Past CRG Working Groups
Pacific Island Studies Research Working Group, 2008-2009
The Pacific Island Studies Research Working Group offered a forum for scholars working on, or interested in, Pacific Island histories and cultures at the University of California, Berkeley. It was designed to bring together scholars and graduate students to meet, share, and discuss work on the Pacific. This group met weekly to read and discuss work on the Pacific in a congenial Pacific environment. This group organized a Pacific Island Studies Speaker Series that will collaborate with and support the objectives and interests of the Pacific Island Studies Research Working Group. For more information, please contact Fuifuilupie Niumeitolu at fuifuilupe@berkeley.edu
Gender and Visual Culture:
This working group explored how race and gender are produced through visual culture. The specific technology of photography will served as a springboard for conversations. We were also concerned with how race and gender formations have impacted visual representational practices including painting and sculpture, film, television, advertising, and new digital technologies. Our aim was to make sense of the long, entangled and inextricable relationships among race, gender and visuality. If you are interested in joining or would like more information, please contact Leigh Raiford (lraiford@berkeley.edu) or Elizabeth Abel (eabel@berkeley.edu).
Blackness and Indigeneity and the Beginnings of the Modern World:
This working group explored the links, differences and mutual implications of indigeneity and blackness in the emerging symbolic order of the modern world-system, with a particular focus on the role of scopic regimes in their respective constructions. We payed particular attention to the emergence of America, Africa, and Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. If you are interested in learning more, please contact Professor Nelson Maldonado-Torres.
Racial Reparations:
Those interested in working on racial reparations were invited to contact Professor Charles Henry. The group placed reparations in a global context dealing with apology and truth and reconciliation. It will investigated local, state and national efforts on reparations including grassroots organizations. Finally, it discussed solutions ranging from monetary to cultural.
War, Women and Dislocation:
Women and children constitute the majority of forcibly displaced people in the world. Yet, they remain virtually invisible in the formulation of policies and intervention programs and are rarely understood as independent entities with their own issues and concerns. A working group convened in Spring 2004 to explore the impacts of conflict on women and the ways that gender features centrally in thinking about and analyzing war, socio-economic, political and cultural dislocations, and migration. Graduate students and faculty interested in these issues were invited to contact Professor Khatharya Um.
Transnational Cultures:
This was a closed-membership group organized by Professors Percy Hintzen (African American Studies) and Jocelyne Guilbault (Music). Members read articles had discussions related to the theme of "Placing Popular Culture: Nation, Diaspora, and Governmentality."
Indigeneity Working Group:
Political recognition (primarily by the West) of indigenous groups has been and continues to be a primary stuggle as we begin the 21st century. However, indigenous peopls have made a critique of these terms of recognition a critical part of the political struggle. Legal and racial identities are primarily legacies of Imperialism, and indigenous groups are re-imagining, challenging, and inventing new modes of political activism that challenge the contours of this political recognition. The Indigeneity working group organized an international conference to adress these and other issues. Contact Steve Crum for more information.
