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Women's Studies & Political Science; University of New Hampshire,
Durham
"Queer Encounters of the Jewish Kind: Feminist Essays on Theory and Practice"
History & Gender Studies; Sarah Lawrence College
Tel
Aviv University, Israel
"Jewish Masculinity in the Era of Heine and Marx"
English; SUNY-Binghamton
"Bodies, Babes and the WNBA: Representation, Public Health, and Female Athletes"
Psychology; Colgate University
"Is Physiognomy Destiny? The Interplay of Physiognomy and Nonverbal Behavior in the Expression of Female and Male Social Influence and Leadership"
Policy Coordination Division, Ministry of Gender Equality, Seoul,
Korea
"A Comparative Study on Anti-Sexual Harassment Policies of Korea and the United States"
Sociology; Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France
Fulbright
Fellow
"Gendered Identities, Gendered Politics? Discourses and Policies Concerning Gender Quotas in Contemporary France"
History; University of Delhi, Hindu College, India
AAUW Fellow
"Retrieving Her-Story: Craftswomen in the World of Early Modern Rajasthani Artisanate"
Women's Studies & Political Science; University of New Hampshire,
Durham
"Queer Encounters of the Jewish Kind: Feminist Essays on Theory
and Practice"
My project is a book length work of interconnected political
philosophy essays intended to advance the discourse regarding
the mutual constitution of our multiple identity signifiers by
incorporating the much under theorized contribution of Jewish
life experiences. The project draws upon and develops the
notion that not only are identities multiple, and multiply situated
with respect to power, but that each politically salient aspect
of our identity is mutually constituted through the development
of the others. The project addresses a combination of concrete
issues of state policy and power, religious expression, family
formation, and Jewish and transgendered challenges to normative
social constructs each/all in a historical context of shifting
sexual differences. Thus, this work brings together and
challenges principally feminist, queer, class-based, and critical
race theories by informing the discourse with Jewishly grounded
theorizing as well as bringing the variety of these critical theories
to bare on an analysis of Jewish history and thought.
History & Gender Studies; Sarah Lawrence College
Tel
Aviv University
"Jewish Masculinity in the Era of Heine and Marx"
I intend to use my time at the IRW to complete
the chapters of my book Conversion, Paris or Suicide: Jewish Berlin
in the Age of Heine and Marx devoted to analyzing the complex
connections between Jewishness and masculinity in early nineteenth
century Berlin. During the Napoleonic wars, Jews had won considerable
rights across the towns and small states of the German lands.
But after Napoleon was defeated and the diplomats at the Vienna
Congress reconstructed the map of central Europe, much that had
been granted was taken away. Pamphlets poking hostile fun at assimilated
Jews flooded the bookshops. Characters in popular plays
and novels mocked the way emancipated Jews spoke German as well
as the shapes of their bodies. As the title of my book suggests,
one of the foremost challenges these men faced was whether or
not to convert, for few felt they could remain Jewish in the Berlin
of the eighteen twenties and thirties and achieve fulfillment
in career, family, or society.
One of my aims in the book is to use private
experiences so as to better understand public behavior.
This I examine how these men felt and acted towards their families
and each other, and pay special attention to whether and whom
they married. Their psychological and physical ailments
are also of interest, for we come upon episodes of depression,
migraines, hemorrhoids, overeating, suicide and other varieties
of misery.
English; SUNY-Binghamton
"Bodies, Babes and the WNBA: Representation, Public Health, and
Female Athletes"
I am interested in women's sports as an important form
of what I call "stealth feminism," a cultural site where feminist
ideals are carried out on a daily basis, and bodies and sexual
difference can be studied in highly concrete ways. Women's
athletic participation has increased 847% since the passage of
Title IX, with many implications for gender theory. Part
of what I want to develop is how the recent acceptance of female
athletes enables more cultural validation of and space for female
masculinity, and why this is not, as some argue, a reactionary
form of male identification and continuation of "male" values
and dominance. I argue that the female athlete, rather than
being peripheral to or even antithetical to feminist values and
concerns, is a central site for feminist inquiry.
This project is critical of feminist arguments that rely
on a gender binary that doesn't see values like aggression and
nurturance on a continuum but rather essentializes them as belonging
to one sex or the other. It also tries to engage with the
current cultural context of anti-feminism, specifically the attack
of women's groups like the Independent Women's Forum and women
scholars like Patricia Hausman in evolutionary psychology, who
have recently argued regarding the reconsideration of Title IX
that women are "naturally" less interested in sports (and math
and science) because they have less testosterone, and therefore
deserve fewer athletic (and academic) opportunities.
