 lecture, “the lawyers argued that the history of segregation laws reveals that their main purpose was to organize the community upon the basis of a superior white and an inferior Negro caste.”

See full story at the New York Times:  John Hope Franklin, Scholar of African-American History, Is Dead at 94 – Obituary (Obit) – NYTimes.com.

Professor Karimat El-Sayed, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt, Winner of the UNESCO/L’Oreal Prize

Friday, March 20, 2009, 3:00-4:00pm, Stanford University, Oak Room West, Tresidder Union. Free and open to all. [Read more →]

See the Film Fest website here – all films at Camera 12, 201 S. Second (@San Carlos)

Be sure to check out:
Patsy Mink: Ahead of the Majority, 12:45pm Sat- About U.S. Congresswoman Patsy Mink and her work on Title IX

Adela, 12:30pm Sun – Portrayal of the ways in which poverty and old age marginalize Filiipino citizens with veteran actress Anita Linda, in the role of an isolated woman preparing for her 80th birthday.

The next event in Women’s History Month is a panel discussion with the women of SWAN….the Service Women’s Action Network in MLK 255/256 noon-1:30pm.   SWAN is “a group of military service women and allies who came together in 2007 to create a network of support for military service women and also women considering military service.” In this panel, veterans will “speak to the realities of life in the military and demystify the illusions often marketed by military recruiters. Panelists will address the myths and realities of the messages often promoted to target young women.

It is a crucial time for women in the military

• Over 155,000 women currently serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.
• 15% of our military service personnel are women.
• The current VA system provides limited services specified for women.

Learn more about SWAN...

Michelle stands boldly in a White House where she is mistress, not slave. Her body is for her own pleasure, her own adornment, her own vanity. She is not reduced to the mule. Her labor will not enrich white folks, it will supply her family. She is not reduced to a breeder. Her children belong to her and she is free to love and protect them. It is an act of resistance for a black woman to demand that her body belong to herself for her pleasure, her adornment, even her vanity, because in the United Sates black women’s bodies have only been valued to the extent that they produce wealth and pleasure for others.

from THE KITCHEN TABLE.

XY: men, masculinities, and gender politics.    XY is a website focused on men, masculinities, and gender politics. XY is a space for the exploration of issues of gender and sexuality, the daily issues of men’s and women’s lives, and practical discussion of personal and social change.

NEW YORK – A global women’s rights treaty completed 30 years ago has a better-than-ever chance for U.S. Senate ratification this year, yet the hunt for the needed 67 favorable votes is likely to incur the wrath of activists on both the left and right. [Read more →]

Tuesday, March 10, 12-2 pm in MLK 225 – Next up for Women’s History Month is A Sense of Wonder, the film about pioneering environmentalist Rachel Carson, and the publication of her book, Silent Spring, in 1962. Ahead of her time, Rachel faced enormous backlash from her critics that thrust her into the center of a political maelstrom. Directed by Kaiulani Lee with cinematrography by Haskell Wexler. Learn more about it at http://asenseofwonderfilm.com. Co-sponsored with Global Studies.

Check out  Glamour Magazine online; this month, they’ve done a cool photo tribute to women for Women’s History Month, with young contemporary stars posing as iconic women: See Paula Patton as Billie Holliday, Alexis Bledel as Rosie the Riveter, Chanel Iman as Althea Gibson, America Ferrara as Dolores Huerta, and more….
thanks to LatinoLikeMe for the link.