FALL 2006
PUBLIC FORUM : Abstinence and Gay Youth--Let's Talk About Sex
University of Arizona Women's Studies Building / Conference Room
1143 E. 1st Street, Corner of First and Vine Sts., between Mountain and Campbell, one block south of Speedway. Free parking available in back beginning at 5 pm.
Instead of receiving comprehensive sex education, many teens are told to abstain from having sex until marriage.and not much else. Abstinence-only programs, funded by the Federal government, often do not teach students essential information about contraception and personal health, but do teach messages such as men need "domestic support" while women need "financial support."
As a result, teens don't get information they need to avoid unwanted pregnancy and STDs, including HIV. While delaying sex until marriage is a useful strategy for some youth, the reality is that most don't wait until marriage and LGBTQ youth can never marry. For some youth, abstinence-only programs reduce their likelihood of using birth control or engaging in safer sex.
Decide for yourself whether teenagers in Tucson are getting straight talk about sex and health by attending public forums at the University of Arizona and Wingspan. We will discuss what’s happening in Tucson – and the rest of the country - when it comes to sex education, and what we can do to provide the best options for young people.
Speakers will include:
Anamika Samanta, Staff Attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, NY, NY
Stephen Russell, Assoc. Professor, Family and Consumer Resources and expert on school-based initiatives for gay youth
Emma Jeffries, peer educator, Planned Parenthood
Thursday, October 26, 2006, 6pm
Proposition 107 DEBATE
James E. Rogers College of Law, Room 146 / 1201 E. Speedway. Parking available behind the law school and in parking garage, both on Helen Street.
Five student groups at the University of Arizona law school are hosting a debate on Proposition 107. The proposition is a proposal to amend Arizona's constitution to prohibit gay marriage, domestic partnerships, and any benefits that derive from such recognitions. Monty Stewart from the Marriage Law Foundation and Jordan Lorence from the Alliance Defense Fund will speak in favor of the proposition. Speaking against the proposition will be Cindy Jordan from the "No on Prop. 107" campaign and Wayne Yehling from the law firm of DeConcini, McDonald, Yetwin & Lacy. Professor Barbara Atwood will moderate the debate. Refreshments will be served before the debate. We hope to see you there!
December 6, 2006, 6pm
FtF: FEMALE TO FEMME
Documentary screening followed by discussion led by Joan Nestle
ILC (Integrated Learning Center), Rm 150
Joan Nestle has spent her life documenting and exploring femme desire. She is co-founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives, author of A Restricted Country and A Fragile Union and editor of The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader. FtF denaturalizes gender and urges an understanding of femininity as multiple rather than singular, constructed rather than natural. Sexy, smart and funny, FtF features a host of fabulous femmes, who make it clear that there's no one way for a femme to define herself.
SPRING 2007
LGBT YOUTH IN SCHOOL: Linking Research and Policy
A research symposium and community education forum sponsored by:
- LGBT Studies Research Cluster on Youth & Education, University of Arizona
- The Institute for Children Youth and Families
- John & Doris Norton School of Family and Consumer Sciences
- The City of Tucson Commission on LGBT Issues
- GLBT Issues Committee of the Arizona Psychological Association
- GLSEN -- Gay, Lesbian, Straight, Education Network -- Tucson
Friday, January 19, 2007, 1-4pm
LGBT YOUTH IN SCHOOL: Linking Research and Policy
Research Symposium
Special Collections Room / Main Library
Featured Speakers:
Stacey Horn, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Educational Psychology and Human Development, University of Illinois - Chicago
Leaving LGBT students behind: Schools, sexuality, and rights
Dr. Horn argues that injustice is pervasive in schools in the United States and has serious negative implications for the health and well-being of not only LGBT students, but all students. Further, she argues that injustice persists, in part, due to larger systemic issues embedded within the complexity and conflict inherent in educating students within a pluralistic democracy and our understanding of the role of the school in child and adolescent development. Finally, she discusses recent research on heterosexual students' attitudes and beliefs about homosexuality and the treatment of lesbian, gay, and gender non-conforming peers, research that has implications for creating safe schools for LGBT students within a pluralistic democracy.
Alan Horowitz, Program Specialist, Out for Equity, Saint Paul Public Schools
Out for Equity: One District's Strategy to Link Research with Educational Equity
Out for Equity is widely recognized as one of the premier school-based centers to meet the needs of LGBT youth. Mr. Horowitz will describe the history and development of Out for Equity, highlighting the ways that research on LGBT youth has guided the development of school-based programs for LGBT students.
Joseph G. Kosciw, Ph.D., Research Director, GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network)
Hostile School Climate, School Attendance and Academic Achievement in a National Sample of LGBT Youth
For many LGBT youth, intolerance and prejudice often make school a hostile and dangerous place. Although some research has documented the incidence of harassment and assault experienced by these students, little attention has been paid to the negative implications that a hostile climate may have on LGBT students' access to education and ability to learn. Using data from a national survey of LGBT middle and high school students, Dr. Kosciw examines key factors that contribute to a hostile school climate for LGBT students, and how hostile climates are linked to poorer school attendance, poorer academic achievement and lowered educational aspirations. Dr. Kosciw also examines how institutional supports for LGBT students and increased student comfort with sexual orientation or gender identity may moderate these negative effects.
