People

2011

2011

Thomas, Sonja

  • From Chattas to Churidars: Syrian Christian Religious Minorities in a Secular Indian State
  • Job Placement: Associate Professor, WGSS, Colby College
  • Webpage: http://www.colby.edu/directory/profile/sonja.thomas/
  • Committee: E. Brooks, J. Puar, E. Grosz, P. Kurien

Bio

Sonja Thomas completed her Ph.D. in Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers in May 2011. Her dissertation, “From Chattas to Churidars: Syrian Christian Religious Minorities in a Secular Indian State,” examined the larger questions of how socially constructed differences between women shape their capacity to create feminist networks and to act towards social change. Her research specifically analyzed the Syrian Christian community of Kerala, India and the intersectional social identities of the religious community; a Christian religious minority identity, an Aryan racial identity, and a high-caste Brahmin identity. From the chatta, a clothing worn in pre-independence India by Syrian Christian women alone, to the churidar worn today by women of all castes, races and religions, her dissertation attempted to understand the complex histories and differences between South Asian people. Sonja accepted a tenure-track assistant professor position at Colby College.

Abstract

This dissertation is a critical analysis of the feminist concept of intersectionality and a necessary contribution into the study of caste, class, race, religion and gender in South Asia. Rather than viewing identities as merely overlapping, I argue that there exist countless “acts” that implicate the co-constitutive, relational, and fluid nature of identities. Particularly focusing on the upper-caste Syrian Christian community in postcolonial Kerala, India, I examine “acts” in the form of embodied clothing practices, women’s mobility in public spaces and political protests. My dissertation especially intervenes into dominant discourses within South Asian and Women’s and Gender Studies. I reassess of the concept of race in South Asia, provide a sustained ethnographic and historical analysis of the state of Kerala, India, and I place the fields of South Asian and Women’s and Gender Studies into critical dialogue with each other. To make these interventions, I use a variety of sources collected through interdisciplinary research methods. These methods include ethnography, archival methods, feminist and postcolonial theoretical analysis, and visual culture analysis. In the first and second chapters of the dissertation, I provide an overview of the dissertation, my field site and a history of the Syrian Christian community. In the third and fourth chapters I explore the relations between class, caste, race, religion and gender through an examination of the women’s (in)ability to move freely in a changing public sphere. Following this, in chapters five and six I analyze how Syrian Christians have used their social privileges to politically mobilize, define a nation-wide minority identity, and protect their dominance in Kerala’s private education sector. In the last chapter, I bridge Women’s and Gender Studies with South Asian Studies and examine each of the disciplines’ approach to studying differences between peoples in India. From the chatta, a clothing worn in colonial Kerala by Syrian Christian women alone, to the churidar worn today by women of all classes, castes, races and religions, I examine how “acts” of class, caste, race, religion and gender may continue previous divisions between groups, justifying forms of oppression and ultimately upholding systems of domination in India today.

Rotramel, Ariella

  • Job Placement: Vandana Shiva Associate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies, Connecticut College
  • Webpage: https://www.conncoll.edu/directories/faculty-profiles/ariella-rotramel/
  • Committee: N.Hewitt (Chair), B.Balliet, J.Gerson, R. Rodriguez, J. D’Emilio
  • Dissertation: Pushing Back: Women-Led Grassroots Activism in New York City’s Transnational Communities of Color, 1986-2011

Bio

Ariella received a B.A. from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2003 and completed her PhD in Fall 2011. She accepted the position of Visiting Assistant Professor in Gender and Women's Studies at Connecticut College. While at Rutgers, she studied women-led community organizing efforts by New York’s Mothers on the Move and CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities. Ariella taught undergraduate courses in women's and gender studies and social justice.

