Colloquium Series
In Spring 2002, the Center for Cultural Studies will continue to host a Wednesday colloquium series, which features current cultural studies work by campus faculty and visitors. The sessions are informal, normally consisting of a 30-40 minute presentation followed by discussion. We gather at noon, with presentations beginning at 12:15. Participants are encouraged to bring their own lunches; the Center will provide coffee, tea, and cookies.
ScheduleALL COLLOQUIA ARE IN THE OAKES MURAL ROOMApril 10
Erica Rand (Art, Bates College, Lewiston Maine)
“The Traffic in my Fantasy Butch: Sex, Money, Immigration, and the Statue of Liberty”
April 17
Niamh Stephenson (Critical Psychology, University of Western Sydney, Australia)
“Interrupting Experience: Demarcating Neoliberal Technologies of the Self”
April 24
Hayden White (History of Consciousness, UC Santa Cruz and Comparative Literature, Stanford University)
“The Illusion of Historical Perspective”
May 1
Gabriela Arredondo (Latin American and Latina/o Studies, UC Santa Cruz)
“Navigating Ethno-Racial Currents: Mexicans in Chicago, 1917-1939.”
May 8
Annette Clear (Politics, UC Santa Cruz)
“A Disarticulated State and Its Implications for Democratization in Indonesia”
May 15
Esther Yau (Film and New Media, Occidental College, Los Angeles)
“The Spectral Present: Can Chinese Film Erotics be Different?”
May 22
William Nickell (Language program and Literature department, UC Santa Cruz)
“Tolstoy and the Articulate Death”
May 29
Eric Porter (American Studies, UC Santa Cruz)
“Losing Face: Walter White, Hydroquinone, and the ‘Color Line'”
Participants
Erica Rand is Associate Professor of Art at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. She has written widely in the areas of queer theory, gender studies, pedagogy, and lesbian studies. Her many publications include Barbie’s Queer Accessories (Duke, 1995), an original and insightful look at the marketing strategies of the Barbie doll and at queer and other appropriations of Barbie, and many articles on a range of topics, including “Diderot and Girl-Group Erotics” (Eighteenth-Century Studies 25 Summer, 1992). Her talk is from her current book project, tentatively called “The Ellis Island Snow Globe: Sex Money Products Nation,” that concerns artifacts, politics, and practices connected to immigration at Ellis Island in New York.
Niamh Stephenson is an Associate Professor of Critical Psychology at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. Currently on sabbatical, she is a visiting research fellow in the Department of Community Studies here at UC Santa Cruz, where she is working on a book which examines the problem of experience in the social sciences. This work involves an interrogation of the relationships between anti-foundational approaches to experience, subjectivity and collectivity. She has co-edited two books on theoretical psychology and is the author of numerous articles, including “The Question of Collective Subjectivity in Memory-Work” (forthcoming in the International Journal in Critical Psychology). Her publications span her theoretical work on memory and agency and her empirical projects, which include work in the field of HIV/AIDS and on sex education in schools.
Hayden White is Professor Emeritus of History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz, and Bonsall Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University (Winter term). His pathbreaking books in the field of “meta-history” have been translated into over ten languages. His latest book is Figural Realism: Studies in the Mimesis Effect (Johns Hopkins, 1999). About his talk, which takes as its point of departure E. H. Gombrich’s studies of perspectival painting, he writes, ” I ask how does one draw a line between the past and the present? What kind of problems does the study of the recent past present that the study of the remote past does not? Are these problems a result of the feeling that we cannot get “historical perspective” on the present, the recent past, or emergent reality? I ask what is the relationship between recent (or present) events and events more remote in time (and space).”
Gabriela Arredondo is Assistant Professor of Latin American and Latina/o Studies at UC Santa Cruz, where she is also on the steering committee of the Chicano/Latino Research Center. She works on U.S. social history, Chicana/o history, comparative Latina/o histories, gender and racial formations, US-Mexico transnationalisms, and comparative im/migrations. She is a co-editor of Chicana Feminisms: Disruptions in Dialogue (Duke, 2002). Her articles include “Cartographies of Americanisms: Possibilities For Transnational Identities, Chicago, 1916-1939, ” (forthcoming Garcia, et al., eds., Geographies of Latinidad: Mapping Latina/o Studies Into the Twenty First Century). Her talk is from her current book project, “Mexican Chicago: Negotiating Race, Ethnicity and Identity, 1916-1939.”
Annette Clear Assistant Professor of Politics at UC Santa Cruz. Her recently completed PhD. dissertation (Columbia, 2002), “Democracy and Donors in Indonesia,” has been nominated for several awards, including the Bancroft Award. . Its analysis focuses on how different donor strategies of three primary donors – the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands – have influenced the process of democratization in Indonesia. Professor Clear has had extensive experience in the global non-governmental realm, holding positions with the Asia Foundation in Tokyo, Phnom Penh, and San Francisco, monitoring the 1999 parliamentary elections in Indonesia, as well as observing the East Timorese ballot for the Carter Center for Human Rights.
Esther Yau is Associate Professor of Film and New Media at Occidental College in Los Angeles, and is one of the most important scholars writing on contemporary Chinese and Hong Kong cinema. She is editor of At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World (2001) and author of many essays on mainland Chinese and Hong Kong cinemas. She is currently working on a study of Chinese Cinema entitled “Shaking the Great Divide: Violence and Vision in Chinese Cinema. ” Her talk discusses an enigmatic Chinese film, Wushan Yunyu (Rainclouds Over Wushan, 1995) set in a town by the Yangzi River will be permanently submerged as the result of the Three Gorges Dam project.
William Nickell is lecturer in Russian language and literature at UC Santa Cruz, having received his PhD in Slavic Literatures at UC Berkeley in 1998. His published articles, written in Russian and in English, include “The Death of Tolstoy and the Genre of the Public Funeral in Russia.” (Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, Winter 2000). His talk is from his current book project, “Tolstoy in the Public Domain: His Death as a National Narrative,” about which he writes, “I approach Tolstoy not as an author, but as the subject of a public narrative regarding his death, and describe how the tropes of that narrative stimulated public discourse and reveal the various collective investments that were made in Tolstoy as a celebrity.”
Eric Porter Assistant Professor of American Studies at UC Santa Cruz, and was formerly on the American Studies faculty at the Unversity of New Mexico. He works in the fields of African American history, comparative race and ethnicity, and jazz studies. His first book, What Is This Thing Called Jazz? African American Musicians as Artists, Critics, and Activists, will be published this year by the University of California Press. His talk is part of a larger project exploring issues around race and science in black intellectual and popular discourse during the 1940s. He writes that “the project explores divergent black racial formations at this moment, as well as various ways black subjects pondered the potential freedoms that scientific ‘proof’ of the insubstantiality of racial categories might offer.”