Center for the Study of Women

The Stateless Diplomat: Diana Apcar's Heroic Life
2022-03-08 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Online/Zoom
Organized by the Promise Armenian Institute at UCLA
DATE: Tuesday, March 8, 2022
TIME: 7:00–8:30 PM (PST)
LOCATION: Virtual/Zoom (registration required)
REGISTER ONLINE
EVENT FLYER
In celebration of International Women’s Day, “The Stateless Diploment: Diana Apcar’s Heroic Life” is a celebration of the life and work of Diana Apcar, the first Armenian woman diplomat, who was appointed Honorary Consul to Japan of First Republic of Armenia (1918-1920).
The event consists of a special screening of “The Stateless Diplomat” followed by a conversation with director Mimi Malayan and historian Meline Mesropyan.
Author, businesswoman, activist, humanitarian and diplomat, Diana Apcar single-handedly rescued countless genocide survivors, enabling them to start new lives thousands of miles from their homeland.
The film, “The Stateless Diplomat,” tries to convey the pivotal moments in Diana’s life: her awakening to the Armenian cause, her spiritual vision prompting her into activism, her mental collapse and frustration as she foresaw the Genocide, and her endless humanitarian work, personally aiding thousands of Genocide survivors.
SPEAKERS:

Mimi Malayan, documentary filmmaker, director of “The Stateless Diplomat”
Meline Mesropyan, research fellow at Tohoku University’s Graduate School of International Culture in Sendai and lecturer at Hyogo University in Kobe, Japan

We Were There: The Third World Women's Alliance and the Second Wave
2022-03-08 15:00 - 16:00
Organized by the UCLA Department of Gender Studies
Book Talk With Dr. Patricia Romney in conversation with Dr. Maylei Blackwell
DATE: Tuesday, March 8, 2022
TIME: 3:00 PM (PST)
LOCATION: Virtual/Zoom (Registration Required)
REGISTER ONLINE
EVENT FLYER
Dr. Romney’s new book documents how the Alliance shaped and defined second wave feminism. From 1970 to 1980, the Alliance lived the dream of third world feminism. The small bicoastal organization was one of the earliest groups advocating for what came to be known as intersectional activism, arguing that women of color faced a “triple jeopardy” of race, gender, and class oppression. Widely recognized as the era’s primary voice for women of color, this alliance across ethnic and racial identities was unique then and now.

Defending Self-Defense: A Call to Action by Survived & Punished
2022-03-03 15:00 - 16:30
This event has passed. Watch a recording on our YouTube channel.
Date: Thursday, March 3, 2022
Time: 3:00-4:30PM PST
Location: Online/Zoom (registration required)
EVENT FLYER
READ THE REPORT
Survivors of domestic and sexual violence who defend themselves are systemically targeted for punishment by the legal system. Join us for 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.
In honor of Tewkunzi Green.
This report is produced by Survived & Punished, Project Nia, and the UCLA Center for the Study of Women.
Survived and Punished (S&P) is a national organization that advocates for the decriminalization of survivors of domestic and sexual violence through community organizing, policy advocacy, and engaged research. S&P provides publications and organizing tools that help highlight the intersections of prisons and gender violence, as well as mobilize grassroots support for criminalized survivors. S&P also includes the following three local/regional affiliates: Love & Protect in Chicago, S&P New York, and S&P California. CSW’s Thinking Gender 2020 conference featured an art exhibit showcasing S&P’s work and accomplishments, as well as a keynote address by Mariame Kaba, a co-founder of Survived & Punished. Kaba is also the founder and director of Project Nia, a grassroots organization that fights to end youth incarceration.
UCLA School of Law is a State Bar of California approved MCLE provider. Up to 1 hour of general MCLE credit will be available (see Further Readings below). If you attended the event, please fill out this form to receive credit.

Event participants:
Survived & Punished

Mariame Kaba (respondent)

Defending Self-Defense Research Team

Alisa Bierria
Colby Lenz
Sydney Moon

Defending Self-Defense Survivor Advisory Council

Liyah Birru
Robbie Hall
Wendy Howard
Roshawn Knight
Ky Peterson
Anastazia Schmid

Further Readings:

Franks, Mary Anne. 2014. “Real Men Advance, Real Women Retreat: Stand Your Ground, Battered Women’s Syndrome, and Violence as Male Privilege.” University of Miami Law Review 68 (4): 1099–1128. https://repository.law.miami.edu/umlr/vol68/iss4/7/
Aiken, Jane H., Sarah M. Buel, Sonal Bhatia, Mark Cooke, Wilhemina Hardy, Tiffany Haigler, Tina Ikpa, and Selena Nelson. 2007. “Resolution 102A: Domestic Violence Victims and Incarceration, Report.” Criminal Justice Committee, American Bar Association. https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/directories/policy/2007_my_102a.authcheckdam.pdf

Cosponsored by:

Criminal Justice Program at UCLA School of Law
Critical Race Studies Program at UCLA School of Law
Williams Institute
Department of Gender Studies

