In cases where Muslim women and girlsare seen as needing to be rescued andadvocacy seems imperative—as withhonor crimes, female circumcision, andearly marriage—structural analyses ofissues apart from gender can fall away,thus producing little new knowledge andreinforcing stereotypes of Muslim back-wardness versus Western modernity.Leading scholars came to Brown inMarch to discuss alternative ways to view

so-called “traditional” Muslim practices.They examined instances where every-thing from local politics to transnationaleconomics might contribute to a givenpractice, and where the political, thesocio-economic, or the cultural might bethe most important factors to consider. Plans for the ongoing project include pub-lication of the March conference and con-tinued conversations at other institutions.

Please see page 4 for more information.

Visions of Nature: Constructing the Cultural Other

Leslie Bostrom, Associate Professor of Art,will lead the 2008-09 Pembroke Seminar.Western cultures have an uneasy and contradic-tory relationship with the natural world, humansbeing of it as animals yet simultaneouslyobserving, consuming, and attempting to con-trol it. Through the visual arts and popularmedia, through literature, philosophy, aesthet-ics, and science, through landscaping and archi-tecture, humans represent their relationshipswith nature. Nature can be a kind of dark mirror,reflecting back one’s desires and fears, loadedwith contradictions and colonial yearnings. It isthought to be fragile yet indestructible, finiteyet cyclical, dangerous yet restful. Notions ofthe natural are employed to build theories ofthe human, as in human nature, natural law,natural gifts, natural intelligence. On the onehand, there is something essentially naturalabout humans, some sort of authentic animalcore; on the other, there are fantasies of thewild, as if there were a territory of pure natureexcluding the human predator. The Western eth-ical relationship to nature is similarly ambiva-lent: on one hand, nature is pure and uncor-rupted by human desire; on the other, nature isby definition the location of sin, the refusal orinability to recognize divine intervention andmoral authority— the “Noble Savage” vs. “Lordof the Flies.” The 2008-09 Pembroke Seminarwill look at how such ambivalences towardnature have driven Western cultural aspira-tions—political and economic—as well as cul-tural notions of the self, of ethics, of aesthetics,of sexuality and the body. And by studying for-mations that emerge from other cultural repre-sentations of nature, the seminar will examinesome of the above assumptions about what isparticularly “Western” about Western nature.For more information, please visit our websiteat www.pembrokecenter.org.

brown university spring 2008

Pembroke Centerfor teaching and research on women

Gender and the Politics of “Traditional”Muslim Practices Conference March 7, 2008

(L-R): Sherine Hamdy of Brown University, Lila Abu-Lughod of Columbia University, Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf ofQatar University, and Dicle Kogacioglu of Sabanci University, Istanbul.

Hank Randall

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Pembroke Seminar: The Question of Identity in Psychoanalysis

Elisabeth AnkerCarol G. Lederer Postdoctoral FellowPh.D. in Political Theory, University of California, Berkeley, 2007

Project: “Orgies of Feeling: Melodra-matic Identifications and the Post-9/11Political Subject”

Anker’s research focuses on post-9/11political life, drawing from Freud’sinsights into identification to helpunderstand how American citizens iden-tify with violent state action as a form ofindividual heroism. Looking in particu-lar at the role of melodrama in Ameri-can political discourse, Anker asks how,whether, and to what degree Freud’s var-ied analyses of the human psyche can beused to examine the workings of con-temporary political phenomena. Ankerunderstands melodrama to incorporateidentifications with figures of both vic-timization and heroism and explorestensions and problems that this dualidentification engenders within contem-porary American political subjectivity.

Lara KelingosNancy L. Buc Postdoctoral FellowPh.D. in German Studies, Cornell University, 2007

Project: “The Melancholic Subject inRelation: Subjectivation, Attachment,and Resistance”

This project examines the politics ofremembrance and inheritance in post-war Germany, with a particular focus onthe intersection of political and psycho-analytic accounts of subjectivity. Kelingosexamines several German novelistswhose works draw from their experi-ences as children in Nazi Germany.Looking at these writings through thelens of the psychoanalytic concept ofmelancholia and situating them in theirparticular historical context, she is able toshed light on the legacies of a criminalnational inheritance for citizens of post-war and post-reunification Germany.

