RSVP appreciated: https://goo.gl/forms/Tj8P0NKlGW9FcjBG2

The 2018 Feminist Research Symposium will be the culmination of a year-long project of exploring the question, “What is Feminist Research?” Last year’s symposium considered the productive tensions and synergies as feminist research moves from its traditional home in the humanities and social sciences into the sciences. These conversations led FRI to posit four values that drive our work: inclusivity, intersectionality, justice, and transformation. Inclusivity acknowledges the role of historical and structural oppression on systems of knowledge production and seeks to redress this. Intersectionality requires us to move from an understanding of how gender is mutually constituted along with other sites of identity and power such as race, class, sexuality, nationality, and ability. Seeking a more just society motivates our work and moves us towards undertaking transformative work to reach those goals. The symposium will explore concrete examples of these values in action at UC Davis and beyond.

The day will feature research from humanities and social sciences including gender, sexuality, and women’s studies, performance studies, cultural studies, anthropology and geography, English, political science, and STEM fields such as biology, engineering, nursing, soil sciences, and environmental studies. Panels will include faculty researchers funded by FRI’s seed grants, graduate students who received summer funding, and working groups. Attendees will be invited to engage in a visioning exercise to identify the most pressing concerns and themes for feminist research to address. The day will conclude with an exploratory panel on the value and values of feminist research."

Tentative Schedule:

8:30-9 Breakfast and opening visioning exercise begins

9-9:30 Introductions

9:30-11 Faculty Seed Grant Presentations

11-12 Graduate Student Fellows Presentations

12-1 Lunch

1-3 Keynote and Discussion: Banu Subramaniam

3-5 Value and Values of Feminist Research Discussion Panel

About the Keynote:

Banu Subramaniam is a professor of women, gender and sexuality studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Originally trained as a plant biologist, she writes about social and cultural aspects of science. She advocates for activist science that creates knowledge about the natural world while being aware of its embeddedness in society and culture. She co-edited Making Threats: Biofears and Environmental Anxieties (2005) and Feminist Science Studies: A New Generation (2001). Her book Ghost Stories for Darwin (2014) was chosen as an Outstanding Academic Title in 2015 and won the Ludwik Fleck Prize for science and technology studies in 2016.

Co-Sponsors Include:

Middle East / South Asia Studies (ME/SA)