Describing LGBT and Gay Rights: A Longitudinal Analysis of Pro- And Anti-Gay Rights Groups’ Online Messages in Taiwan
2022-03-02 17:00 - 18:00 | Online
Organized by the UCLA Asia Pacific Center
Date: Thursday, March 3, 2022
Time: 5:00 PM (PST)
Location: Online/Zoom
REGISTER ONLINE
Taiwan has become the first Asian country to legalize same-sex spousal rights with the passage of a special law in May 2019. The legalization of same-sex relationships in Taiwan is a highly-contested process, with pro-and anti-gay rights groups competing with one another to win legitimacy over how even the idea of gay rights should be interpreted. To better understand the different discursive tools deployed by pro- and anti-gay rights activists between November 2013 and March 2020, I adopt a thematic content analysis approach to generate a codebook and apply it to a corpus that includes Facebook public posts of the pro-gay rights group and anti-gay rights group with the largest number of followers, respectively. The findings suggest that the pro-gay rights group is more likely to mention frames of anti-discrimination, equality, liberty, and identity-building while their anti-gay rights counterpart relies heavily on frames of morality, public interests, democracy, and anti-elitism. Furthermore, the pro-and anti-gay rights activists have adopted specific localized framing elements to construct their policy messages, including “Taiwan-China comparison,” “indigenous people,” and “ancestor veneration.” By treating framing as a dynamic process that changes over time, it becomes possible to observe that activists’ framing patterns have changed in response to policy outcomes, elite behavior, and interaction with rival activists.
Shih-chan Dai studies the development of LGBTQ rights in East Asian countries as well as examines how digital technology has reshaped the way politics and activism work nowadays. His research is situated at the intersection of political communication, social movements, and LGBTQ politics. He received his PhD in political science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. During his postdoc at UCLA, Shih-chan Dai is revising his dissertation into different journal articles and working on research topics related to gay rights in East Asia.
This event is part of the Asia Pacific Center’s UCLA Taiwan in the World lecture series. The Taiwan in the World lecture series aims to promote and disseminate knowledge about Taiwan’s society, political system, social structure, and institutions in a global context, and shed light on Taiwan’s political economy, international relations, and US-Taiwan-China relations. This series is organized by Taiwan in the World postdoctoral fellow Shih-chan Dai and supported with funding by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles. This lecture is cosponsored by the UCLA Center for the Study of Women, LGBTQ Campus Resource Center, and Office of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion.

Auntie Sewing Squad
2022-02-28 12:30 - 13:45
Organized by the Asian American Studies Department
This event was originally scheduled for Fall quarter, as part of “Sewing Social Justice.”
DATE: Monday, February 28, 2022
TIME: 12:30–1:45 PM (PST)
LOCATION: Virtual/Zoom
ZOOM ROOM
Join us for this event celebrating the Auntie Sewing Squad, a massive mutual-aid network of volunteers who have been providing free masks in the wake of US government failures during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Featuring:
Asian American Studies MA and Gender Studies PhD alum Preeti Sharma and co-editors Mai-Linh Hong and Chrissy Lau, discussing their recently released book The Auntie Sewing Squad Guide to Mask-Making, Radical Care, and Racial Justice (UC Press).
Screening of “Auntie Kristina,” a short film about the Auntie Sewing Squad and a discussion with the filmmaker, Asian American Studies MA alum Hannah Joo.

'We are not part of your family': Domestic Workers and the International Struggle for Labor Rights and Recognition
2022-02-17 14:00 - 15:15
Organized by the International Development Studies (International Institute)
Date: Thursday, February 17, 2022
Time: 2:00 – 3:15 PM (PST)
Location: Online/Zoom (registration required)
REGISTER ONLINE
EVENT FLYER
This lecture will focus on how Latin American Domestic Workers, through their membership in the International Domestic Workers Federation, have led the global movement to advance domestic workers’ rights. In particular, it will share insights about how domestic workers have used grassroots organizing, strategic alliance building, and transnational solidarity to secure and enforce one of the most historic victories for domestic workers: C189, the Domestic Workers Convention of the International Labor Organisation.
Adriana Paz Ramirez is a labor rights organizer and popular educator based in Mexico and Canada. Originally from Bolivia, she is the regional coordinator for the Americas for the International Domestic Workers Federation. Prior to that, she was the senior organizer for the Workers’ Action Centre in Toronto and the gender, equity, and women’s empowerment officer at the Solidarity Center in Mexico. She was also the manager of the International Development certificate program for the University of British Columbia, and co-founder of Justicia for Migrant Workers in British Columbia, a national grassroots organization advocating for the labor and immigration rights of migrant farm workers. Currently, Adriana holds an Open Society Fellowship in which she will identify how the strengths of grassroots organizing can be leveraged to tackle the challenges of policy enforcement and implementation, based on the successes of the Latin American domestic workers movement.

Taiwan for Her: Gender (In)Equality in Taiwan
2022-01-19 17:00 - 18:00 | Online
Organized by the UCLA Asia Pacific Center
Date: Wednesday, January 19, 2022
Time: 5:00 PM (PST)
Location: Online/Zoom (Registration Required)
What are the countries that come to mind when you think of gender equality? Most people would be very likely to mention Nordic countries. To many people’s surprise, Taiwan has progressed tremendously in narrowing the gender gap, especially when compared to other Asian countries. Current President Tsai Ing-wen was elected as the first female leader in Taiwan in 2016 and won reelection in 2020. The share of seats in parliament held by women is about 40% in Taiwan, which is roughly equal to Denmark and higher than the U.S. (27%). However, despite these advances in women’s political participation, it is unclear to what extent the increase in female representation has translated into improvements in women’s social and economic status in Taiwan. Therefore, we invite Director and Associate Professor Weiting Wu in Graduate Institute for Gender Studies at Shih Hsin University to discuss the following topics: what Taiwan has achieved in gender equality and marriage equality; what factors explain Taiwan’s progress; furthermore, what challenges and difficulties women in Taiwan still face from an intersectional perspective.
Weiting Wu is an associate professor and the director of the Graduate Institute for Gender Studies at Shih Hsin University. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at City University of New York. Her research areas are social movement, gender politics, and state-society relations.
This event is part of the Asia Pacific Center’s Taiwan in the World lecture series.
The UCLA Taiwan in the World lecture series aims to promote and disseminate knowledge about Taiwan’s society, political system, social structure, and institutions in a global context, and shed light on Taiwan’s political economy, international relations, and US-Taiwan-China relations. This series is organized by Taiwan in the World postdoctoral fellow Shih-chan Dai and supported with funding by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles. This lecture is cosponsored by the UCLA Center for the Study of Women, LGBTQ Campus Resource Center, and Office of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion.