Elana WeinerArtemis A.W. and Martha JoukowskyPostdoctoral FellowPh.D. in Psychology, MassachusettsSchool of Professional Psychology, 1995

Project: “The Negotiation of Envy andthe Development of the Self”

Weiner’s research examines the intersub-jective negotiation of envy, with mutualexperiences of giving and receiving, ascentral to the development of the self.Challenging traditional formulations ofenvy as a destructive force, Weiner exam-ines the ways in which, under optimalconditions, envy operates as an impetusfor development. Her work explores thechild’s emergent capacities to apprehendand create certain kinds of affectivestates and thereby to regulate the senseof self. Weiner is a practicing psycholo-gist and provides psychoanalytically ori-ented therapy to adults.

Bernard Reginster, Professor of Philosophy and the Chesler-Mallow Senior Faculty Research Fellow at the Pembroke Center,is the director of the 2007-08 Pembroke Seminar. This year’sseminar has as its theme “The Question of Identity in Psycho-analysis.” In the century since Sigmund Freud’s early psychoan-alytic works, the discipline has witnessed a theoretical explosionof ideas. These new ideas have produced a rich and sometimes

confusing fabric of effects on academic disciplines such as phi-losophy, religious studies, history, gender studies, literature,media studies, and anthropology. The seminar looks at howpsychoanalytic views of identity continue to evolve and whatimpact these theories have on scholarship in a variety of fields.

For a full seminar description, please see: www.pembrokecenter.org.

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2007-08 Pembroke Center Lectures

Arnold H. ModellClinical Professor of PsychiatryHarvard Medical School

“Identity and the Selection of Value”

October 9, 2007

Judith Guss TeicholzSupervising Analyst and Faculty MemberMassachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis

“A Strange Convergence: Postmodern Theory, Infant Research, and Psychoanalysis”

December 4, 2007

John ForresterProfessor of History and Philosophy of ScienceUniversity of Cambridge

“Women and the Reception of Psychoanalysis in Cambridge in the Early Twentieth Century”

April 3, 2008

Faculty Fellows

Bernard ReginsterPhilosophy

Chesler-Mallow Senior Faculty Research Fellow

Omer BartovHistory

Edwin and Shirley Seave Faculty Fellow

Coppélia KahnEnglish

Edith Goldthwaite Miller Faculty Fellow

Suzanne Stewart-SteinbergItalian Studies and

Comparative Literature

Pembroke Center Faculty Fellow

Graduate Fellows

David Bering-PorterModern Culture and Media

Erin RobertsReligious Studies

Carlos VazquezAmerican Civilization

Undergraduate Fellows

Jessica LaserReligious Studies

Alexandra RegenbogenPsychology

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Graduate Fellows David Bering-Porter, Erin Roberts, and Carlos Vazquez

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Leti VolppLawUniversity of California, BerkeleyOpening Remarks

Dicle Kogacioglu SociologySabanci University, Turkey“Gender in Tradition: A Kaleidoscope of Colonialisms?”

Lila Abu-Lughod AnthropologyColumbia University“The Scandal of Honor Crimes: Liberalism and the Circulation of Rights Discourses”

Sherene Razack SociologyOntario Institute for Studies in Education, Canada“Multiculturalism vs. Feminism, RoundTwo: Feminist Responses to Violenceagainst Muslim Women”

Nadera Shalhoub-KevorkianFaculty of LawHebrew University, Israel“‘Security Theology,’ Global Economy of Fear and Violence against Women in Conflict Zones: The Palestinian Case Study”

Rogaia Abusharaf AnthropologyQatar University, Qatar“Transforming the Gendered Self inNorthern Sudan”

Annie Bunting Law and SocietyYork University, Canada“An Analysis of ‘Promoting MuslimWomen’s Rights through Sharia in North-ern Nigeria’: A Development Strategy?”

