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Women’s Committee
Report of the Women’s Committee 2006
In May 2005 Katherine Ledford and AnaLouise Keating became co-chairs of the Women’s Committee. Since this time, the Women’s Committee has continued to engage with its charges, following the lead of former chairs Irene Ramalho Santos and Barbara McCaskill. The Women’s Committee remains dedicated to facilitating partnerships between women from both academic and community settings; fostering networking opportunities for women academics and students; collaborating with other ASA committees and task forces, such as the International Committee, Minority Scholars’ Committee, Task Force on Ethnic Studies, Committee on Secondary Schools, Students’ Committee, and Queer Caucus, on issues of common concern; and facilitating greater visibility and acknowledgement of independent scholars and international scholars and scholarship on global issues.
Following the resolutions of the 2005 Washington, D.C. meeting, the focus of the Women’s Committee has been on five major issues: 1) sponsored panels for the 2006 ASA convention; 2) the 2006 ASA convention breakfast speaker; 3) the Gloria Anzaldúa Award for Independent Scholars; 4) the Directory of International Women in American Studies; 5) budgeting funds to cover conference registration fees for participants in women’s committee sponsored session.
1. ASA Conference Panel:
The Women’s Committee is delighted to sponsor a roundtable discussion at the Oakland conference, proposed by Kristen Hogan at the committee’s 2005 meeting, entitled “Printing a Transcultural U.S. Feminism: California, 1969-present” and featuring women prominent in the feminist printing movement. The discussants are Judy Grahn (New College of California), Carol Seajay (Books to Watch Out For), Norma Alarcón (University of California, Berkeley), Yolanda Venegas (University of California, Riverside), Shay Brawn (Aunt Lute Books), and Irene Helen Reti (University of California, Santa Cruz). By sponsoring this roundtable discussion, the Women’s Committee seeks to highlight the transcultural nature of a particular print discourse, centered in the Bay area but crossing cultural and national boundaries, that changed literature, feminism, and women’s lives.
2. Women’s Breakfast:
In an attempt to give greater visibility to the Women’s Breakfast and to attract a wider and more varied attendance, the Committee concentrated this year on selecting a speaker who could address transnational issues of importance to women. We decided to invite Alicia Arrizon to deliver the 2006 ASA Convention Breakfast Speech. First approached by Sonia Torres, Professor Arrizon accepted our invitation.
Alicia Arrizon, who received her Ph.D. in Spanish from Stanford, is Professor and Chair of Women’s Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Professor Arrizon’s research interests include critical theory, cultural studies, theatre and performance studies, feminist theory; Chicana(o) Latin American/U.S. Latino literatures and cultures, ethnicity, race, gender, and sexualities. Her latest book, Queering Mestizaje: Transculturation and Performance (University of Michigan Press, 2006), employs theories of postcolonial cultural studies (including performance studies, queer, and feminist theory) to examine the notion of mestizaje—the mixing of races, and specifically indigenous peoples with European colonizers—and how this phenomenon manifests itself in three geographically diverse spaces: the U.S., Latin America, and the Philippines. Professor Arrizón argues that as an imaginary site for racialized, gendered, and sexualized identities, mestizaje raises questions about historical transformation and cultural memory across Spanish postcolonial sites. Her earlier book, Latina Performance: Traversing the Stage (Indiana University Press, 1999), which was selected as one of ten “Outstanding Academic Titles” by Choice in 2000, examines the Latina subject whose work as dramatist, actress, theorist, and/or critic further defines the field of theatre and performance in the United States.
3. Gloria E. Anzaldúa Award for Independent Scholars:
Originally proposed by AnaLouise Keating at the 2004 October Women’s Committee business meeting, the award is designed to honor the memory of the cultural theorist and feminist scholar, Glória E. Anzaldúa. Professor Sonia Saldivar-Hull presented the proposal to the Executive Committee in May, and it was approved. The prize will consist of a lifetime membership in the ASA; it will be awarded annually to an independent scholar (that is: a scholar who is not employed full-time by a university or college) who has made transformative feminist contributions to issues of gender, ‘race,’ and sexuality in the field of American Studies. This award is designed to reflect 1) Anzaldúa’s status as an independent scholar; and 2) Anzaldúa’s groundbreaking contributions to women-of-color studies and queer theory.
The award requires an endowment of $28,000 with an annual return of 5%. The $28,000 will be achieved when 112 people made tax deductible contributions of $250 each to the American Studies Association for a Gloria Anzaldúa fund. Already, four people or groups have pledged to make $250 contributions, and we anticipate that many others will do so as well. Once we receive approval from the National Council, we will begin soliciting additional contributions via ASA publications, Crossroads, and listservs in a variety of disciplines. We also anticipate working in conjunction with other ASA committees such as the following: Minority Scholars’ Committee, Committee on Ethnic Studies, Queer Caucus, and Students’ Committee, as well as groups such as the National Council of Independent Scholars.
4. The Directory of International Women in American Studies:
This directory was conceived by the Task Force for International Women in American Studies (1999-2002) to facilitate the networking of American studies women scholars in the United States and abroad, and encourage the participation of non-US-based women scholars in American studies events and exchanges worldwide. A web-site that enables members to search by name, region, and field can be visited at http://www.georgetown.edu/crossroads/community.html. It includes some 100 names of non-US-based women scholars willing to have their addresses and major academic interests publicized with a view to scholarly intercourse and joint initiatives by Women Americanists in the US and elsewhere. Former President Shelley Fisher Fishkin’s International Initiative would seem to reinforce the importance of such a Directory. Because of privacy issues, however, it may be difficult to expand its present relatively modest number of names. Irene Ramalho Santos offered to investigate this issue and make a recommendation about whether we should pursue the project and, if so, how we should proceed.
5. Budgeting funds to cover conference registration fees for participants in women’s committee sponsored session
Because conference fees were not waived for community participants at the 2006 conference, the Women’s Committee decided to use a portion of its budget to fund the registration fees for participants in its committee-sponsored session.
Respectfully submitted,
Katherine Ledford and AnaLouise Keating, ASA Women’s Committee Co-Chairs
September, 2006
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