GENDERED TRANSNATIONALISMS
The Fourth UC Transnational & Transcolonial Studies Multicampus Research Group
Graduate Student Conference
May 13, 2005 – 314 Royce Hall
8:30 a.m. Coffee & bagels
8:45 a.m.-9:00 a.m. WELCOME AND OPENING REMARKS
Francoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih, Co-Directors, UC Transnational & Transcolonial Studies Multicampus Research Group
Grace Yeh, English, UCLA; Chair, MRG Graduate Student Conference Planning Committee
9:00 a.m.-10:30 a.m. ENCOUNTERING CULTURES
Moderator: Jonathan Naito
Rachel Gillett, History, Northeastern University
Going big over there: Black American Music, Gender, and Race in Transnational Perspective
Tammy Ho, Comparative Literature, UCLA
Of Mothers and Saints: Exile, Translation, and Self-representation in Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands and Theresa Cha’s Dictee
Lidija Milic, English, SUNY Stonybrook
Sexy Beasts: Serbian Masculinity and the American Encounter
Nina Sylvanus, Anthropology, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris
Renegotiating Gendered Trading Spaces in West Africa
10:40 a.m.-12:10 p.m. QUEER EXCHANGES
Moderator: Anna Ward
Nishant Shahani, English, University of Florida
What Can Queer Theory learn from Transnational Feminism?
Caitlin MacAlpine, English, Georgetown University
When Cultures Collide: The Two-Spirit Tradition in Contemporary Native American Literature
Ryan Fong, English, UC Davis
Weaving a Different Kind of Tartan, Wearing a Different Kind of Kilt: Jackie Kay’s Trumpet and Transgendered Nationalisms
Paul Yeoh, Literatures in English, Rutgers University
Writing Singapore Gay Identities
12:10 p.m.-1:10 p.m. Break
1:10 p.m.-2:40 p.m. EMBODIED PERFORMANCES
Moderator: Denise Cruz
Samantha Pinto, English, UCLA
“Why Must All Girls Want to be Flag Women?”: Sexuality, Grievance and Indo-Trinidadian Women’s Soca Performance
Ronie Parciack, East-Asian Studies, Tel Aviv University
Letting the Other in, Queering the Nation: Bollywood and the Mimicking Body
Kimberly Feig, Women’s Studies, San Francisco State University
Exploding Wombs, Exploding Nations: (Re)presentations of Female Suicide Bombers
Ana Croegaert, Anthropology, Northwestern University
East to West Migration after the Cold War: Who’s that Girl?
2:50 p.m.-4:20 p.m. REPRESENTING PROGRESS
Moderator: Rachelle Okawa
Chie Ikeya, History, Cornell University
Prostitutes, Feminists, and Missionaries: Representations of Women, Civilization, and Progress in Twentieth-Century Colonial Burma
Bina Gogineni, English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
Mobility and Marronage in Claude McKay’s Banjo and Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea
Lindsey Simms, Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota
Parodies of Progress: Gender and Mobility in Urban West African Cinema
Carolyn Kendrick, Spanish and Portuguese, UCLA
A Transnational Legacy of Colonialism: Pomba-Giras, Bandidas, and other Cinematic Representations of Women in the Hypermasculine Space of the Brazilian Ghetto
4:30 p.m.-6:00 p.m. KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Introduction by Shu-mei Shih, Co-Director of UC Transnational & Transcolonial Studies Multicampus Research Group
Ien Ang, Professor of Cultural Studies, Director of the Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney, Australia.
Gender and Hybridity
The address will be accompanied by a screening of a short documentary, “PARRA: It’s Not Where You’re From, It’s Where You’re At,” which she co-wrote with Mitzi Goldman. Ien Ang is Director of the Center for Cultural Research at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. Professor Ang’s work focuses on popular media and cultural consumption, cultural difference and diversity, nationalism and globalization, migration and ethnicity; and issues of representation in contemporary cultural institutions, as well as the politics of cultural studies itself. She is the author of On Not Speaking Chinese: Living Between Asia and the West, Desperately Seeking the Audience, Living Room Wars: Rethinking Media Audiences for a Postmodern World, and Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination.
6:00 p.m. RECEPTION
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This year’s conference focuses on the significance of gender in the global economy and transnational culture, as well as on the intersections between gender studies and transnational studies, with particular interest in how literature and culture negotiate these disciplinary terrains. By “transnationalisms,” we suggest the multiple and varied practices of imagined communities in the context of the global exchanges of people, of ideas, and of capital. “Gendered transnationalisms” thus takes into account that these practices do not occur or are not inscribed evenly across or through gendered bodies and sites. Through the consideration of sexuality, cultural encounters, modernity and progress, and bodily performances, the conference panels address the intersections of gender and transnationalism in culture, economics, and politics.
Organized by
The MRG Graduate Student Conference Planning Committee at UCLA:
Grace Yeh, Chair, English
Denise Cruz, English
Linda Greenberg, English
Christina Nagao, English
Jonathan Naito, English
Rachelle Okawa, Comparative Literature
Samantha Pinto, English
Anna Ward, Women’s Studies
Jiayun Zhuang, Theater
To Attend
This program is free and open to the public. No reservations are required, however, seating is limited. Parking on campus is available for $7. Please go to the parking information kiosk at Hilgard and Westholme Avenues for the nearest available lot. Inquiries can be directed to the UC Transnational & Transcolonial Studies MRG by email at modcon@humnet.ucla.edu or by phone at (310) 825-9581. For further information, or a list of future events, please see our website at http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/transnation.
The UC Transnational & Transcolonial Studies Multicampus Research Group, 310 Royce Hall, Box 951461, Los Angeles, CA 90095