Revisiting the “3-ply yarn”: Where are the sex/gender/sexuality concepts now?
2021-12-03 13:00 - 14:00 | Semel B8-225
Organized by the UCLA Center for Social Medicine and Humanities
DATE: Friday, December 3, 2021
TIME: 1:00-2:00 PM
LOCATION: Semel B8-225 or Virtual/Zoom (REGISTRATION REQUIRED)
EVENT FLYER
Scholars have distinguished among sex, gender, and sexuality for decades, but the distinctions have always been contested, and have become more rather than less so in recent years. This talk will explore the changing relationships among these concepts with a special view to how they are used and what they can accomplish, and obscure, in medical research and practice. A Q&A session is to follow. Free event. Registration required.
FEATURING
Sahar Sadjadi, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Social Studies of Medicine Department, McGill University
Rebecca M. Jordan-Young, PhD, Ann Whitney Olin Professor Chair, Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, Barnard College

Sewing Social Justice
2021-11-30 13:00 - 15:00
Sewing Intimacies

Organized by the American Indian Studies Center
DATE: Tuesday, November 30, 2021
TIME: 1 PM
LOCATION: Virtual/Zoom (REGISTRATION REQUIRED)
This webinar showcases the work of the Sewing Intimacies Project – a project encompassing a group of Dakota and Lakota women who collectively embarked on a journey to create jingle dresses this past summer. In the wake of COVID-19 and the ongoing violence from the settler state, the jingle dress has continued to serve as a catalyst toward healing and resistance for Native communities across Indian country. Though the dress originates with the Ojibwe people, the power it garners to bring communities together to overcome trauma is palpable. In this webinar, members of the Sewing Intimacies group will come together to discuss their experiences making the dress and the elements of healing and community-building that are facilitated in the process of crafting. Using a native-feminist framework grounded in theories of Oceti Šakowin relationality, this project asks how crafting serves as a conduit to cultivating community-based resistance in spite of the violences enacted by settler colonialism. As a virtual participation-observation project this event will also discuss the methodological implications of the project as it takes place under the conditions of pandemic.
Participants:

Dr. Mishuana Goeman, Project Advisor
Jessica Fremland (Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota), PhD Student – Gender Studies
Nancy Bordeaux (Sicangu Lakota), Sewing Intimacies Group Facilitator
Clementine Bordeaux (Oglala/Sicangu Lakota), PhD Candidate – Worlds Arts and Cultures

The Auntie Sewing Squad
Organized by the Asian American Studies Department
DATE: POSTPONED TO WINTER 2022 (DATE TBD)
TIME: 3:30 PM
LOCATION: Virtual/Zoom
Join us for this event celebrating the Auntie Sewing Squad, a massive mutual-aid network of volunteers who have been providing free masks in the wake of US government failures during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Featuring:
Asian American Studies MA and Gender Studies PhD alum Preeti Sharma and co-editors Mai-Linh Hong and Chrissy Yau, discussing their recently released book The Auntie Sewing Squad Guide to Mask-Making, Radical Care, and Racial Justice (UC Press).
Screening of “Auntie Kristina,” a short film about the Auntie Sewing Squad and a discussion with the filmmaker, Asian American Studies MA alum Hannah Joo.

The Ungrateful Refugee: Dina Nayeri, in conversation with Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi
2021-11-22 09:30 - 10:45
Organized by the International Institute and the Asian American Studies Department
DATE: Monday, November 22, 2021
TIME: 9:30-10:45 AM
LOCATION: Virtual/Zoom (REGISTRATION REQUIRED)
FLYER
What is it like to be a refugee? What is the role of narrative in determining who is considered a refugee and who gets labeled an economic migrant? Why is it important to respect refugees’ dignity, and what are best practices for doing so? These are questions that Dina Nayeri explores in her award-winning book of creative nonfiction, The Ungrateful Refugee (2019). This book interweaves Nayeri’s experiences as a child refugee from Iran with her advocacy for contemporary refugees. During this event, Nayeri will engage in conversation with Dr. Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi about her book and how it continues to resonate in the current moment of mass forced displacement from Afghanistan, Haiti, Syria, and Central America, to name just a few. This event kicks off the UCLA International Institute’s year-long series, “Global Racial Justice and the Everyday Politics of Crisis and Hope,” continuing conversations inspired by the Movement for Black Lives and the long history of interconnected struggles for racial justice in the context of global histories of colonialism, imperialism and internationalism.
Dina Nayeri is the author of two novels and a book of creative nonfiction, The Ungrateful Refugee (2019), winner of the Geschwister Scholl Preis and finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Kirkus Prize, and Elle Grand Prix des Lectrices, and called by The Guardian “a work of astonishing, insistent importance.” Her essay of the same name was one of The Guardian’s most widely read long reads in 2017, and is taught in schools and anthologized around the world. A 2019-2020 Fellow at the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris, and winner of the 2018 UNESCO City of Literature Paul Engle Prize, Nayeri has won a National Endowment for the Arts literature grant, the O. Henry Prize, and Best American Short Stories, among other honors. Her work has been published in 20+ countries and in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Granta, and many other publications. Her short dramas have been produced by the English Touring Theatre and The Old Vic in London. She is a graduate of Princeton, Harvard, and the Iowa Writers Workshop. In autumn 2021, she will be a Fellow at the American Library in Paris. She is currently working on plays, screenplays, and her upcoming publications include The Waiting Place, a nonfiction children’s book about refugee camp, Who Gets Believed, a creative nonfiction book, and Sitting Bird, a novel.
Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi is an assistant professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her book, Archipelago of Resettlement: Vietnamese Refugee Settlers and Decolonization across Guam and Israel-Palestine, is forthcoming with University of California Press in spring 2022.

