JASMINE WADDELL:
Hello and welcome.
My name is Jasmine Waddell
and I'm class of 1999.
I am the incoming chair of
the Pembroke Center Associates
and this group is some really
remarkable alumni, and alumnae,
and friends, who support the
Pembroke's Center's work.
We're delighted to welcome
all of you, students,
your families, alumni,
alumnae, faculty, and friends
to the Pembroke Center's
annual Student Prize and Grant
Recipient Presentations.
Founded in 1981,
the Center was named
in honor of the Pembroke
College in Brown University,
and the Women of Pembroke and
its predecessor, the Women's
College.
The Pembroke Center is home to
Brown's Gender and Sexuality
Studies concentration, and
supports students and scholars
such as this group
we are honored
to have with us here today
with scholarships, prizes,
and research grants.
The Center also supports
the Christine Dunlap Farnham
Archive and the
Feminist Theory Archive
preserving the history of
Brown and Rhode Island women
and the intellectual history
of feminist scholars.
Both are unique collections
and are important resources
for scholars around the world.
So now I'll hand the
podium over to Drew Walker,
associate director of
the Pembroke Center
and director of the Gender
and Sexuality Studies
concentration, who will be
our emcee for the afternoon.
DREW WALKER: Thanks Jasmine.
It's always a pleasure to
recognize great student work
and to have the
opportunity to hear
the students speak about it.
So it's a pleasure to introduce
our student prize winners
and grant recipients today.
I want to welcome you all
again, and welcome them,
and congratulate them on their
accomplishments, especially
their impending graduation.
And to begin, I would like to
offer a few words of thanks.
First, to all those who have
supported these students--
their professors, the
university, their friends,
families, and all
other supporters.
And a special thanks goes to
their advisors, several of whom
are here, who guided them
through their projects.
Here's two over
here that I know of.
Are there other
advisors in the room?
Well, Debbie and Matt
are representing.
Second, big thanks to
the Associates Council
whose support and generosity
makes possible so much
of what we do at
the Pembroke Center,
including giving these
grants and prizes each year.
I'd also like to thank
my Pembroke colleagues,
who assisted in the process
of selecting these students
and who coordinated
today's events--
especially Donna Goodnow, who
administers the entire process
from applications
and nominations
to processing the awards--
Martha Hamblett, Diane
Straker, Faith Baum,
and our interim
director, Bonnie Honig.
And a special thanks to
our awards committees,
especially to Denise Davis, who
serves on all of our committees
in addition to teaching
in the department
and working as the managing
editor of our journal,
Differences.
This year, as in years past we
receive a robust and impressive
group of applications
and nominations
for these grants and prizes.
And it's always a
wonderful challenge
to make the selections.
We're proud of the work
of this year's recipients
and the ways that they
embody the mission
and values of the
Pembroke Center
and Gender and Sexuality
Studies at Brown.
So now before turning it
over to our today's speakers
for the rest of
the program, I do
want to announce two grant
recipients who are not here
today.
That's Sarah Nicita, who
received a Linda Pei research
grant, and Margaret Cohen, who
received an Enid Wilson travel
grant.
We congratulate them
in their absence.
[APPLAUSE]
Now--
So now I'm just
going to turn it over
to the students and
their presentations.
They're going to present
in alphabetical order
as it appears on the program.
Each will introduce
themselves and their project.
And then we'll have time
for a couple of questions
after each presentation.
OK?
And with that, Cleveish,
I'll turn it over to you.
CLEVEISH BOGLE: Hello everyone.
Thank you for being here today.
My name is Cleveish Bogle,
and I am in the class of 2018.
I concentrated in anthropology
and health and human biology.
For my presentation, or before
beginning my presentation,
I wish to extend my immense
gratitude to the Pembroke
Center for the Study of
Women and the Barbara Anton
Internship Grant
for their support
in empowering this project and
in making this work possible.
I would also like to express
my deep appreciation and thanks
to the Department of
Anthropology and the Engaged
Scholars Program,
particularly Professor Lina
Fruzzetti and Professor
Rebecca Carter,
who acted as my thesis advisor
and second reader respectively.
And finally, I wish
to thank my family
for their support
and encouragement
throughout my study.
And so in introduction,
this research project
was an ethnographic
study that entailed
and it engaged in immersive
examination of the role
and impact of creative
youth development
on the participants
and perceived community
of the Community Youth
Organization, Providence
CityArts for Youth.
I know that was a lot.
I'm going to break it down.
And so first in acknowledging
that disadvantaged adolescents
may face developmental
problems as they age,
current research into
youth development
asserts that the goal of
positive youth development
is in promoting a positive
socio-emotional outcomes.
It is thus important to consider
the ways in which a deeper
sense of belonging and
positive youth development
framework of self and
group identity can drive
and manifest prosocial
socio-emotional outcomes.
And so to wrangle with
these questions about how
community building efforts, as
well as positive development
practices as underscored in
creative youth development,
can impact the
participants, both youth
students and the
staff, administrators
of an organization, I undertook
this particular research
project.
And so for a bit of
background-- oh, that's--
that was that.
And so to go into the history of
Providence CityArts for Youth--
it was founded in 1992
in South Providence
by Sister Ann Keefe, who was
a beloved community activist
and champion of social,
and of economic justice.
Sister Ann Keefe believed
and advocated the idea
that access to the
arts and to artists
supports the heart-centered
empathetic, moral educations
of our youth.
To the same, the limited
resources and funding allotted
to arts programs
and public schools
throughout the state of
Rhode Island has led to a gap
that in the availability
and access to opportunities
for self-development, community
building, and social change
which artistic and
creative activities can
provide in the youth who
engage in these processes.
The mission of CityArts
is thus inspired
by the creative process
of art making combined
with the exploration
of ideas that
shape our communities
and everyday lives.
In a nutshell--
yes, in a nutshell,
there are two main goals of the
CityArts current mission model.
The first is to increase the
number of Providence students
engaged in arts-based and
project-based learning
after and during school.
The second is to help
develop the next generation
of diverse artists to grow
professionally as community
leaders, teachers, and artists.
And so in determining
the curriculum framework
of Providence CityArts, it
has a multi-pronged mission
that provides CityArts youth
with exceptional opportunities
to perform and to participate
in artistic, educational
programming.
These include field
trips to local museums,
engaging in neighborhood
arts service projects,
performing at
community gatherings,
and also in receiving mentorship
from the community volunteers
who facilitate these programs.
And so to deepen
our understanding
of what creative use development
means I offer this definition
the process of creative
youth development
refers to a focused and
motivated process that
encourages positive outcomes,
including community engagement
and positive self-image, as well
as increased confidence in self
and in one's skill capacities.
In a focus on the community
organization, Providence
CityArts, I have grounded
this research study
into the impact of these
practices of creative youth
development to underscore
how they transform
onto not only the
youth participants,
but also the staff and
administrators who facilitate
programming, indicating
a wider impact that
can be translated into
different levels of society.
And so the structure of
this research project
will be entailed as such.
So the guiding inquiry
of this fieldwork
was to investigate--
who are the people that
are working to craft, lead, and
to support the creative youth
development and
community building
efforts of Providence CityArts?
As key agents in
the facilitation
of the work of this
community youth organization,
centered on arts education,
youth empowerment,
and professional development
of community teaching
artists, the administrators and
administrative staff members,
who each culminate their own
experiences in the organization
with these positive
youth development
practices and values as
championed at CityArts.
And so I volunteer directly in
CityArts programs and workshops
as a teaching assistant
to participate and observe
these practices in action.
During the interview
process of this project,
I conducted formal conversations
with a total of 11 CityArts
employees, including four
administrators, five teaching
artists, and two
administrative staff members.
This fieldwork project entails
a deep immersion and engagement
in the work and community
of teaching artists.
And so one of the preliminary
questions by which I guided
this research study was--
how is community defined
either in general
or at Providence CityArts?