Abstract

“Pushing Back” analyzes women-led activism of transnational communities of color through an examination of social justice campaigns around domestic work, housing, and environmental policies and practices. Through a case study of New York City from the 1980s to the present (2011), the dissertation argues that one key to progressive women’s successful organizing efforts is their ability to draw upon a range of political stances and to cross traditional identity-based boundaries. This study addresses three central questions: Which issues do organizations representing transnational communities of color identify as key to their communities and how do they frame them? What forms of advocacy do they wield and what do such approaches look like in practice? and How do they negotiate internal diversity (gender, race/nationality, class, etc.) and engage the broader community, particularly as women-led groups? The study focuses on two grassroots organizations, the pan-Asian/American CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities and the South Bronx’s largely Puerto Rican and Black Mothers on the Move/Madres en Movimiento. A complex picture of activism is produced through original archival research in previously unprocessed papers at each organization, oral history interviews, participant-observation, and the evaluation of relevant governmental and media sources.

Phillips, Danielle

  • Job Placement: Associate Professor, English, Speech and Foreign Languages, Texas Women’s University
  • Webpage: http://www.twu.edu/ws/phillips.asp
  • Committee: N. Hewitt; A. Ramos-Zayas; E. Brooks
  • Dissertation: Global Formations of Race in Close Quarters: Irish and African American Domestic Workers in New York, 1888-1940Global Formations of Race in Close Quarters: Irish and African American Domestic Workers in New York, 1888-1940

Bio

Danielle received a B.A. in Comparative Women’s Studies from Spelman College and completed her PhD in 2010. She accepted a tenure-track position in Women's Studies at Texas Woman's University.

Abstract

My dissertation investigates the experiences of southern African American women migrating to New York after emancipation and Irish women, who became heavily concentrated in domestic service positions there as a result of the migration that followed the devastating potato famines of the 1840s and 1850s. Although both groups of women were clearly marginalized because of their racial, gender, and class status, they moved to the center of debates about the meanings of citizenship, blackness, non-whiteness, whiteness, and the ideals of domesticity in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. As southern Black, immigrant, and white women came into greater contact in the domestic sphere, the supposed “bedrock” of American civilization, it became a site of contention as groups negotiated modes of power and definitions of who was white and who was an “American.” Native-born white employers and Irish and southern African American domestic workers used personal interactions, letters to the editor, satirical images, and newspaper and journal articles as platforms to construct identities that would allow them to claim the material and ideological promises of the “American Dream.” Debates about the “domestic service problem” in New York City did not occur in isolation, of course. Harper’s Bazaar and other periodicals carried these discussions overseas, featuring transnational conversations between employers in the U.S. and London who exchanged tips about how to deal with the “belligerent” domestic workers who were “invading” their homes and providing “inadequate” service. This study also examines how Black intellectuals including W.E.B. Du Bois and Anna Julia Cooper inserted their own theoretical contributions into this global debate about domestic service and the particular interaction between Irish and southern African American female laborers in the North. My dissertation investigates the experiences of southern African American women migrating to New York after emancipation and Irish women, who became heavily concentrated in domestic service positions there as a result of the migration that followed the devastating potato famines of the 1840s and 1850s. Although both groups of women were clearly marginalized because of their racial, gender, and class status, they moved to the center of debates about the meanings of citizenship, blackness, non-whiteness, whiteness, and the ideals of domesticity in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. As southern Black, immigrant, and white women came into greater contact in the domestic sphere, the supposed “bedrock” of American civilization, it became a site of contention as groups negotiated modes of power and definitions of who was white and who was an “American.” Native-born white employers and Irish and southern African American domestic workers used personal interactions, letters to the editor, satirical images, and newspaper and journal articles as platforms to construct identities that would allow them to claim the material and ideological promises of the “American Dream.” Debates about the “domestic service problem” in New York City did not occur in isolation, of course. Harper’s Bazaar and other periodicals carried these discussions overseas, featuring transnational conversations between employers in the U.S. and London who exchanged tips about how to deal with the “belligerent” domestic workers who were “invading” their homes and providing “inadequate” service. This study also examines how Black intellectuals including W.E.B. Du Bois and Anna Julia Cooper inserted their own theoretical contributions into this global debate about domestic service and the particular interaction between Irish and southern African American female laborers in the North.

Pélaez, Susana M.

Bio

Susana Matallana received an M.A. in English from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She completed her Ph.D. in Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers in May 2011.