Arzoo Osanloo Law, Societies & Justice ProgramUniversity of Washington, Seattle“When Blood Has Been Spilled: Unraveling the Gendered Logistics ofIslamic Criminal Sanctioning in Iran”

Elliot Colla, Middle East Studies, Brown University, and Sherine Hamdy,Anthropology, Brown University servedas moderators for the conference.

The conference was sponsored by thePembroke Center for Teaching andResearch on Women. Institutionalcosponsors included: Middle East Studies, Cogut Center for the Humani-ties, Watson Institute for InternationalRelations, Anthropology, and the SarahDoyle Women’s Center.

Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian of Hebrew University and Sherine Hamdy of Brown University

Sherene Razack of the Ontario Institute for Studiesin Education

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Gender and the Politics of “Traditional” Muslim Practices Conference Presenters

pembroke center • 5

The Child Development research initiative, directed by AnneFausto-Sterling, Professor of Biology and Gender Studies,applies a dynamic systems approach to questions of humandevelopment. The initiative’s research suggests that complexsex-typed behaviors come into being through a process ofdynamic interactions between children and their environ-ment—a function of both biological and social influences. The Ford Foundation, which made its initial grant in 2004,recently extended its support with a $200,000 award to fur-ther the project’s research through 2010.

This interdisciplinary research initiative began with the 2002-03 Pembroke Seminar, “Theories of Embodiment.” Following the seminar, Fausto-Sterling undertook the begin-ning stages of the project in collaboration with a faculty fellowof the “Embodiment” seminar, Cynthia García Coll, Professorof Education, Psychology, and Pediatrics. Fausto-Sterling andGarcía Coll have been joined in their research by RonaldSeifer, Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior andDirector of the Center for the Study of Human Development,and by William H. Warren, Jr., Professor of Cognitive & Lin-guistic Sciences and chair of the department. The initiativehas received seed funding for several years from the PembrokeCenter. Additional support has come from the Wayland Col-legium and the Office of the Vice President for Research.

At present, researchers are conducting detailed analyses offour infants (two boys and two girls) and their mothers inweekly videotaped sessions from ages two to fourteen months.Through these analyses, researchers are obtaining a richdescription of the development of activity level, vocalization,and play behavior, three behaviors for which sex-typed differ-ences have previously been reported in the first three years oflife. Parental behavior is also being observed and coded.

When the data analyses are complete, researchers hope to testhypotheses and identify how stable patterns emerge that pointto differences between the genders.

The new Ford Foundation support will enable researchers toextend their sample of four infant-mother pairs to a sample ofthirty infant-mother pairs, thus allowing analyses that combinethe depth and detail of dynamic systems case studies with thepredictive power of multivariate statistical analysis. In doingso, researchers hope to translate their dynamic systems modelof sex-typed differences into the language of mainstreamdevelopmental science.

To learn more about the Child Development research initiative, please visit: www.brown.edu/Research/Behaviors_in_Infancy(URL is case-sensitive)

Ford Foundation Awards $200,000 to Child Development Research Initiative

(L-R) Ray Serrano’07, MD’11, Christelle Ngnoumen’09, Alison Toth’08, and Mary Zeng’09 code data and perform statistical analysis for the Child Development Project. Ngnoumen also works as laboratory coordinator for the project.

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On behalf of differences: A Journal ofFeminist Cultural Studies, ElizabethCastelli, Professor of Religion at BarnardCollege at Columbia University, will leada discussion on the intellectual under-pinnings of conservative Christianactivisms in contemporary U.S. cultureat the Sixth Annual Cultural StudiesAssociation meeting. The meeting,which will be held in May at New YorkUniversity, provides a forum for scholarsof Cultural Studies, in all its diversemanifestations, to exchange their workand ideas across disciplinary lines andinstitutional locations. Castelli hasassembled a panel comprised of the con-tributors to God and Country, the spe-cial issue of the journal that she guestedited (differences 18.3).

