2019-2020 Archive
For the 2019-2020 academic year, the colloquia committee will focus on the following three types of events: those in which we share our own research; those in which we invite outside speakers whose work is related to the research interests of the department; and brown-bag professionalization workshops for graduate students.
Graduate Student Professionalization Workshop: Strategies for the Job Market
Thursday, October 10, 2019 - CANCELLED DUE TO PG&E's electricity shutdown, learn more.
Time: 11:40 - 1:15pm
Location: Rachel Carson College 301Topics will include: Applying to Post-docs, Faculty and Non-Academic Positions, Preparing a Successful Job Talk, Application Process at CSUs. (PDF Flyer)
Speakers:
Juhee Kang (Ph.D. Media Information Studies, Michigan State University) Assistant Teaching Professor Sociology Department, UCSC
Jaimie Morse (Ph.D. Sociology, Northwestern University) Assistant Professor Sociology, Department, UCSC
Yvonne Kwan (Ph.D. Sociology UCSC) Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, California State University, San Jose
Faculty Dialogues: James Doucet-Battle and Jaimie Morse
Thursday, October 17, 2019
Time: 11:40 - 1:00pm
Location: Rachel Carson College 301With Sociology@UCSantaCruz faculty James Doucet-Battle and Jaimie Morse. The conversation and Q&A session will be moderated by Sociology Graduate Student Dennis Browe.
James Doucet-Battle is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley/University San Francisco Joint Medical Anthropology Program. His research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of science, technology and society studies, development studies and anthropological approaches to health and the medicine. He applies these interests to study the political economy of genomic discourses about race, risk, and health disparities.
Jaimie Morse MPH, is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Senior Visiting Fellow with the Global Health Justice Partnership at Yale University. She studies knowledge, technology, and policy in biomedicine and public health, with a focus on the interplay of law, health, and human rights in processes of policy change. Her current project examines these dynamics through a focus on the emergence of the sexual assault medical forensic exam (commonly known as the “rape kit”) as a tool of anti-rape activism in emergency medicine in the United States since the 1970s and its adaptation for use with refugees and internally displaced persons.
Stephanie Malia Hom on "The Island in the Middle Sea: Lampedusa, Migration, and the Ripple Effects of Empire"
Thursday, October 24, 2019
Time: 11:40 - 1:00pm
Location: Rachel Carson College 301From 10:30-11:30, in RCC 301, Stephanie will meet with graduate students to discuss paths in and outside of the academy.
Hom's talk will explore the lasting connections between Italy’s current crisis of migration and detention and the carceral archipelago of its recent past. It interrogates the layered histories of the island of Lampedusa, and in particular, how the movements occasioned by Italy’s nation-making and colonial projects in the early twentieth century have textured migration and detention in the twenty-first. It traces the ways in which the control of mobility, vis-à-vis a discourse of temporary permanence, has informed the creation of these exclusionary spaces, and how Italy’s neglected colonial history in Libya (1911–43) has become cited and expanded in the politics of the present, transforming Lampedusa into the southern border of “Fortress Europe.” What is at stake is a sustained critique of empire and mobility, with Italy as the keystone for imperialism, past and present, in the Mediterranean.
Stephanie Malia Hom is Executive Director of the Acus Foundation in Berkeley, CA. Hom writes and lectures on modern Italy and the Mediterranean, Italian literature and culture, colonialism and imperialism, migration and detention, and tourism studies. She is the author of Empire's Mobius Strip: Italy's Crisis of Migration and Detention (Cornell, 2019) and The Beautiful Country: Tourism and the Impossible State of Destination Italy (Toronto, 2015). She also co-edited with Ruth Ben-Ghiat Italian Mobilities (Routledge, 2015). Her essays and articles have been published in wide range of venues, including the leading journals in the fields of Italian studies, tourism history, urban studies, and folklore.
