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Power & (In)Visibility
SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE

Location: Building 4, Rooms 159 & 163
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA 02139
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Symposium Date: March 28, 2015

SATURDAY, MARCH 28th

8:15 - 9:00 AM: REGISTRATION AND LIGHT BREAKFAST

9:00 – 11:30 AM: PANEL SESSIONS

9:00 – 10:15 AM: CONCURRENT PANELS #1

PANEL A: Queer Identities “Recognizing Queer Bodies and Identities”
This panel explores the tenuous and shifting visibility of queer and gender variant bodies from various sites, including autoethnography, law, and comic books
Room: 4-163

  1. “Codes, AIDS, and Editors: Toward a Periodization of LGBT Visibility in American Comic Books”; Sean A. Guynes, M.A. Candidate, American Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston
  2. "The Cruel Optimism of Third Gender Laws"; Mollie Pepper, PhD Candidate, Sociology, Northeastern University
  3. "Mixed Emotions: David Wojnarowicz and the Art of AIDS Activism"; Gabriel Quick, M.A. Candidate, Art History, Tufts University
  4. "Fluid Space: The Story of the Fat Non-Binary Body"; Harmony Evans, M.S. Candidate, Counseling and Applied Psychology, Northeastern University

Moderator: Gary Strain, Simmons College


PANEL B: Narrative Rendering Visibility
This panel explores how literary narratives serve as a means to unearth and explore self and social representation.
Room: 4-159

  1. "Autofiction: Looking Rebels in the Face in Entendez-vous dans les montagnes"; Erin Lamm, PhD Candidate, Romance Studies, Boston University
  2. '"Margaret B. Jones", Blackface, and White Flight'; Paul Bachand, MA Candidate, American Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston
  3. "Importing Agency from the Archives: The Case of the Gilded Age New York's Female Elite"; Yael Merkin, PhD Candidate, History, Harvard University
  4. "Still Kicking: Disrupting the Maternal Imagination in Small Island"; Fiona-Elle Maurissette, PhD Candidate, English, Tufts University

Moderator: Laura Hartmann, Northeastern University


10:30 - 11:30 AM: CONCURRENT PANELS #2


PANEL A: Theorizing Gender
This panel examines developments in feminist theory and philosophy, focusing on visibility and intelligibility in theoretical, digital, and media discourses.
Room: 4-163

  1. '"How Might Flesh Signify When It is Not Visually Performative?”: Technology as Interface in the Human-­‐Gender Interaction'; Gregory L. Bagnall, PhD Candidate, English Literature, University of Rhode Island
  2. "Haunted Spouses: The Gendering of Derrida’s Spectral Ethics in Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy"; Lilia Kilburn, M.A. Candidate, Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  3. "Tango for Two: Reconceptualizing Feminist Epistemology through the Theories and Work of Gloria Anzaldúa and Material Feminisms"; Kristin Alder, PhD Candidate, Political Science, Texas Woman's University

Moderator: Pamela Devan, Boston University


PANEL B: Women Writers and Slavery
Concerned with visiting the untold stories and bodies of slave women, this panel looks at the role of motherhood and Black women’s efforts to critically re-examine the structures of theology, the novel, and motherhood to speak about slavery.
Room: 4-159

  1. "Infants in the Lives of Slave Girls: Harriet Jacobs, Frances Kemble, and Displaced Motherhood"; Cassandra Berman, PhD Candidate, History, Brandeis University
  2. "When the Scapegoat Speaks: Writing as an Act of Solidarity"; Alicia Lauren Brienza, M.A. Candidate, Philosophy and Theology, Boston College
  3. "Invisible Children: The Trope of the Childless Slave Mother in Abolition and Human Rights Print Culture, 1820-1860"; Rhae Lynn Barnes, PhD Candidate, History, Harvard University

Moderator: Lily Cole-Chu, Simmons College


11:30 AM - 12:30 PM: LUNCH (off-site)

12:45 - 4:30 PM: PANEL SESSIONS


12:45 - 1:45 PM: CONCURRENT PANELS # 3


PANEL A: Female Embodiment
These papers explore complex questions of embodiment and gender in terms of celebrity, labor, and disability.
Room: 4-163

  1. "Alien(ated) Bodies: Visibility, Celebrity, and Femininity in Under the Skin"'; Anna Christine, PhD Candidate, English, Tufts University
  2. "The Fat Woman at Work: Examining Invisibility and Empowerment in the Labor of Performance"; Katherine Phelps, PhD Candidate, Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Boston
  3. "Women with Disabilities: Their Visible and Invisible Social and Economic Impact"; Julianne M. Acker-Verney, MA Candidate, Women and Gender Studies, Saint Mary’s University & Mount St. Vincent University

Moderator: Cara Fallon, Harvard University

PANEL B: Sexual Violence
Examining competing interpersonal and institutional discourses on sexual violence, these papers explore different frames of sexual violence to question social truths of "victims" and visibility.
Room: 4-159

