gender space and place 2009 final panel abstract

8/6/2019 Gender Space and Place 2009 Final Panel Abstract

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Panel Proposal

Panel Proposal³Gender, Place and Space: An Interdisciplinary Conference´

The University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IndianaMarch 25-27, 2010

Panel Title:From Sexy Archives to Translucent Wombs:

Ideological Shifts and Changing Representations of Gender, Space, and Place

Panel Abstract: This panel investigates ideological shifts in archival research, reproductive

technology, feminisms, and feminist geography as a means to elaborate on tensions betweenchanging representations of place²the home, the body, and the archive²and space²the womb,

suburbia, and world cities. We address both the real and the imaginary by centralizing the roleof popular culture in gender studies. In this panel, intimate social spaces, such as the womb, are

theorized as sites of a growing marketplace economy; we address the need for academic attentionto desire, fantasy, and sexual pleasure and discuss feminist resistance to silences in the archive;

and homes are treated as sites of collective and individual identity. Each of these spaces of intimacy is integral to the place of context. From a woman¶s body to her home in the suburbs,

from fantasies of sex in Cosmo to desire and pleasure in the archive, we argue that shiftingtechnologies facilitate changing understandings of liminal bodies²knowledge, archives, and

women²all the while pointing to the greater context of local and global economies, whichnecessitate shifting academic attentions to gender, space, and place.

Panel keywords: intimate spaces, liminal bodies, popular media

Technology Requested: PowerPoint

Contact Information:

[email protected] of Gender Studies

Indiana University BloomingtonMemorial Hall East, 130

1021 E. Third StreetBloomington, Indiana 47405



Panel Proposal

Individual participants

Laura HarrisonAssociate Instructor

Department of Gender Studies

Indiana University [email protected]

K ey words: reproduction, surrogacy, technology

Abstract:Picturing the Fetus: Fetal Personhood, Surrogacy and Surveillance

In the contemporary United States, the womb is a space that evokes vivid imagery of maternal

love, patience, and safety. Imagined as a safe haven for the gestating fetus, the womb is a spacethat is increasingly both permeable and visible through the use of advanced medical technologies

that monitor and visualize the fetus. In addition, the meaning of the fetus has undergone massiveshifts in recent decades as the concept of fetal personhood has gained cultural and medical

legitimacy. All pregnancies are impacted by these developments, but women who act asgestational surrogates may have an increased likelihood of encountering surveillance during their

pregnancy in order to reassure the prospective parents of the health and safety of the baby-to-be.This essay argues that the womb of the surrogate is a liminal space ± the fetus is reliant upon the

surrogate for survival and is sustained by her body, yet gestational surrogates are not biologicalor social ³mothers´ to the children that they bear. The space of the womb has been refigured by

technologies such as ultrasound and fetal monitoring, and by the emergence of the fetal person/patient, which impacts public perception of surrogacy as a free market commodity.

Bio: Laura Harrison is a doctoral student and Associate Instructor in the Gender Studies

program at Indiana University. Her research analyzes the implications of new reproductivetechnologies on family formation, women¶s reproductive freedom, and the changing meaning of

race in the United States, with attention to representations of fetal personhood and maternal-fetalconflict.

Cierra Olivia Thomas-Williams

John H. Edwards Fellow, 2009-10Department of Gender Studies


K eywords: Popular Culture, Market Development, Feminisms

The Cosmopolitan Effect: Popular Culture, International Market Development,

and ³Incommensurable´ Feminisms

In the late nineteenth century, The Cosmopolitan M agazine brought literature andinternational politics into more homes than any other magazine available on the U.S. market as

one of the first mass marketed periodicals. The magazine helped to construct a homogenous



Panel Proposal

vision of American national character against its many ³Others.´ Today, Cosmopolitan is theworld¶s number one selling women¶s ³lifestyle´ magazine available in more than 100 countries

in over 50 languages. Why is this particular magazine, critiqued by feminists for promotingsexist ideals, enjoying such global success? Scholars internationally are engaging with

Cosmopolitan in connection to the development of regional marketplaces and are implicating

Cosmo as a source of tension for emergent and competing feminist discourses about gender andsexuality. This paper seeks to bring this growing archive together in conversation with Cosmo¶s own U.S. history to illustrate the historic importance of popular culture in general and

Cosmopolitan Magazine in particular to capitalistic marketplace development and identitymaking across space and time. This paper demonstrates that popular culture is integral both as a

site of anxiety for and access to feminist movements nationally, while providing readers a meansto observe the continual ³trouble´ with gender, sexuality, and media feminisms as forms of

identity politics internationally.

