[WCUSP] On Global Feminism

[Odile Hugonot Haber]

About the Global Feminisms Project at the University of Michigan

The 'Global Feminisms Project' was funded, beginning in 2002, by a
major grant from the Rackham Graduate School, with additional funding
provided by the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, the
Institute for Research on Women and Gender, the Women's Studies
Program, and the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of
Michigan.
By documenting individual life stories of activists and scholars, and
considering them in their particular historical and cultural contexts,
the project records important differences in women's activism in
specific local sites, and questions constructions of 'global' feminism
that assume a common (Western) set of issues as universal to all
women. In addition, the project questions conventional notions of
global feminism as the "internationalization of the women's movement,"
which often assumes a transfer eastward of western feminist ideals.
Each site has independently developed its list of interviewees,
thereby selecting on their own terms the issues that represent aspects
of their national histories and women's movement histories, as well as
who should represent them,. The four research teams met twice to
review each other's materials and to discuss the disparate ideas about
the body, the public-private divide, the state, law & jurisprudence,
and publishing that have emerged from the interviews.

Working at the intersections of the local and global, we hope the
collection of life histories can offer scholars and students a nuanced
understanding of the dense historical relations, and long history of
mutually influential interactions, among women's movements in and
feminist scholarship from different countries and regions. We hope the
completed archives from this project, consisting of written
transcripts, along with the videotaped interviews, will be a resource
for future research on the histories of feminism. These materials will
be deposited at each site, thus creating an international network of
archives of oral histories that document women's scholarship and
activism. In addition, we are developing a variety of model curricular
uses for the narratives--for courses introducing women's studies
scholarship, as well as courses on "global feminism," on methods, on
activism, and in the disciplines. These curricular issues will be
explored in September, 2006 at a conference at the University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor. Resulting materials will eventually be posted on
this website.
http://www.umich.edu/~glblfem/about.html
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Conference to focus on global feminism

By Joe Serwach
News Service

A multiyear interdisciplinary initiative, "Global Feminisms:
Comparative Case Studies of Women's Activism and Scholarship," that
documents the lives of scholars and activists in the women's movements
around the world will culminate in a two-day conference Sept.14-15,
Michigan League, 3rd Floor.

The conference, "Changing the World, Changing the Academy: Feminisms
in China, India, Poland and the U.S.," will showcase 42 videotaped
oral histories with feminist activist-scholars from China, India,
Poland and the United States.

Panels and workshops will highlight the potential of the interview
materials for research and teaching, both in women's studies and in
other disciplines. Representatives from all four countries will
participate, along with U-M faculty and students who have worked on
the project from a variety of fields, including women's studies,
American Culture, Afro-American and African Studies, English, history,
political science, psychology, sociology, and other disciplines.

"We believe these materials will offer many new opportunities for
faculty and students to do interesting research, as well as for
faculty to bring these issues into the classroom in exciting new
ways," says Abigail Stewart, a psychology and women's studies
professor who was one of the organizers of the event.

During the conference, project participants will present three papers
exploring research themes that arose across interviews and sites.
Participants also will present four papers discussing the use of
global feminism materials in research, and particularly in teaching
mainstream courses in the fields of history, English, psychology and
sociology.

Guest experts on global feminisms from other institutions have been
invited to participate in workshops focused on how to use these
materials to develop new courses on global feminism, or the
intersection of activism and scholarship, as well as how to enliven
and enrich existing courses on introduction to women's studies and
research methods.

The event is free and open to the public. Initially supported by a
Rackham Interdisciplinary Collaboration Research Grant, additional
support was provided by LSA, the International Institute, the
Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Women's Studies, the
Institute for the Humanities, the Center for South Asian Studies, the
Herman Family Fund, the Center for African and Afro-American Studies
and the Office of the Provost.

The conference is presented in collaboration with the LSA Theme Year,
"The Theory and Practice of Citizenship: From the Local to the
Global".