And so in this investigation
we determined that at its core,
community involves people
being together, building bonds
and being able to depend on each
other, and genuinely wanting
to be supportive of one another.
In my experiences working
with Miss Delilah, a teaching
artist at CityArts,
I learned more
about the responsibilities
and practices of the teaching
artists at CityArts who lead
these arts education programs.
During the first week
of any workshop session,
the teaching artists will
lead the young artists
in brainstorming,
and discussing,
and establishing the
community agreement
guidelines of their classroom.
This community
agreement represents
a collaborative process
of designating the best
practices of
communication and behavior
in the class environment--
encouraging respect,
compassion, and collaboration
between everyone in the
classroom community.
It's evident in the
programming at CityArts
that a general theme
of respect and patience
is underscored in the teacher
and student relationship,
both in their conversations
in the artwork they produce,
and during times of conflict
resolution, whether there's
conflicts that originate in
their previous school day
experience or within
the community.
Because at the core
of it all, it's
about supporting one another
and caring with one another,
not necessarily for.
Because it empowers both
sides of that conversation
and dialogue.
And so in developing
their relationships--
the relationships between
the mentors and the students,
we gained insight into the
conversations, as well as
the outcomes and the
impact of these programs
on these individuals.
Largely, there is a pride of
work in both the young artists
and the structural
agents, which is
with an emphasis on
the teaching artists.
The nature of
confidence building
extends to teaching artists in
their own creative processes
as they develop and participate
in the curriculum frameworks
that are defined by the values
of creative youth development.
Perfect.
So the CityArts'
Feeding her fire exhibit
and panel was held
in December 2017
and provided the crux
of my research study.
It proved to be a
transformative experience
for both the young artists
and adult mentors who
witnessed the results.
A year long course,
the participants
were female identifying young
artists between the ages of 11
and 14, who worked alongside
community feminist artist
activists to create
artwork that culminated
in this formal exhibition.
One of the guiding
frameworks of city arts
is the professional
development of teaching artists
and their students as it
imbues their competence as well
as their confidence.
We found that in
a very real sense,
student experiences
are the primary product
of creative youth
development rather than
the artworks that they produce.
In this way, it is not
necessarily the product,
but the process that
develops these impacts.
Teaching artists
at CityArts work
to ensure that their
young artists understand
that their work
is process driven.
And that it is most important
to have them reflect
on their growth as self-assured
individuals and as invested
members of the
community, remembering
to see students
artworks as evidence
of the process of student
learning and development.
And so in conclusion, as
individuals, we both create--
Oh, no, sorry.
Individual and community impact.
And so with this formal
analysis of the feeding
her fire exhibit, we understood
that in placing students
in positions of
empowerment, allowing
them to have a voice in the
display of their artwork,
as well as the creation,
we were able to facilitate
the development of their
confidence, competence,
and their compassion,
and formally,
their identities as
artists, as activists,
and as invested
community members.
And so in conclusion
as individuals
we both create and are
influenced by our communities.
In the processes of community
youth organizations,
the prioritization of
positive youth development,
alongside the creative
youth development practices
of arts education and a
social justice education
have an extensive impact on
the socio-emotional experiences
of the youth participants, the
organizational administration,
staff, teachers
and volunteers who
participate and facilitate this
work and the inherent values.
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
DREW WALKER: Questions?
CLEVEISH BOGLE: Two, oh yeah?
AUDIENCE: Really
fascinating talk.
Anthropologists get to go out
and study other communities
and learn about them.
Often they end up coming
up with inside stuff
in communities that
they come from.
So what I wanted to ask
you as you kind of make
this transition beyond
Brown, if there's stuff
that you've got from
doing this participant
observation in this
program that you think
could be implemented at Brown
and other places of higher
education.
Is there a way that angles back?
CLEVEISH BOGLE: Yeah,
that's a great question.
And it's something
that definitely
stayed with me throughout my
experience in this project.
As someone who is invested
in that the impact
that community building
and a focus on youth voice,
and the impact that it can
have on the development
of those very youth,
I think that when
we think of the larger concept
of how these outcomes can
be facilitated in
a larger sphere,
it is an understanding that
youth are active participants
in their own educations.
And in that understanding,
we reemphasize the fact
that their voices matter.
And I think with Brown
or any organization that
is invested in community
building efforts in such
a regard, it's this
emphasis and focus
on empowering the
voices of youth,
as well as the actions of
youth, that can be brought forth
to imbue larger social
structures and systems
and to better the world.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
CLEVEISH BOGLE: Thank you.
JASMINE WADDELL: I
would [INAUDIBLE]
thank you for sharing
with us today--
exciting, interesting project.
I'm curious-- the
other piece of what
do get from it, which is--
what are you doing next?
CLEVEISH BOGLE: Yay.
I'm glad you asked.
So after graduating from
Brown, I will be working--
or I will be
participating in the 2018
corps for Teach for America
teaching secondary science
in Massachusetts.
Yes.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
Thank you very much.
BRIGITTE DALE: Hi everyone.
Thank you so much
for being here.
My name is Brigitte Dale.
And I would first like to
thank the Pembroke Center
for this wonderful occasion and
for awarding me the Helen Terry
MacLeod Research Grant.
I'd also like to thank my
incredible advisor, Professor
Kelly Colvin, for all of her
help over the past year or so
in writing my thesis and my
parents for being here today.
I wrote my honors history thesis
on the British women's suffrage
movement at the turn
of the 20th century.
And I specifically
focused on the group
of militant suffragettes
called the Women's Social
and Political
Union, or the WSPU.
I used my grant from
the Pembroke Center
to travel to London, where I did
primary research at the British
Library.
I read the suffragettes
self-published journal
called Votes for Women.
And I was able to glean a
sense of the women's own voices
and compare how they
represented themselves
with how contemporary London
newspapers and historiography
portrayed them.
So I'm going to
keep it brief today.
And I don't have time to share
with you all of my findings,
but I would like to
give you an overview
of the incredible
women's movement
that I was able
to study and write
about over the past two years.
In 1908, the WSPU you lead
an unprecedented march
of over 500,000 suffragettes
through London's Hyde Park.
Clad in violet, white,
and green and termed
by one newspaper as quote,
"a richness and refinement
of colors such as the
grandest of military pageants
has never supplied," unquote.
By 1913, just five years
later, the same suffragettes
bombed the house
of the Chancellor
of the Exchequer,
David Lloyd George,
leaving only a
hairpin as evidence.
The WSPU began a campaign
for women's suffrage in 1903,
ultimately employing militancy
and violence from 1910 to 1914.
In terms of chronology,
nearly half the movement's
lifespan was characterized
by nonviolent tactics.
Yet, in contemporary media
and historical memory,
not to mention existing
academic scholarship,
the entire movement
was remembered
as being radical from the start.
Their contemporaries
called them odious amazons
lusting after notoriety.
And later, historians
reinforced the suffragettes
self-proclaimed militancy
calling the women ritually
psychopathic.
But in my research, I argued
that the suffragettes' presence
in public, not their
later violence,
is what made them radical.
The suffragettes
occupied the same streets
as actresses and prostitutes,
the most disreputable members
of society.
The suffragettes disavowed
Victorian domesticity
by dramatizing their campaign
for a public audience.
Historians retroactively
characterize the suffragettes
as radical because
of their violence,
but contemporaries
did so initially
because of their presence.
The thousands of suffragettes
in color-coordinated costumes
risked their reputations
to perform their desire
for political participation.
They fought against stereotypes
from dissimulative prostitutes,
to failed mothers, to lesbians.
Later, they would risk their
lives enduring hunger strikes,
forced feedings in prison, and
sexual assault at the hands
of police officers.
We expect so-called
"radical" women
to be violent so that they
seem beyond the bounds
of feminine
expectations, but we must
recognize what was actually
radical at the time, women
in public.
Stereotypes persist about
women in power, which recently
led women to march in pink pussy
hearts instead of color sashes.
