51猎奇

Dr. Melinda Brennan Appointed Executive Director of ACLU of Wisconsin After National Search

headshot of Melinda

The ACLU of Wisconsin today announced that Dr. Melinda Brennan has been chosen to lead the organization as its executive director after an extensive, nationwide search.

Dr. Brennan, born and raised in Wisconsin, called the opportunity 鈥渁 dream come true.鈥�

Dr. Brennan earned her bachelor鈥檚 degree in women鈥檚 studies and her master鈥檚 degree in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She went on to earn her doctorate in gender studies at Indiana University, where she wrote a dissertation on the nexus between hate acts, nationalism, white supremacy, and American Islamophobia.

Before joining the ACLU, Dr. Brennan served as a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice Board Consultant for the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition Project, training and educating board members about disability, race, and class issues related to mobility justice. She also has expertise in the DEIJ space, with years of experience as a consultant and community advocate.

鈥淢any of the issues I am devoted to reveal the way difference is weaponized and cast as problematic, rather than honoring difference, being accountable to justice, and supporting communities held at the margins,鈥� Dr. Brennan said. 鈥淢y commitment to this work is informed by scholarship and action, much of which was done by women of color, queer people of color, and other multiply marginalized leaders who speak truth to power.鈥�

Dr. Brennan was previously a trusted leader in the UW System, operating as Co-chair of the Women鈥檚 and Gender Studies Consortium, served as a member of the Rapid Response Team for Hate and Bias Incidents, and worked at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee as the assistant chair of Women鈥檚 and Gender Studies.

鈥淚n my career and community service, I prioritize working collaboratively, foregrounding how our different backgrounds and needs bring strength and clarity to our work, with a deep fire for the pursuit of justice. I am delighted to bring this focus to serve the ACLU, Wisconsin communities, and the battles ahead 鈥斕� justice, activation, care, and quality of life,鈥� Dr. Brennan said.

Shaadie Ali, who served as interim director, will stay with the organization until March as the ACLU of Wisconsin鈥檚 interim deputy executive director.

鈥淲e are so excited to welcome Melinda to lead our organizations,鈥� said William Sulton, board president of the ACLU of Wisconsin. 鈥淗er extensive leadership experience, passion for the equity of all people, and commitment to the protection of civil rights and civil liberties will serve her well in this role. I do not doubt the affiliate will reach even greater heights under her leadership.鈥�

 

WGS Lunch and Learn Series Continues

The Women’s & Gender Studies’ Lunch and Learn series continues on Wednesday, December 8, 2021 at noon with a presentation by Dr. Rae Langes, Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies at UW-Eau Claire.听 She is presenting

“This is Sentimental Archaeology!” Excavating, Envisioning and Embodying Trans Femme Apotheosis in Sofia Moreno’s Art and Performance at Hans Gallery

This event is open to the public and all are welcome.

or Toll 1-414-253-8850, Conference ID 379 096 87#

 

 

 

Vilas Trust Speaker Named

Silvia Federic headshot

51猎奇鈥檚 Women’s & Gender Studies is delighted to welcome , professor emerita and Teaching Fellow at , as the Vilas Trust Speaker.

Silvia Federici is a feminist scholar, teacher, and activist. She was one of the founders of the International Feminist Collective, which in the 1970s launched the campaign for Wages for Housework. She has taught in Nigeria and was a co-founder of the . She has also been active in the anti-globalization movement and the movement for the abolition of the death penalty. Her publications include

  • Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation
  • Revolution at Point Zero
  • Re-enchanting the World. Feminism and the Politics of the Commons
  • The Patriarchy of the Wage

Selected quotes from Dr. Federici’s work include:

鈥淭he history of Europe before the Conquest is sufficient proof that the Europeans did not have to cross the oceans to find the will to exterminate those standing in their way.鈥�
鈥� Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch

听鈥淸V]iolence against women is a key element in this new global war, not only because of the horror it evokes or the messages it sends but because of what women represent in their capacity to keep their communities together and, equally important, to defend noncommercial conceptions of security and wealth.鈥�
鈥� Silvia Federici, Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women

听鈥淏ut the main reason why we cannot enjoy the pleasure that sexuality may provide is that for women听sex is work. Giving pleasure to man is an essential part of what is expected of every woman.鈥�
鈥� Silvia Federici, Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle

If you are interested and want to learn more, mark your calendar! 听Friday, December 3, 2021 at 3:30pm, via Zoom.听 is required.

