News & Events

* Women's and Gender Studies graduate student Sara Perryman received the Rutgers Graduate School - New Brunswick Teaching Award for showing excellence in undergraduate teaching.

* Stina Soderling, another WGS graduate student, received the Linda Rothman Award for teaching excellence. 

Rutgers University 
March 27-28, 2014

March 27 5:30 pm Keynote address: Sarah Whatmore (Oxford University)
March 28: 9:00-5:00 Workshop sessions

Attendance at both events open to the public

LOCATION: Douglass Campus, Ruth Dill Johnson Crockett Bldg, 162 Ryders Land, New Brunswick, NJ 08901 

For a complete schedule and further information, visit: http://after400ppm.wordpress.com.

Scholars in the social and natural sciences as well as the humanities are increasingly engaging with the notion that the planet has entered a new geological period, the Anthropocene, in which the Earth is fundamentally influenced by human activity on an unprecedented scale.

A recurrent concern throughout scholarly and popular discussions of the Anthropocene is science’s role in framing the crisis as well as finding its solutions. On the one hand, apocalyptic scenarios and questions about the human species’ chances for survival frequently accompany framings of science and technological expertise as the best, if indeed not the only, hope for responding effectively to cataclysmic threats (c.f.Launder and Thompson 2008). On the other hand, some philosophers and critical theorists argue that scientists’ appeals to truths ‘outside’ the reach of social or political forces ultimately amount to a refusal to take responsibility for the central role played by science in expanding humanity’s capacity to fundamentally transform the planet. From this perspective, science’s power to ameliorate the negative impacts of socioecological crises depends largely on abandoning “its…belief in detached objectivity [... and learning to] become reflexive about its own maintenance of the economic inequalities which make it possible” (Saldhana 2013). From both perspectives, however, it is clear that there can be no apolitical reckoning with science in the Anthropocene, leaving many scholars and thinkers to begin re-framing what constitutes politics and re-imagining what politics can do (Stengers 2005, Latour 2004, Whatmore 2002).

This workshop brings together early career academics and advanced graduate students whose research engages critically with the ways in which this profound transformation of the planet and its support systems also entails shifts in our understandings and practices of science and politics.

Organizers:
Eric Sarmiento
Sean Tanner 
Miriam Tola 
Max Hantel 

Sponsored by: The Departments of Geography and of Women’s and Gender Studies, the Graduate Geographers Project, the Women's and Gender Studies Graduate Association and The Center for Cultural Analysis at Rutgers University.

Rutgers University has joined the GEMMA European Exchange Program. The GEMMA Program in Women’s Studies features a Consortium of European Universities that offers a Masters in Women’s Studies. This Consortium is sponsored by the European Commission. The Program is two years in length. MA students in Rutgers - Women's and Gender Studies may visit two European Universities in which to complete coursework and benefit from scholarly mentorship. In their fourth term they will return to Rutgers to complete their thesis. The participating European universities are: Lodz, Poland; Oviedo, Spain; Granada, Spain; Hull, UK; Utrecht, Netherlands; and Bologna, Italy.

Two of the three featured panelists for the National Women’s Studies Association’s May 17, 2012 webinar “What Can You Do With a Women's Studies Degree?” have degrees in Women’s and Gender Studies from Rutgers. They are:

* Ingrid Dahl, currently the Director of Next Gen (youth programs) at Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC) in San Francisco, CA, earned both her BA and MA in Women’s and Gender Studies from Rutgers.

* Allison Attenello, currently the Training Director at New York Peace Institute in New York City, earned her BA in Women’s and Gender Studies and her MS in Global Affairs from Rutgers.

Eleanor Brilliant Award for Outstanding Senior in Women’s and Gender Studies

Melissa A. Gabilanes

Gilda Morales Award for Outstanding Student Activist

Em Kay

Dorothy Hamilton Balliet Award for Outstanding Research

Annu Dahiya

Dee Garrison Award for Justice and Peacemaking

Amarilis Rodriguez

Elizabeth Hallowell Award for the Advancement of Women’s Rights

Laura M. Callejas

Douglass College Women’s and Gender Studies Alumnae Prize

Caitlin McAleer

Among our wonderful alums, we would like to congratulate:

* Megan Kennedy started her new job as Campaign Management Analyst with LexisNexis at Dayton, Ohio.

* Sulekha Prasad has been accepted to participate in a six-month paid internship program at Kudumbashree, a poverty reduction program in Kerala, India. 

* Neha Kagal was accepted to the PhD program in Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. It is a three year program and she began in September 2012. She received a three-year scholarship and is studying with Professor Naila Kabeer as her advisor.

* Jessica Valenti- called one of the Top 100 Inspiring Women in the world by The Guardian- has authored three books: Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters, He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut…and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know, and The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women which has been made into a documentary by the Media Education Foundation.  She is the editor of the anthology Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, which was named one of Publishers Weekly‘s Top 100 Books of 2009. Jessica is also the founder of Feministing.com, which Columbia Journalism Review calls “head and shoulders above almost any writing on women’s issues in mainstream media.” Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Nation, The Guardian (UK), The American Prospect, Ms. magazine, Salon, and Bitch magazine. She has won a Choice USA Generation award and the 2011 Hillman Journalism Prize for her work with Feministing. She has appeared on The Colbert Report and the Today show, among others and was profiled in The New York Times Magazine under the headline “Fourth Wave Feminism.”

* The Women's and Gender Studies Department congratulates Jillian Hernandez for receiving an offer of a tenure-track assistant professor position in Critical Gender Studies and Ethnic Studies at the University of California – San Diego. She was also awarded a Dissertation Fellowship from the American Association of University Women for her research on “The Politics of Sexual Aesthetics: Women and Girls Crafting Bodies.” She defended her dissertation in March 2013.

* Anahi Russo Garrido received the two-year Allen-Bereson Postdoctoral Fellowship in Sexuality Studies at Brandeis University.

* Sonja Thomas accepted a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor at Colby College in Maine, and she began teaching in Fall 2012.

* Ariella Rotramel accepted a Visiting Assistant Professor position at Connecticut College.

* Catherine Sameh has been working as Associate Director of the Center for Research on Women at Barnard College.

* Danielle Taylor Phillips and Agatha Beins began teaching at Texas Woman's University as tenure-track Assistant Professors in Women's Studies in fall 2011.

Congratulations to our wonderful alumni.