50 Years of Chicana Feminism: Celebrating the Hijas de Cuauhtémoc
2021-11-18 18:00 - 20:00
Organized by the Chicano Studies Research Center
Join us to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1971 newspaper Hijas de Cuauhtémoc, a groundbreaking publication of Chicana feminist activism and philosophy. Hijas de Cuauhtémoc members were among the first to articulate Chicana feminism, creating a praxis that embraced economic justice, community empowerment and third world solidarity as well as named key issues of domestic violence, the sexual double standard, and employment for Chicanas.
DATE: Thursday, November 18, 2021
TIME: 6:00-8:00 PM
LOCATION: Online via Zoom (registration required)
Featuring the original members Anna Nieto Gomez and Corinne Sánchez
Scholars/Musicians: Dionne Espinoza (CSULA), María Cotera (UT Austin), Maylei Blackwell (UCLA), Grammy Award-winning Martha Gonzalez (Scripps College/Quetzal).

Virgin Capital, A Virtual Book Talk with Tami Navarro
2021-11-17 12:30 - 13:45
Organized by the Department of Anthropology
DATE: Wednesday, November 17, 2021
TIME: 12:30-1:45 PM
LOCATION: Virtual/Zoom (REGISTRATION REQUIRED)
FLYER
Virgin Capital: Race, Gender, and Financialization in the US Virgin Islands (SUNY Press, 2021) examines the cultural impact and historical significance of the Economic Development Commission (EDC) in the United States Virgin Islands, a tax holiday scheme. Drawing on fieldwork conducted during the boom years leading up to the 2008–2009 financial crisis, Virgin Capital provides ethnographic insight into the continuing relations of coloniality at work in the quintessentially “modern” industry of financial services and neoliberal “development” regimes, with their grounding in hierarchies of race, gender, class, and geopolitical positioning.

Playing with No Consequences: A Conversation with Michelle Krusiec
2021-11-12 15:00 - 17:00
Organized by the UCLA Department of Theater
DATE: Friday, November 12, 2021
TIME: 3:00PM – 5:00PM
LOCATION: Virtual/Zoom (REGISTRATION REQUIRED)
FLYER
A conversation with Regents’ Lecturer, Michelle Krusiec and TFT Dean Brian Kite
Actress and filmmaker Michelle Krusiec has sustained a 25-year career working as a woman of color in an industry that has both tokenized her and given her visibility. In this frank, funny and transparent discussion, Dean Brian Kite speaks with Krusiec about the lessons of invisibility and how it forces us to delve deeper into our work as storytellers.
Streaming live from the UCLA Darren Star Screening Room before a small studio audience.
Michelle Krusiec is an actress and filmmaker. She is presently a director in the 2021 AFI Directing Workshop for Women. Her work as an API artist has been recognized by The White House, the State of California and the Museum of Chinese in America. She recently penned an op-ed for The Washington Post about playing Anna May Wong in Ryan Murphy’s Netflix series Hollywood.

Open House 2021
2021-09-22 12:00 - 15:00
Welcome back to campus, Bruins!

CSW is inviting new and returning UCLA students to our Open House to learn more about our research streams, upcoming events, and funding opportunities (for both graduate and undergraduate students of all genders). Stop by in-person in front of the Public Affairs building from 12-2 PM or join the Zoom room for a virtual meeting from 2-3 PM. You can stop by at any time during our Open House hours. FREE SWAG will be given out to all visitors!
Date: Wednesday, September 22, 2021
Time: 12:00-2:00 PM (in-person), 2:00-3:00 PM (virtual)
Location: Outside 1500 Public Affairs (in-person) | Zoom link (virtual)
“Introduction to CSW” packet: for Graduate Students | for Undergraduate Students

Information Session for Graduate Students
2021-09-16 14:00 - 15:00
As part of the New Grad Student & TA Resource Fair, we’re hosting an open information session specifically for UCLA graduate students! Stop by our Zoom room on Thursday, September 16th from 2 to 3pm, to find out about our research streams, upcoming events, and funding opportunities.
How to Register and Access Zoom Info
“Introduction to CSW” Packet for Graduate Students

Assembling/Reassembling
2021-06-24 13:00 - 15:00 | Online/Zoom
Organized by Now Be Here Art
Why books NOW? Are books symbolic objects? Have books created political change? What is it that makes artists’ books a unique /compelling art form? Can artists’ books advance social justice for women? This panel discussion will tackle the history and current state of independent press and self-publishing by women artists making books as an art form.
DATE: Thursday, June 24, 2021
TIME: 1:00 PM (PST)
LOCATION: Online event (RSVP)
This panel discussion focuses on book aesthetics in the history and current state of independent press and self-publishing by women artists. Though increasingly active in California publishing over the last century, as in so many areas, women have not always been as visible as their contributions deserve. Showcasing a diverse range of women artists and curators, the panel address the ways in which women artists’ publications create a distinct discourse, whether that arises from editorial ethics or curatorial decisions, feminist methods, specific topics and themes, or anticipated audiences. Most importantly, the panel will call attention to vibrant works of art being made in the book format designed to bring transformative points of view into published form.
Speakers:
Tia Blassingame, Artist, Professor and Press Director Scripps College
Johanna Drucker, Moderator, Artist, Breslauer Professor, Information Studies, UCLA
Alexandra Grant, Artist, Publisher X Artists’ Books
Marcia Reed, Chief Curator, The Getty Research Institute
Susan Sironi, Artist