The panel will discuss the judicial his-tory of secularism, explore a series ofexamples where law and religion overlapin complex and sometimes paradoxicalways, and examine the rhetorical strate-gies underpinning various sites ofChristian activism. Progressive thinkershave increasingly raised the specter of“theocracy” in analyzing the currentstate of affairs in U.S. politics; God andCountry offers readers a series of casestudies for critically assessing suchclaims.

6 • pembroke center

A third book in the differences series isdue to appear this spring with DukeUniversity Press. Women’s Studies onthe Edge, edited by Joan Wallach Scott,

comes at a time when women’s studiesprograms have achieved department sta-tus in many universities, establishingtenure-track appointments, graduateprograms, and consistent course enroll-ments. Yet, as Scott notes in her intro-duction, women’s studies has lost muchof its critical purchase. Feminism, thedriving political force behind women’sstudies, is regarded by many of today’sstudents as an outmoded political posi-tion, and activism is no longer central towomen’s studies programs on manycampuses. In Women’s Studies on theEdge, leading feminist scholars tacklethe critical, political, and institutionalchallenges that women’s studies hasfaced since its widespread integrationinto university curricula.

The contributors embrace feminism notas a set of prescriptions, but as a criticalstance, one that seeks to interrogate and

disrupt prevailing systems of gender.Refusing to perpetuate and protectorthodoxies, they ask tough questionsabout the impact of institutionalizationon the once radical field of women’sstudies; about the ongoing difficulties ofarticulating women’s studies with eth-nic, queer, and race studies; and aboutthe limits of liberal concepts of emanci-pation for understanding non-Westernwomen. They also question the viabilityof continuing to ground women’s stud-ies in identity politics authorized by per-sonal experience. In Women’s Studieson the Edge, there are conflicting inter-pretations that sometimes overlap andsometimes stand in opposition to oneanother. The result is a collection thatembodies the best aspects of critique:the intellectual and political stance thatthe contributors take to be feminism’sethos and its aim.

Forthcoming Book: Women’s Studies on the Edge

differences Guest Editor and Contributors to Present at CulturalStudies Association Meeting

Joan Wallach Scott was the founding director of thePembroke Center and is the Harold F. Linder Professor,School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study.

pembroke center • 7

The Pembroke CenterAssociates, the Cen-ter’s alumnae/i sup-port organization,awards an annualinternship to anundergraduate stu-dent whose honorsproject involves aninternship or volun-teer work in a com-munity agency. This

year, the Associates awarded the internshipgrant to Alison Fairbrother, a DevelopmentStudies concentrator, who is interning for theAfrican Services Committee (ASC). This com-munity organization, based in Addis Ababa,Ethiopia, provides HIV prevention education,mass condom distribution, counseling andtesting for HIV, and care and support for HIVpositive individuals.

Fairbrother’s internship with ASC hasinvolved writing grants and overseeing a pilotprogram she helped develop to improve thehealth of fifteen HIV positive mothers andtheir children living in an impoverished areaon an isolated mountaintop above AddisAbaba. In addition to providing medical careand nutrition, Fairbrother’s project helpsarrange no-interest loans for the mothers tostart businesses to generate income for theirfamilies. An important element of this projectis its respect for the families’ belief in the heal-ing properties of holy water from a stream atthe top of their mountain.

Utilizing the findings from her internship inEthiopia, Fairbrother is writing an honors the-sis that investigates the ways Western medi-cine can be combined with a strong local com-mitment to religiously-inspired medicinalbeliefs, such as holy water. Her research askshow the incorporation of traditional practicescan have an impact on the success or failure ofprograms that introduce Western medicine.

