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Women’s Committee
Womens Committee 2003
Annual Report of the ASA Women’s Committee
The charge of the Women’s Committee is four-fold: 1) to facilitate partnerships between women from both academic and community settings; 2) to foster networking opportunities for women academics and students; 3) to collaborate with other ASA committees and task forces, such as the Minority Scholars’ Committee, Task Force on Ethnic Studies, Committee on Secondary Schools, and Queer Caucus, on issues of common concern; and 4) to facilitate greater visibility and acknowledgement of international scholars and scholarship on global issues.
Since the beginning of the 2003 calendar year, the Women’s Committee has had two collaboratively organized session proposals accepted for the upcoming October convention in Hartford and has been finalizing planning for them. With the Queer Caucus, the Women’s Committee is screening the film It’s Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues in School, directed by the Academy Award winner Debra Chasnoff. Addressing directly the conference themes of violence and belonging, her film examines American classrooms from elementary through high school levels, and dramatizes how queer children face a variety of forms of physical and psychological violence in these educational institutions. A dialogue led by committee member Marcy Knopf Newman will accompany the screening. A follow-up panel discussion involving educators and activists from the Hartford area will also be held, co-sponsored by the Queer Caucus and Secondary Education Committee. As sessions offered during the Committee on Secondary Schools’ Focus on Teaching Day, these intend to fulfill the Women’s Committee’s mission of engaging issues of import to women faculty and students at both secondary and college levels. We are very pleased that the ASA has waived registration fees for the Hartford-area panelists and absorbed the cost of film rental.
In addition, the Women’s Committee, Queer Caucus, and Minority Scholars’ Committee are co-sponsoring a roundtable session led by committee member Leslie Fishbein on “Domestic Violence/Domestic Spheres: The Activist Response to Shaming Rituals.” Towards our charge of facilitating connections between academic and community groups, scholars and activists representing a variety of racial and ethnic religious communities; lesbians; and affluent women, will discuss the impact that shaming in their respective communities has upon women victims of domestic violence, and they will share strategies for overcoming the adverse affects of these environments. We are very appreciative that the ASA has waived the cost of conference registration and ASA membership for community activists who are participating in this panel. From its own budget, the Women’s Committee has provided honoraria totaling $500 for most of them and $300 for the costs of the audio-conferencing that will allow Dr. Susan Weitzman of Not to People Like Us to participate in the roundtable from Chicago. The American Studies Association has provided several hundred dollars of supplementary support for the audio-conferencing and for the other audio-visual equipment needed for the roundtable. In addition, with the support of the ASA, the Women’s Committee has extended invitations that include free passes to the roundtable to domestic violence activists at nearly two dozen facilities in Connecticut, and we are anticipating tremendous interest in and attendance at this panel among Hartford area residents. Finally, at the Hartford convention we also are again co-hosting a delightful annual Thursday evening reception with the Minority Scholars’ Committee and Queer Caucus.
The annual Breakfast for Women in American Studies was very well attended in 2002 (approximately 150 participants), and we anticipate a similar strong showing this year at the 2003 Hartford Convention. Our guest speaker is Hazel V. Carby, the Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of African American Studies at Yale University. Dr. Carby is an appropriate speaker for this event as she has published groundbreaking scholarship on the connection between black women’s activism and intellectual activity, most notably her Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist. Besides issues of race and gender, her work also focuses on cultural history and the African diaspora, such as the relationship between African American and black British constituencies. As longtime Chair of Yale’s Department of African American Studies, she was responsible for broadening its focus to include peoples of African descent from Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean. Thus, our selection of Dr. Carby as the breakfast speaker also follows through on our Committee’s decision last year to attend more strongly to issues affecting women globally and internationally. We are very grateful that the ASA has generously provided an honorarium of $200 in support of Dr. Carby’s lecture.
We again have planned a joint Business Meeting with the Minority Scholars’ Committee at the Hartford Convention. As a follow-up to email discussions prior to the convention, we would like to take up discussion again of the variety of issues facing women in academia that we raised in our mid-year 2003 report, to prioritize the issues we would wish to research quantitatively and qualitatively for our proposed report on the Status of Women in the Profession, and to discuss sources of external funding for this research. In conjunction with the Minority Scholars’ Committee, we also broached the subject of changing employment conditions and the crisis in the publishing industry and its impact on our constituencies. We agreed that our constituents are in very vulnerable positions in regards to these developments, and that any research project the Committee embarks upon should develop statements and forward recommendations to the ASA on these topics. I plan to attend the ASA National Council’s October business meeting to consult about our progress on this project. At our individual meeting of the Women’s Committee at the ASA conference, an additional agenda item we have planned to take up again is how to work with the ASA to resolve the ongoing scheduling conflict between sessions sponsored by the Women’s Committee and the Women’s Breakfast.
I close by extending a welcome to the incoming committee members, AnaLouise Keating and Rachel Adams, and offering very heartfelt thanks to the two members who rotated off the Women’s Committee this year, Danille Taylor-Guthrie and Julia Ehrhardt, the outgoing Chair. Both Danille and Julia were very reliable, conscientious, and energetic stewards. Danille’s contributions were central in facilitating and publicizing the Women and War screening and workshop at the 2002 Houston convention. In addition to her very able leadership of our routine Committee affairs, Julia’s unflagging correspondence and brainstorming sessions were crucial for the successful, inaugural launch of the Lora Romero First Book Publication Prize and enhanced annual reception. Under Julia’s guidance, the Women’s Committee also secured approval to change its bylaws to include a seventh, international scholar as a permanent member.
Respectfully submitted,
Barbara McCaskill, ASA Women’s Committee Chair
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