My research examines
the performative nature
of the WSPU's campaign.
By staging a public
performative spectacle
to demand political equality
long before violence ever
ensued, the suffragettes
were radicals simply
for being there.
The legacy of the
suffragettes and the organized
power of women's movements
is seeing a revival.
The suffragettes could not
say "me too", but we can.
And even today,
we're able to witness
the incredible power of women's
voices unified in protest.
In recontextualizing the
suffragettes purported
radicalism, we're able to
provide a deeper understanding
of women's continued
contested relationship
with power and
the public sphere.
And as for me to preemptively
answer this question,
after graduation I will be
presenting my thesis research
at the Suffrage
Centennial Conference
at the University of Surrey.
And then next year,
I will be applying
to PhD programs in
women's history.
[APPLAUSE]
DREW WALKER: Any questions?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
Yes?
AUDIENCE: Hi.
This is more for thank you
for sharing with us today.
It touches my heart
in a lot of ways
and I'm glad you linked it to
some of the current movement.
This picture-- the
juxtaposition of pictures
is very powerful for me.
I had a very basic question
though about your research,
which is does your paper define
what radical means in order
to sort of unpack the different
types of manifestations
of radicalism?
BRIGITTE DALE: Yes, definitely.
So in my research, I contrast
militant versus radical.
The suffragettes called
themselves militant
from the time that they were
founded, long before they
were ever to use violence.
And that's because they were
reacting against an earlier
generation of female
suffragists who
would stick to tactics
like writing letters
to members of parliament
or writing petitions.
When the WSPU was founded
by Emmeline Pankhurst,
she and her daughters decided
that they would use new tactics
that they called militant in
order to advocate for the right
to vote.
And those tactics would
include large demonstrations,
public speaking, marches--
so all putting their bodies on
display in the public sphere.
That's something that
they viewed as militant
but what society
viewed as radical.
AUDIENCE: Can I just interject
that the Helen Terry MacLeod
Research Grant--
and the person who
just asked me that question
is the granddaughter of Helen
Terry.
BRIGITTE DALE: Thank you
so much for being here.
[APPLAUSE]
Yes?
AUDIENCE: When was
[INAUDIBLE] I guess
is the question-- is the
[INAUDIBLE] for its [INAUDIBLE]
this granted [INAUDIBLE].
BRIGITTE DALE: So
women were granted
partial suffrage in 1918 and
then full suffrage in 1928.
And it coincided really with
the end of the First World War.
The suffragettes stopped their
militant activity in 1914
when war broke out and then
dedicated their efforts
to supporting their
country during World War I.
And then at that point,
when the war ended in 1918,
they began re-asking
for the right to vote.
And at that point, having
participated in the war effort
and fighting for democracy
on the world scale,
they were ultimately
granted the right
to vote for women over
30, who owned property.
And then it would
take another decade
of fighting in order to receive
equal suffrage with men.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
ZOE GILBARD: Good afternoon.
My name is Zoe Gilbard, and
I am double concentrating
in history and public health.
This past year, I completed an
honors history thesis entitled,
Confining the unfit,
the eugenics movement
in early 20th
century Rhode Island.
Eugenics-- a term
invented by Francis Galton
in 1883, was the
wellborn science
promoting better breeding to
achieve a more perfect society.
Galton became interested
in the possibility
of cultivating the human
race in the same way
that farmers breed animals--
weeding out less
desirable characteristics
and propagating positive ones.
He believed that
social improvement
was possible through
biological means.
And he wrote extensively about
his hypotheses concerning
human heredity beginning in
the 1860s, almost concurrently
with Charles Darwin's Theory of
Evolution and Gregor Mendel's
early genetics experiments.
The United States
eugenics movement
began to flourish in the early
20th century, often dubbed
the Progressive Era because
of the liberal social activism
that proliferated at the time.
The American eugenics
movement enacted
legal sexual sterilization,
immigration restriction,
marriage laws, and
institutional segregation
confining and controlling
socially undesirable people.
The improvement of the
genetics of the population
seemed to be in
everyone's best interest.
The historian Gregory Dorr
characterizes eugenics
as having ideological
flexibility.
The goal of eugenics--
to be able to improve
the traits of the
future population
by controlling reproduction
was attractive to a wide range
of individuals and movements.
My thesis was inspired
by a newspaper article
that I found last spring in
the Providence Sunday Journal
from 1912.
The headline read, "Can
we improve the race
by a 'eugenic marriage' law?"
I wanted to know more about how
a eugenics movement played out
in Rhode Island?
Who was involved?
What did participation
look like?
Rhode Island did not have
legalized sexual sterilization.
And so it has not been the
target of much research
on eugenics.
I found that the main tools of
the eugenics movement in Rhode
Island were marriage restriction
laws and the confinement
of socially undesirable
people to asylums and prisons.
In addition, I examined
individual participants
in the eugenics movement
in Rhode Island,
and I found that there
were many intersections
between participation
in eugenics
and in other social
movements of the time.
In particular, many
doctors and scientists
were interested in hygiene and
sanitation along with eugenics.
A Brown professor,
Herbert Eugene Walter,
whose field was comparative
anatomy and whose name now
adorns a building
on Waterman Street,
was a proponent of eugenics
as an extension of his studies
of biology and genetics.
Professor Walter
taught multiple courses
on eugenics over
his time at Brown,
including courses on
human conservation
and the control of heredity.
A genetics textbook written
by Walter entitled, Genetics,
is partially focused on
the use of the science
to weed out undesirable
people from the population.
Walter presented at the 1913
Providence Child Welfare
Exhibit, alongside
photographer Louis Hines,
displaying a poster
entitled, What is eugenics?
Here, you can see some of
the images of the poster kept
at the John Hay Library.
Walter suggests strategies
for increasing good blood
and decreasing bad blood.
Helen Cordelia
Putnam, a gynecologist
who practiced in Providence
for over 40 years,
was a great advocate for
the welfare of mothers
and children,
attending conferences
and publishing articles
on the importance
of hygiene to children's health.
She was also a
champion of education,
including sex education
for young people.
Dr. Putnam's interest, however,
also extended into eugenics.
Many social
movements of the time
found the goals of
eugenics to be in harmony
with their own
utilitarian goals.
Dr. Putnam chaired the National
Education Association's
Committee on racial well-being
calling for eugenics research
among undergraduates
across the country.
Dr. Putnam is only one example
of the individuals I examined
in my thesis, but
she demonstrates
the nuances of liberal
social activism
in the early 20th century.
I do not have time today to
go into my other discoveries,
but I would like to conclude
by saying it is imperative
that we continue to question
the social movements
and institutions we are part of.
My research demonstrated
that the eugenics movement
in the early 20th century,
along with being entrenched
in the medical and scientific
ideologies of the time,
was most powerful within
the state's institutions,
including Brown.
The Brown University community,
along with many other Rhode
Island institutions,
continue to use and discusse
the population of the state
for medical and public health
research.
And it is important to keep
in mind the dark history
of these disciplines
and the ways
in which science can
perpetuate systems of harm,
discrimination, and exclusion.
I would like to take a
moment to thank those
who made my research possible.
First, thank you to the
Pembroke Center for providing me
with the Steinhaus/Zisson
Research Grant which
allowed me to visit
and obtain sources
from the American Philosophical
Society in Philadelphia,
as well as the
Cushing/Whitney Medical
Library at Yale University.
Next I would like to thank
my advisor, Debbie Weinstein,
for her guidance and mentorship
throughout the thesis process.
And finally, I'd like to
thank my family who is here
today for all of their support.
This coming year,
I will be working
at a life sciences consulting
group in the Philadelphia area.
In the future, I hope to
attend medical school.
However, I will always
be a historian at heart.
Thank you so much
for being here today.
And thank you again to the
Pembroke Center for having me.
[APPLAUSE]
AUDIENCE: Some of you
may not have heard about,
cross your fingers, but some
of us who went to this college
in the 60's, when we
entered our freshman year,
we were stripped
down to our underwear
and marched through
the gymnasium
and had our photographs taken.
