Conference: The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness (fwd)

Melissa Ponder (mponder@edcc.ctc.edu)
Thu, 6 Mar 1997 10:00:25 -0800


>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>
>PLEASE POST WIDELY!! PLEASE POST WIDELY!! PLEASE POST WIDELY!!
>
>The UC Berkeley Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies is pleased to
>announce a conference:
>
>WHAT:The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness
>WHEN: April 11-13, 1997
>WHERE: Lipman Room, 8th floor Barrows Hall, UCB Campus.
>
>THE CONFERENCE IS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!!
>
>Participants include: Norma Alarcon, Allan Berube, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz,
>Troy Duster, Michelle Fine, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Neil Foley (pending),
>Ruth Frankenberg, Cheryl Harris, John Hartigan, Jr., Saidiya Hartman,
>Patricia Penn Hilden, Mike Hill, Aida Hurtado, Noel Ignatiev, Caren Kaplan,
>Josh Kun, Eric Lott, Steve Martinot, Cameron McCarthy, Walter Benn
>Michaels, Annalee Newitz, Michael Omi, Sam Otter, Fred Pfeil, John Powell,
>Jasbir Puar, David Roediger, Michael Rogin, Jose Saldivar, Alexander
>Saxton, Mab Segrest, Richard Walker, David Wellman, Lois Weis, Howard
>Winant, and Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano.
>
>For more information, see details below, or visit our website:
>
>http://violet.berkeley.edu/~ethnicst/conference/main.html
>
>or email us at: whiteinfo@garnet.berkeley.edu
>
>**************************************************************************
>**************************************************************************
>CONFERENCE DESCRIPTION:
>
>As a recent articles in _American Quarterly_ and the _Chronicle of
>Higher Education_ explain, there is a growing group of scholars who are
>working in a new field: the study of whiteness. This field has expanded
>over the past decade in part as a result of suggestions by intellectuals
>like Toni Morrison, who have long suggested that race studies must include
>a critical, self-reflexive body of work about whites
>which is both anti-racist and progressive. Thus, the study of whiteness is
>both comparative, in that whiteness is understood as one specific race
>among others, and critical, in that whiteness is generally viewed as a
>socially-constructed identity which has historically helped to perpetuate
>social inequalities. Scholars of whiteness represent a very diverse range
>of disciplines. Sociologists, historians, anthropologists, as well as
>practitioners of ethnic, legal, cultural, and literary studies, are
>bringing interdisciplinary methodologies and critical concerns to the study
>of whiteness. Additionally, many anti-racist activists have spoken to
>issues around whiteness as they appear in community organizing, coalition
>building, and other forms of political movement.
>
>Our chief goal is to promote dialogue among scholars of whiteness across
>the disciplines and throughout the UC system. Although scholars in the
>field read and comment upon each other's work, there has not yet been an
>opportunity for the kind of discussions and networking that a full- scale
>conference permits. This conference is the first of its kind.
>Rigorously interdisciplinary,"The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness"
>features presentations, works-in-progress, and respondents at the graduate
>and professorial level. We have chosen a conference format which will be
>conducive to discussion among participants. Audience members will be
>encouraged to ask questions and given ample time and space to do so.
>________________________________
>TENTATIVE CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
>
>Friday, April 11
>
>9:00am Welcome Address: Michael Omi & Jose David Saldivar
>
>9:30am-12:00pm Panel 1
>
>Shelley Fisher Fishkin (moderator)
>
>Josh Kun: "The Yiddish are Coming!": Mickey Katz and American Whiteness"
>
>Eric Lott: "Race Traitor, Patriot, Iceman, Pig: The New Discourses of
Whiteness"
>
>Annalee Newitz: "On the Whiteness of the Police"
>
>Fred Pfeil: "The Not-So-Great White Way: Some Lessons from the Fantasies of
>the American Gulag"
>
>12:00-1:30pm Lunch
>
>1:30-4:00pm Panel 2
>
>Evelyn Nakano Glenn (moderator, pending)
>
>Michelle Fine: "'You're Stealing My Soul!': Preserving Whiteness as Quality
>in a Public High School"
>
>Cameron McCarthy: "Reading the American Popular: Suburban Resentment and
>the Representation of the Inner-City in Contemporary Film and Television"
>
>Lois Weis: "Re-examining 'A Moment in History': Loss of Privilege Inside
>White Working Class Masculinity in the 1990s"
>
>Aida Hurtado: (abstract pending)
>
>4:30-7:00pm Panel 3
>
>Norma Alarcon (moderator)
>
>John Hartigan: "Establishing the Fact of Whiteness"
>
>Walter Benn Michaels: "Whiteness as Social Construct?"
>
>Mike Hill: "After Whiteness Studies"
>
>Cheryl Harris: "Deconstruction and Anti-Essentialism in Legal Discourse:
>Reconstructing Whiteness"
>
>Saturday, April 12
>
>9:00-11:30am Panel 1
>
>Patricia Penn Hilden (moderator)
>
>Neil Foley: (pending)
>
>Howard Winant: "White Racial Projects: A Comparative Perspective"
>
>Caren Kaplan: "Whiteness in a Transnational Frame: Commodity Feminism in a
>Era of Globalization"
>
>Ruth Frankenberg: "Locating Research on Whiteness"
>
>12:00-1:00pm Lunch
>
>1:30-4:00pm Panel 2
>
>Saidiya Hartman (moderator)
>
>Jasbir Puar: "Transnational Configurations of Desire: The Nation and its
>White Closets"
>
>Allan Berube: "How Gay Stays White"
>
>John Powell: "The Fluidity of the Self and the Stability of Race"
>
>Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano: "Whiteness in the Last Generation: The
>'Half-Breed,' the Queer, and the Nation"
>
>
>4:30-7:00pm Panel 3
>
>Michael Rogin (moderator)
>
>Noel Ignatiev: "The New Abolitionism"
>
>Mab Segrest: "The Souls of White Folks"
>
>David Roediger: "Studying Whiteness: An African American Tradition"
>
>David Wellman: "Whiteness as a Site of Contestation"
>
>Sunday, April 13
>
>
>9:00-11:30am Panel 1
>
>Richard Walker (moderator)
>
>Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: "The Proof of Whiteness: More Than Skin Color"
>
>Steve Martinot: "Racialized Whiteness: Its Meaning, History, and Politics"
>
>Samuel Otter: "White Jackets"
>
>
>
>Alexander Saxton: "The Dance Macabre of Universalism, White Racism, and
>Nationalism"
>
>
>11:30-1:00pm Bag Lunch and Closing Remarks: Troy Duster
>
>____________________________________________________
>CONFERENCE ORGANIZERS
>
>Eric Klinenberg
>Irene Nexica
>Pamela Perry
>Birgit Rasmussen
>Kellie Stoddart
>Jillian Sandell
>Matt Wray
>
>Faculty Sponsors:
>
>Michael Omi
>Jose David Saldivar
>
>___________
>SPONSORS
>
> The Conference is sponsored by: the University of California Humanities
>Research Institute, the Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies, Office
>of the Dean of Social Sciences, Berkeley Graduate Assembly, Doreen B.
>Townsend Center for the Humanities, Beatrice Bain Research Group, Critical
>Studies in Whiteness Working Group, and the UC Berkeley Departments of
>African American Studies, American Cultures Program, American Studies
>Program, Anthropology, Comparative Literature, and Geography.
>
>
>==========================
>
>
>
Melissa S.K. Ponder
mponder@edcc.ctc.edu
206-640-1065
NW Center for Equity and Diversity
EDCC
20000 68th Ave. W.
Lynnwood, WA 98036

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