Category — Faculty note

As the proud granddaughter of undocumented Mexican immigrants, nothing disheartens me more than the current wave of anti-immigrant hysteria.  I find very heartening, on the other hand, this article by economist Masao Suzuki discussing how current anti-immigrant legislation crosses racial and ethnic lines.

These anti-immigrant forces try to argue that undocumented immigrants today are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. This is the same argument that the anti-Chinese movement used 100 ago years to try to strip Wong Kim Ark of his birthright citizenship, saying that Chinese immigrants, who were banned from naturalizing by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, were not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. But the 1898 U.S. Supreme Court rejected this argument, pointing out that the only exceptions are children of diplomats (who are immune from U.S. law) and the children of a hostile occupation force in the United States.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Wong Kim Ark extended fundamental civil rights won by African Americans to Asian Americans. Later this case was cited in the 1982 Plyler v. Doe U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down a Texas state law that tried to exclude unauthorized Mexican immigrant children from public schools.

This move by anti-immigrant forces to target native-born Americans shows that this movement is not about the legality of immigrants. The anti-immigrant movement is a right-wing movement that is all about stripping away the right to go to public schools and to be citizens. These rights were won by African Americans through struggle – like the Civil War – and later extended to Asian Americans and Latinos.

See full article:  Anti-Immigrant Movement to Target Native Born

We are happy to announce that our very own Women’s Studies professor, Victoria Rue,  is directing the Pulitzer prize winning play [07'] , Rabbit Hole, at the Santa Cruz Actors’  Theatre.   Details follow….

Santa Cruz Actors’ Theatre, the longest running theater in Santa Cruz, is proud to announce it’s play to close our twenty-fifth season. Actors’ Theatre will bring to life David Lindsay-Abaire’s Pulitzer Prize winning drama “Rabbit Hole,” running May 14 to June 6, 2010, at the Santa Cruz Actor’s Theatre, 1001 Center Street, Santa Cruz, CA.

Lindsay-Abaire’s play, which garnered five Tony nominations and won the Pulitzer for drama in 2007, tells the story of Becca and Howie, a married couple whose 4-year-old son, Danny, was killed by a car eight months earlier. Struggling to cope and unable to reconcile their different ways of grieving, their relationship has begun to unravel: Becca is trying to forget the pain, Howie is holding onto his fading memories, and other family members are complicating the situation. Hope is reignited when Jason, the teenage boy driving the car that killed Danny, comes into their lives. Despite its heavy subject matter, Lindsay-Abaire’s play is a balance of comedic moments with serious themes.

The production is directed by theatre titan Victoria Rue. Dr. Rue’s work as a theatre director and playwright has been seen in Los Angeles at the Mark Taper Forum, San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre and New York’s Shakespeare Festival, among other theaters.

“This is a play about compassion,” said Victoria Rue. “Grief and rage and love rise up. We also laugh. We recognize this as our human condition.”

A quietly moving play, the story explores the reconnection of relationships and the possibilities of hope after tragedy. Rabbit Hole, is a beautifully observed and heartfelt look into the grief and healing one family experiences dealing with a death in the family. Meticulously mapped, Lindsay-Abaire never indulges with sentiment.

“Lindsay-Abaire’s story is about how grief is often held so tightly to the chest that it is difficult for our arms to embrace the present.” said Victoria Rue.

“Rabbit Hole” is Lindsay-Abaire’s first naturalistic work, a departure from his trademark style of dark comedy seen in previous plays such as “Fuddy Meers” and “Kimberly Akimbo.” Despite the differences, Lindsay-Abaire said all his plays deal with the same underlying dilemma: “… it’s about characters finding themselves in an upside-down world and trying to find clarity in a world that doesn’t make any sense.”

The cast includes Kristin Brownstone as Becca; Steven Capasso as Howie; Nan Dejarlais as Becca’s mother, Nat; MarNae Taylor as Becca’s sister, Izzy; and Taylor Closs as Jason.

Dates for “Rabbit Hole” are: Friday, May. 14 (Opening), and closing Sunday, June 6.

Performances are Friday through Saturday at 8PM and Sundays at 3PM.

All performances at Actors’ Theatre, 1001 Center St., Santa Cruz

Tickets are $16 general; $13 students/seniors. Buy tickets at the theatre box office one hour before show times.

To make a reservation, call 831.425.PLAY (831.425.7529). You can also purchase tickets at www.brownpapertickets.com or Visit Actors’ Theatre website at www.santacruzactorstheatre.org

http://www.santacruzactorstheatre.org/

This article from the Racewire blog draws attention both to First Lady Michelle Obama’s campaign to reform the American diet.  She does this both by modeling the importance of eating fresh fruits and vegetables and using organic gardening methods, but also advocates structural change by working with America’s food manufacturers to reduce fat and sodium content in their food.  Go Michelle!

As Michelle Obama turns up the heat on food manufacturers, PolicyLink and The Food Trust have released a report that maps America’s “food deserts” and looks at their lasting effects in rural areas and low-income communities of color.

The report culls research from more than 100 previous studies to bring together the best data available on food access. The findings won’t shock anyone living in one of America’s many food deserts, but they prove Obama’s childhood obesity campaign can’t stop with telling parents to feed their kids better:

• 23.5 million Americans lived over a mile away from the nearest supermarket in 2009;
• African Americans were nearly four times as likely to live a food desert as whites;
• 80 percent of nonwhite residents in Albany, N.Y., can’t find low-fat milk or high-fiber bread sold in their neighborhoods;
• More than 70 percent of families eligible for food stamps in Mississippi travel at least 30 miles to reach a supermarket.