This happened to people who
went to other elite colleges--
Wellesley, Yale are two
that I know of personally.
It was part of a eugenics
study to see whether or not
the intelligentsia
of our country
were ectomorphs or endomorphs.
And those of us
have talked-- who
were subject to this
scientific exposure have talked
about the difference
between today
and that-- because today,
we would never, ever have
agreed to do that.
At the time, we felt we
didn't have any choice.
So it wasn't that
long ago that it's
kind of frightening to think so.
ZOE GILBARD: Yes.
I've actually had other older
female professors tell me
that when they were in college,
they had the same thing.
Yeah, that's really interesting.
DREW WALKER: Any other
questions or comments?
JASMINE WADDELL: So
thank you very much.
This was really interesting
[INAUDIBLE] and opening.
And it's a history
that we can't forget.
I also wonder what this means
for Brown's physical spaces.
I can understand how we
and other institutions
sort of are tied
up in this history.
Do you think as
an historian that
has implications for the
way that our institutions,
our buildings are named?
I think it's actually important
to preserve the names in order
to continue to explain to
people that this happened.
So I think it would be
useful to have like a plaque
or something
acknowledging the history,
but I don't think
that changing the name
would be the right step.
There are other
parts of Providence
that I learned about
through my research that
are still very present.
And I think that their
continued existence
is important for remembrance.
I do think it should be
acknowledged in some way
so that people can
learn from these things,
but I personally
think that continuing
to have the names or
the structures to exist
is really important
for remembrance.
AUDIENCE: I hope that your
research [INAUDIBLE] that.
ZOE GILBARD: Thank you.
DREW WALKER: Thank
you very much.
ZOE GILBARD: Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
AJA GRANDE: Great.
All these presentations
have been really wonderful.
Hi, aloha, my name
is Aja Grande.
I am a science and
society concentrator here
at Brown University.
I am graduating this year.
And before I delve
into this research,
I would like to take the time
to thank my two advisors, who
are not present--
Bhrigupati Singh from the
anthropology department
and Iris Montero
from the Department
of Science Technology
and Society.
I would also like to extend
my gratitude to the Pembroke
Center for Teaching
and Research on Women
for generously awarding me
the Steinhaus/Zisson Research
Grant.
With this support, I was
able to travel back to Hawaii
and conduct fieldwork and
explore historical archives.
So in this research--
this will be the outline,
I tell the story of Hawaii's
educational development
through the lives
of three women.
It is through them
that I introduce
how ontologies or
ways of being in life
emerge in formative institutions
and land-based learning
environments.
As the driving question of
this study, I contemplated--
could land-based learning
introduce a more embodied sense
of shared values for human
relationships of the land?
And if so, how would
we know that we
have achieved such a status?
To answer this
question, I'll start
with how this whole
project began,
which was while I was creating
a theoretical sustainable
curriculum as an
independent researcher
at my high school in 2015.
During that same year,
I got to spend time
with a woman named Jessica,
who ran Peace Child
International in Hawaii.
I volunteered to
help with planning
an event called the World
Youth Congress in 2017, which
had about 68 participants--
students, teachers, educators
from around the state
of Hawaii.
And the photo on the left
as of Jessica, and the right
is in the conference.
So to go over each chapter--
governance, consumption, waste--
I'll dive into each
one separately.
The first chapter acquaints
my time with Jessica
and traces the forms of
educational governments
that I conceptualized while
volunteering in researching
the sustainable curriculum.
As the main organizer
of the event,
Jessica drew my interest
because of her thinking
on education and ways
of organizing events.
Over email correspondences,
in-person meetings, and shared
experiences or conferences,
and also while volunteering
at a Hawaiian Land
Stewardship sites,
I express what I've
learned from Jessica
to depict two different
ways of education-related
decision-making.
This screenshot is of our
Dropbox folder which represents
one form of decision-making.
It's a more loose-ended
form, but it's
more egalitarian in terms of how
people connect to one another.
And this is the front
of the Hawaii State
Department of Education which
depicts the second form.
Hawaii only has one single
district of education,
and that is probably the lowest
throughout the United States.
So for consumption-- fastening
the second chapter to a 1977
oral history of Elizabeth
Elis, as a moment through which
to conceptualize
ontologies of consumption,
I present her childhood
from the 1910s to the 1920s
and with formal institutions as
well as her food and medicinal
relationships to
the land and also
her connection to
Hawaiian ethnobotany.
In the same
consumption chapter, I
identified to consumption
pools locally-centered and
urban-assimilated.
Recently, just this past year
actually, the Hawaii Department
of Education introduced
local school auctions
at public schools.
So the locally-centered
photo represents
products that come
from the islands,
while the photo on
the right depicts
the urban-assimilated
consumption where
people consume imported food.
And just to give you some
statistics, about 85% to 90%
of our food is imported to
the islands and from Hawaii.
So that's according
to the Department
of Agriculture in the state.
For the third chapter in
ontologies of human waste,
I adjust the focus
to Hawaii education
through a vignette
of Isabella Abbott.
She remains the most prominent
figure of Hawaiian ethnobotany.
She became the first Hawaiian
to acquire a PhD in the sciences
and documented a record
number of Pacific sea weeds,
or Limu in Hawaiian.
I tie her focus to what
is known as bioremediation
or the cycle of waste repurposed
for matters like consumption.
So opening the term waste to
mean more than just garbage
cans and flushed toilets.
I brought in the discussion
to sentimental human waste
in the form of jealousy,
anger, and resentment.
The photo on the
right is a species
of Hawaiian seaweed known
in scientific nomenclature
as Sargassum Echinocarpum.
And it's otherwise known
in Hawaiian as Limu kala.
This was used for
ceremonial purposes
to make things
right between people
that you have strife with or
if you're angry with someone,
they would come together
and ho'o pono pono
to make things right.
So in a synthesis, the
narratives and knowledges
in this ethnography on Hawaii
education draws from women.
I aim to point out that
groundbreaking theories,
educational frameworks,
and the productions
of scientific knowledge
stem from figures
who identify themselves as
minority figures as opposed
to figures of earlier education
critiques which have been
attributed to European men.
And I include Hawaiian
education authors as well.
My intent is not to
condemn existing bodies
of European or masculine
knowledge's, but rather
to contribute the story
of marginalized figures.
When I began my field work with
'Iolani School in high school,
I set out to find where
post-colonial Hawaii
and the rest of
the world would go
from the [INAUDIBLE]
Prussian education system.
In conclusion, I posit
that land-based learning
habitualizes both concepts of
ontologies of sustainability
while formative
institutions only introduced
concepts of sustainability.
So if the external world
remains beyond our reach, which
is inside classrooms,
then so will
our feelings of
fulfillment if we're
unable to give back to
the original sources that
compose our very selves.
Mahalo nui loa, or a very
warm thank you in Hawaiian.
[APPLAUSE]
OK.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: Could you
give me an example
of a land-based learning
school and then the other one?
So an example is--
there's a farm on the Northwest
side of Oahu Island which
is called [? Kualoa ?] farms.
And they have a land-based
learning component to education
which is just
volunteering outside.
And one interesting component
of the bioremediation cycle
is how people just have
waste toilets outside.
What you do is you just use
the toilet how you normally
would and then put
mulch on it for compost.
Later, it ferments.
You can put it
back into the soil
and use it for
fertilizer to consume.
And the example of an
in-classroom learning
is just with being
inside of a classroom
and not having tangible
experiences to the land using
a toilet system sort of
like how you saw here.
The waste goes out of
sight, out of mind.
And you don't really
see the same connection
that you do in classrooms
in urban spaces.
AUDIENCE: I want to
ask you one more thing.
Thank you so much.
But would you look--
did you ever look
or think that in--
I'm just thinking of pioneers
who educated their children
in the maybe mid-19th
century, really,
where they basically learned--
maybe they had family Bible,
but most of their learning
was outdoors-- learning how to
work around the farm with soil.