Bio: Cierra Olivia Thomas-Williams has been awarded IU's 2009-10 John H. Edwardsfellowship for "good citizenship, character, and especially attitude toward public service.´ Ms.

Thomas-Williams is one of the 2007F

riends of the Kinsey Institute grant recipients for collaborative research on sexuality and her areas of interest are the representations of women of

color in media; critical race and feminist theories; and transnational feminisms as they intersectwith theories of the Black Diaspora.

Jessica WallAssociate Instructor

Department of Gender StudiesIndiana University Bloomington

[email protected]

K eywords: Silences, Pleasure, Sexualities

Silent Spaces: In Search of a History of Pleasure

The field of history has long fought against accepting sex and sexuality as historical entities. Inow wish to challenge the idea that desire and pleasure are also ahistorical. While not all sexual

activities are driven by pleasure and desire, as feminist historians and theorists have made clear,the ubiquity of sexual violence, rape and power differentials have erased neither pleasure nor

desire from the historical records.

Within historiographies of sexuality, a silence exists in connection to sexual pleasure and desire.This absence of space in this historiography is both troubling and unnecessary. Those historians

who do tackle sexual desire and pleasure rely on representations of pleasure and desire²diaries,letters, and literature. While these works may shift our understandings about an old

misconception, largely that of Victorian passionlessness, can this representation-based archiveadequately support a history of pleasure and desire? If we reconsider these silences through a

shift of questions, a clear history of desire and pleasure emerges. I propose a move away fromthis silence within histories of sexualities toward a history of pleasures and desires. Those works

focusing on representation have already wrought some of the changes I call for through



Panel Proposal

positioning the body as a location of sexuality, of desire, or pleasure. I will show that with a bitof creativity, it is possible to carve a space for pleasure and desire within the archive.

Bio: Jessica Wall is a fourth year graduate student at Indiana University in Bloomington. Jessica

has an MA from IUB in History. Seeking a dual PhD in History and Gender Studies, Jessica¶sresearch and writings focus on issues of reproductive rights and justice within the US, andsexuality more broadly.

Stacy Weida

Associate Instructor Department of Gender Studies


K eywords: suburbia, America, symbolic ecology

McMansions and Empty Cul-de-sacs: Contemporary Representations of Suburbia

Scholars in a variety of fields have examined postwar U.S. suburbs. As a new manifestation of

the American Dream, both the actual built environments themselves and the idealized imagesthat circulated in the media encouraged new ways of constructing collective and individual

subjectivities.

But while extensive academic work has been done on the suburbs of the 50s, 60s, and 70s,suburbia remains central to the daily lives and collective national imaginary of many Americans.

As of 2004 more Americans lived in suburbs than anywhere else, with many individualsworking, shopping, and socializing almost exclusively in suburbs. Suburbs are still the setting for

most contemporary sitcoms and prime-time soaps. Given that the recent real estate boom and bust has once again changed the landscape of America and renewed the suburbs as a symbol of

national hope and anxiety, this is the perfect time to re-examine the ways in which the suburbsand the suburban home, both real and imagined, influence collective and individual identities.

Accordingly, I examine both in-depth news coverage of the foreclosure crisis confronting thenation as well as contemporary fictional representations of suburban life in order to map the

evolving ³symbolic ecology´ of contemporary suburbia, paying particular attention to issues of gender, class, and citizenship.

Bio: Stacy Weida has an MA in American Studies from Purdue University and is currently afourth year graduate student working on a PhD in Gender Studies at Indiana University in

Bloomington. An Associate Instructor in the Gender Studies Department, her research interestsinclude feminist geography, sitcoms, embodiment, and materialist feminism.

gender space and place 2009 final panel abstract

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