听

Xin Huang Research Assistance

Xin Huang is honored to receive a Research Assistance Fund grant form 51猎奇 to support a book manuscript t膩 is working on entitled Picturing Life: Gender and Photo-based Life Narrative. This book analyzes how lives, history, and gender are constructed in and through the ways personal photos are created, printed, reproduced, circulated, organized, and received. Each chapter focuses on one particular photography format in relation to gender and life narrative construction, including signifying fun眉 (women) in black and white studio photos of the Mao era, coloring women in color snapshot photos since the 1980s and 1990s, narrating gendered self in digital and digitalized photos and archives since 2000, and the contestation over master scripts of gender and history through the comparison of visual and oral life narratives.

Carolyn Eichner Research Assistance

Carolyn Eichner is pleased to have received a Research Assistance Fund grant to cover the cost of professionally indexing her forthcoming book, Feminism鈥檚 Empire (Cornell University Press, June 2022). Feminism鈥檚 Empire examines the first late 19th-century French feminists to engage imperialism, and to develop multiple critical approaches to existing empires. Ranging from anarchist to monarchist, these activists shaped both feminisms and imperialisms through their ideological commitments and their embodied experiences in metropolitan France, and in colonial contexts including New Caledonia, Algeria, Turkey, Russia, and the American West.

Community Crisis: Affordable Housing

Community Crisis flyer

IGNITE National and 51猎奇’s Women’s & Gender Studies Department are happy to host , an event to create dialogue about affordable housing and how it impacts everyone.

Today, many community members are facing housing instability. Affordable housing is progressively getting worse especially for poor and low income families.

 

Join us Wednesday, December 01, 2021 at 12pm CST for a virtual discussion about affordable housing. We will hear from Dr. Anne Bonds, Sarah Weintraub, and Savina Martin

Zoom Details:
Click to join the event
Meeting ID: 994 4754 4028
Password: 007190

 

Check out the esteemed panel who will be facilitating this discussion!

Dr. Anne Bonds is Associate Professor of Geography and Urban Studies at UW-Milwaukee.听 Anne is a feminist geographer whose research interests include race and racialization, urban political economy and community development, and critical carceral studies.

She is an editor of Urban Geography, Chair of the Urban Geography Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers (AAG), Co-Chair of the Critical Prisons Studies Caucus of the American Studies Association (ASA) and a Senior Fellow at听 the 51猎奇 Center for Economic Development.

 

Sarah Weintraub is a tri-chair of the Wisconsin’s Poor People’s Campaign.听 She is a mother, educator and community organizer in the movement to unite the poor and dispossessed to end the interlocking injustices of systemic poverty, systemic racism, ecological devastation, and the war economy.

In particular, she draws on her family’s experience of being impacted by the broken immigration system and years of organizing for the human right to healthcare.

 

Savina Martin is a lifelong activist and organizer from Massachusetts.听 She is an Army Veteran, and over the years has mobilized and organized around the war on drugs affecting homeless men, women, and veterans in Boston and San Diego, CA.

In 1993, she helped coordinate resources to refurbish an abandoned “Takeover” home, which today continues to provide as a refuge for homeless women recovering from addiction.听 As President of the Boston Chapter, during the mid-1980’s, she helped to lead direct action efforts during the Union’s Housing Takeover Campaign.

 

And representing UW-Milwaukee and IGNITE National:

Dr. Melinda Brennan is the Assistant Chair of Women’s & Gender Studies at UW-Milwaukee.听 She earned her doctorate in Gender Studies from Indiana University and her MA and BA from 51猎奇.

Her transdisciplinary work operates at the intersection of gender, sexuality, and race, focusing on anti-violence activism, violence related to hate and power, and how people experience community across dissimilarly situated differences.听 As a scholar and educator of the margins and on the margins, she works to increase inter-group community and activism.

 

Justice Grau is the IGNITE Milwaukee Fellow.听 Justice is a proud first-generation student currently pursuing her Master’s degree in Cultural Foundations of Community Engagement and Education at UW-Milwaukee.

Justice continually advocates for vulnerable communities in Milwaukee and is committed to understanding race, class, gender, and other equitable issues as a core of her professional work with an intersectional approach.

Safe Space Dialogue

graphic for diversity

The Women’s Resource Center, Women’s & Gender Studies, and the Black Student Cultural Center are hosting a Safe Space Dialogue to discuss events in Kenosha surrounding the Kyle Rittenhouse trial that impact us all.听 This is a great opportunity to share concerns, ask questions, and support your peers as we navigate this challenging and confusing situation.

