WGSS Colloquium, Fall 2018

by Faye Wang

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We began the WGSS working group series this semester with Professor Inderpal Grewal, who shared her work on lynching, communal violence, and the image in contemporary India. Students discussed the paper’s novel engagement with the status of violence as well as its new knowledge and image circuits contemporary technologies make possible. Our second working group session convened with Professor Sunny Xiang’s paper discussing “Genres of Global China. Professor Xiang’s paper notes that Chinese racialization occurs as genre rather than genealogy, a shift that is made through the 20th and 21st centuries. We look forward to our last working group event, still to come, with new WGSS faculty member Evren Savci. These sessions are valuable spaces where students and faculties can share ideas and encounter works in process.

This semester, we also had three exciting colloquium sessions, beginning with presentations from Lucia Hulsether (Religious Studies) and April H. Bailey (Psychology). Lucia shared her research on the history of “social responsible capitalism” and how it naturalized markets as the site for international progressive projects. April presented her research on how women in positions of power do not circumvent being stereotyped as weaker while also failing to retain positive feminine stereotyping. The second session featured LiLi Johnson (American Studies) and Salonee Bhaman (History). LiLi presented research on how pregnancy literature beginning in the 1970s and 1980s constructed a consumer model of parenting and family formation that reflected the expanding neoliberalism of that era. Salonee’s presentation grappled with what an inheritance case centered on a rent-controlled apartment during the AIDS crisis can teach us about the law’s relationship to defining family. The last session featured Marie Hause (Master of Divinity) and Jennifer Carr (French). Marie presented her research on the discussions over the gender (or lack thereof) of the body’s spirit within certain religious communities in early America. Jennifer’s work examined Anne Garréta’s Sphinx to tease out how an erasure of gender from the novel throws performance practices as well as racial and cultural differences into stark relief.

We look forward to convening again next year. Thank you to all the faculty and students who took the time and shared their work with our community, as well as the wonderful community of scholars who attended these sessions. We very much appreciated the opportunity to think alongside all of you.