The PembrokeCenter awardsthe Helen TerryMacLeodResearch Grantto support under-graduate honorsresearch onissues having todo with womenor gender, orresearch that

brings a feminist analysis to bear on a prob-lem or set of questions. Elisabeth Stelson,a senior concentrating in History, is therecipient of this year’s MacLeod grant tosupport her research exploring the historyof women’s anti-suffrage activity in Illinois.

The national anti-suffragist movement isconsidered to be a precursor of the conser-vative women’s movement in the United

States. While the anti-suffragist move-ment of the Northeast has been studied,historians had largely ignored the move-ment in Illinois, and particularly inChicago. In identifying this research gapand developing a case study of the anti-suf-frage movement in Illinois, Stelson’s hon-ors thesis explores the dialogue betweenanti-suffragists and suffragists and exam-ines how capitalists, immigrants, andorganized labor responded to and influ-enced the debate about women’s suffrage.

The MacLeod grant enabled Stelson totravel to numerous locations vital to herresearch, including Harvard’s SchlesingerLibrary’s Women’s Rights Collection, theChicago History Museum, the NewberryLibrary in Chicago, the Illinois State His-torical Society, and Cornell University’sWomen’s Studies Collection located at theCarl A. Kroch Library.

Nancy DukeLewis Professorand Professorof English,ComparativeLiterature, andModern Cultureand Media

“Gender Must Be Defended”

October 23, 2007

Victorian novelists were the first to confront the problem of the relationshipbetween themselves as individuals andwhat Foucault calls “man-as-species.”This is a problem for theorists of liberaldemocracy as well. In two series of lec-

tures titled, respectively, Society Must BeDefended (1976-77) and Security, Terri-tory, Population (1977-78), Foucault offershis most comprehensive explanation as towhy the disciplinary procedures aimed atproducing self-governing individualsrequired supplementary policies that dealtwith the population at large and so giverise to what he calls bio-power. Even here,however, he stops short of acknowledgingthe difficulty of articulating the subjectpresupposed by liberal society to theobject of bio-power. Armstrong discusseda number of Victorian novels to see howthey negotiated the contradiction posed by the two modes of government and concluded that a more flexible concept of gender can show how the Victoriansthemselves imagined an alternative to asociety composed of individuals.

Barbara Anton Intern: Alison Fairbrother

Helen Terry MacLeod Research Grant Recipient: Elisabeth Stelson

Annual Gender Studies Lecture

Nancy Armstrong

Alison Fairbrother’08

Elisabeth Stelson ’08

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Pembroke Center for teaching and research on women

Brown University

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Providence, RI 02912

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Pembroke Center Advisory Board

Rey ChowComparative Literature and Modern Culture and Media

Carolyn J. DeanHistory and Modern Culture and Media

Mary Ann DoaneModern Culture and Media and English

Anne Fausto-SterlingBiology and Medicine

Lynne JoyrichModern Culture and Media

David KonstanClassics and Comparative Literature

Ex OfficioNancy ArmstrongEnglish, Comparative Literature, and Modern Culture and Media

Karen NewmanComparative Literature and English

Ellen RooneyModern Culture and Media and English

Pembroke Center Associates Council Officers

Diane Lake Northrop ’54, P’81Chair

Phyllis Santry ’66Vice-Chair

Pembroke Center Staff

Elizabeth Weed, Ph.D. ’73 Director

Christy Law BlanchardDirector of Alumnae/i Affairs

Denise Davis, A.M. ’97Managing Editor of differences

Donna GoodnowCenter Manager

Suzanne Stewart-SteinbergDirector of Gender Studies

Jane Lancaster, Ph.D. ’98Consultant to the Christine Dunlap Farnham Archives

Martha HamblettPrograms and Stewardship Coordinator

contact informationPembroke CenterBrown UniversityBox 1958Providence, RI 02912

phone: 401 863-2643fax: 401 863-1298e-mail: Pembroke_Center@brown.eduweb: www.pembrokecenter.org