And that's how they
learned about math,
and that's how they learned
about science and animals.
Could that be similar or
are we talking about just
environmental?
I think so.
So Isabella Abbott actually
went to Kamehameha Schools
in Hawaii.
And in her time there,
the principal at the time
required that women
go and garden.
And it was a part of their
component in education.
And so that would count as a
component of sustainability
or interacting with
outside environments
either through
farming or gardening.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
AJA GRANDE: Thank
you very question.
OK.
AUDIENCE: Great talk.
I was wondering-- I
have two questions.
How might you go
about quantifying
the amount of sentimental
ways that [INAUDIBLE] tourism
in Hawaii?
And then the second is the
land-based approaches--
what do you see the role for
traditional Hawaiian language,
[INAUDIBLE],, practices,
and ideas of nature
and all of that?
AJA GRANDE: OK.
The first question is somewhat
easier than the second one.
So could you ask it again?
I'm sorry.
AUDIENCE: So I'm
wondering how you might
go about quantifying the--
AJA GRANDE:
Quantifying the human--
AUDIENCE: --waste that
tourism [INAUDIBLE] in Hawaii.
AJA GRANDE: So I also
argue in this thesis
that we should make a move back
to the humanities for a more
qualitative assessment instead
of using standardized tests
or numbers.
And that would be one way to
assess human sentimental waste.
It would require a lot
of thinking and reading.
But for the second
question, could you
ask that one again as well?
AUDIENCE: I'm wondering with
the land-based approaches
that you're advocating,
how much of that
would be using traditional
Hawaiian language
and practices as part of
a curriculum-- language,
ideas of nature, all of
those kinds of things?
AJA GRANDE: I think because
Hawaii's background does
have about over 1,000 years
of traditional land practices,
it would be pretty important
or imperative that Hawaii
education and language
would be included.
But I think you can
assimilate other countries
like France and Chile in
ways of being with the land.
It would also make it a more
global, well-rounded framework.
Yup.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
DEBORAH POMERANZ: OK.
Great.
Good afternoon everyone.
My name is Deborah
Pomeranz, and today I'll
be talking about
my ethnic studies
senior thesis titled,
Policing the city,
how discourses of public
safety reshape New York.
My research examines
the different forms
of policing in the
context of late 1970s
New York City at
which point there
was a moral panic
about crime that
was related to broader racial,
sexual, and economic anxieties.
So on this slide, I've included
two photos of Times Square.
The one on the right, I took
myself this past December.
And it shows a city
that, today, is
renowned for tourism,
advertising, culture,
and above all, safety.
This is the New York I've grown
up seeing and hearing about.
On the other hand Lou
[? Schumann's ?] 1980
photograph of Times
Square was taken
at a time when the
name New York City was
synonymous with danger,
decay, and general sleaze.
I chose to look at New
York during this time
because I was curious
about how the mainstream
perception of the
city, and maybe
also its material realities,
could change so quickly.
I was also interested in
thinking about race, queerness,
and policing in dialogue
with one another.
The 70s moral panic
about crime, as well as
its racial and moral subtext,
was centered on New York City
but relevant to the
country at large.
The news, popular
and artistic media
spread assumptions
about crime in New York.
Newspapers highlighted
serial killers
which they asserted that the
bungling police force would
never be able to catch.
The 1977 blackout, which
lasted for 24 hours, ,
received highly racialized and
sensationalized media coverage
nationwide.
Popular movies of the
time depicted New York
as dirty and dangerous with a
mugger on every street corner.
Even the city police fed the
fear with this pamphlet titled,
Welcome to fear city, which
they handed out to tourists
in bus stations and airports.
Overlaid on the crime
panic was a sex panic
where people were worried about
sexual economies and sex work,
particularly in Times Square.
The questions guiding my
research included first,
how did perceptions of
New York change so quickly
and what did the ways people
talked about or practice
public safety have
to do with this?
Second, what do
the state employees
do to retain regain legitimacy
when the public loses trust
in them to keep them safe?
Then finally, how is
policing different
when practiced by civilians
rather than state actors?
What can these
differences tell us
about community policing and
the ways it may be different
when practiced by civilians?
I explored these questions by
comparing the New York Police
Department with two civilian
organizations, the Guardian
Angels and Women
Against Pornography.
All three groups were concerned
with public safety in New York
City, but had different
ideas about what this meant
and how that could be achieved.
The NYPD practiced
traditional policing
as a state
organization who would
use surveillance and
arrest to prevent,
but more often respond to, what
they considered to be crimes.
The Guardian Angels,
on the other hand,
were a group of
young people, mostly
working class
young men of color,
who patrolled the subways
to prevent and intervene
in crimes similar to the
police but as civilians.
They were very popular
among the public
but were criminalized by
the mayor's office and NYPD.
Finally, Women
Against Pornography
was a national
feminist organization
based out of New York City.
They believed that
pornographic imagery
and patriarchal violence were
the biggest threats to women's
safety and used
awareness-raising and boycott
strategies to fight these.
Despite their
significant differences,
all three groups excluded
marginalized New Yorkers,
including those perceived
as poor, black or Latinx,
gay or transgender, sex-working,
homeless, and/or mentally ill
from their visions
of urban citizenship.
This physical and imaginative
exclusion cleared space
for redevelopment
and gentrification,
profit-oriented city governance,
and broken windows policing--
a policing strategy
that promotes
racial profiling
and harsh punishment
for minor and
nonviolent offenses.
And these were
three sort of things
that marked later 20th
century New York City
or were characteristic of it.
Examining this history
demonstrates the broad impact
discourses of public safety can
have above and beyond the ways
that they influence the police
and criminal justice system.
It also shows that moral
discourses, such as those
about sexuality and
sexual economies,
can shape the public safety
apparatus and its goals.
Finally, it implies that
policing will likely always
be exclusionary and
violent, even when
practiced by non-state actors.
In the future, to
preempt the questions,
I am hoping to
continue my research
on policing in the US and
its disproportionate impact
on nonwhite, queer,
and transgender people
in an American
studies PhD program.
I'd like to thank the
Pembroke Center for having us
all here today and
recognizing my research.
The Department of Ethnic
Studies, students and faculty--
particularly my advisors,
Professor Guterl
and Professor Weinstein.
Thank you all.
[APPLAUSE]
Any questions?
Sure.
AUDIENCE: So what do you think
is the biggest driver of change
and did it have to do with the
political administration that
came in?
DEBORAH POMERANZ: Hmm.
AUDIENCE: Or is that like the
biggest impetus for change?
DEBORAH POMERANZ: Yeah.
So there was a lot
coming together.
This was also a moment right
after the 1975 fiscal crisis.
So there was a lot
of economic change
as well as a lot
of social change.
This was sort of the long
aftermath of the civil rights
movement, where you
have legal changes.
So rights for people of
color, but then also a lot
of pushback.
And this is kind of in
the middle of all of that.
But I really think
the biggest driver
was this moral panic that
conflated all these issues--
the economic anxieties,
the racial anxieties,
and the anxieties about crime.
Thanks.
Mm hmm?
How do you think emergence
of the aids crisis
in the early 80s impact all this
or was impacted by [INAUDIBLE]??
DEBORAH POMERANZ:
That's a great question.
So I studied the moment
right before the AIDS crisis,
because things
really changed a lot.
The ways people could
express their sexuality
and could engage
in sexual economy
has changed a lot with
the outbreak of AIDS.
There were new laws that
or like a new legal mood,
whereas before the mood had been
towards more civil rights, more
liberalization, so more
freedom for sexual economies
to operate.
The AIDS crisis sort
of reversed that
and also how they
really personal
impact on a lot of queer folks
and sex workers in the city.
DREW WALKER: Thank
you very much.
DEBORAH POMERANZ:
Yeah, thank you.
ZOE SACKMAN: OK.
