Faculty News

marjorie becker | lisa bitel | elizabeth davenport | diane ghirardo | sharon gillerman | linda serra hagedorn | velina hasu houston | pierrette hondagneu-sotelo | philippa levine | phoebe liebig | tara mcpherson | michael messner | gloria orenstein | margaret russett | nellie stromquist | j. ann tickner | walter williams | jennifer wolch

Marjorie Becker’s (History) article “Talking Back to Frida: Houses of Emotional Mestizaje” will be published this December in History and Theory. (back to top)

Lisa Bitel (History and Gender Studies) published Women in Early Medieval Europe, 300-1100. Her article “Body of a Saint, Story of a Goddess: Origins of the Brigidine Tradition,” is forthcoming in Textual Practice. She presented “The State of the Field on the Isle of the Saints” at panel on of State of Irish Studies at the National American Conference on British Studies. Bitel is currently teaching a multimedia version of History 270, From Goddesses to Witches: Women in Premodern Europe—for their final projects, students are creating web-based "shrines". (back to top)

Elizabeth Davenport (Center for Women and Men) co-authored a chapter with Judith Stacey, "Queer Families Quack Back," published in A Handbook of Gay and Lesbian Studies. The Rossier School of Education, in partnership with the Center for Women and Men (Student Affairs), has been awarded a $400,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice (Violence Against Women Office) to work with the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women and the Sheriff's Department to address the prevention of and response to violence against women in Los Angeles. Melora Sundt, PhD, is principal investigator, and Elizabeth Davenport is co-PI. The five community colleges of the Los Angeles Community College District and Mt. St. Mary's College are consortium partners, and will be collaborating with USC to raise service levels and practice consistently across institutions of higher education in Los Angeles. Specifically this project is designed to: (1) provide a process for each campus to benchmark educational interventions and service delivery against VAWO standards, and set and meet new goals; (2) create a model for a peer-based education and outreach program, adaptable to any campus setting; and (3) develop and pilot formal education in the areas of gender and violence for undergraduates, through the creation of an academic minor, and for graduate students and future leaders, through the creation of a certificate program. Davenport and her collaborators hope to benefit more than 130,000 students, the majority of whom are non-traditional by age, first language and ethnicity. Since many students migrate between these various campuses, they know that if they want to change the culture of violence in Los Angeles, and improve the quality of life for students, they need to bring key “pathway” campuses together. (back to top)

Diane Ghirardo (Architecture) received a Guggenheim Fellowship for "Women's Spaces in Renaissance Ferrara." (back to top)

Sharon Gillerman’s (Judaic Studies) article “Samson in Vienna: The Theatrics of Jewish Masculinity” will appear in the journal Jewish Social Studies. She gave a paper at the German Studies Association Conference “Consuming the Jewish Body: Sensation and Spectacle in the Performances of Siegmund Breitbart.” (back to top)

Linda Serra Hagedorn (Rossier School of Education) published (with Sax, L. J. Arredondo, M., & DiCrisi III, F.) “Faculty Research Productivity: Exploring the Role of Gender and Family-Related Factors” in Research in Higher Education. and (with Laden, B. V.) “Exploring the climate for women as community college faculty” in New Directions in Community Colleges, and “Community College Faculty: Characteristics, Practices and Challenges.” She also delivered her talk “Is there a Chilly Climate for Female Community College Faculty?” at the Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education. (back to top)

Velina Hasu Houston (School of Theatre) delivered a speech entitled, “Mixed Messages: Multiracial Images in the Media,” that focused on representations of multirace in cinema at a conference of the Association of Multiethnic Americans in Tucson. The theme of the conference was multiracial children and youth. She received a Zumberge Research and Innovation Fund Grant, an interdisciplinary collaborative grant with Dr. Dorinne Kondo for a project including plays and research entitled, “TRANSNATIONALISM, RACE AND IDENTITY: A Theatrical and Critical Investigation .” (back to top)

Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo’s (Sociology) book Domestica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence has won 5 book awards, including the C. Wright Mills book award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems; the Max Weber Award, from Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work, American Sociological Association; and the Distinguished Book Award, from the Section on Sex and Gender, American Sociological Association. (back to top)

Philippa Levine (History) published “The White Slave Trade and the British Empire,” in Criminal Justice History. She was an organiser of the Oxford History of the British Empire/gender and empire conference, USC, October 18-20. In November, Levine delivered the keynote address at the “Women and Work Culture conference” at Leeds Metropolitan University and presented a workshop “Gender, Sexuality and Health” at the School of African & Oriental Studies, University of London. Finally, she moderated a panel at the North American Conference on British Studies. (back to top)