Author Chat Series: Akwaeke Emezi x Zoé Samudzi
2021-06-23 18:00 - 19:00
Organized by the Salt Eaters Bookshop and the Black Feminism Initiative
Join us in celebrating the release of Akwaeke Emezi’s Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir with an intimate conversation between authors Akwaeke Emezi and Zoé Samudzi. Wednesday June 23rd at 6pm PST, 9pm EST. RSVP HERE.
DATE: Wednesday, June 23, 2021
TIME: 6 PM (PST) | 9 PM (EST)
LOCATION: Online (Register Online)
The Salt Eaters Bookshop is an emerging independent bookstore coming to ​Inglewood, CA early 2021.
The Salt Eaters aims to create a Black feminist literary hub and resting ground for dreamers, seekers of knowledge, creatives, writers, community archivists, artists, change agents, and those invested in a liberation practice that holds Black women, girls, femmes, and non-binary people at the center.

Freedom and Fugitivity
2021-06-11 10:00 - 11:30
Organized by Sanctuary Spaces: Reworlding Humanism within the Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy
Date: Friday, June 11
Time: 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM
Location: Webinar (Registration Required)
Situated at the present historical conjuncture of resurgent white nationalism and xenophobia, the closing event of the Sanctuary Spaces Sawyer Seminar, Freedom and Fugitivity thinks across Black feminism and Indigenous studies to foreground “beautiful experiments” of flight, refusal, and rebellion.

Featuring:
Saidiya Hartman, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University; 2019 MacArthur Fellow
In conversation with:
Aisha K. Finch, Associate Professor of African American Studies and Gender Studies, UCLA
Tiffany Lethabo King, Associate Professor of African-American Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Georgia State University
Kyle Mays, Assistant Professor of African American Studies, American Indian Studies, and History, UCLA
Moderated by:
Sarah Haley, Director of the UCLA Center for the Study of Women Black Feminism Initiative
Associate Professor of African American Studies and Gender Studies, UCLA
Chaired by:
Ananya Roy, Director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy
Professor of Urban Planning, Social Welfare, and Geography, UCLA

Co-organized with Black Feminism Initiative at UCLA
Co-sponsored by the UCLA American Indian Studies Center
Part of the Sawyer Seminar Sanctuary Spaces: Reworlding Humanism

2021 Awards Celebration
2021-05-20 16:00 - 17:30
This event has passed. Watch Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell’s keynote address and Q&A on CSW’s YouTube channel!
Join the UCLA Center for the Study of Women (CSW) for a special virtual event on Thursday, May 20th to honor the center’s accomplishments, student award recipients, and this year’s Distinguished Leader in Feminism Award honoree.
Watch the Livestream
FEATURING THE KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Intersectional Feminism and the Fight for Justice
by
Holly J. Mitchell

Supervisor, 2nd District, Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors
This year, CSW has selected Holly J. Mitchell as the recipient of the Center for the Study of Women’s 2021 Distinguished Leader in Feminism Award. She represents the 2nd district on the LA County Board of Supervisors, and is a member of the California Legislative Black Caucus. From 2013 to 2020, Mitchell served as State Senator for California’s 30th District, and has previously served as California State Assemblymember for the 54th District.
Please join us to hear LA County Supervisor and former California state senator Holly Mitchell present on lessons learned from inspiring women in her life, defining leadership moments on her career journey, and the need for intersectional feminism in the fight for justice and progress.
REGISTRATION OPEN

EVENT DETAILS & REGISTRATION
Date: Thursday, May 20, 2021
Time: 4:00 PM (PST)
Location: Zoom Webinar (Registration required) / Livestream
Registrants will receive a Zoom link a few days prior to the event. If the Zoom room is at capacity, attendees will be able to view the event via livestream on CSW’s YouTube channel.
For questions, please contact CSW at csw@csw.ucla.edu.

ABOUT THE KEYNOTE SPEAKER
On November 3, 2020, Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell was elected to serve the Second District of Los Angeles County. Throughout her career in public service, Supervisor Mitchell has always worked with the understanding – that creating a California where all residents can thrive – means investing in the communities, families, and children of LA County.
Having authored and passed over 90 laws in the California Legislature, Supervisor Mitchell brings an extensive public policy record to the Board of Supervisors. Many of her bills have been at the forefront of expanding healthcare access, addressing systemic racism, and championing criminal justice reform. During her tenure in the California State Legislature, Supervisor Mitchell represented the 54th District for three years as an Assemblymember and later served seven years as State Senator for the 30th District.
As State Senator, she also held the distinction of being the first African American to serve as Chair of the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee. In this capacity, she led the passage of state budgets each totaling over $200 billion for the fifth largest economy in the world.
Prior to serving in elected office, Supervisor Mitchell was CEO of Crystal Stairs, California’s largest nonprofit dedicated to child and family development. In this role, she ensured that families across Los Angeles County gained access to childcare and poverty prevention resources. Before leading Crystal Stairs, she worked as a legislative advocate at the Western Center for Law and Poverty.
Supervisor Mitchell’s leadership has been recognized by over 100 community and business groups. She was recently honored as a 2020 Visionary by Oprah Winfrey’s O Magazine for making California the first state in the nation to ban natural hair discrimination with The CROWN Act.
As Supervisor, Mitchell is proud to serve the two million residents of the Second District which includes the neighborhood she grew up in, Leimert Park, and the following cities: Carson, Compton, Culver City, Gardena, Hawthorne, Inglewood, Lawndale, Lynwood, parts of Los Angeles, and dozens of unincorporated communities.
Supervisor Mitchell is a University of California at Riverside Highlander, a CORO Foundation Fellow and mother to Ryan.
Holly Mitchell on Social Media
Instagram: @HollyJMitchell
Twitter: @HollyJMitchell
Facebook: @SupervisorHollyJ.Mitchell

