Faultlines Fall 2008 Issue

The Commodification of Wombs & Reproductive Labor
Dr. Kalindi Vora, Anthropology
Dr. Fouzieyha Towghi, Women & Gender Studies

The Center was proud to inaugurate the Fall 2008 Thursday Afternoon Forum Series with a panel entitled, “Reproductive Technologies in South Asia: Transnational Medico-technical Mediations, the Commodification of Wombs, and (Re)productive Labor,” an examination of the complex intersection between human reproduction, and the ethics and influence of medical technology in South Asia. 

Adventures In Racialization: Immigration & Critical Race Theory
Professor Angela Harris, Law
Professor Leti Volpp, Law

Professor Leti Volpp of the Boalt School of Law opened the September 18th, CRG Thursday forum with a discussion on the role that culture, race and gender now play in shaping immigration laws. Citing examples of recent legislation passed around the world, Professor Volpp argues that a rhetoric of “gendered, cultural subordination” is being used to justify discriminatory policies against immigrant populations in the name of helping women.

Yes, We Did!
Words From the Director

Just as many of us were obsessed with news coverage for weeks leading to the 2008 Presidential elections, we found ourselves enthralled by post-election dissection in the days following Barack Obama’s victory. Many spontaneous celebrations broke out all over the Berkeley campus, just as they did in innumerable sites around America. The sixth floor of Barrows Hall, where the CRG, Gender and Women’s Studies, and African American Studies are located had knots of excited staff and faculty breaking out wine and sparkling cider the morning after Obama’s victory.

Race, Space, and Labor Outcomes
Professor John Quigley, Economics
Professor Stephen Rafael, Public Policy

What is the relationship between where people live, and where jobs are located? What are the resulting employment outcomes for minorities? According to Professor Steven Rafael of the Goldman School of Public Policy and Professor John Quigley, Economics, understanding the spatial mismatch between where racial minorities live and work can significantly impact and inform local, regional, and national public policy planning.

Fighting Workplace Abuse and Dislocation Through Law & Activism
Cheryl Andrada, Law
Francisca James Hernández, Post-Doctoral Fellow in Ethnic Studies

The October 16th forum explored the challenges faced by migrant women workers. Cheryl Andrada, a second year student at the Boalt School of Law, opened the talk by discussing the legal protections available to migrant Filipina domestic workers.

California Roundtable for Philosophy & Race
Falguni Sheth, Hampshire University
Gregory Velazco y Trianosky, Cal State University, Northridge
Nelson Maldonado-Torres University of California, Berkeley

Each year, the California Roundtable on Philosophy and Race convenes to advance the philosophical exploration of racial formations. This year’s Roundtable was hosted and sponsored by the Berkeley Department of Ethnic Studies and the Center for Race and Gender. The 2008 meeting counted eleven presenters coming from across the United States.

Islamophobia & Anti-Blackness: A Genealogical Approach
Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley

The year 1492 marked a major  turning point in the trajectory of Western Civilization. Elementary age children are taught this as the year Columbus famously crossed the Atlantic. An equally significant event that year, was the Spanish conquest of al-Andalus–a Moorish province on the southern Iberian peninsula established eight centuries earlier–and more importantly, the last major Muslim stronghold on the European continent.

Strategies for Decentering Islamophobia
Khaldoun Samman, Sociology, Macalester College

Professor Khaldoun Samman began his talk by recounting how as a young Jordanian boy recently transplanted to New Jersey, he had been taught never to flush the toilet for “number 1,” but only for “number 2.”  Thus, after neglecting to flush the toilet while at the home of a schoolmate, Samman was confronted by his friend’s mother who politely informed the young immigrant, “in America, we always flush the toilet.”

The Geopolitics of Cartoons
Dina al-Kassim, English & Comparative Literature, UC Irvine
Peter Gottschalk, Religion, Wesleyan University

An old adage states, the pen is mightier than the sword; another that a picture is worth a thousand words. What then might occur, when pen and ink combine in a politically charged image?

The 2005 publication of caricatured, cartoon renditions of the Muslim prophet Muhammad in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten sparked uproar in Islamic communities the world over.

The Qur’an and the U.S. Constitution
Kathleen Moore, Law and Society, UC Santa Barbara

On January 4th, 2007, the newest members of the 110th Congress were sworn in to duty. Among that number was House Representative Keith Ellison from Minnesota, an African American, and the first Muslim ever elected to serve in Congress.

What Islamophobia Means in Britain
Tariq Modood, Sociology, University of Bristol, UK

Before there were anti-Muslim attacks in Britain, there was anti-Asian and African discrimination in the 1980’s. Prior still to that, there were widespread acts of hostility directed against non-whites throughout the 1950’s.

Islamophobia on the Eastern Front
Hamid Algar, Near Eastern Studies, UC Berkeley

The social, cultural, political, and religious dichotomies evoked by the term Islamophobia are most readily conceived of as a modern-day conflict between Islam and the Protestant-Catholic West, and the people and institutions of the Middle East with those of Western Europe and the United States. Less well known, however, is what Professor Hamid Algar characterizes as an unbroken history of systematic hostility, persecution, and violence perpetrated against Muslims by adherents of Slavic Orthodox traditions dating back to the 16th century.

Fall 2008 Faculty Profile
Zeus Leonardo, Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Education

Like critical race theory, whiteness studies is an emergent, inter-disciplinary field that examines the historical construction and moral implications of racial categorizations. Zeus Leonardo’s work is guided by an attempt to capture “the real experiences of race, both by whites and people of color.” Leonardo has been influenced by his lived experience as a person of color.

Download the Fall 2008 Faultlines