Category — Miscellaneous
EOP is Currently Hiring Tutors for Spring 2012
Greetings SJSU Professors,
The Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) at SJSU is currently hiring tutors for the spring 2012 semester. As a professor we value your opinion and would like to ask if you have any students in your class who you would recommend to be a tutor for the EOP program.
We are hiring tutors in various subjects but especially in English, math and the sciences.
We are looking for students who have the following characteristics: Enthusiasm, imagination, patience, good communication skills, leadership skills, ability to relate to students culturally and academically different from themselves, and a sense of responsibility.
Other specific requirements include attainment of at least a 2.7 GPA overall or an overall 2.7 GPA for the 2 semesters prior to the submission of this application and at least a “B” grade in each course they plan to tutor.
If you have any student you feel may be a good fit please send me their name, their ID# and their contact information and I will connect with them to see if they are interested.
Also please visit our website at http://www.sjsu.edu/eop/Jobs/ for more information about the tutor position.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding this please feel free to contact me anytime.
Sincerely,
Veronica Mendoza Hand
EOP Academic Advisor
veronica.mendoza@sjsu.edu
November 16, 2011 No Comments
How Do You Spell Ms.
Forty years ago, a group of feminists, led by Gloria Steinem, did the unthinkable: They started a magazine for women, published by women—and the first issue sold out in eight days. An oral history of a publication that changed history.
By Abigail Pogrebin, New York Magazine
In the years leading up to the birth of Ms., women had trouble getting a credit card without a man’s signature, had few legal rights when it came to divorce or reproduction, and were expected to aspire solely to marriage and motherhood. Job listings were segregated (“Help wanted, male”). There was no Title IX (banning sex discrimination in federally funded athletic programs); no battered-women’s shelters, rape-crisis centers, and no terms such as sexual harassment and domestic violence.
Few women ran magazines, even when the readership was entirely female, and they weren’t permitted to write the stories they felt were important; the focus had to be on fashion, recipes, cosmetics, or how to lure a man and keep him interested. “When I suggested political stories to The New York Times Sunday Magazine, my editor just said something like, ‘I don’t think of you that way,’ ” recalls Gloria Steinem. “It was all pale male faces in, on, and running media,” says Robin Morgan, who was Ms.’s editor in the late eighties and early nineties.
But in the mid-sixties, feminist organizations such as New York Radical Women,Redstockings, and NOW began to emerge. On March 18, 1970, about a hundred women stormed into the male editor’s office of Ladies’ Home Journal and staged a sit-in for eleven hours, demanding that the magazine hire a female editor-in-chief. Says feminist activist-writer Vivian Gornick, “It was a watershed moment. It showed us, the activists in the women’s movement, that we did, indeed, have a movement.”
November 7, 2011 No Comments
bell hooks on feminism
October 17, 2011 1 Comment
Difficult Dialogues: On Diversity Related Issues
Fall 2011 Schedule
Join us this semester for the Difficult Dialogue series.
These workshops are all about YOU. What are your experiences with these diverse topics and how do they affect you as a member of the SJSU community. We challenge you to share your experiences and learn how these diverse topics affect different individuals on campus.
The difficult dialogue series are open to all SJSU Staff, Faculty, and Student.
GREAT Sessions for Greek Life
CHAMPS/Life Skills points for Student Athletes.
Date Time Topic Location
October 11 3:00-4:30p.m. Environment and SJSU Clark Hall 547
October 17 5:00-6:30p.m. Campus Safety Clark Hall 222
October 18 6:00-7:30p.m. Budget at SJSU Clark Hall 117
October 18 6:30-8:00p.m. Domestic Violence Clark Hall 222
October 19 4:30-6:00p.m. UPD Campus Safety Clark Hall 547
October 20 6:30-8:00p.m. Immigration BBC 032
October 25 4:00-5:30p.m. Substance Abuse BBC 032
October 25 6:00-7:30p.m. Campus Stereotypes Student Union: MOSAIC
October 27 3:00-4:30p.m. Freedom of Speech MLK Jr. Library 225
Please RSVP to Byron.Pulu@SJSU.EDU
For questions about any of the Difficult Dialogues feel free to contact Byron Pulu at Byron.Pulu@SJSU.EDU or ext. 4-2283.
October 16, 2011 No Comments
“Pink Smoke Over the Vatican”
“Pink Smoke Over the Vatican”
Friday, September 23, 6 pm
Chapel of the Great Commission, Pacific School of Religion
1798 Scenic Ave, Berkeley, CA
*Free and Open to the Public*
This award-winning documentary tells the passionate stories of
women seeking priestly ordination in the Roman Catholic Church, despite controversy and threats of excommunication.
Followed by a discussion with SJSU Professor Victoria Rue, Roman Catholic Womenpriest. Join the conversation with PSR students, women’s ordination advocates, and WOC Board Vice-President, Christine Haider-Winnett.