Racewire blog article continues here

Report from PolicyLink & The Food Trust here

Tune in to hear bell hooks interviewed on 99.5 FM WBAI Pacifica Radio Thursday, March 18 at 12 noon to 1pm EST. She’ll be promoting her newest book, Teaching Critical Thinking (Routledge, 2010).  WBAI is New York’s Pacifica radio station, accessible online.

Click on image to see fullsize

Dear Campus Community and Friends of Women’s Studies

On Tuesday, March 2nd, the course I teach on “Gender, Sexuality and Religion” will host Max Dashu, director of the Suppressed History Archives in Oakland.  She will be speaking on the vast legacy of Women Shamans from far-ranging cultural backgrounds, ancient to modern.  We’ve moved to a larger room to accommodate visitors: please feel free to join us.  The class runs from 6:00 to 8:45 pm, in Boccardo Business Classroom 003 (ground floor, accessed from the courtyard).  Click on the links below for more background on Max and the specific talk she is presenting on Tuesday.  Hope to see you there:

Date: Tuesday, March 2nd
Where: Boccardo Business Classroom 003 (BBC 003)
When: 6:00 PM
Who: Max Dashu, Director, Suppressed History Archives
What: Talk on Women Shamans
Hosted: Prof. Jennifer Rycenga, Comparative Religious Studies class on Gender, Sexuality and Religion

http://www.suppressedhistories.net/
http://www.suppressedhistories.net/catalog/womanshaman.html

Jennifer Rycenga
Professor, Comparative Religious Studies and Humanities

OMG! Check out this article by George Lakoff from UC Berkeley. http://keepcaliforniaspromise.org/?p=77 .   This is exactly what I was trying to say in my last blog post. I guess great minds do think alike. Ha ha ha.

…The university is lot more than an economic engine: it is a quality of life engine. And when it is truly public, it is a moral engine.

And it is especially a moral engine because it educates millions of Californians. Education is about more than making money. It is about coming to know the world, about learning to think critically, and about developing the capacity to create new knowledge, new social institutions, and new kinds of businesses. It is about each of millions of people becoming more of what they can be. That is the real promise of California. It is our system of higher education that delivers on that promise.

The reason that the Master Plan designates “state-supported higher education” is that higher education contributes a disproportionate amount to the protection and empowerment both of individuals and of corporations, and to the creation of a California civilization.

All discussion of moral issues must start there, with the systemic and moral effects of higher education.

From this perspective, the university-as-factory metaphor is not only inaccurate, but is immoral. It is both because it hides all that — all of what public universities are about.

The university-as-factory metaphor sees the university as a factory producing educations in the abstract and selling them to students and/or their parents. All discussion of raising tuition or taking more out-of-state students who pay more tuition is based on that metaphor. The central argument is that students (or their parents) should be paying what the product is worth, economically, over a lifetime, and that they shouldn’t be complaining about fee raises because they’re getting a relatively good deal.

The factory metaphor misses almost everything. It obviously misses the enormous contribution to the economy of the state as a whole. But it also misses all the other forms of protection and empowerment, as well as shaping California civilization…..

Read full article here

Two articles on women and sports today:

A favorite topic of mine that we discuss in my intro classes is the impact of Title IX and the growth of girls’ and women’s sports on American culture.  Critics have long argued that women’s sports like the WNBA are simply not as economically viable as men’s.  This New York Times article offers an interesting argument that the reverse is true for young girls’ sports – that girls’ participation is more likely to involve entire families’ – and therefore be more economically viable.

The second article points to how women’s sports is constructed so as to be economically viable – specifically, how it caters to society’s homophobia.  Mike Wise at the Washington Post asks why a staple of  sports coverage – the “kiss cam” is not used at Washington Mystics games.  The Mystics manager says it’s “not appropriate” because so many kids are at the games, which directly touches on the double standard by which heterosexual family values are worshipped at a sports event which takes for granted its substantial lesbian support base.

On girls’ sports

Ten members of Kirsten Grant’s family converged here last week to watch her play in a major youth softball tournament. Her mother, father, sister and brother had driven 13 hours with her from their home in suburban Toronto. Other relatives had traveled from as far as Salt Lake City. During lulls in play, they all went shopping and visited local attractions.

But last year, when Kirsten’s older brother, Erik, played on a traveling baseball team, the experience could not have been more different. Parents rarely accompanied the team, he said, and the coach frowned on anything that distracted from the game. “No leisure activity,” said Erik, 19. “It was eat, sleep and drink baseball.”  More here

On the lack of “kiss cams” at Mystics games

“Why don’t they have a KissCam at Mystics games?” a young friend asked last week, which preceded an awkward pause and an even more awkward answer.

Really, why doesn’t the inclusive WNBA franchise in the nation’s capital, of all places, send their video cameramen and camerawomen to find unsuspecting couples in the stands during timeouts and capture their mugs for all of Verizon Center’s crowd to see? And wait for the couple’s reaction, which usually involves a polite, if awkward, peck on the lips.

Just like they do at NBA games and other sporting events in which the participants are men.

“We got a lot of kids here,” Sheila Johnson, the Mystics’ managing partner, said when asked last week at a game. “We just don’t find it appropriate.” More here

Also see story at Out Sports

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.

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...