Feminisms in Latin America and the Challenges of Diversity in the XXI Century

Virginia Vargas is a Peruvian sociologist, political scientist, and feminist militant. In 1978 she founded the Centro de la Mujer Peruana Flora Tristán (The Flora Tristán Center for Peruvian Women), and is still active with the center today.  Vargas has been involved in numerous other feminist and activist networks and initiatives, locally and globally, most recently with the Articulación Feminista Marcosur (The Marcosur Feminist Articulation), a Latin American feminist political network. Vargas was the Latin American and Caribbean NGO Coordinator to the NGO Forum held in September, 1995, on occasion of the Fourth World UN Conference on Women in Beijing, China.  In Beijing, Vargas received a UNIFEM Award.  Vargas is on the Advisory Council for the Democracia y Transformacion Global (Democracy and Globlal Transformation Program) at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, in Lima, Perú.  Since 2001 Vargas has been actively involved in the processes of the World Social Forum, as a member of its International Committee, and on behalf of the Articulación Feminista Marcosur.

 Directions to 370 Dwinelle Hall

Organized by: The Global Commons Foundation

Co-sponsored by: Beatrice Bain Research Group

370 Dwinelle Hall
3:00 PM to 5:00 PM

BBRG PRESENTS: A Lecture by BBRG Scholar Carla Risseeuw

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4:00 PM to 5:30 PM

BBRG PRESENTS: BBRG Annual Keynote Talk - Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

 NEW DATE!

"Situating Feminism" 

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor and Director of the Center for Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia University

This presentation will attempt to situate feminism geographically, in terms of the triumph of the Euro-specific (even Anglo-specific) model, in terms of the history of both of Marxism and Capitalism. It will trace feminism’s itinerary through both coloniality and globalization. It  will also attempt to situate feminism historically in terms of the provenance of what we at radical U.S. universities call feminism and see how it reflects on the development of mobility among women in terms of not only capital but also the great engines of world governance.

Organized by: Beatrice Bain Research Group

Co-sponsored by: Department of Comparative Literature, Department of Rhetoric, Department of Sociology, Department of Gender and Women's Studies- Li Ka Shing, Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, English Department, Townsend Center for the Humanities, Center for Race and Gender, Center for South Asia Studies, Department of Gender and Women's Studies, Department of Geography, and the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory

The Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall, UC Berkeley
4:00 PM to 6:00 PM

BBRG PRESENTS: 'Fat. Gay. Gay. Fat.'
Toward a Comparative Geneology of Sexuality and Body Size

Body size and homosexuality have been potent sites of moral panic in the 20th century United States. Fat people and gay people have been discursively linked in a range of popular and academic representations and targeted for efforts at containing what is widely viewed as their excessive desires. Yet few efforts have been made to place the two issues in historic conversation, tracing common genealogies and making a case for productive comparative work. This paper will be a step in that direction, laying out similarities and differences between moral and medical discourses on fatness and homosexuality historically and examining two contemporary efforts at changing homosexuality and body size: a Christian weight loss program and an ex-gay ministry.

 

Organized by: Beatrice Bain Research Group

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4:00 PM to 5:30 PM

Ex-Gay, Post-Gay, Still Gay
The Ex-Gay Movement in South Africa and the United States

The ex-gay movement is a complicated and at times contradictory phenomenon. A bastion of conservative sexual values and politics, it is also the site of gender and sexual innovation (of a particular sort). Its efforts at healing people from homosexuality range from the strictly therapeutic to the intensively spiritual. And the movement both reflects and engages with the national political environments within which it finds itself. This panel will bring a transnational perspective to the ex-gay movement, with speakers who have undertaken intensive field work in ex-gay ministries in South Africa and the United States. It will look at the gender, racial and bodily practices and perspectives the ministries promulgate, their relationship to sexual and religious politics, and their impact on the lives of people attempting to change their sexual orientation.

Speakers

Lynne Gerber is a Research Fellow at the Religion, Politics, and Globalization Program at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests include evangelical Christianity and contemporary American culture, Jewish-evangelical relations, and religion and sexuality. She is currently working on a manuscript titled Ruling the Unruly Body: Losing Weight, Becoming Straight and Being Christian in Evangelical America, a study of evangelical weight loss ministries and ex-gay ministries. Lynne holds a Ph.D. in Ethics and Social Theory from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School. She has also worked as a consultant for numerous philanthropic foundations.

Melissa Hackman is a PhD candidate in cultural anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is currently writing her dissertation “Born-Again Masculinity: Ex-Gay and Pentecostal Identities in Post-Apartheid South Africa,” which is based on 15 months of intensive fieldwork at an ex-gay and sexual addiction ministry in Cape Town. She has an M.A. in Anthropology from UCSC and a Masters of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School, where she focused on religions of the African Diaspora and gender/sexuality. Melissa received her BA in Women's Studies from Temple University and is originally from Philadelphia.

Organized by: The Religion, Politics and Globalization Program

Co-sponsored by: Beatrice Bain Research Group, The Center for Comparative Study of Right Wing Movements, The Center for Race and Gender, and the Center for the Study of Sexual Cultures

223 Moses Hall
4:00 PM to 6:00 PM