Stephen T. Russell, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Family Studies and Human Development, University of Arizona
Understanding - and Changing - School Climates
While some states, districts, schools, and individual administrators and teachers have proactive policies that assure that the school environment is free from harassment and discrimination, it remains that many schools and school personnel have limited awareness of or are not prepared or trained to understand and manage issues of same-sex sexuality or identity. Recent research highlights the roles of school policy, school personnel, and social support from institutions and peers in promoting school safety and positive school climates. Dr. Russell will discuss applications of research on LGBT youth to educational policy change at multiple policy levels: classrooms, schools and school districts, and state education legislation.
Discussants:
Laura Briggs, Chair and Professor, Women's Studies, University of Arizona
Brian Chase, Staff Attorney, Western Regional Office, Lambda Legal
Hugh Crethar, Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Arizona Alan Horowitz, Program Specialist, Out for Equity, Saint Paul Public Schools
Ingrid Novodvorsky, Director, Science Teacher Preparation Program, University of Arizona
Andrea Romero, Assistant Professor of Mexican American Studies, University of Arizona
Saturday, January 20, 2007, 10-11:30am, Location: TBA
LGBT YOUTH IN SCHOOL: Linking Research and Policy
A Community Education Forum
Wingspan Community Center, The Anzaldua Room
Joseph G. Kosciw, Ph.D., Research Director, GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network)
From Teasing to Torment: Bullying and Harassment in Arizona Schools
School can be an unsafe and hostile environment for many students, particularly those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. However, Arizona's schools may improve climate and perhaps ameliorate the negative effects of bullying and harassment by implementing positive resources for LGBT students, such as comprehensive safe school policies. Yet there is no statewide legislation protecting any student from bullying and harassment in school and four out of the five largest school districts in the state do no have such policies enacted at the district level. Thus, thousands of students in Arizona schools may be left unprotected from school-based harassment. In order to understand the issues of bullying and harassment in Arizona schools, we examined the responses of youth who were attending schools in Arizona from a larger national survey of secondary school students and teachers. Results demonstrate how biased language, especially homophobic and sexist remarks, were commonly heard among students and often overlooked by teachers and other school staff. Arizona students also reported that students were frequently bullied and harassed because of their personal characteristics, especially their physical appearance, actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender expression. Students in Arizona were also more likely to report bullying and harassment based on race/ethnicity occurring in their schools than did students nationally.
Panel Discussion: Advancing LGBT Student Safety in Arizona
Moderator:
Stephen T. Russell, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Family Studies and Human Development, University of Arizona
Panelists:
Stacey Horn, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Educational Psychology and Human Development, University of Illinois - Chicago
Alan Horowitz, Program Specialist, Out for Equity, Saint Paul Public Schools
Promising Complicities: On the Sex, Race and Globalization Project
Presentation by Professor Miranda Joseph and David Rubin
Modern Languages, Conference Room 451 / Refreshments
This collaborative presentation reflects on (some of) the scholarship produced and presented over the 6 years of the Sex, Race and Globalization Project that took place here at the UA. Specifically, we take up a number of recent calls to evaluate the "transnational turn" in queer studies and to examine whether certain kinds of attention to globalization might actually undermine the radical promise of queering as a critical methodology.
February 20, 3-5pm
'Children of multicultural Britain' and the limits of the national imaginary
Special Collections / Main UA Library
Reception will follow the lecture / Free and open to the public
Anne-Marie Fortier, Visiting Scholar in LGBT Studies
Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, England
In this talk, Dr. Anne-Marie Fortier explores different representations of 'children of multicultural Britain' - some utopian, some dystopian - that have been circulating in the British press since 2001. The talk includes two sections: 'Models of Modern Britons' and 'Monsters of Modern Britain.’ Moving from one section to the other takes us from the 'average' to the 'ordinary' other Britons; a delicate shift that is laden with anxieties and broken dreams about the promises of the assimilationist project. From a morphed 'Face of Britain' and 'Genevieve: the model of a modern Briton,' to 'shoe bomber Reid' and the four suicide bombers of July 7, 2005, these 'children of multicultural Britain' once held the promises of multicultural Britain as it is figured in heterosexualised ideals of hybridity and 'mixing.’ But what happens when the 'mixing' is of ‘the wrong kind’? What happens when the nation is called to witness the hopelessness of its own familial desires as they were projected on the 'picture perfect' stills of the 'children of multicultural Britain'?