Women’s Ordination Conference:
Founded in 1975, the Women’s Ordination Conference is the oldest and largest organization that works to ordain women as priests, deacons and bishops into an inclusive and accountable Catholic church. WOC represents the 63 percent of US Catholics, and millions of Catholics worldwide, that support women’s ordination. WOC also promotes new perspectives on ordination that call for more accountability and less separation between the clergy and laity.
September 24, 2011 No Comments
SfAA 2012 Gender-Based Violence Sessions
The Society for Applied Anthropology’s Gender-Based Violence Topical Interest Group invites participants for three themed panels for the 2012 SfAA meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, March 28-31. We welcome submissions from scholars from all sub-fields of anthropology, across scholarly disciplines, and from professionals working within and/or outside of academia.
We propose three sessions to be delivered over three meeting days according to the following themes and are soliciting abstracts for these sessions. If you are interested in being considered for one of these sessions, please submit your name, affiliation, title, and a 100-word abstract in the body of an e-mail to jennifer.wies@eku.edu by Tuesday, October 4th. Selections will be completed by Friday, October 7th and registration and membership must be completed by October 15th if selected.
Bays, Boundaries, and Borders: The Anthropology of Gender-Based Violence
[Bays]
Gender-based violence is an important research topic across disciplines. The range of studies includes the neurobiology of aggressive behavior, the psychological effectiveness of violence prevention programs, and the impact of legislation on social service provision to abused women. Taking the idea of “bay” as a place where two landscapes meet, this session explores the intersections of anthropology with other disciplines to study, respond to, and prevent gender-based violence. We invite papers where transdisciplinary efforts have yielded success in unique ways, as well as papers that bring to the fore potential challenges to collaboration across disciplines.
[Boundaries]
Anthropologists are expanding the theoretical and methodological approaches to examining gender-based violence through time and across cultures. Archaeological investigations challenge our previous assumptions about the rate and nature of gender-based violence, sociocultural anthropologists create models to identify co-factors in gender-based violence, and biological and physical anthropologists help us understand how bodies respond to gender-based violence. This session brings together scholars from all disciplines of anthropology to showcase the ways that scholars and practitioners are expanding the geographical and temporal boundaries of our understanding gender-based violence.
[Borders]
This session invites papers from geographic locations previously understudied and studies of populations undertheorized, such as prisoners, children, same sex intimate partners, and other special populations. Additionally, we welcome papers that explore the borders of the term “gender-based violence” and enhance our understanding of the similarities and differences found within the forms of violence that are categorized as gender-based. Could/should the same theories apply to genital cutting as to domestic violence, sexual assault as to elder abuse?
September 24, 2011 No Comments
Stop JC Penney and Forever 21 from putting more sexist clothing on their shelves
Hi All,
I got this email yesterday and I think it will be of interest to those on the list. WHO THINKS THIS IS FASHIONABLE???? Consider taking 2 minutes to sign this important petition!
Thanks,
Christin Munsch
Just yesterday, retailer Forever 21 began offering for sale a shirt for girls emblazoned with the slogan “Allergic to Algebra.” And a few weeks ago, JC Penney offered similar girls’ shirts with the slogan “I’m too pretty to do homework, so my brother has to do it for me.”
Sexist slogans like these play into and perpetuate the offensive stereotype that women are innately bad at math or that being pretty is more important than being smart. By selling these shirts, the stores give their implicit support of these efforts to convince girls that, to be stylish and fit in, they must be bad at math or less interested than boys in academic achievement.
After backlash from outraged customers, the both shirts were pulled from the shelves and online stores. But how did the sexist shirts get there in the first place? Clearly, something is totally broken within the corporate culture of these retailers. There is no effective review process for the clothing sold at JC Penney and Forever 21 if offensive clothing that demeans young girls makes it to their shelves.
Tell the CEOs of JC Penny and Forever 21 that you will hold them accountable for the clothing that is sold in their stores. Demand they make a public commitment to keep sexist clothing for girls from making it to their shelves in the future.
