Series
Feminist/Queer Praxis
The Feminist/Queer Praxis (formerly Feminist Lives and Queer Trajectories) series brings artists, activists, scholars, and professionals to CSGS to talk about their work in the world as people committed to queer and feminist values and action. Previous speakers have included Amber Hollibaugh, a long time activist for economic justice, sexual liberation and LGBTQ human rights and author of My Dangerous Desires: a queer girl dreaming her way home; Jessica Halem, comedian and feminist/queer activist who served as a University of Chicago CAPS counselor and RH in the 90s; Judge Sebastian Patti, the first openly gay man elected to an Illinois bench; and Anne Ladky, Executive Director of Women Employed and a nationally recognized expert on women's organizing, equal opportunity issues, career development and economic self-sufficiency.
The first Feminist/Queer Praxis event of the year will present sociologist and activist Rachel Caidor, who will talk about her life and work on Monday, October 17, from noon to 1:30 in the first floor conference room at the Center (5733 S. University). See her bio below.
Rachel Caidor earned her BA in sociology in 1997 from Notre Dame with a concentration in Gender Studies and a Master's in Women's Studies from the University of Maryland College Park in 2007. Most recently, Rachel was the Coordinator of Crisis Services for YWCA Chicago's Sexual Violence Support Services. She was also the founding member of Incite! Women of Color Against Violence's Chicago Chapter and the feminist activist dance troupe, the Pink Bloque. In her free time (which is, like, all the time) she consults on academic research projects, conducts trainings on crisis intervention with survivors of sexual assault, helps victims of racist micro-aggressions on the Race Crisis Hotline, and watches way too many episodes of The Golden Girls.
Classics in Feminist Theory
This series is devoted to a critical rethinking of foundational texts in the development of feminist theory. Over the course of its history, feminist theory has developed an increasingly critical stance towards its central categories of analysis: sex, gender, and women. However important this stance has been, it has had the paradoxical effect of marginalizing texts once considered core to the feminist project itself. For example, it is not uncommon today for gender and sexuality students to have read Judith Butler's Gender Trouble but not Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex. Apart from the assumption that what comes later is by definition better, this approach significantly distorts what was at stake for third-wave feminists such as Butler in the critique of Beauvoir. In an effort to better grasp contemporary feminist theory and the state of feminism today, the series seeks to reanimate interest in the texts that once inspired a radical political and cultural movement.
The 2011-2012 year centers on the work of Catharine A. MacKinnon, the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at University of Michigan and long-term James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Professor MacKinnon specializes in sex equality issues under international and constitutional law. She pioneered the legal claim for sexual harassment and, with Andrea Dworkin, created ordinances recognizing pornography as a civil rights violation. Representing Bosnian women survivors of Serbian genocidal sexual atrocities, Professor MacKinnon won with co-counsel a damage award of $745 million in August 2000 in Kadic v. Karadzic, which first recognized rape as an act of genocide. The Supreme Court of Canada largely accepted her approaches to equality, pornography, and hate speech. In addition to scholarly works that include Sex Equality (2001), Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (1989), Only Words (1993), Women's Lives, Men's Laws (2005), and Are Women Human? (2006), she has published widely in journals and the popular press. Her work has been documented to be among the most widely-cited writings on law in the English language. Professor MacKinnon practices and consults nationally and internationally, and works with Equality Now, an non-governmental organization promoting international sex equality rights for women, and the Coalition for Trafficking in Women (CATW). She has served as Special Gender Adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court since November 2008.