Use code "09FLYER" to receive a 30% discount when ordering Empire's Mobius Strip directly from Cornell University Press. (PDF-flyer)
Co-Sponsored by Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, the Research Center for the Americas, and Italian Language Program, Dept. of Languages and Applied Linguistics
Yvonne Sherwood on "Streaming Indigenous Knowledge: The Case of Colorado River v. State of Colorado and the Recognition of Nature's Inherhent Rights
Friday, November 01, 2019
Time: 1:00pm - 3:00pm
Location: Rachel Carson College 301How do we invest and articulate a “land based pedagogy” without furthering the erasure of Indigenous peoples and ongoing settler occupation at the same time that we pay attention to our responsibilities to our more-than-human relations? Rights of Nature movement actors reference Indigenous worldviews as foundational to the recognition of nature’s inherent rights and propose that the rights of nature environmental laws that foreground Indigenous ontologies are a way to protect nature by shifting the consciousness of would be polluters. Sherwood’s talk will explore the tension between the romanticization of indigeneity along side the criminalization of Indigenous assertions to tribal sovereignty, paying specific attention to the ways that the Rights of Nature movement draws from Indigenous Knowledge through what movement actors call “Indigenous Streaming” at the same time criminalizing Native interests to their ancestral homelands. Grounded in anti-colonial critique of the politics of recognition, Sherwood’s talk will examine the logics of the rights of nature movement by looking across a series of foundational texts, websites, and legal actions, to better understand the strengths and limits of focusing on “Indigenous streaming” and the recognition of a river’s inherent rights in the context of settler-state courts. Despite social movement actors’ goal for new environmental law to expand the consciousness of would be polluters, the recognition of Nature’s rights that is centered on recognition through state courts furthers liberal multicultural narratives at the same time entrenching the colonial legal apparatus.
Following the talk: time will be given to allow relevant practice job talk feedback.
Yvonne P. Sherwood (Spokane and Coeur d’Alene) is a PhD Candidate in Sociology with a designated emphasis in Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Sherwood studies race and gender, indigeneity, activism, and politics with a focus on the interplay between violence against Indigenous lands and the violence against Indigenous bodies, particularly Native women. Sherwood’s current project examines these dynamics through a focus on Indigenous Knowledge and the constitutionalizing of Nature’s rights (internationally known as the Rights of Nature Movement) as a social, cultural, and legal tool used by environmentalists to advance and protect nature’s rights even as it frames Indigenous interests as potentially criminal.
She is a current American Sociological Association, MFP (Minority Fellowship Program) Fellow and her research has been funded by several institutions and organizations, including the University of California, Santa Cruz’s President’s Dissertation Year Fellowship and the UCSC Jessica Roy Memorial Award. Sherwood has published in: The Fourth World Journal, Intercontinental Cry, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, and Open Rivers: Rethinking Water, Place & Community.Karen Tice on "Feminist Radical Left Internationalism and Border Crossings to Cuba: The Vexing of Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Political Solidarities, 1960-1985"
Thursday, November 07, 2019
Time: 11:40 - 1:00pm
Location: Rachel Carson College 301A wide spectrum of left feminist activists from the global North have participated in international solidarity delegations such as the Venceremos Brigades, to support global liberation struggles, a longstanding form of radical social activism used to challenge imperialism, capitalism, and militarism. Based on oral histories conducted with women revolutionary travelers who identified with women’s, gay, and/or black ethnic liberation struggles; personal and organizational archives; travel accounts; and radical left publications, Tice focuses on the differing narratives and experiences recounted by U.S. radical women of color and white feminists who defied U.S. travel bans to travel to Cuba.
Tice analyzes the accounts of women of color and white feminists that were generated by their border crossings to support the Cuban revolution. Tice highlights the differences and overlaps in how white women and women of color reacted to their political travels to Cuba and how intersectional politics and schisms shaped their stories and interpretations of Cuba and each other, as well as the impact on their post-Cuba coalitional activism. Tice focuses on the internal debates within the delegations about the prioritizing of intersectional relations of power, highlight the political differences around Cuban revolutionary practices, revolutionary subjectivities, and the daily negotiations of race, sexuality, gender, and cultural imperialism that occurred while in Cuba. Tice examines the fault lines and limits but also the post-Cuba networks and circuits that supported subsequent U.S. coalition building among feminist-identified travelers to Cuba. Tice concludes by suggesting the import of these debates and experiences for contemporary transnational feminist solidarity delegations and coalitional exchanges.
Karen Tice is a Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Kentucky. She traveled to Cuba in 1978 and again in 2015. She is currently writing a book on U.S. Cuban solidarity exchanges, past and present, and the intersectional and transnational solidarity politics of radical women of color and white feminists.
Co-Sponsored by the Feminist Studies department.
Ipek Demirsu on "Verona the City of Love and Hate: Struggle to Define City-space and Belonging in the Age of Right-wing Populism"
Thursday, November 14, 2019
Time: 11:40 - 1:00pm
Location: Rachel Carson College 301The picturesque setting of Shakespeare’s famous play Romeo and Juliet, the city of Verona is a tourist hub in northern Italy with its rich history, its world famous Valpolicella wine, and its still functioning Roman Arena that annually hosts operas and concerts. Yet, one lesser known reality is how the city is considered as a fortress of far-right movements and neofascist groups since World War II, today institutionalized in the city administration, seeking to define the city and belonging thereof. The dominance of far-right groups who have found greater expression through the right-wing populist party Lega is challenged by a thickly interwoven network of local associations remarkably situated in the neighborhood of Veronetta, who pursue everyday practices of appropriating urban spaces whilst redefining belonging and city-zenship. It is at this conjuncture that the case of Verona is taken to apply microscopic lenses to understand the global rise of right-wing populist politics in the everyday urban context through an exclusive construction of belonging and local identity, as well as how such representations are challenged by actors who seek to create an inclusive city for various minorities.