Psychology; Colgate University
"Is Physiognomy Destiny? The Interplay of Physiognomy and
Nonverbal Behavior in the Expression of Female and Male Social
Influence and Leadership"
Male and female faces and bodies present distinctly different
venues on which dynamic, verbal and nonverbal behavioral messages
of social status and power are expressed. For example, female
faces are characterized by static, morphological features that,
all by themselves, send very different status messages than do
the features of male faces. The youthful appearance of female
faces, exemplified by relatively large eyes, full lips, rounded
jaws, and thin, arched brows, reflect a tendency in biology generally
known as neoteny--the mimicry of prepubescent characteristics.
Although facial cues for submissiveness and immaturity make
most people appear more honest and warm, they tend to diminish
impressions of power. Dominance cues promote images of strength
and competence, but they project interpersonal chilliness and
aloofness, as well. Consider the dilemma for women; their
neotenous facial traits may constrain their ability to be perceived
as leaders.
I plan to focus on two major aspects related to my studies
of gender and leadership while at Rutgers. The first emphasizes
the role physiognomy plays in constraining and shaping the nature
of women's social influence. The second project examines
the degree to which the influence strategies women develop in
response to their physiognomy "cross over" in different gender
contexts. That is, once developed, how effective are women's
influence strategies when applied to female and male audiences?
Policy Coordination Division, Ministry of Gender Equality, Seoul
Korea
"A Comparative Study on Anti-Sexual Harassment Policies of Korea
and the United States"
Sexual harassment in the workplace has emerged as a key
policy agenda partly because it violates a victim's human rights
and partly because it impedes workplace productivity. In
the United States, sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination
that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Korean government has begun to pay attention to this issue
with the enactment of the 1999 Gender Discrimination Prevention
and Relief Act (GDPR Act), which also defines sexual harassment
as a form of gender discrimination. In the United States,
the jurisdiction of Title VII pertains to employment relations
in the workplace, while in Korea the GDPR Act covers almost all
kinds of human relations--including, for example, relations between
teachers and students, citizens and civil servants.
I selected the United States as a comparative model because
it has enforced anti-sexual harassment policies for 38 years,
accumulating sufficient experience and expertise. This expertise
and experience could serve as a valuable reference to Korea.
For example, the GDPR Act of Korea stipulates that, when a complaint
is filed, the GEPC should resolve it within 90 days. However,
because of the backlog, many complaints fail to be processed within
the time limit. Likewise, the EEOC has long been criticized
for its backlog, and as an effort to speed up its procedures,
the EEOC has implemented the Priority Charge Handling Procedure,
under which all charges are classified into three categories in
accordance with the severity of the harassment. With this
procedure in place, the EEOC has been able to substantially reduce
its backlog.
Sociology; Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris
Fulbright
Fellow
"Gendered Identities, Gendered Politics? Discourses and
Policies Concerning Gender Quotas in Contemporary France"
The French Parliament voted the Parity Law in June 2000
after a long political, philosophical and public debate of more
than eight years, from 1992 to 2000. This major political
change offers a fascinating case for analyzing cultural repertoires
on sexual difference, political representation and more generally
on gender and politics. Indeed, the implementation of an
affirmative action for women in politics breaks several rules
of the French political system which has tried to ban any form
of identity politics. In fact, those claims are perceived
as a threat to the republican universalism which enhances French
political history since the French Revolution. In a country
which often describes itself as America's counter model in matters
of identity politics, it is quite a paradox that such a law, which
openly formulates the category of gender as an accurate one in
the political sphere, would be implemented.
History; University of Delhi, Hindu College
AAUW Fellow
"Retrieving Her-Story: Craftswomen in the World of Early Modern
Rajasthani Artisanate"
Virki, a woman from the caste of potters in 18th century
Jodhpur (or Marwar), the Princely State in the western part of
modern-day Rajasthan in India, alleged that her husband was impotent,
and decided to dissolve the marriage. Her husband's kin
complained to the Potters' Caste Council, and approached the Court
with a petition seeking divorce. There ensued then a prolonged
engagement between the Jodhpur State, the Potters' Caste Council,
Virki's natal and marital kin, and Virki herself. Finally,
she was allowed to dissolve her first marriage and enter marriage
with another potter from her neighboring village.
Was Virki an exception or were there other women in her
community and in those of other artisanal castes who struggled
for space and resisted suppression, circumscribed as they were
by contemporary structures of patriarchal dominance? I propose
to study the interface between artisanal women and institutions,
organizations and structures that sought discipline her agency
in early modern Rajasthan. The history of women of subaltern
groups, particularly for the pre-colonial period, has remained
shrouded in obscurity since scholarship on South Asian history
has privileged the study of gender relations in elite contexts.
In an attempt to shift away from the study of patriarchy of socially
superior groups, I would like to explore how gender hierarchies
were constructed, legitimated, challenged and maintained within
the artisanal world of early modern Rajasthan.
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