Abstract

This study traces the first one-hundred years after the Spanish conquest of the Alto Magdalena Region (1535-1629) in present-day Colombia. In doing so, it focuses primarily on the indigenous actors – male and female, local and non-local – who took part in one way or another in this enterprise. As such it is based on the analysis of twenty-two unpublished archival documents dating from 1540 through 1669. This study argues that Belalcázar‟s Yanacona (Inca) allies played a major role in the conquest and colonization of the Alto Magdalena region, and that Yanacona women were an important part of this expedition. It also argues that Belalcázar and his troops encountered local matrilineal societies (Yalcones, Panches, Coyaimas, Natagaimas, Pixaos) in which women held significant political power, and that a local female (Yalcón) leader by the name of Guatepán may have given rise to the legend of La Gaitana. With regards to the wars of resistance that took place between the second half of the sixteenth century through the beginning of the seventeenth century, it claims that local indigenous groups such as the Coyaimas and Natagaimas who sided with the Spanish were instrumental in defeating the Pixao Indians who were the principal leaders of the revolts. Along this line, it contends that the vicious and “fratricidal” wars between the Indians who sided with the Spanish and those who sided against them were a decisive factor for Spanish victory. In addition it purports to show that local indigenous shamans known as mohanes were in fact politico-religious leaders who were persecuted by Spanish authorities not for religious but for political reasons, and more specifically for their role as leaders of the resistance. Finally, it argues that the wars that ensued after the Spanish incursion destroyed the social networks on which so much of local women‟s power was based, and that as a result, local indigenous women lost much of their traditional power and status.

Kumari, Valsala

  • Job Placement: Executive Director, Kudumbashree State Poverty Eradication Mission, Kerala, India
  • Committee: L. Fernandes, D. Hodgson, E. Brooks, P. Swaminathan
  • Dissertation: Microcredit as a Poverty Alleviation Strategy, Women's Empowerment and Gender Relations

Bio

Valsala Kumari defended her dissertation in 2011. After completion, she continued working as Secretary to the Government of Kerala, India, in the Labor and Employment Department. She served as the Director of the Social Welfare Department in charge of Women and Children in Kerala state for 3 years and was subsequently appointed as Secretary of the Statutory Women's Commission of Kerala for 2 years. In 1999 she was the recipient of the Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship awarded by the US Government for mid-career professionals with proven track record of leadership. Under the auspices of the Humphrey Fellowship, she completed a Masters in Planning and Urban Development at the Bloustein School of Rutgers University. She also completed an M.A. in Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers.

Abstract

This dissertation is about how women are empowered when they gain access to small loans (microcredit) and how that alters or reinforces existing gender relations. My study shows that “the poor” is not a monolithic entity but is an aggregation of differentiated categories with the most vulnerable segments of society occupying the lowest rung of society. The state-civil society synergy that is so characteristic of the state of Kerala does not percolate down to the poorest and most vulnerable segments of society and the tribes for a variety of reasons. If these segments of the population have to benefit, the structure of microcredit has to be redesigned to make it more appropriate and responsive to their special needs. Microcredit provides the entry point but it is the networking that empowers impoverished women who lack material resources. Networking itself is an umbrella term that entails different kinds of networking. My conclusion is that the women-centric microcredit program sponsored by the state marks a departure from the earlier paradigms of developments in which women were not placed at the center of developmental activities. The new paradigm is the state’s attempt at negotiating privatized strategies of development in the larger context of liberalization espoused by the Indian state. My study reveals that microcredit does help women tide over the emergency needs of the family without relying on others. But it is not a substitute for long term structural problems of poverty. The social solidarity generated by different kinds of networking helps women’s empowerment by way of expanding their consciousness through new knowledge including legal literacy and through exposure to other people with other ideals and ethics. I also find that the social capital generated by the networking of over 3.7 million women through self help groups has not transformed into organized demand cutting across party politics for radical changes like redistribution of resources especially arable land. Microcredit has functioned to depoliticize what could have been a progressive politics for gender equity.