Ipek Demirsu is a PhD student in Social Sciences at the University of Padova, with a focus on migration and the city in the Italian context. Previously, Ipek completed a PhD in Political Science and International Relations at Sabanci University (Istanbul), during which had the chance to spend time as a visiting researcher in the stimulating environment of University of Otago National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies. Ipek has worked as post-doctoral researcher in a joint project conducted by Sabanci University and KU Leuven, entitled "Assessing interdependence between the European Union and Turkey: Policies and cooperation in regional and global governance". Ipek is author of the book Counter-terrorism and the Prospects of Human Rights: Securitizing Difference and Dissent published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2017. Ipek's research interests include human rights,democracy and pluralism, security studies, migration studies, everyday resistance, urban ethnography, and qualitative research methods.
Ananya Roy on Sanctuary Spaces: Reworlding the West in the Age of White Nationalism
Tuesday, February 11, 2020 (PDF Flyer) - CANCELLED
Time: 12:00 - 1:15pm
Location: Rachel Carson College Red RoomAt a time of resurgent white nationalism and organized right-wing violence, sanctuary jurisdictions have emerged as an important terrain of struggle. This talk undertakes a critical interrogation of sanctuary and thereby of philosophies of Western humanism and humanitarianism that underpin the terms of protection for racial others. Attentive to colonial relationalities, the talk foregrounds multiple histories and formations of fugitivity, refuge, and rebellion that make possible a reworlding of the West as the space of sanctuary.
Ananya Roy is Professor of Urban Planning, Social Welfare, and Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she also serves as inaugural Director of the Institute on Inequality and Democracy. Along with colleagues at UCLA, Ananya leads a Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar on Sanctuary Spaces. More at: https://luskin.ucla.edu/person/ananya-roy
Sponsored by the UC Santa Cruz Institute for Social Transformation and the Departments of History of Consciousness, Politics, and Sociology.
Graduate Student Professionalization Workshop: Working with Faculty Advisors and Mentors
Thursday, February 13, 2020 - CANCELLED
Time: 11:40 - 1:15pm
Location: Rachel Carson College 301This topic was selected based on graduate student feedback and concerns shared during the Fall mid-quater meeting. Coordinated by the Graduate Advisory Committee, the first half hour of the workshop will consist of a discussion among graduate students where they may share what's worked well in working with faculty, as well as questions and issues that they would like to discuss with the faculty. These questions/issues will be shared anonymously during a discussion with a faculty panel from 12:15-1:15.Mark Warren on Lift us up Don’t push us out! Movement-building for racial equity and educational justice
Thursday, February 20, 2020 - CANCELLED
Time: 12:00 - 1:15pm
Location: Rachel Carson College 301In an era in which national politics has increasingly descended to the level of tabloid journalism and national education policy is in increasing disarray, remarkably successful and inspiring efforts to pursue educational reform and justice through grass-roots politics mainly go unnoticed by the national media. Mark Warren, a sociologist concerned with the revitalization of American democratic and community life, collects and reports on many of these efforts in his recently published Lift Us Up Don’t Push Us Out! In his campus talk, Warren will discuss the need for a grassroots movement to transform public education, led by people most affected – parents and students from low-income communities of color – along with educators and allies from other social justice movement. He will provide examples from the book of organizing and alliance building efforts and discuss the challenges to building a broader and more intersectional social justice movement with racial and educational justice at its center.
Mark Warren is Professor, Department of Public Policy and Public Affairs, McCormack Graduate School. Mark is a sociologist concerned with the revitalization of American democratic and community life. He studies efforts to strengthen institutions that anchor low-income communities— schools, churches, and other community-based organizations—and to build broad-based alliances among these institutions and across race and social class. Mark studies and works with community and youth organizing groups seeking to promote equity and justice in education, community development, and civic engagement. He is committed to developing a new approach to scholarly work that is engaged and collaborative with practitioners and community and institutional leaders.
Co-Sponsored by the Education Department.