LGBT Studies is excited to host Dr. Anne-Marie Fortier as a Visiting Scholar during Spring 2007. Dr. Fortier, who is a member of the Sociology faculty at the University of Lancaster, UK, conducts research at the intersection of critical race, diaspora, and gender/sexuality studies. She particularly examines two themes: migrant identities, home and belonging; and multiculturalisms and nationalisms in a globalizing world. She is the author of Migrant Belongings: memory, space, identity (Berg, 2000); the co-editor of the book Uprootings/Regroundings: Questions of home and migration (Berg, 2003); and the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters, including “Queer Diasporas” (2002), and “Making Home: Queer Migrations and Motions of Attachment” (2003). Dr. Fortier is currently finishing her manuscript, Multicultural Intimacies: Diversity and the Limits of the Civil Nation (forthcoming from Routledge), and co-organizing an international conference on Melancholic States.
AME Auditorium, 1130 N. Mountain
Discussion to follow, with filmmaker Heather Courtney, Kat Rodriguez of Derechos Humanos and Francesca Meza of Pan Left Productions.
This award-winning documentary interweaves video letters carried across the U.S.-Mexico border by the film's director with the personal stories of women left behind in post-NAFTA Mexico. Director Heather Courtney provides an intimate look at the lives of the people most affected by today's failed immigration and trade policies. Focusing on a side of the immigration story rarely told by the media or touched upon in our national debate, Letters offers a fresh perspective, painting a complex portrait of families torn apart by economics.
"A much-needed examination of the collateral damage of illegal
immigration, LETTERS FROM THE OTHER SIDE gives voice to the women and
children left behind -- sometimes forever -- when Mexican men cross
the U.S. border looking for work. Sensitive treatment of an overlooked
issue should make it resonate."
–John Anderson, Variety
Co-sponsors include:
The College of Fine Arts Dean's Fund for Excellence, Department of Media Arts, Hanson Film Institute, Department of History, Department of Anthropology and Department of Women's Studies, with additional support provided by Latin American Studies, Pan Left Productions and Derechos Humanos.
Public Feelings
ILC (Integrated Learning Center), Room 150, University of Arizona
Professor Ann Cvetkovich (English, UT Austin)
The Subjectivities, Sexualities and Political Cultures Research Cluster (sponsored by the Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies) and the New Directions in Critical Theory Conference are pleased to present this talk by Professor Ann Cvetkovich.
Ann Cvetkovich has written on trauma studies, globalization and activism, the formation of subcultures, local counterpublics and lesbian communities, women, gender and literature, and popular culture. She is the author of Mixed Feelings: Feminism, Mass Culture and Victorian Sensationalism (Rutgers 1992), An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Culture (Duke, 2003), and the co-editor of Articulating the Global and Local: Globalization and Cultural Studies (Westview 1997). She has published articles in Camera Obscura, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, and GLQ, and in the edited collections, Dancing Desires, Feminist Consequences, and Trauma at Home: After 9/11. She is currently the editor of GLQ.
For more information about the New Directions Conference, which includes a lecture by film scholar Gaylyn Studlar and many fabulous presentations by graduate students, click here to view that page on the UA English Dept website .
MARCH 2007: QUEER PUERTO RICAN DIASPORA
LGBT Studies will host Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, scholar of Queer Puerto Rican Diaspora from the University of Michigan. The following events are funded by the Arizona Humanities Council and have been designated as a "We the People" project by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
March 22, 2007, 6:30pm
The Loft Cinema / 3233 E. Speedway / Free and open to the public
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes will introduce and lead Q&A following this film about two Puerto Rican lesbian migrants.
March 23, 2007, 3:30pm
Rose Troche and Puerto Rican Lesbians in Chicago: A Reading of Go Fish
Special Collections / Main UA Library
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes discusses Rose Troche's landmark debut film Go Fish (1994), particularly the representation of Puerto Rican, African American, and white lesbians in Chicago, in relation to Troche's own biography as a Chicago-born Puerto Rican raised in the suburbs. Troche is possibly one of the most famous Puerto Rican filmmakers currently working in Hollywood, having also directed Bedrooms and Hallways (1999) and The Safety of Objects (2003), collaborating on HBO's Six Feet Under, and currently co-writing and co-directing the Showtime series The L Word. This talk forms part of his forthcoming book Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora (University of Minnesota Press), which focuses on the intersection of Puerto Rican culture, migration, and sexual orientation.
Professor Sandy Soto Brown Bag Talk
De-Mastery of Desire: Reading Chican© Like a Queer
Women's Studies Conference Room
Chicana/o literary and cultural texts have long been approached through two overlapping presuppositions: they offer instructive reflections of the material social processes that racialize and oppress peoples of Mexican descent living in the US; they help constitute and mobilize an oppositional Chican© public for politically contesting racism in the US. What happens when the burdens of transparent reflection and of an identity politics squarely focused on race are lifted from the texts and from the readers/viewers? When reflection is shattered? When Chican© representations thwart our desires for mastery (of knowledge, of agency)? When what they offer up instead is the unknowable, unthinkable, unsayable? In "De-Mastery of Desire: Reading Chican© Like a Queer" Sandra Soto takes up these and other questions.