December 9, 2014 - 22:50
I. (2:25-2:45) Start with course evals (and a full bowl of snacks....)
II. (2:45-3:00) Coursekeeping
* update on gallery?
Rhett's portrait broke--replacement glass?
okay w/ 'zines? (replenishing the supply if needed?)
getting final copy (have Abby's insert, not Bridget's, from Google doc)
to put up on Serendip as a booklet (w/ turning pages..)
*noon-2 p.m. on Friday we are hosting Our Intersectional
On-Campus "Listening" Event, in Rhoads:
check in re: advertising (no flyers?),
set up (moving your portraits before hand?),
script,
other issues/concerns? (Kristin coming late; assigned or no roles for me and Sara?)
decision maker (vs. "too many cooks" phenomenon...)
* villagers will be joining us on Monday @ 10: be @ CC then to welcome them, give campus tours
(@ 11 we'll gather in the Ely Room to present your portraits; @ noon we'll have lunch; @ 1 their departures)
* on T, W, Th afternoons next week you'll be meeting w/ Kristin, Sara and me in the English House Lounge:
prepare by reviewing your portfolio, come w/ some notes/reflections--knock on the glass door when you arrive
(help keep us on schedule: it's a tight one, and--"because disability reasons"--there is no flexibility, so do not stand us up!)
* complete the 360 evaluation and bring it with you (if you forget, you will have to stay there and do it then....)
Schedule
T, 12/16
5:00 Amelia
5:30 Nkechi
6:00 Sula
W, 12/17
1:30 Abby
2:00 Natalie
2:30 Rebecca
3:00 Bridget
3:30 Niki
Th, 12/18
1:30 Gabby
2:00 Sophia
2:30 Rhett
3:00 Kate
III. (3:00-3:15): continuing our discussion of Waring (we'd made a deal on Tuesday that,
in exchange for not having to write the international feminism paper, we'd work seriously
on this material this week...which isn't happening. but: briefly!
question on the table: is feminism = anti-capitalism?
(capitalism: the economic system in which trade and industry
are controlled by private owners for profit;
not [necessarily?] the same thing as consumerism
your postings on Waring are in agreement here:
smalina: Waring is quite clearly a believer that feminism and capitalism cannot coexist....
Sunshine: Capitalism thrives on the marginalization of different groups.... therefore feminism has to be anti-capitalist
rosea: we justify the system on a daily basis with our consumption, complacency, and life practices in general
bridget: this also ties into our communities here existing in economized contexts...how can we develop and push forth a global economy that...leads to greater systemic equality?
nbarker: It strikes me that economics is fundamentally patriarchal and colonial...recapitulating patriarchy by devaluing women's life work. But how could we change it?...what would be the alternative to economics as it is? Is there some way we could refocus the mentality behind economics to be one about decisions and process, rather than about money itself? Would this be a way to fix, to dismantle and then rebuild, the unsustainable, patriarchal, and oppressive structures of economics and capitalism?
Anne: When I taught Critical Feminist Studies last fall, we had a very interesting counternarrative to lay alongside the work of Marilyn Waring. Heidi Hartmann is a McArthur Fellow, a Swat grad with a Ph.D. in economics from Yale; she is the President of the Washington-based Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR), a scientific research organization that she founded in 1987 to meet the need for women-centered, policy-oriented research. The Greater Philadelphia Women’s Studies consortium brought her to Philadelphia to speak, and I arranged for her to visit my class, give a public talk, and have dinner with a group of us.
She wrote, “My background in these issues probably starts with growing up poor to a single mother and going to an elite college, Swarthmore, where there were a lot of new Left activities...I didn't get involved in the women's movement until 1969 when I went to graduate school in economics at Yale. New Haven Women's Liberation was....very much a socialist feminist group...a strong atmosphere of activism...helped me understand that what I was learning in school could actually be useful to women. A heady feeling....Then in 1987, I founded IWPR [Institute for Women's Policy Research]….Although I have written a couple of articles that are well known in socialist feminist theory, I moved into the public policy world soon after getting my Ph.D. I have worked primarily on women's employment and related issues...I am primarily a practitioner in the policy research context. I do not read much theory....'Who reads Signs anymore?'
For the past 20 years, David Karen has been teaching an article that Heidi had published in 1979, called “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards a more Progressive Union”: it makes an intersectional analysis, and argues that that it is necessary to take on the combination of patriarchy and capitalism.” But in the decades since, he was shocked to learn @ her talk, Hartman had (in her own words) “become a Washington creature, couching arguments differently”: she said that she had “underestimated,” in 1979, “how much new economic incentives could challenge the patriarchy. There are more women working now,” she finds that hopeful, and focuses now on the labor market, where she thinks it’s easier to get change--and then, she believes, things can change domestically.
When she was here, I dismissed this as "liberal feminism," accomodationist...now I'm rethinking it, as a US-based form of nego-feminism...
Stop here w/ the provocative (confusing) recognition that feminism takes many forms. Don't think you've arrived @ one...
IV. (3:25-3:45) "Decompression"
Another exercise, in silence, without discussion:
call attention to the beautiful bowl, fragile but capable of holding whatever we put in it...
What are you setting down? What can you leave in the bowl?
(do this in an embodied way: consider the shape and weight of these things...)
What are you carrying out with you?
go 'round twice, in silence, without commentary;
free to pass, but say so,
speaking of your own experience...