Aliya Saperstein on The Opioid Epidemic and Racial Classification on Death Certificates
Thursday, February 27, 2020 - CANCELLED
Time: 12:00 - 1:15pm
Location: Rachel Carson College 301Previous research has highlighted not only the existence of individual racial fluidity in censuses and surveys, but also inconsistency in racial classification across U.S. vital statistics systems, including stereotypical associations with specific causes of death. This, in combination with what some have called the “whitewashing” of the current opioid epidemic, raises the question: are decedents more likely to be classified as white if opioid use was listed as a contributing cause relative to decedents whose deaths were not deemed opioid-related? To provide an answer, we draw on recently released restricted-use data from Mortality Disparities in American Communities (MDAC), which links respondents from the 2008 American Community Survey to death records through 2015. We find that respondents previously recorded as nonwhite who later die of opioid overdoses have significantly greater odds of being (re)classified as white, all other measured factors being equal. Odds of such reclassification are lower in states hit hardest by the epidemic or with low death certificate drug data quality, suggesting error is not a primary explanation of the results. Instead, the patterns suggest that racialization of the recent opioid epidemic as a public health emergency disproportionately affecting white Americans may be shaping the data used to track racial disparities in mortality.
Aliya Saperstein is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Stanford University. Saperstein received her B.A. in Sociology from the University of Washington and her Ph.D. in Sociology and Demography from the University of California-Berkeley. Her research focuses on the social processes through which people come to perceive, name, and deploy seemingly immutable categorical differences —such as race and sex—and how such processes create and maintain social inequality.
Rene Almeling on GUYnecology: The Missing Science of Men's Reproductive Health
Thursday, April 30, 2020 - CANCELLED
Time: 12:00 - 1:15pm
Location: Rachel Carson College 301The average American has yet to encounter new information about the importance of “healthy sperm” and the “male biological clock.” That is because basic medical knowledge about how men matter when it comes to reproductive outcomes, from miscarriages to childhood illnesses, has only recently begun to be produced. This gap in knowledge about men is only more glaring when one considers the enormous efforts to understand and treat women’s reproductive bodies over the past century. What took so long? Why are biomedical researchers only now asking questions about how men’s age and bodily health affect reproductive outcomes?
Weaving together historical materials and qualitative interviews, Almeling examines the history of medical knowledge-making about men’s reproductive health and its consequences for individuals. From a failed nineteenth-century effort to launch a medical specialty called andrology to the contemporary science of paternal effects, she argues that a lack of medical specialization around men’s reproductive bodies resulted in obliviousness about men’s role in reproductive outcomes. Sifting through media messages and analyzing the stories of individual men and women, GUYnecologydemonstrates how this historical gap in attention shapes reproductive politics today. Rene Almeling is a sociologist at Yale University with research and teaching interests in gender and medicine. Using a range of qualitative, historical, and quantitative methods, she examines questions about how biological bodies and cultural norms interact to influence scientific knowledge, medical markets, and individual experiences. She is the author of Sex Cells, an award-winning book that offers an inside look at the American market for egg donors and sperm donors. Her second book, GUYnecology: The Missing Science of Men's Reproductive Health, will be published by the University of California Press in August 2020. In it, she argues that the historical lack of biomedical attention to men’s reproductive health has profound implications for contemporary reproductive politics. Professor Almeling has also conducted two original surveys, the first on Americans’ attitudes toward genetic risk (with political scientist Shana Kushner Gadarian) and the other on women’s bodily experiences of IVF. She has received funding for her research from the National Science Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Her articles have appeared in American Sociological Review, Annual Review of Sociology, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, and Gender & Society. She is a recipient of the Arthur Greer Memorial Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Research, one of Yale’s highest honors, and holds courtesy appointments in American Studies, the Yale School of Public Health (Department of Health Policy and Management), and the Yale School of Medicine (Section of the History of Medicine). During the 2019-20 academic year, she is a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.
Co-Sponsored by the Science & Justice Research Center.
Graduate Student Professionalization Workshop: Preparing for the Job Market
Thursday, May 07, 2020
Time: 12:00 - 1:15pm
Location: refer to emailed Zoom linkTopics will include: Applying to Postdoc Positions, Working with your committee/letter writers, Networking, Preparing Application letters.
Speakers:
James Doucet-Battle Assistant Professor of Sociology, UCSC
Miriam Greenberg Professor of Sociology, UCSC
Veronica Terriquez Associate Professor of Sociology, UCSC
Kati Barahona-Lopez Ph.D. Sociology UCSC
Yvonne Sherwood Ph.D. Sociology UCSC
Brandi Summers
Thursday, May 14, 2020 - CANCELLED
Time: 12:00 - 1:15pm
Location: Rachel Carson College 301Brandi Summers is assistant professor of Geography and Global Metropolitan Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. I received my Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz and a Masters degree in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago.
Fall Quarter
Winter Quarter
Spring Quarter
See Also
