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PRESIDENTIAL SESSIONS |
Friday 1:30PM-2:45PM
PRESIDENTIAL SESSION: FEMINISM THEORIES OF GLOBALIZATION AND EMPIRE
Feminist critiques of globalization have variously focused on the disproportionate impact on women, particularly in the global South. of global capitalist economic restructuing, cultural imperialism, and the neoliberal political restructuring of privatization. Feminist scholars and activists have also foregrounded women’s resistances to these forces at local, national, regional, and transnational levels and the cooperations, tensions, and problematics among these movements.
Such resistances, however, are further complicated by what some view as the rise of empire, which either coopts or further marginalizes such resistances. These well-known scholars of femnist globalzation studies will offer their analyses of the current state of feminist resistances to globalization and how they can be furthered to act “against empire.”
Valentine M. Moghadam, Purdue University
Mary Hawkesworth, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Nancy Naples, University of Connecticut
Debra J. Liebowitz, Drew University
Moderator: Sheila Croucher, Miami University, Ohio |
 Valentine M. Moghadam, Purdue University
Valentine Moghadam is Professor of Sociology and Director of Women's Studies at Purdue University.
Her specializations include: Sociology of gender, gender and development, globalization and transnational social movements, sociology and political economy of the Middle East and North Africa.
From 2004-2006 she served as Chief of the Section on Gender Equality and Development in the Social and Human Sciences Sector of UNESCO, in Paris, France. Prior to that she was Professor of Sociology and Director of Women’s Studies at Illinois State University.
Born in Iran, Dr. Moghadam has devoted much research to development, social change, and gender in the Middle East, North Africa, and Afghanistan, but she also studies and publishes on the social and gender dynamics of globalization. Her first book, Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East (1993, 2003) was selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Book for 1993-94. Her third book, Globalizing Women: Transnational Feminist Networks (2005) received the American Political Science Association’s Victoria Schuck Award for the best book on Women and Politics in 2005 (August, 2006).She also has edited and contributed to seven books, most recently Social Policy and Economic Development in the Middle East (2006) and From Patriarchy to Empowerment? Participation, Rights and Women’s Movements in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia (2007).
She is a founding member and past president of the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies and a founding contributor to the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies.
Dr. Moghadam has held three fellowships – at Brown University’s Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women (1988-89) for work on women and revolution in Iran and Afghanistan; a Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC)
She is the recipient of an ASA Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline grant (2003-04) for research on women’s movements in the Middle East and North Africa, 2003-04. She has been a consultant to many international organizations and lectures widely.
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 Mary Hawkesworth, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Mary Hawkesworth is Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Senior Scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Her teaching and research interests include feminist theory, women and politics, contemporary political philosophy, philosophy of science, and social policy.
Hawkesworth is the author of Globalization and Feminist Activism (Rowman and Littlefield, (2006); Feminist Inquiry: From Political Conviction to Methodological Innovation (Rutgers University Press, forthcoming 2006); Beyond Oppression: Feminist Theory and Political Strategy (New York: Continuum Press, 1990); and Theoretical Issues in Policy Analysis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988); ); co-author of Women, Democracy and Globalization in North America (Palgrave, 2006); editor of The Encyclopedia of Government and Politics (London: Routledge, 1992; 2nd Revised Edition, 2003), and Feminism and Public Policy (Policy Sciences 27(2-3), 1994), and co-editor of Gender, Globalization and Democratization (Rowman and Littlefield, 2001).
Her articles have appeared in leading journals including the American Political Science Review, Political Theory, Signs, Hypatia, Women and Politics, Journal of Women’s History, NWSA Journal, International Journal of Women’s Studies, and the Women’s Studies International Forum. She has served on the Editorial Boards of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Women and Politics and the International Feminist Journal of Politics. She is serving as the Editor of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 2005-2010.
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Nancy Naples, University of Connecticut
 Dr. Nancy Naples teaches courses on sociology of gender; qualitative methodology; gender, politics, and the state; women’s activism and globalization; and feminist theory. By using a variety of research methods including ethnography, discourse analysis, archival research, and comparative research, she interrogates the relationship between the state, market, other social institutions and citizenship to determine how social actors are affected by, and resisting extra-local economic and political structures and policies.
She has explored the historical construction and implementation of welfare, immigration, rural economic development, and community control policies. She has also examined how members of low income and working class urban and rural communities respond to, reshape, and resist externally imposed policies and state-sponsored programs. She has also conducted research on programs designed to enhance access to justice for crime victims with disabilities and survivors of childhood sexual assault.
She is currently working on a book that investigates the link between global economic change, social policy, and community-based social restructuring in the rural US. Her current research is on sexual citizenship in comparative perspective. She served as President of Sociologists for Women in Society (2004) and has held elected office in the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP), Eastern Sociological Society, the Pacific Sociological Association, and the American Sociological Association. She is currently serving as President of SSSP (2007-2008).
Selected Publications include: Feminism and Method: Ethnography, Discourse Analysis, and Activist Research New York, Routledge (2003); Women’s Activism and Globalization: Linking Local Struggles and Transnational Politics , eds. Nancy A. Naples and Manisha Desai. New York : Routledge (2002); and Grassroots Warriors: Activist Mothering, Community Work, and the War on Poverty, New York : Routledge (1998) |
Debra J. Liebowitz, Drew University
 Debra holds a joint appointment in Political Science and Women’s Studies. She received her B.A. from the University of Oregon in 1988, and received her Ph.D. from Rutgers University in January, 2000. Her research interests are in the areas of gender and transnational political organizing, with particular attention to international economic issues and Latin American Politics. While a graduate student at Rutgers University, she was the recipient of the University’s Graduate Student Teaching Excellence Award.
Her most recent publications include two forthcoming articles, “TCBY® in Limón, Costa Rica: (Re)Constructing Identity in International Service Learning” and “Constructing Cooperation: Feminist Activism and the North American Free Trade Agreement.” Debra was also the winner of the best paper award from the International Studies Association’s Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Section in 1998. Professor Liebowitz also has an extensive background developing educational programs that emphasize issues of gender, leadership and public policy both in the U.S. and abroad. |
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