Clare, Stephanie

  • Job Placement: Associate Professor of English at University of Washington
  • Committee: E. Grosz, H. Davidson, C. Decena
  • Dissertation: Earthly Encounters: Readings in Poststructuralism, Feminist Theory, and Canadian Settler Colonialism

Bio

Stephanie Clare is an interdisciplinary scholar who works at the intersections of feminist and queer theory, settler colonial studies, and science studies. She has taught at Rutgers University, the University of Oxford, and Duke University in multiple departments: from English to Philosophy, from African and African American Studies to Women’s Studies. She is currently writing a book manuscript, Earthly Encounters. The book examines relations between subjectivity and territory, land and the earth in twentieth-century world literature and philosophy, focusing especially on Canada. Her work has appeared in Diacritics, GLQ, differences, and Hypatia.

Abstract

This dissertation draws out a point of resonance between Frantz Fanon’s and Luce Irigaray’ philosophies: Fanon and Irigaray demonstrate how the philosophy of difference– be it racial and/or sexual difference – and the philosophy of power relations – be it the analysis of patriarchy and/or colonialism – not only bring attention to racialized and gendered others, they also bring attention to land and the earth. In both authors’ works, abstract, homogenous empty space comes to the foreground, filled with the matter that constitutes it: earth, air, and land. The dissertation draws on Fanon’s and Irigaray’s treatment of space to reconsider central concepts that circulate in poststructuralist feminist thought: power, discourse, interiority, subjectivity, and sexuality. I read these concepts within the context of Canadian settler colonialism to foreground the politics of space. Most centrally, I argue that alongside the forms of power Michel Foucault analyzed at length exists another form of power, geopower, the force relations that transform the earth. I describe geopower through an analysis of the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railroad. Ultimately, “Earthly Encounters” contributes to feminist, antiracist thought by bringing attention not simply to sexual or racial difference but also to the material differences that make up our world: animal, plant, and mineral.

Beins, Agatha

  • Job Placement: Associate Professor & Director of Master’s Program, English, Speech and Foreign Languages, Texas Women’s University
  • Webpage: http://www.twu.edu/ws/beins.asp
  • Committee: J. Regulska, H. Davidson, N. Hewitt
  • Dissertation: Free Our Sisters, Free Ourselves: Locating U.S. Feminism through Feminist Periodicals, 1970-1983

Bio

Agatha Beins received a B.A. in Classical Languages from Carleton College, an M.A. in Women’s Studies from University of Arizona, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Poetry from Eastern Washington University. She completed her PhD in 2011, and accepted a tenure-track position at the Texas Woman's University. Agatha is a co-editor of the anthology Women's Studies for the Future. Her dissertation explored the production and consumption of U.S. feminist periodicals published in the 1970s.

Abstract

In 1968 the first feminist periodicals associated with the second wave of U.S. feminism appeared in the United States, and by 1973 over five hundred different feminist newsletters, newspapers, and literary journals had been published. Although these periodicals often had erratic publication schedules and rarely ran more than a few years, their proliferation during this time period shows that publishing was vital to the women’s liberation movement. Not only did periodicals create a space for women to describe experiences, develop theories, debate politics, and exchange ideas, they also connected women through their circulation, producing an imagined community of feminists at local and global scales. Free Our Sisters, Free Ourselves: Locating U.S. Feminism through Feminist Periodicals, 1970-1983 examines the U.S. feminist movement through the production and consumption of feminist newsletters and newspapers. Focusing on periodicals published in five cities (New Orleans, Louisiana; Northampton, Massachusetts; Cambridge, Massachusetts; Iowa City, Iowa; and Los Angeles, California), this dissertation tracks the circulation of ideas to explore how feminism as a collective identity was produced and reproduced. Based on archival research throughout the country and an analysis of the circulation and repetition of language and images as well as on the effects of modes of periodical production, this dissertation draws from a wide range of literatures, including history, sociology, geography, cultural studies, visual studies, and history of the book, as well as from feminist theories about power and identity. I argue that during the 1970s feminist periodicals were vital to the production not just of feminism’s present and presence but also of feminism’s past and future. Periodicals additionally contributed to the discursive and material existence of the women’s liberation movement, allowing feminism’s past, present, and future to be imaginable as well as physically locatable.