2004-2005 Toward Equality: The Global Empowerment of Women
Focus Group III. Negotiating Citizenship
and Diversity: Gender, Nation and Diaspora
Co-Chairs: Rabab Abdulhadi, Agnieszka Graff,
Titia Loenen
Members: Margot Badran, Wendy Chavkin, Esther
Ngan Ling Chow, Shanti Parikh, Rhoda Reddock
Goal Statement:
- To critically assess the assumptions underlying
the discourses of gender and nation in
popular culture and academic contexts
- To identify transcultural commonalities and differences
in constructions of gender and
nation
- To understand the ways in which "diversity'
is constructed and negotiated
- To examine why and in what ways women are constructed
as bearers of culture via
their sexuality, fertility, purity, willingness to
sacrifice, etc. How do women claim, resist,
negotiate or subvert these constructs in various contexts?
- To explore the gendered dynamics of collective and
individual identities and the
making and working of citizenship; who is seen as
"representative" and "authentic"
("real
woman," "true member of a nation,"
etc.)
- To examine the gender implications of trans/nationality
- To identify the gendered ideologies related to religion,
sexuality and culture and their
implications for gender and nation
Next Steps:
- Creation of a collective reading list on issues
of gender, citizenship, nation and
identification of 3-5 to be discussed at the mid-term
meeting in India (Reddock and Chow).
- Collection of representations of textual and visual
images related to womanhood and the construction of
the nation (Graff and Loenen).
Long-Term Goals:
- Summer and/or winter institute, one in the US and
the other in the South.
- South/South and North/South lecture tours of NCS
scholars
- Graduate student visits/exchanges
- Special issue of a journal or collected volume of
papers (possibly from the institute.)
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