Projects Archive
Women In Science
Spring 2011
"The Changing Status of Women in Science at MIT: 1999-2011" the Inaugural Colloquium on How to Advance Women in Science and Engineering with Nancy Hopkins. Professor Hopkins, Amgen, Inc. Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
"Social Isolation and the Biological Mechanisms of Breast Cancer" with Suzanne Conzen, Professor, Hematology/Oncology, Department of Medicine and Martha McClintock, David Lee Shillinglaw Distinguished Service Professor, Departments of Psychology and Comparative Human Development and the College, the Committees on Neurobiology and Evolutionary Biology, Founder of the Institute for Mind and Biology, Co-Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Health Disparities Research.
Spring 2010
"Developmental Foundations of Human Cognition" with Kathleen (Kathy) Millen, Associate Professor, Department of Human Genetics — "The Genetic Basis of Building a Brain" and Katherine Kinzler, Neubauer Family Assistant Professor in Psychology — "The Native Language of Social Cognition."
Winter 2010
"Making the Invisible Visible: from the Nose to the Cosmos." Evalyn Gates, Assistant Director, Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics presented a discussion on gravitational lensing and the search for dark matter and Leslie Kay, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology and Director, Institute for Mind and Biology addressed dynamical states in olfactory perception.
Spring 2009
The Project hosted its first event, Personal Perspectives on Women in the Sciences. In the academic year 2009/2010, the Project hosted three events, one per quarter, pairing women working on similar problems from different disciplinary perspectives.
"Personal Perspectives on Women in the Sciences," sprung from the "On Equal Terms" Educating Women at the University of Chicago archive exhibit in the Special Collections Research Center at Regenstein Library. Featured presenters: Evalyn Gates, Senior research associate and assistant director, Kavli Institute, Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics. Katie Turk, Graduate student, Department of History, Co-Curator of "On Equal Terms: Educating Women at the University of Chicago" exhibit. Janet Rowley, Blum-Riese Distinguished Service Professor, Departments of Medicine, Molecular Genetics & Cell Biology, and Human Genetics. Caroline Herzenberg, Consultant, Science and Engineering, Argonne National Laboratory Physicist, retired.
Winter 2009
"Integrated Approaches to the Study of Birth Defects" with Ka Yee C. Lee, Professor of Chemistry, University of Chicago gave a presentation on lung surfactant, a complex mixture of lipids and proteins that assists the breathing process and Victoria Prince, Professor, Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy and Chair, Committee on Developmental Biology, University of Chicago speaking on her lab's studies of how neurons move.
Lesbian & Gay Studies
Past Events
A Queer Orientalism: Sex, Power and Cultural Difference in Backhouse's "Memoirs"
Morris B. Kaplan, Professor of Philosophy at Purchase College. "A Queer Orientalism" traces the intersections among sex, power and cultural difference in the memoirs of Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse.
Brokered Subjects: Sex, Trafficking, and the Politics of Freedom
Elizabeth Bernstein is co-editor of Regulating Sex: the Politics of Intimacy and Identity (Routledge 2005) and the author of Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity, and the Commerce of Sex (University of Chicago Press 2007). Her current research explores the convergence of feminist, neoliberal, and evangelical Christian interests in the shaping of contemporary U.S. policies around the traffic in women. At Barnard and Columbia, she teaches courses on the sociology of gender and sexuality; trafficking, migration, and sexual labor; and contemporary social theory.
In Search of Countess Vivian: Queerness and the Making of Southern History
E. Patrick Johnson is Professor, Chair, and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Performance Studies and Professor in African American Studies at Northwestern University. A scholar/artist, Johnson has performed nationally and internationally and has published widely in the area of race, gender, sexuality and performance. E. Patrick Johnson's latest book, Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South-An Oral History (University of North Carolina Press) contains narratives collected between 2004 and 2006 from black gay men who were born, raised, and continue to live in the South. The men hail from fifteen different states and range in age from 19 to 93.
Women, Aggression, Images
Maud Lavin, Professor of Visual and Critical Studies and Art History, Theory, and Criticism, School of the Art Institute of Chicago Maud Lavin gave a talk from her new book on contemporary U.S. images of women's lust and aggression in art and mass culture, "Push Comes to Shove: New Images of Aggressive Women". Lavin is also author of Cut with the Kitchen Knife: The Weimar Photomontages of Hannah Höch and Clean New World: Culture, Politics, and Graphic Design. She edited The Oldest We've Ever Been: Seven True Stories of Midlife Transitions.
2010-2011 Events were part of the Series "The Politics of Sexual Freedom."
Spring 2010
The Lesbian and Gay Studies Project of the CSGS at the University of Chicago and The Center on Halsted hosted a one-day conference entitled, What's Queer About Sex Offenders? Or, Are Sex Offenders the New Queers? The symposium featured criminal justice scholars, feminist and queer theorists, and prison reform activists exploring the social history and legal concept of the "sex offender."
Video from Panels 1 and 2 are available to stream at the University of Chicago Mind Online site at the links below.
Experience of Women
Spring 2009
"On Equal Terms": Educating Women at the University of Chicago
This multimedia exhibit, organized by CSGS and Special Collections at the Regenstein Library, included archival material and oral histories. This exhibition was the result of a unique collaboration among undergraduates, graduate students, library staff, and faculty at the University of Chicago. It was part of a larger CSGS project on the history of women at the University that included seventy-one oral histories from the University's alumae, faculty, and staff as well as finding guides for the oral histories and the Regenstein Library's archival resources.