Conversations in Black Feminist Practice: Black Queer Radicalisms
2021-05-07 13:00 - 14:30 | Online/Zoom
A Discussion Between Charlene Carruthers and C. Riley Snorton
Moderated by Ebony Oldham with a Welcome by SA Smythe
This event has passed. View a recording on our YouTube Channel.
Download Flyer
This talk is part of the Black Feminism Initiative’s 2020-2021 public program series, Conversations in Black Feminist Practice.
DATE: Friday, May 7, 2021
TIME: 1:00 PM-2:30 PM
LOCATION: Online

Charlene Carruthers is a political strategist, cultural worker, and PhD student in the Department of African American Studies at Northwestern University. A practitioner of telling more complete stories, her research includes Black feminist political economies, abolition of patriarchal and carceral systems, and the role of cultural work within the Black Radical Tradition.
Her work spans more than 15 years of community organizing across racial, gender and economic justice movements. As the founding national director of BYP100 (Black Youth Project 100), she has worked alongside hundreds of young Black activists to build a national base of activists in a member-led organization of Black 18-35 year olds dedicated to creating justice and freedom for all Black people. She is the author of the book Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements (available in English and Spanish language).

C. Riley Snorton, Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago, is jointly appointed in the department and the Center for Gender and Sexuality Studies. Snorton is a cultural theorist who focuses on racial, sexual and transgender histories and cultural productions. He is the author of Nobody Is Supposed to Know: Black Sexuality on the Down Low (University of Minnesota Press, 2014) and Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), winner of the John Boswell Prize from the American Historical Association, the William Sanders Scarborough Prize from the Modern Language Association, the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction, the Sylvia Rivera Award in Transgender Studies from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, and an honorable mention from the American Library Association Stonewall Book Award Committee. Snorton is also the co-editor of Saturation: Race, Art and the Circulation of Value (MIT Press/New Museum, 2020).

Thinking Gender 2021: "Care, Mutual Aid, and Reproductive Labor in a Time of Crisis"
2021-04-28 08:00 - 2021-04-30 17:00
This event has passed. Watch the Keynote Panel on our YouTube Channel.

Thinking Gender 2021
31st Annual Graduate Student Research Conference
“Care, Mutual Aid, and Reproductive Labor in a Time of Crisis”
April 28-30, 2021

Free, Public Keynote Panel on Friday, April 30, 2021
(Register for Zoom link)
Thinking Gender 2021 will focus on feminist, queer, trans, transnational, Indigenous, and intersectional approaches to care, mutual aid, and reproductive labor.
Abstract submissions are now closed.
For Thinking Gender 2021, graduate student presentations will be held in private workshops on April 28-29. Only the April 30 keynote panel will be open to the public.
Poster illustration by Favianna Rodriguez. Copyright 2020 Favianna.com.

KEYNOTE PANEL

Join the UCLA Center for the Study of Women on Friday, April 30, 2021 for a special Thinking Gender 2021 webinar featuring keynote presentations and a conversation with Dean Spade and Melanie Yazzie on the subject of mutual aid, abolitionist politics of care, and radical relationality.
Register online to receive the Zoom link! This webinar will be livestreamed, and a recording will be posted on our YouTube channel. Closed captioning is available.
DATE: Friday, April 30, 2021
TIME: 12:00 PM-1:30 PM
LOCATION: Zoom Webinar (RSVP required)
Keynote Panelists:

DEAN SPADE
“Mutual Aid for Survival and Mobilization”
Dean Spade’s talk draws from his recently published book, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During this Crisis (and the Next) (Verso Press 2020), which provides a grassroots theory and practical tools of mutual aid as a key to practicing abolition.
Dean Spade has been working to build queer and trans liberation based in racial and economic justice for the past two decades. He’s the author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law, the director of the documentary “Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back!,” and the creator of the mutual aid toolkit at BigDoorBrigade.com. His latest book, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next), was published by Verso Press in October 2020.

MELANIE K. YAZZIE
“Ecologies of Indigenous Caretaking”
Melanie Yazzie’s presentation explores Indigenous mutual-aid approaches to “radical relationality” and care between Indigenous people, land, and water.
Melanie K. Yazzie (Diné) is Assistant Professor of Native American Studies and American Studies at the University of New Mexico. She specializes in Navajo/American Indian history, political ecology, Indigenous feminisms, queer Indigenous studies, and theories of policing and the state. She also organizes with The Red Nation, a grassroots Native-run organization committed to the liberation of Indigenous people from colonialism and capitalism.