Hi everyone.
My name is Zoe Sackman.
And this last year, I
completed my honors thesis
in gender and sexuality studies.
This coming year,
I'll be working
on my master's and teaching
high school English.
I'd like to thank my
advisor, Drew Walker,
and my second reader,
Diego Millan, my family,
and the Pembroke Center for
awarding me the Joan W. Scott
Prize.
So my thesis titled,
Wicked witches of the West,
dealt with currents of colonial
ideology in neopagan theory
and practice throughout
the 20th century.
This is part of an
ongoing conversation
on the meaning of cultural
appropriation and neopaganism.
In my research, I found that
eclectic neopaganism borrows
from other cultures
and religions
in ways that trace
pathways of colonialism,
meaning that white
European and North American
practitioners draw rituals
and symbols from Asia, Africa,
and the Americas, divorce these
symbols from their contexts,
and incorporate them into
eclectic neopaganism.
In an effort to understand
the origins of this practice
and its implications, I look
to the history of neopaganism
to determine where these
colonial impulses came from
and what kind of
work they were doing.
The first chapter deals with the
history of pagan persecution.
And in this chapter, I argue
that the course of pagan
persecution and the
christianization of Europe
is inextricably tied
to the development
of Western ideologies
of domination.
From the christianization of
the Roman Empire to the witch
trials, different campaigns
targeting those called pagan,
have been tools which develop
technologies of empire,
colonialism, and capitalism.
It seems ironic
then, that neopagans
who claim that a descendancy
from these historic pagan's,
themselves are caught up in
a kind of colonialist logic.
This was one framing
question of my research.
How did some of the first
victims of Western civilization
become its agents?
To answer this question I
looked at the development
of neo-pagan theory and
practice over the course
of the 20th century.
I found that at every
turn, neopaganism
has been influenced
and underpinned
by contemporary political
motivations for better
or for worse.
Beginning with two founding
figures of neopaganism,
Margaret Murray
and Gerald Gardner,
I found that early 20th century
neopaganism was fundamentally
motivated by the particular
colonial landscape
of the British
empire at this time.
As this empire began
to falter, white Brits
were caught up in
a racial anxiety
around the concept
of white indigeneity.
And neopaganism
became one outlet
through which a desire for
indigeneity was expressed.
By mythologizing the
history of paganism
and reviving pagan practices,
or as was often the case
inventing pagan
practices, white people
were given access to a
particular colonialist
concept of the primitive.
This origin set the stage
for the next century
of neo-pagan theory.
Like Murray and
Gardner were caught up
in this primitive urge, other
generations of neopagans
were caught up in other
political and social
motivations.
In the '60s and '70s, these
were counterculture movements,
second wave feminism, and
the beginnings of new age.
In my chapter on the spiral
dance by author and activist,
Starhawk, I examined
the relationship
between second wave feminism
and feminist neopaganism
more closely and found that the
same critiques of second wave
feminism given by
black feminists
and post-colonial
feminists can be applied
to feminist neopaganism,
which has a distinct tendency
to flatten and subsume different
experiences of womanhood
into a pre-established model
of European goddess worship.
However, feminist neopaganism
and Starhawk's work
in particular, also contain
certain rhetorical strengths,
which I will return
to in a moment.
So moving into
the '80s and '90s,
I looked at how
neopaganism begins
to be captured by a
distinctly neoliberal logic.
In my chapter on Scott
Cunningham's, Wicca,
a guide for the
solitary practitioner,
I analyzed the way in which
his highly influential theory
of solitary practice promotes
a distinctly neoliberal
worldview.
The solitary practice
relies heavily
on the technique of borrowing
from various traditions
in order to build that practice.
In a solitary practice, the
original contexts or histories
of rituals and symbols
are not important.
The only thing that matters is
what these rituals and symbols
mean to an individual.
This invites cultural
appropriation, because it
allows someone like a
white American neopagan
to look at something like a
Muscogee war bonnet and say,
yeah that really speaks to
me, so I'm going to wear it,
with no regard for
where it comes from
or what it means in
its original context.
So given all these
points of failure
that are contained in the
history of neopaganism,
I also wanted to try
to point toward what
an ethics of neopaganism
might look like.
I proposed different elements
of this in my conclusion,
but one central theme is that in
order to resist these failures,
neopaganism requires an
intentional consciousness
around its own
constructed nature.
Because neopaganism
is a religion,
practitioners have a tendency
to naturalize their actions
to claim that what they do
is spiritual and personal
and doesn't have
political repercussions.
This obfuscates the reality
that political motivations have
always underpinned neopaganism
and that the personal is always
political.
This brings us back to
one of the strengths
of feminist neopaganism.
Out of all the neopagan
movements that I've researched,
feminist neopaganism
is the only one
which is explicitly political.
This political
awareness has allowed
for a constant internal
discussion, reevaluation,
and revision, and fosters
a critical awareness
of the political repercussions
of spiritual work.
I'm looking forward to
potentially developing
this ethics of neopaganism
further and finding
the tools necessary
to meaningfully resist
systems of domination.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
DREW WALKER: Any
questions or comments?
ZOE SACKMAN: Mm hmm?
AUDIENCE: Thank you so much.
This was for me,
interesting because you
think about religion
as not having--
not being politicized
is kind of ironic.
I can't think of a religion
that isn't politicized
or [INAUDIBLE].
What are you doing next?
ZOE SACKMAN: So I said
it at the beginning,
but that was a while ago.
And then I said a
bunch of other things.
AUDIENCE: I was taken
by your project.
ZOE SACKMAN: Thank you.
I am getting my master's in
teaching secondary English.
So high school English.
Mm hmm.
DREW WALKER: Anyone else?
Thank you.
ZOE SACKMAN: OK.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
EMILY SUN: OK.
Good.
Hi everyone, I'm
Emily and I will
be graduating with a
degree in ethnic studies.
And today I will be
presenting my research
on what I am calling
the subterranean
as a range of
aesthetic strategies
I found women of color,
contemporary artists using
to imagine different
relationships
between their bodies
and the earth.
And in doing so,
create alternatives
to dominant imaginaries
and visions of citizenship
that often exclude black,
brown, and queer communities.
So the first photograph I
would like to talk about
is by artist, Laura Aguilar
who unfortunately recently
passed away a couple weeks ago.
But Aguilar was a queer Chicana
artist from the San Gabriel
Valley in California.
And on her mother's
side, her family
goes the generations
back in that land.
And her overall
photographic practice often
collaborates with her
surrounding communities,
often black and brown
folks, working class folks,
to visibilize these communities
not traditionally seen
in art history.
Her most recent
body of work-- she
takes nude photographs
in the Southwest desert.
And one could argue that
the land and the features
of the desert become
her collaborators
in these photographs.
So in this photograph from
her grounded series, Aguilar--
you can't really tell
it's her because she's
obscuring a lot of
her body and face,
and embodies the gestures
of the rocks around her.
She seems to sink into the rock
below and perform the rock's
way of being in a way.
And so I'm also
from the Southwest.
I'm from Colorado and
so when I was little,
I used to collect rocks.
And I would hold them
my hands, and they would
feel kind of sticky and warm.
And so when I first began
studying this photograph,
I felt it in my hands.
And I think it's because
of the artist's choices
to forego human or
gendered identifications
and began to look more
like rocks and in doing
so, activates the photograph
beyond the visual dimension
into these other ways
of knowing and being.
And another question I
asked about this photograph
was, well, she
seems very relaxed.
She seems like she's exhaling
into the rock below her.
At the same time her face
is buried in the rock.
It must be very hard to breathe.
And she must be bracing
herself against the rock.
So I asked, like what does that
mean to imagine this desert
space with these very
durable, hard rocks as a space
of shelter and healing.
So to deepen these
questions, I turned
to Chicana and native feminist
thinkers such as Mishuana
Goeman and Maria Josephina
Saldana-Portillo,
who think about the US Southwest
and its deep political history
of US, Spanish imperialisms
and settler colonialism
that enforced more relationships
to land based on property.