http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/sexist_shirts/?r_by=-3608322-hYZlGCx&rc=paste2
September 14, 2011 No Comments
An Open Statement to Fans of _The Help_
Professor Ruth P. Wilson, Chair, Department of African-American Studies forwarded this entry, writing:
On behalf of the Association of Black Women Historians (ABWH), this statement provides historical context to address widespread stereotyping presented in both the film and novel version of The Help. The book has sold over three million copies, and heavy promotion of the movie will ensure its success at the box office. Despite efforts to market the book and the film as a progressive story of triumph over racial injustice, The Help distorts, ignores, and trivializes the experiences of black domestic workers. We are specifically concerned about the representations of black life and the lack of attention given to sexual harassment and civil rights activism.During the 1960s, the era covered in The Help, legal segregation and economic inequalities limited black women’s employment opportunities. Up to 90 per cent of working black women in the South labored as domestic servants in white homes. The Help’s representation of these women is a disappointing resurrection of Mammy—a mythical stereotype of black women who were compelled, either by slavery or segregation, to serve white families. Portrayed as asexual, loyal, and contented caretakers of whites, the caricature of Mammy allowed mainstream America to ignore the systemic racism that bound black women to back-breaking, low paying jobs where employers routinely exploited them. The popularity of this most recent iteration is troubling because it reveals a contemporary nostalgia for the days when a black woman could only hope to clean the White House rather than reside in it.Both versions of The Help also misrepresent African American speech and culture. Set in the South, the appropriate regional accent gives way to a child-like, over-exaggerated “black” dialect. In the film, for example, the primary character, Aibileen, reassures a young white child that, “You is smat, you is kind, you is important.” In the book, black women refer to the Lord as the “Law,” an irreverent depiction of black vernacular. For centuries, black women and men have drawn strength from their community institutions. The black family, in particular provided support and the validation of personhood necessary to stand against adversity. We do not recognize the black community described in The Help where most of the black male characters are depicted as drunkards, abusive, or absent. Such distorted images are misleading and do not represent the historical realities of black masculinity and manhood.Furthermore, African American domestic workers often suffered sexual harassment as well as physical and verbal abuse in the homes of white employers. For example, a recently discovered letter written by Civil Rights activist Rosa Parks indicates that she, like many black domestic workers, lived under the threat and sometimes reality of sexual assault. The film, on the other hand, makes light of black women’s fears and vulnerabilities turning them into moments of comic relief.
Similarly, the film is woefully silent on the rich and vibrant history of black Civil Rights activists in Mississippi. Granted, the assassination of Medgar Evers, the first Mississippi based field secretary of the NAACP, gets some attention. However, Evers’ assassination sends Jackson’s black community frantically scurrying into the streets in utter chaos and disorganized confusion—a far cry from the courage demonstrated by the black men and women who continued his fight. Portraying the most dangerous racists in 1960s Mississippi as a group of attractive, well dressed, society women, while ignoring the reign of terror perpetuated by the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Council, limits racial injustice to individual acts of meanness.
We respect the stellar performances of the African American actresses in this film. Indeed, this statement is in no way a criticism of their talent. It is, however, an attempt to provide context for this popular rendition of black life in the Jim Crow South. In the end, The Help is not a story about the millions of hardworking and dignified black women who labored in white homes to support their families and communities. Rather, it is the coming-of-age story of a white protagonist, who uses myths about the lives of black women to make sense of her own. The Association of Black Women Historians finds it unacceptable for either this book or this film to strip black women’s lives of historical accuracy for the sake of entertainment.
Ida E. Jones is National Director of ABWH and Assistant Curator at Howard University. Daina Ramey Berry, Tiffany M. Gill, and Kali Nicole Gross are Lifetime Members of ABWH and Associate Professors at the University of Texas at Austin. Janice Sumler-Edmond is a Lifetime Member of ABWH and is a Professor at Huston-Tillotson University.
Suggested Reading:
Fiction:
Like one of the Family: Conversations from A Domestic’s Life, Alice Childress
The Book of the Night Women by Marlon James
Blanche on the Lam by Barbara Neeley
The Street by Ann Petry
A Million Nightingales by Susan StraightNon-Fiction:
Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household by Thavolia Glymph
To Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors by Tera Hunter
Labor of Love Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family, from Slavery to the Present by Jacqueline JonesLiving In, Living Out: African American Domestics and the Great Migration by Elizabeth Clark-Lewis
Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne MoodyAny questions, comments, or interview requests can be sent to:
ABWHTheHelp@gmail.com
Reprinted from the Organization of Black Women Historians website
August 21, 2011 No Comments
Internship Opportunity (Paid)
“The Well Project is looking for two energetic, innovative and passionate individuals to intern with our organization and support our outreach, development and online services. One internship is based in California and one is based in New York.
Job descriptions are attached or check out the postings on our website at www.thewellproject.org.”
-Shalini Eddens
June 15, 2011 No Comments
The Vagina Monologues: Marth 11th-13th, 2011
The Monologues were messy. Let’s face it, no conversation about sexuality, gender, birth, or violence can be sterile and honest at the same time. The scene opened on four young women, standing with mics under their own spotlight, speaking openly about their fears and insecurities. The monologues that followed were based on vagina interviews, which did the unprecedented—asked women to talk about their vagina. Provocative, funny, heartbreaking and relentlessly honest, the monologues said what few women are willing to say and every woman should hear. This production was a spotlight campaign to raise awareness of the violence against women in Haiti. Proceeds went to local women’s shelters and programs, as well as shelters and legal service centers for victims of violence in Haiti. It was clear the students involved with the production had entirely too much fun with it. It would be impossible to enter that theater and witness that play without a level of intimacy and irreverence. In a way, it was honest of them to decorate the entryway as a giant vagina.
May 27, 2011 No Comments