Moderators:

CATHERINE FELIZ
Catherine Feliz is an interdisciplinary artist and medicine person born and raised in Lenapehoking territory [New York City] to parents from Kiskeya Ayiti [Dominican Republic]. An entanglement with archival research, disarming apparatuses of violence, and earth based healing inform their practice. They work to reclaim ancestral technologies that have been systematically erased by drawing from multiple disciplines to unearth histories and make space for decolonial futures. Catherine is currently an MFA candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles department of Interdisciplinary Studio. You might also know Catherine as the medicine-maker behind Botánica Cimarrón, the co-founder of Abuela Taught Me — an Afro-Taino Two-Spirit educational space, and a founding member of Homecoming — a QTBIPOC radical care collective.

ROSIE STOCKTON
Rosie Stockton is a PhD student in the Gender Studies Department, and is the 2021 Thinking Gender Graduate Student Coordinator. Their research draws on abolitionist feminisms, Black feminist thought, and queer and trans critique to look at political and aesthetic practices of anti-carceral resistance. They are a member of the UCLA Black Feminism Initiative, and an organizer with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP) and the DROP LWOP campaign. They are also a poet, and their first book, Permanent Volta, is forthcoming from Nightboat Books in May 2021.

Cosponsored by

American Indian Studies Center
American Indian Studies Program
Anthropology Department
Asian American Studies Center
Asian American Studies Department
Chicana/o and Central American Studies Department
Chicano Studies Research Center
Critical Race Studies Program at UCLA School of Law
Division of Humanities
Gender Studies Department
Institute for American Cultures
Institute for Research on Labor and Employment
Labor Center
Office of the Chancellor
Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA School of Law
Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies
Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law

Rupture and Continuity
2021-04-23 10:00 - 2021-04-25 16:00
Organized by the Department of Political Science
1st Annual UCLA Graduate Conference in Political Theory
Date: Friday, April 23rd – Sunday, April 25
Location: Online/Zoom
Event Registration
Alongside a keynote address from Professor Bonnie Honig of Brown University, the conference will feature a number of panels on feminist politics, indigenous politics, postcolonial theory, as well as on the history of race and political thought. Nearly every panel will include a discussion of women and gender, which makes this conference a fruitful site not only for intersectional work (on gender/race/class) but also for thinking of these questions in comparative and international systemic contexts.

The Films of Sarah Maldoror
2021-04-22 16:00 - 19:30 | Online/Zoom
Organized by UCLA Film & Television Archive
Free Registration (RSVP to receive Zoom link)
The UCLA Film & Television Archive is partnering with CSW and the Black Feminism Initiative to present two of Sarah Maldoror’s markedly distinct works: her first short, Monangambé (1969), and her satiric, delightful French television film, Dessert for Constance (1981). Presented in dialogue with each other, the two works construct a nuanced portrait of Maldoror’s unique formal, social and political concerns.
Featuring a post-screening conversation with Maldoror’s daughter, producer and distributor Annouchka de Andrade, UCLA Cinema & Media Studies PhD candidate Zama Dube, and UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television Associate Professor Ellen C. Scott.

Paging through Photos and Songs: Hayganush Mark and Koharig Ghazarosian’s Friendship in Post-Genocide Istanbul
2021-04-20 12:00 - 13:30
Organized by the Promise Institute for Human Rights, UCLA School of Law
Date: April 20, 2021
Time: 12:00 PM
Location: Zoom Webinar (Register for link)
In this event, Dr. Lerna Ekmekcioglu (MIT) and Dr. Melissa Bilal (UCLA) will follow the story of a friendship between two Armenian women in Istanbul that endured the hardships of WWI, the Armenian Genocide, and early republican Turkey’s repressive minority politics. Hayganush Mark was the leading Armenian feminist writer of her time and Koharig Ghazarosian was a prominent composer, concert pianist, and piano teacher active in Paris and Istanbul. Their intertwined lives can be traced in photographs, letters, and pages of sheet music. Internationally acclaimed actress, filmmaker, and writer Nora Armani, mezzo-soprano Danielle Segen of the Vem Ensemble, and internationally renowned pianist Steven Vanhauwaert performed and recorded Ghazarosian’s song settings of Mark’s poetry to be premiered at this event. Through this repertoire which was brought back to life as a part of their ongoing project Feminism in Armenian: An Interpretive Anthology and Digital Archive, Bilal and Ekmekcioglu will discuss the ruptures and continuities in Armenian community life in Turkey. This event is organized by the Promise Institute for Human Rights and Promise Armenian Institute in partnership with UCLA Armenian Music Program under the direction of Movses Pogossian.

Africa's Readiness for Climate Change (ARCC) Forum
2021-04-19 09:00 - 2021-04-23 09:00
Organized by the UCLA African Studies Center
Registration to attend ARCC is now open: RSVP here
Date: April 19-23, 2021
Time: 9:00 AM
Location: Zoom (RSVP for link)
The UCLA African Studies Center and the Earth Rights Institute invite you to engage with us in the 2021 virtual ARCC Forum. The inaugural forum will expand an integrated vision of “Green Development” in Africa that is both ecologically and economically sustainable, emphasizing local solutions to climate change developed by African stakeholders in urban and rural communities. ARCC 2021 will assemble interdisciplinary panels of scholars, scientists, industry leaders, climate change innovators, youth activists, and policy-makers to discuss cutting-edge research and the most successful sustainable development projects unfolding on the ground. Participants will identify priorities for research and implementation and collaboratively develop a five-year action plan.