  1. "Rape by any other name: Mapping the feminist legal discourse regarding rape in conflict onto transitional justice in Cambodia"; Sarah Gledhill, LL.M. Candidate, International Law and Human Rights , Northeastern University
  2. "I am (not) woman, hear me roar: Tension-filled femininities in women’s discussion of risk"; Margaret W. Nicholson, M.A. Candidate, Gender and Cultural Studies, Simmons College
  3. "The Visibility of Victimhood: Attaching a Victim Status to Selected Groups in the Commercial Sex Industry"; Julianne Siegfriedt, PhD Candidate, Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Moderator: Berit Lindell, Northeastern University

2:00 - 3:00 PM: CONCURRENT PANELS # 4

PANEL A: Place/Space
This panel addresses the role of place/space as they work to reinscribe stratified identities and their relative (in)visibilities.
Room: 4-163

  1. "Plantation to Incarceration: The Criminalization of Black Bodies to Uphold the White American Power Structure"; Gina Physic, M.A. Candidate, African American Studies, Boston University
  2. "The Spatialized Nature of Suburban-Urban Discourse: Breaking Down the Myths of Safety and Violence in Chang-Raw Lee's 'Native Speaker'"; Megan Phillips, M.A. Candidate, English and Teaching, Simmons College
  3. "Philanthropic Voyeurism: Victorian Slum Travel and the Female Incognito"; Shannon Derby, PhD Candidate, English, Tufts University

Moderator: Mollie Pepper, Northeastern University

PANEL B: The Figure of the Child
While the figure of the child is one that has been widely circulated and well-theorized, this panel explores the realities of invisible children. 
Room: 4-159

  1. "Longing to Belong: Relational Risks and Resilience of Commercially Sexually Exploited Children in the United States"; Kate Price, PhD Candidate, Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Boston
  2. "Seeing Others as They See Themselves: Utilizing Art-Based Participatory Research Methods with Child Soldiers in Eastern DRC"; Beth Maclin, M.P.H. Candidate, Epidemiology, Boston University
  3. "The System of Gender: Neoliberalism, Tokenization, and Trans* Youth of Color"; Denny Bobot, PhD Candidate, Social Justice Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Moderator: Tess Consoli, University of Massachusetts Boston

3:15 - 4:15 PM: CONCURRENT PANELS #5

PANEL A: Global Perspectives: The Gendered Structure of Labor, Politics, and Technology
This panel considers constructions of gender and the ways they are enmeshed in and deployed by power structures in Turkey, Thailand, and Kenya. 
Room: 4-163

  1. "The Transnational Figure of Kathoey Entertainers and Construction of Thai Identity"; Rebecca Farber, PhD Candidate, Sociology – Gender and Sexuality Studies Concentration, Boston University
  2. "The Moral Dilemmas of Disclosure in Transnational Sex Selection from Turkey to Northern Cyprus"; Burcu Mutlu, PhD Candidate, History, Anthropology, Science, Technology, and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  3. "Women’s Political Representation in Kenya: Exploring Social Capital and Power Structures"; Rose Nyaondo, PhD Candidate, Public Policy, University of Massachusetts Boston

Moderator: Cliff Sonkin, Clark University

PANEL B: Visual Representations of Race and Ethnicity
This panel considers the role of (self) representation and invisibility in regards to constructions of race and gender; these papers explore the role images play in mediating national identities.
Room: 4-159

  1. "Photographic Image-Managements in the Feminine Sinosphere: A Comparison of the Photo books by Sanmao and Aileen Chang in the late-Modern Taiwan"; Clint Capehart, PhD Candidate, East Asian Languages and Civilization, Harvard University
  2. "Selling America: Concealing the Indian Queen in John Haberle’s U.S.A"; Christine Garnier, M.A. Candidate, Art History, Tufts University
  3. "Fetishization of Colonialism"; Lena Campagna, PhD Candidate, Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Moderator: Lydia Dana, Simmons College


4:30 – 5:30 PM: KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Room 4-163

Elora Halim Chowdhury, Associate Professor and Chair of Women's and Gender Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Title: Power, Visibility, and Violence: Mapping Human Rights Narratives Across Borders

Elora Halim Chowdhury is an Associate Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her research and teaching interests include transnational feminism, gender violence, human rights, narrative and advocacy. She is the author ofTransnationalism Reversed: Women Orgnaizing Against Gendered Violence in Bangladesh (SUNY Press 2011), which was awarded the Gloria E. Anzaldua Book Prize by the National Women's Studies Association in 2012. She has published extensively in journals and edited volumes and is currently working on a project on transnational feminist solidarity, and another on representations of trauma, agency and justice in nationalist cinema in South Asia

5:30 PM: Post-conference drinks and networking (off-site).

For more information, contact gcws@mit.edu

Contact Us

Consortium for Graduate Studies in Gender, Culture, Women, and Sexuality
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 14N-211
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139
Phone: 617-324-2085

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