In fact, in the history
of the US Southwest,
Chicano peoples
were often forced
to renounce their ties to
indigeneity and indigenous
communities in return for access
to citizenship and land grants.
And so speaking back to
these systems of power,
Chicana feminist
thinker, Gloria Anzaldua,
has written about a kind of
mystiques that consciousness.
And Anzaldua talks
about La Facultad, which
is a way, as she argues, of
seeing beyond the surface
and into kind of
this what she calls
the chthonic, or a
spiritual underworld,
where spiritual
knowledge is and as
well as the traumas
of colonization
are buried within Chicana
women's bodies, Mestizo bodies.
And so putting Aguilar's
photography in conversation
with Anzaldua's
theory of the chthonic
of the subterranean
space, or might
argue that if we go
back to the photograph,
she's enacting this
type of deep perception,
imagining a more empathetic
way to relate to the land that
puts these buried knowledges
in both her body and the land
into circulation.
The next piece I
wanted to talk about
was by Simone Leigh, who is
a Carribean-American artist.
And her work often deals with
black feminine subjectivity
and histories of--
she draws inspiration from
histories of black women's care
work such as secret
societies of nurses
formed alongside the
Underground Railroad.
And so in this piece,
she collaborated
with Chitra Ganesh,
another artist.
And it's called, My
dreams my works must
wait till after hell.
And its actually a
video so you can't
see from the still
photograph, but in the video,
you just see the black female
nude figure, her breath
and the rise and
fall of her rib cage.
And so what I find very
compelling about this piece
is the ambiguity over whether
the rocks are preventing
this woman from breathing
or actually entering
into an different
kind of relationship,
because the pieces of rock
visually isolate the woman's
rib cage and draw the viewer's
attention to her breath
in a world and anti-black
environment in which
the breath of black
communities is at stake.
So I wanted to bring this
piece into a conversation
with womanist and back feminist
thinkers who have actually
written about gardening
rocks and intimacies
between black women
and the earth.
Relationships that
are very fraught, also
because of notions of
property, property land,
but also notions of
property in the wake
of transatlantic slavery
applied to black women's bodies.
Alice Walker and her
work on gardening
has talked about how
black women are expected
to ensure care for communities
whose survival is not
guaranteed.
And that this labor is
often an unacknowledged
or done in secret, but
it is also creative.
And so she talks about her
mother working the soil
and writes whatever
rocky soil she landed on,
she turned into a garden.
And Audre Lorde has
an essay on poetry
and also uses the language
of rocks and the interior
of that Earth to
describe reservoirs
of black feminist
creativity buried
within these kind
of deep dark places.
And she writes,
"the woman's place
of power within each of us is
neither white nor surface--
it is dark, it is
ancient, and it is deep.
Within these deep
places, each one of us
holds an incredible reserve
of creativity and power,
of unexamined and unrecorded
emotion and feeling.
The farthest external horizons
of our hopes and fears
are cobbled by our poems,
carved from the rock experiences
of our daily lives."
And so I'd like to
think about these pieces
as acknowledging another art
history of poems made out
of rocks and all
the implications
that that might hold.
So yeah, in conclusion,
I always think
that art opens up more
questions than conclusions,
but I was using the
subterranean to think
about the alternate forms
of intimacy with the earth
that these artists
were contemplating,
and how they might pose an
alternate vision for belonging
in comparison to dominant
notions of citizenship
based on like space as property.
In addition, in
these works, it's
a very concealed aesthetic--
visually kind of hidden.
And so they imagine
ways for these women
to represent
themselves in ways that
don't like immediately identify
racially or sexually a body.
And yeah, so that
concludes my presentation.
I want to send a
tremendous thank you
to my primary advisor,
Professor Leticia
Alvarado in American studies.
I also want to thank
Diego Millan, who
is here, who read some
writing about Aguilar,
and ultimately the Pembroke
Center for Research
and Teaching on
Women who provided me
a grant to see exhibitions to
help farther this research.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Hi, yes.
AUDIENCE: Hi, I was
struck by the fact
that the two images
that you showed
showed something that
you also observed
about the rocks in your hand,
which is that there's, I think,
a real textural
difference between rock
and human skin that is also
supported in those images.
Does your thesis at
all approach that
as part of what you
talk about, especially
in contrast or comparison
to things like poetry?
EMILY SUN: Yeah.
I think it's really interesting
to analyze photographs and film
and video from a perspective
of a more embodied perspective
that incorporates
feelings of touch,
because you can see the
dissonance between ways race
and sexuality have been
embedded in the visual
and then how by bringing
in these other dimensions
of the hard texture of
rock and the softness,
assumed softness of skin
can kind of push back
at these very ingrained visual
systems of representation.
AUDIENCE: Something I feel
like female artists who
do work around human
nature and embodiment
are often charged
with criticisms
about their perceived passivity.
I think I've seen
people critique
that of Laura Aguilar's work.
And I was wondering how
you might respond to that
or how that relates to your
ideas of the subterranean.
EMILY SUN: Yeah, no, that's
something I think about a lot
too.
At first, I really didn't
like Laura Aguliar's work
because I was like it's very
cliche, it's very passive,
women in nature.
But then when I
started looking more
into like chicana
feminist theory
and [INAUDIBLE] it was
interesting because of the way
we think about nature and
women within this binary
of power relationships
that are dominant
and superior or
active and passive.
And so what happens if we
throw that kind of binary away
and tried to think beyond
the active passive binary?
So that was the way I was like
thinking about her relationship
experimental with
relationship with the Earth.
[APPLAUSE]
NATALIE ZEIF: Hello everybody.
My name is Natalie Zeif.
I'm a senior concentrating
in education studies.
Before I get started, I want to
thank my family, all of which
pretty much is here right now.
Thanks for coming.
My advisor professor Tracey
Stephens who taught a class
called culture wars in
American schools, which
introduced me to this subject.
And finally, of course,
the Pembroke Center
for the Enid Wilson
undergraduate
Travel Fellowship, which really
made my research possible.
So my thesis is titled
sexuality and school work
in South Florida, Anita
Bryant's 1977 Save Our Children
movement.
Because our time
is so brief, I'm
just going to give a short
overview of what the Save Our
Children movement was, who
the key actors involved were,
and then jump into my research
questions and methodology.
I'll give a brief overview
of some of my original data
but obviously don't have
time to get into all of it.
And then I'll wrap up with a
sort of abbreviated epilogue
and explain why I think the
Save Our Children movement is
significant and worth studying.
I think some of my formatting
got messed up, but that's OK.
So the Save Our Children
movement was a religious
and political movement to repeal
Miami-Dade County's first local
civil rights law protecting
LGBTQ residents from bias
in three areas--
in housing, in public
accommodations,
and in employment.
The actual language of the law
was, "protecting individuals
from bias based on sexual
or affectional preference."
But the law as it
stands protected people
who identify it as sort of
a gender, sexual minority.
It was passed on
January 18th of 1977
under the guidance of Ruth
Shack who was a Brooklyn born
emigrate to south Florida.
And she was also the
first woman council
member for Miami-Dad county.
And she partnered with local
LGBTQ rights organization
with a long name,
the Dade County
Coalition for the
Humanistic Rights of Gays.
And they just went by the
Dade County Coalition.
And so they drafted
a law that Ruth Shack
endorsed and proposed to
the county commission.
And that was passed in January
of that year, as I said.
It was unfortunately short lived
because of Save Our Children.
Save Our Children
was incorporated
in January and by
June had waged sort
of an all out campaign
locally in South Florida
to turn local people's minds and
hearts against the civil rights
law.
And on June 7th
of that year, they
garnered 70% of the public
vote and overturned this law.
So Save Our Children
was founded and led
by a woman named Anita Bryant.
Anita Bryant was a
singer turned activist.
She was a born
again Christian who
lived in Miami with her three
children and her husband.