Phoebe Liebig (School of Gerontology) published an article in the Indian Journal of Social Development on economic security, retirement systems and the lifecourse (with an emphasis on older women). She wrote a chapter in the Asian Handbook on Aging (with P.V. Ramamurti) on living arrangements and social support for Indian elders (with a constant focus on the status of women). This was the basis for a conference presentation in Seoul, Korea on 9/6 on the “Social and Cultural Context of Aging in Asia.” She is currently evaluating of a program of training for caregivers (predominantly women) in Los Angeles County. (back to top)

Tara McPherson (Cinema-Television and Gender Studies) recently organized the Race in Digital Space 2.0 Conference + Performance event at USC and MOCA (online at www.annenberg.edu/race). McPherson's "Self, Other, and Electronic Media" was recently published in The New Media Handbook, and her interview with Anne-Marie Schleiner about computer game culture is forthcoming in Informatics of Resistance, the inaugural online publication of the Alt-X critical e-books series as well as a special issue of the Electronic Book Review. She was recently promoted to Associate Professor and has been enjoying her sabbatical at home with her new son, Dexter. (back to top)

Michael Messner (Sociology and Gender Studies) has a new book out: Taking the Field: Women, Men, and Sports. He was invited to the California Women's Law Center where he presented "Eying Title IX: Why the Hostility?" in September. (back to top)

Gloria Orenstein (Comparative Literature and Gender Studies) gave a slide lecture in September on Contemporary Jewish American Artists. She facilitated the exhibit of Siona Benjamin’s multicultural Jewish/Indian Art at Hillel. (back to top)

Margaret Russett (English) has recently returned from six months in Istanbul where she taught at Bogazici University on a Fulbright grant. She’s now completing an overlapping stint as a Guggenheim Fellow. During the past year Russett appeared as an interview subject in two Discovery Channel documentaries, one on Emily Bronte's Wuthering
Heights (directed by Rick King), and another on Impostors (directed by Jay Miracle). Her article “Three Faces of Ruth Rendell: Feminism, Popular Fiction, and the Question of Genre” is forthcoming in Genre. This fall she will return briefly to Istanbul for a lecture series. (back to top)

Nellie Stromquist (Rossier School of Education) published the articles “Globalization, the I, and the Other” in Current Issues in Comparative Education, and “Literacy and Gender: When Research and Policy Collide” in the Journal of Educational Planning and Administration. She also delivered several keynote lectures on public policies and gender in Latin American in international conferences organized by the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, the University of Guadalajara, and the National Pedagogic Institute (Colombia) during August and October 2002. (back to top)

J. Ann Tickner (School of International Relations) published “Feminist Perspectives on 9/11” in International Studies Perspectives. She was a speaker at the National Council for Research on Women's Annual Conference, entitled “Facing Global and National Crises: Women Define Human Security” last June in New York. (back to top)

Walter Williams (Anthropology and Gender Studies) continues to serve as Editor of the International Gay and Lesbian Review [published at www.usc.edu/gayreview online], and has written several book reviews for it. In August he presented a paper "Sexual Variance in World History" at the World History Association, meeting at Seoul National University. He did research on the emerging Korean gay community, and brought back a collection of publications and archival materials to deposit in ONE Institute and Archives, at USC. While in South Korea Williams also gave the inaugural lecture for the Korea Sexual Minority Rights Center, based on an adaptation from his book Overcoming Heterosexism and Homophobia. This lecture was featured in four of Seoul's major newspapers, as well as on Seoul television news stations. Williams has been involved in international protests relating to the Chinese government's August 24 arrest of Dr. Wan Yan Hai, China's leading AIDS prevention educator. China arrested him for "revealing state secrets" due to his publicizing government-approved blood selling programs that resulted in the massive infection of thousands of Chinese peasants with HIV. In 1997-98 Dr. Wan was an affiliated scholar at the Center for Feminist Research, and worked under Williams' direction while resident at USC. In 1997 Wan and Williams organized the first international conference of the Chinese Society for the Study of Sexual Minorities, which was held at USC. (back to top)

Jennifer Wolch (Geography) has several forthcoming publications on women and attitudes toward animals: “Siren Songs: Gendered Discourses of Concern for Sea Creatures” (with Jin Zhang) in Companion to Feminist Geography; “Animal Practices and the Racialization of Filipinas in Los Angeles” (with Marcie Griffith and Unna Lassiter) Society & Animals; “From Barnyard to Backyard to Bed: Attitudes Toward Animals Among Latinas in Los Angeles,” (with Unna Lassiter) Land of Sunshine: The Environmental History of Greater Los Angeles; and “Socio-cultural Aspects of Attitudes toward Marine Animals: A Focus Group Analysis” (with Unna Lassiter) in California Geographer. (back to top)