Join us Thursday, November 18, 2021 from 10:30 to 11:30 am, either in person at the Women’s Resource Center (Student Union, WG93) or virtually ()

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Justice Grau at john3265@uwm.edu.

How Do We Use Citations? Krista Grensavitch, and Co-Authors, Explore and Advise

Well Done! graphic

Krista Grensavitch, Senior Lecturer for Women鈥檚 & Gender Studies, contributed to 鈥溾�� in Teaching & Learning Inquiry.

This article, an example of collaborative research within the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) explores the idea that citing is a political act. As Grensavitch and her co-authors argue: citing is a practice that can work both sides of the same coin: it can give voice, and it can silence. The article makes a call for readers to consider, and perhaps change, their citational practices.

The aim of the research study that is the basis of the article was to gather data about how citation is practiced within the SoTL community: who we cite, how we cite, and what values, priorities, and politics are conveyed in these practices. The contributors were also interested in whether any self-selected categories of identity (e.g., gender, career stage) related to self-described citation practices and priorities. Findings suggest several statistically significant relationships did emerge, which are identified as important avenues for further research and writing. The paper concludes with 10 principles of citation practices in SoTL.

Thank you, Krista, for continuing to demonstrate your commitment to representation for all marginalized groups, in all areas of academia!

 

Krista Grensavitch鈥檚 Anti-Racist Work Continues

Women鈥檚 & Gender Studies鈥� Senior Lecturer, Krista Grensavitch, is a Curator/Contributor for the exhibit currently on view at the Emile H. Mathis Gallery at UW-Milwaukee.

Hostile Terrains at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee examines the intersection of space, policy and violence in and around the US. This exploration is catalyzed by the Hostile Terrain 94 installation authored by the Undocumented Migration Project and directed by anthropologist Jason De Le贸n. Hostile Terrain 94 illustrates the consequences of government policy at the US-Mexico border. That border is a checkpoint of territorial control through which thousands of migrants pass each year. Many are deterred or detained, and many perish. Hostile Terrain 94 simultaneously reveals the massive scale of that invisible tragedy and its irreducibly personal human impact. It also directs us to examine the hostilities of our own terrains.

Surrounding installations in the exhibit analyze hostile landscapes in and around Milwaukee. Faculty curators, students, and community partners explore the interrelationships of identity, space, policy, and violence from the perspectives of Native People, Black Americans, Women, and Life in the Pandemic, among others. In Hostile Terrains, Milwaukee and the US-Mexico border are linked conceptually by boundary-making activities 鈥� some government-led initiatives, some societal traditions 鈥� in which the marginalization of certain groups is the precondition for and consequence of hierarchical power, social, and physical violence, and oppressive policy. Our objective is to center and amplify the voices of the silenced, reveal the invisible injustices embedded in our landscapes, and to cultivate connections between allies and organizations fighting for rights in and beyond Milwaukee. This is a safe space for all students, staff, faculty, and community members regardless of immigration status, personal or group identity.

You can view the Hostile Terrains exhibit:
Emile H. Mathis Gallery
UW-Milwaukee
Mitchell Hall, Room 170
3203 North Downer Avenue
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53211

Gallery Hours are Monday through Friday, 10 am to 4 pm and this exhibit runs September 30, 2021 鈥� February 10, 2022

Carolyn Eichner Recognized

Congratulations to WGS Associate Professor Carolyn Eichner, who was awarded a 51猎奇 Office of Research/Foundation Research Award during the Fall, 2021 semester.

Carolyn Eichner, Department of History and Women’s & Gender Studies, is an internationally recognized scholar of French feminist history, particularly women and gender in 19th-century French political and social movements.

Eichner has published extensively on revolutionary women, feminism, imperialism, and gender in France and its empire. 51猎奇 History Department chair Joseph Rodriguez writes, 鈥淗er work is cutting edge鈥攔evealing the stories of French women who previously languished in historical obscurity. The freshness and originality of her work has attracted an international audience, and much of her work has been translated into French. Her first book is regularly used in women and gender and French history courses.鈥�

Eichner鈥檚 French translation of her 2004 book on women in France鈥檚 revolutionary civil war, Surmounting the Barricades: Women in the Paris Commune, was a finalist for the prestigious Prix Augustin Thierry, given by the City of Paris to recognize historical work focusing on the period between Antiquity and the late 19th century. Her second and third books, The Paris Commune: A Brief History and Feminism鈥檚 Empire, are forthcoming in 2022.