CSW faculty and staff featured in the news
Sarah Haley receives Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholars Award
Published January 24, 2023 in UCLA Newsroom
Featuring Sarah Haley CSWAC Member
Sarah Haley, an associate professor of gender studies and African American studies in the UCLA College, has received the Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholars Award. Haley’s expertise focuses on Black feminism, U.S. women’s and gender history, African American history from 1865 to the present, carceral studies, and labor and working-class studies.
Premiere of restored women’s prison documentary ‘We’re Alive,’ accompanied by Q&A
Published January 23, 2023 in UCLA Newsroom
Featuring Grace Hong, CSW Director, Colby Lenz, CSW Deputy Director of Policy and Community Research
“Gleason, Lesiak and Levitt wanted their mark as filmmakers to be unnoticeable: collaborating with incarcerated people, whose participation was voluntary, to give the women in the community an opportunity to speak for themselves about their individual and collective experiences. As a result, production history of the film remained largely unknown until the last decade, when requests for the film started filtering into the Archive, which has since digitally remastered it”.
World premiere of restored ‘We’re Alive,’ 1974 documentary filmed in a California women’s prison
Published January 24, 2023 in UCLA Newsroom
Featuring Grace Hong, CSW Director, Colby Lenz, CSW Deputy Director of Policy and Community Research
Capturing the consciousness-raising style of dialogue that defined feminist discourse in the 1970s, the women share an acute perspective on prison abolition informed by experiences of gendered and racialized discrimination and economic disenfranchisement, the effects of drug addiction and the parole board’s abuse of power. Several participants discuss recognize the camaraderie — political, platonic and romantic — that they experienced in prison.
Trans rights advocate Bamby Salcedo wins Distinguished Leader in Feminism Award
Published May 25, 2022 in Daily Bruin
Featuring Mishuana Goeman, CSW Associate Director
“ ‘Her remarkable and wide-ranging activist work has brought voice and visibility to the trans community and many overlapping communities and issues such as immigrants, HIV, youth, incarcerated (communities) … even when there was none,’ Goeman said.”
New Bill Protects Abuse Survivors Who Fight Back – But Experts Warn It’s Not Enough
Published January 23, 2022 in Black Voice News
Featuring Colby Lenz, CSW Deputy Director of Policy and Community Research
“‘We see this pattern of survivors of violence, particularly Black women and other women of color, being charged with murder and given the most severe sentences in context of that violence,’ said Colby Lenz, a co-founder of Survived and Punished, a national coalition of survivors, advocates, attorneys and scholars who organize to decriminalize efforts to survive domestic violence. ”
UC to offer course on Indigenous heritage preservation, repatriation
Published January 23, 2022 in Daily Bruin
Featuring Mishuana Goeman, CSW Associate Director
“Goeman, who is UCLA’s special advisor to the chancellor on Native American and Indigenous affairs, said the project spotlights Indigenous stories in an era of mass development and climate change, and universities need to acknowledge the ways they have hurt Indigenous communities in the past.
‘Even while anthropology has changed over the years, anthropology has yet to reckon with that past of disrespect,’ Goeman said. ‘So it gets left on the work of the tribes to do, … to take care of things that were not meant to happen.’ ”
UCLA faculty lead multicampus effort to highlight Indigenous voices
Published November 30, 2021 in UCLA Newsroom
Featuring Mishuana Goeman, CSW Associate Director
Naming The Gunman Glorifies His Crimes, Not Naming Him Could Undermine The Truth
Published March 25, 2021 in NPR
Featuring Grace Hong, CSW Director
“It‘s very, very difficult, and especially in this particular context when there’s such a long history of Asian people and Asian women, in particular, being thought of as inhuman, being thought of as everything from mechanical and robotic to malevolent.”
Center for the Study of Women embraces ‘anti-carceral’ feminist research
Published March 26, 2019 in UCLA Newsroom
Featuring Sarah Haley, Senior Faculty Research Associate
“UCLA is so compelling to such a wide range of students, and has a stated mission of promoting diversity and public engagement,” said Sarah Haley, UCLA professor of gender studies and African American studies. “And so, there is a certain responsibility to ensure that equity includes people who have a history of incarceration, as well as disproportionately criminalized groups such as women of color, queer people of color, men of color and poor people.”
Issues of food and gender to take the spotlight at UCLA
Published in UCLA Newsroom
Featuring Rachel Vaughn, Assistant Professor
“On Wednesday Oct. 26, in conjunction with UCLA’s Food Week and in partnership with the UCLA Healthy Campus Initiative, the center will highlight new gender studies adjunct assistant professor Rachel Vaughn as she talks about her book-in-progress ‘Talking Trash: Oral Histories of Food In/Security from the Margins of a Dumpster.’ ”
Official press releases from CSW
We’re Alive: Film Screening and Conversation
Published January 17, 2023
The restoration world premiere of We’re Alive (1974) and a discussion featuring formerly incarcerated women sharing their experiences. We’re Alive filmmakers and UCLA alumni Michie Gleason, Christine Lesiak and Kathy Levitt are joined by moderator Colby Lenz, CSW|Streisand Center Deputy Director of Policy and Community Research, and members of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP), Romarilyn Ralston and Susan Bustamante, who experienced incarceration at the California Institution for Women (CIW).
2021 Awards Celebration
Published May 13, 2021
Event hosted on May 20, 2021. CSW’s annual Awards Celebration honors the UCLA faculty and student recipients of CSW fellowships, awards, and grants. The 2021 Awards Celebration featured the keynote address, “Intersectional Feminism and the Fight for Justice,” presented by Holly J. Mitchell, Los Angeles County Supervisor for the Second District and the 2021 recipient of CSW’s Distinguished Leader in Feminism Award.
Barbra Streisand to fund forward-looking institute at UCLA focused on solving societal challenges
Published October 18, 2021 in UCLA Newsroom
“Ahead of the formal establishment of the institute, which will occur when the full gift amount is received, the work will be housed at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women. The center is internationally renowned for research in areas including women’s empowerment, environmental sustainability, women’s health, public policy and politics, and arts, culture and narrative storytelling. Streisand’s gift extends the center’s robust research on critical issues that affect women and society overall.”
Gender, Race, and Age Behind Bars: Impacts of Long-term Sentencing
Published February 21, 2021
Event hosted on Wednesday, February 3, 2021. It featured a rare opportunity to hear from two formerly-incarcerated women activists on the compounded adverse impacts of long-term sentencing on the elderly incarcerated, women and transgender people, and people of color in prison and beyond. Jane Dorotik was incarcerated for almost 20 years on a wrongful conviction. She was released in April 2020 due to COVID-19 concerns, and her conviction was reversed in July 2020. Romarilyn Ralston was incarcerated for 23 years, and is now the Program Director of Project Rebound at the California State University-Fullerton. Both are organizers with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP). Dorotik and Ralston will be in dialogue with LA County Public Defender, Ricardo Garcia, and moderator Alicia Virani, Gilbert Foundation Director of the Criminal Justice Program at the UCLA School of Law.
Defending Self-Defense: A Call to Action by Survived & Punished
Published March 3, 2022
Event hosted on Thursday, March 3, 2022. It featured the launch of Defending Self-Defense, a community-based, survivor-centered research report that identifies key patterns in the criminalization of self-defense and recommendations to transform the conditions of criminalized survival. The report is produced by Survived & Punished, Project Nia, and the UCLA Center for the Study of Women.