And she was a nationally
known gospel singer
who performed in
armed forces tours
and also was just a really
recognizable face in the United
States at that time,
because she was
a spokeswoman for well-known
companies like coca-cola,
Singer Sewing Machines,
Tupperware and most famously,
the Florida Citrus Commission.
You can see that
pictured on the left
it's an advertisement
for a pavilion at Disney
World in Florida
that she helped open.
And Anita Bryant is not
an obvious candidate
to spearhead this
anti-queer rights movement.
But she positioned
herself in that way
due to rhetoric implicating
schools, teachers,
and child safety to
position herself as someone
who had anti-queer rights work
logically within her purview
as a Christian mother.
And despite the fact that this
ordinance did not specifically
mention school work
anywhere whatsoever,
Anita Bryant honed in on
educational institutions
to exploit harmful stereotypes
and cultural myths about queer
hypersexuality and even
recruitment of young people.
In my thesis I asked
three main questions.
First, how did Anita
Bryant frame herself
as an authority on
child protectionism?
Second, how did she connect
with and mobilize her followers?
And third, why did her campaign
reveal about constructions
of gender and sexuality as
they relate to ideas of who
is fit to be an educator?
With these questions,
I hope to clarify
the particular anxieties,
presuppositions,
and cultural norms
underpinning Brian's fixation
on purging queer teachers
from systems of education.
And I also wanted to explore
how gender and sexuality operate
on either side battles
about child protectionism.
And specifically,
I wanted to focus
on Anita Bryant's
performance of maternalism,
explicit demonstrations of
motherhood, and the ways
that she presented queer
sexuality and gender
expression in her anti-queer
teacher propaganda.
Ultimately, my thesis
sought to understand
how Safe Our Children reinforced
a paradigm that juxtaposes
queer identity with
the capacity to teach
and says that the capacity
to effectively teach
material in a safe and morally
sound classroom environment
is mutually exclusive
with identifying a queer.
To answer these
research questions,
I used funding from
the Pembroke Center
to travel to south
Florida where I accessed
public records, campaign
ephemera, interviews, memoirs,
and media documentation at
the University of Miami,
the University of South Florida,
and the Stonewall National
Museums and archives
in Fort Lauderdale.
I also traveled to the
Lesbian Herstory Archives
in New York City.
And I was able to work with
librarians and archival experts
there to assemble a
consolidated Save Our Children
sort of archive that isn't
consolidated without that work.
And I also accessed
a large amount
of secondary literature,
which consisted
mostly of historical
and sociological theses
and dissertations
and also books.
Because of the breadth
of sources available,
I was able to parse
apart rhetorical themes
from Anita Bryant's movement.
I don't have time to get
into all of that data,
but I can break down three of
the themes that I picked up on.
First, Save Our Children argued
that the rights of career
teachers were
threatening to the quote
"civil rights of parents".
So this is obviously
language that
is co-opted from
language of minority
rights from the African-American
civil rights movement
and longer black freedom
struggle in the United States
to make the argument that
protecting the rights of queer
people to work in
schools actually frayed
the rights of Christian parents.
Second, Save Our Children argued
that the rights of teachers
were special
privileges that went
above and beyond equal rights.
So a really telling Gallup
poll conducted in June of 1977
found that of 2000 local
respondents in Miami-Dade,
a majority of people thought
that LGBTQ people should
have the right to equal
employment in general.
But 65% did not believe
that this community
was appropriately suited
to work in schools.
So this just really shows
that the general public
saw the right to teach in
school as too specific,
going above and beyond what
is constitutionally protected.
And finally, Anita
Bryant emphasized
what I talked about before--
the idea that your
teachers are fundamentally
hazardous to students safety.
And she did this by playing
into parents' worst fears
about their children's
well-being in a really harmful
way to the queer community.
And in a more
theoretical way, she
argued that inviting
queer teachers
and protecting their
place in schools
was akin to tacitly sponsoring
what she called the queer
agenda, in her language.
And this sentiment
demonstrates an idea
at the core of my
thesis that school work
is distinct from
other professions
because its practitioners
are essential
to cultural
reproduction and thus
are often forced to embody
mainstream values that
subjugate not only
the queer community
but other marginalized
groups of people.
So a brief word on
conclusion and significance
of this movement, the
Save Our Children movement
was unifying on both the
political left and right.
It helped unleash
a new strand of
homophobic Christian activism.
But it also brought
queer activists together.
Although the Stonewall
rebellion in 1969
is often thought of as the
dawn of the modern LGBTQ rights
movement, the episode in
Miami brought queer rights
organizing to more far flung
places in the United States
outside of Los Angeles, San
Francisco, and New York City.
So in 1977, for
example, Kansas City
had its first gay pride march.
And there were lots of other
cities across the country where
the Mattachine Society
opened chapters where
they weren't existing before.
And it particularly
helped with issues
of visibility and legal
issues across the Sun Belt
and in the Midwest.
The movement also
exposed the viability
of using children,
schools, and teachers,
as sort of political pawns
an anti-queer end game.
And this is a tactic used by
the religious right today.
And finally, this case study
reveals the persistence
of norms surrounding teachers
as stand ins for values
and other ideas that subjugate
the queer community that's
independent of other
types of employment.
So that's the end
of my presentation.
Again to preempt the
question, next year in July
I am starting a
paralegal position
at the Federal Defender's
in New York City
and a department that represents
clients who are appealing
capital sentences.
So thank you so
much for listening.
[APPLAUSE]
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] this
presentation and your research.
This is a question
about research
When you were reading
literature looking
at interviews and newspapers--
you said Anita Bryant
used queer as the word.
Did they really use that?
I mean, that seems to me--
that was the language they used?
NATALIE ZEIF: No.
So the language
that they used was
most commonly homosexual
or even more harmful
language, derogatory slurs,
and then just gay and lesbian.
It wasn't inclusive--
I mean, queer at the time
was still a derogatory word.
I use it in my research.
And I defined it in my longer
departmental presentation.
But I thought for now
because it's so brief,
I wouldn't bring it up.
But I talk about my
choice to use the word
queer in my presentation
as sort of an umbrella term
in an effort to be more
inclusive than the language
at the time, which was obviously
limiting and offensive.
AUDIENCE: I was wondering
if in your research
if you saw any of the queer
activists articulating
values for queer teachers
in the classroom--
things that they could
read to the classroom?
NATALIE ZEIF: Yeah, I think
I think more of the emphasis
was not on saying queer
teachers bring something
new to the classroom
or something
different than
heterosexual teachers.
It was more saying like--
well, Anita Bryant's movement
was making the argument
that having queer people in
classrooms with sexualizing
a previously asexual
environment, whereas queer
activists alongside Ruth Shock
and pro-ordinance contingent
were saying these environments
are already sexualized
but in a heterosexual way.
Simply having a female
identifying professor
having a picture of
her husband on the desk
is sexualizing that environment.
Date dances that promote
heterosexual couples
are sexualizing the environment.
Queer teachers are not
sexualizing an environment
that was previously asexual
because there's no such thing.
And I think that was more
that emphasis in saying it's
not really any different.
It's just opening
our understanding
of appropriate and right
and yet just accepting
different sexual
identifications.
[APPLAUSE]
DREW WALKER: I want to
say thank you, again,
to our presenters for those
wonderful presentations.
And thank you all
for being here.
I think seeing these
presentations shows
one, how wonderful
the students at Brown
are two, what wonderful
work the Pembroke Center
is able to support, in large
part, thanks to our associates
and just how interdisciplinary
and broad that research is
across the university.
So thanks again for coming.
Congratulations to the
graduates on Sunday.
At this time, the Associates
Council and the Pembroke staff
are going to adjourn
to a business meeting.
The rest of you are
welcome to have coffee--
there's desserts on the table--
to talk with each other if
you have remaining questions
for each other.
Just enjoy yourself as
long as you'd like to stay.
Thank you.