Connecting Art & Law for Liberation
2021-04-16 16:00 - 2021-04-17 13:00 | Online
Organized by Criminal Justice Program, School of Law
Join visionary artists, activists, attorneys, advocates, legal scholars, and community members at UCLA to share innovative, cutting-edge collaborations at the intersection of ART and LAW – aimed at developing and disseminating new strategies to end mass incarceration.
FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

CSW Research Affiliates Brown Bag, "Resist, Reframe, Insist: Alice Notley’s Poetics of Inclusion" by Elline Lipkin
2021-04-16 12:00 - 13:00
A Talk by Elline Lipkin, PhD
Register Online
This talk considers the experimental poetics of contemporary American poet Alice Notley, one of the few women considered part of the New York school. Notley’s use of an “expanded ‘I’” within her work admits other voices into her poems, rather than just a singular speaker, particularly within her contemporary epic “The Descent of Alette.” Notley’s writing about motherhood and multivocality reflects her commitment to explore boundaries on the page and is a hallmark of her poetic vision.
DATE: Friday, April 16, 2021
TIME: 12:00 PM-1:00 PM
LOCATION: Zoom (RSVP to receive link)
Elline Lipkin is a poet, academic, and nonfiction writer. Her first book, The Errant Thread, was chosen by Eavan Boland for the Kore Press First Book Award. Her second book, Girls’ Studies, was published by Seal Press and explores contemporary girlhood in America. She is currently a Research Scholar with UCLA’s Center for the Study of Women and also teaches poetry for Los Angeles Writing Classes. From 2016-2018, she served as Poet Laureate of Altadena and co-edited the Altadena Poetry Review.

International human rights law and domestic violence: progress or retreat?
2021-03-05 09:00 - 10:15 | Online/Zoom
Organized by the Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA Law
A Talk by Dr. Dubravka Šimonović
Date: Friday, March 5
Time: 9:00 – 10:15 AM
Location: Online/Zoom (RSVP for Zoom link)
Event Details
Dr. Dubravka Šimonović was appointed as United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences in June 2015 by the UN Human Rights Council for a six years’ tenure. Dr. Šimonović was a member of the UN CEDAW Committee between 2003 and 2014, and served as its Chairperson in 2007 and 2008. At the regional level she was the Chair of the Council of Europe’s Task Force to combat violence against women (2006-2007) that in its Final report proposed adoption of the CoE Convention on violence against women. Between 2008 and 2010, she co-chaired the Council of Europe’s intergovernmental Committee that drafted the Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence – The Istanbul Convention.
For a number of years she was in diplomacy in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Croatia – as a diplomat she attended the Fourth World Women’s conference in Beijing (1995) and served as the Chairperson of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (2000/2001). She finished her diplomatic carrier as the Ambassador of Croatia to the OSCE and United Nations in Vienna, Austria (2013-2015).
Dr. Šimonović holds a PhD in family law from the University of Zagreb. She is the author of several books and articles on women’s rights and violence against women. She also lectured at different universities and was a Visiting Professor in Practice in the Centre for Women, Peace and Security at LSE for 2016-2018.

Imagining the Political: Vernacular Idioms of Sexuality in India
2021-03-02 18:00 - 19:30
Organized by the Department of Asian American Studies and the UCLA Asian American Studies Center
Date: Tuesday, March 2, 2021
Time: 6:00 – 7:15 PM
Location: Online/Zoom (RSVP)
Professor Navaneetha Mokkil will discuss her new book, Unruly Figures, which navigates the pulsating links between subjectivity, political activism and the world-making capacity of cultural practices in a non-metropolitan region in India. It focuses on the non-linear figurations of the sex worker and the lesbian in Kerala, a state in Southern India, and the fractured processes of staging the politics of sexuality. The book moves back and forth from the post-1990s to the pre-1990s interlinking different forms, texts, genres and events in order to show how sexual subjects are not finished portraits, nor silenced bodies eager to claim visibility and recognition. Rather, the transactions between the subject and the figure point to the breaks in the conception of a cohesive, visible and agential political actor.
Navaneetha Mokkil teaches at the Center for Women’s Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. She is currently Charles Wallace India Trust Fellow at the University of Edinburgh.

The Feminist War on Crime: The Unexpected Role of Women’s Liberation in Mass Incarceration
2021-03-02 12:15 - 13:30
Organized by Critical Race Studies at UCLA School of Law
DATE: Tuesday, March 2, 2021
TIME: 12:15 PM – 1:30 PM
LOCATION: Online/Zoom
Event Details | RSVP for Zoom link
Aya Gruber, author and Professor of Law at the University of Colorado Law School, and Jennifer M. Chacón, Professor of Law and CRS core faculty member at UCLA Law School, will be discussing Gruber’s new book, The Feminist War on Crime: The Unexpected Role of Women’s Liberation in Mass Incarceration.
About the book: Many feminists grapple with the problem of hyper-incarceration in the United States, yet commentators on gender crime continue to assert that criminal law is not tough enough. This punitive impulse, prominent legal scholar Aya Gruber argues, is dangerous and counterproductive. In their quest to secure women’s protection from domestic violence and rape, American feminists have become soldiers in the war on crime by emphasizing white female victimhood, expanding the power of police and prosecutors, touting the problem-solving power of incarceration, and diverting resources toward law enforcement and away from marginalized communities. Deploying vivid cases and unflinching analysis, Gruber documents the failure of the state to combat sexual and domestic violence through law and punishment. Zero-tolerance anti-violence law and policy tend to make women less safe and more fragile. Mandatory arrests, no-drop prosecutions, forced separation, and incarceration embroil poor women of color in a criminal justice system that is historically hostile to them. This carceral approach exacerbates social inequalities by diverting more power and resources toward a fundamentally flawed criminal justice system, further harming victims, perpetrators, and communities alike. In order to reverse this troubling course, Gruber contends that we must abandon the conventional feminist wisdom, fight violence against women without reinforcing the American prison state, and use criminalization as a technique of last—not first—resort.