A Guide for Researchers in the Archives
Keyword Finding Aid
The University of Chicago has been the subject of much scholarly attention over the years, but for those of us involved in this project, it soon became clear that paying particular attention to women and gender illuminates previously unexplored chapters of its past and makes familiar stories look much different. Women have very different stories to tell about the experiments in co-education and faculty diversification; the experience of the classroom, the laboratory, the dorm, and the streets of Hyde Park; the problems of mentorship, intellectual community, and career advancement; the opportunities for political action and community involvement, for friendship, romance, and sexual experimentation.
In our research, we uncovered more material documenting the experiences of Chicago women than we had previously imagined. These rich sources have answered some, but not all, of our questions. While sources on undergraduate life were particularly rich, there is still much to learn about graduate women and faculty experiences; about women of color; and about the late emergence of gender studies as a field of study at Chicago. We are hopeful that this survey will encourage future research on the workings of gender in the intellectual and physical spaces of the University.
An Introduction to the Exhibit:
The University of Chicago's original articles of incorporation, crafted in 1892, state that the institution will "provide, impart, and furnish opportunities for all departments of higher education to persons of both sexes on equal terms," thus writing coeducation into the University's founding principles. Yet integrating the sexes into the curriculum, research agenda, and extracurricular life proved to be a difficult and as yet unfinished task. The history of women at the University of Chicago is uneven, full of successes and failures that reflect both Chicago's unique intellectual community and larger trends in academia. Coeducation provided women with exciting academic and social opportunities, but it did not necessarily translate to equality of treatment or equal distribution of resources. While women have often stood among the most accomplished members of the University community, their history on campus raises important questions about how and where women and women's issues fit into academia-questions that still resonate today.
The University has provided women with space for teaching, research, and community activism with few parallels; at the same time, some of these scholars formed the front lines of the University's struggles to incorporate issues of women and gender into the life of the mind. Women students brought with them expectations of higher education that the University was often unprepared to meet. These students expected identical treatment to men, but also sought their own spaces and demanded university respect for female-oriented activities and courses of study. Women students and faculty frequently banded to form single-sex academic, service-oriented, and social associations, which fostered specifically women-oriented networks and a strong tradition of female mentorship. They fought for institutional support and respect for academic programs in home economics, social service administration, gender studies, and more. Women made these claims loudly and sometimes disruptively, with lasting effects. By demanding to be incorporated in the university culture and curriculum, women at the University of Chicago have shaped the institution just as the University has molded and educated them.
Oral History Project:
In 2004 CSGS undertook an oral history project designed to record the stories of women alumnae, faculty, and staff in order to capture their varied experiences at the University of Chicago. Some of our best undergraduates collaborated to take and transcribe 71 oral histories from women whose time at the university spans from 1935 to the present day.
To complement the exhibition, "On Equal Terms"-Educating Women at the University of Chicago, CSGS produced audio files and a CD with excerpts culled from those oral histories, representing a sampling of over half of the total interviews. While we believe they provide interesting commentary on and elaboration of many of the issues this exhibition illustrates, it is important to note that the oral history project preceded the organization of the exhibition and is in itself an active documentation of women's voices and experiences. In future years, this archive of oral histories will be deposited and accessible at the Special Collections Research Center in the Regenstein Library.
iTunes: Selections from the CSGS Oral History Project
Mp3s: Download All
Spring 2009
Student Research Exhibit:
The Life of the Female Mind: Gender and Education at the University of Chicago
The Life of the Female Mind: Gender and Education at the University of Chicago was an exhibit of student research on the history of women at the University of Chicago on display at the Center for Gender Studies from April 1 through June 13, 2009, highlighting the research of Caitlyn Buchanan, Sarah Butler, Leanna Delhey, Doug Dishong, Erin Franzinger, Lauren Guerrieri, Emily Moss, Kati Proctor, Patricia Ross, Toby Schwartz, Sarah Sticha, and Amy Unger.
As part of the exhibition "On Equal Terms"-Educating Women at the University of Chicago, CSGS offered an undergraduate seminar in Fall 2008 titled Alma Mater: The History of Women at the University of Chicago. Together, for ten weeks, instructors Monica Mercado and Katherine Turk, also curators of the library exhibit and the twelve students explored the experiences of women students, faculty, and staff at the University of Chicago from 1892 to the present day.
During this time, students undertook their own archival research and learned to navigate the Special Collections Research Center in the Joseph Regenstein Library. Using the finding aid and research guide created by the Center for Gender Studies, students were given the freedom to research a topic of their choosing, and found a wealth of items in the archives to illustrate those stories. Their research-to be showcased here-reveals the diversity of women's experiences at the University of Chicago. When viewed with the larger exhibition at the Joseph Regenstein Library, the students' research demonstrates that women students and faculty have been integral to the University's formation and evolution. The student projects remind us of the depth of the University's archival collections, and we hope they will inspire even more research.
Late Liberalism Project
The focus of this project was on the forces that make political ideology and fantasy attach to particular forms: political ones, such as the nation, as well as corporeal ones, evidenced in gender, sexuality, race, indigenousness, caste, and so on. What does it mean to pull apart these forms from the desires that make people attached to them? What might we learn from transitional concepts like the global and the transnational, or from non-individuality-based notions of freedom and justice?
This project was more about technologies of political form than "gender and sexuality" in its usual senses; yet gender and sexuality were central to the stories, past and future, which we continually try to understand and tell.