Research Series, 2009 – 2010

THE POLITICS OF VULNERABILITY: SUBJECTS, BODIES, COMMUNITIES

Fundamental to human being and social life, vulnerability can be the condition for suffering and inequality but also the ground for cooperative empowerment and growth. Thoroughly gendered and often sexualized, vulnerability can be used to justify cultural abjection and social exclusions. But vulnerable subjects, bodies, and communities can also interrupt prevailing norms or provoke individual and collective transformation.

By bringing together scholars from the Humanities and Social Sciences to address the Politics of Vulnerability, the Center aims to open new questions and provoke creative consideration of the unexamined gender and sexual dynamics of vulnerability, including the vulnerable boundaries of disciplined knowledge that feminist studies continues to negotiate.

Friday, October 16, 2009
4pm - 5:30pm, Kyle Morrow Room, Fondren Library 3rd Floor

Public Lecture:
Vulnerability, Disposability, Desubjectivation
Ranjana Khanna, Margaret Taylor Smith Director of Women's Studies and Professor of English, Duke University

Saturday, October 17, 2009
9am - 2pm, Kyle Morrow Room, Fondren Library 3rd floor

Panel PresentationsThe Politics of Vulnerability: Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences

Friday, October 30, 2009
4pm - 6pm, HUM 115 (open to Rice faculty, fellows, and advanced graduate students)

Feminist Research Group:
From the Blood of Race to the Chromosomes of Gender: The Legal Criteria of Race and Sex in Cases of "Fraud" 
Jenifer Bratter, Associate Director of Center on Race, Religion, and Urban Life and Assistant Professor of Sociology, Rice University
Kristen Schilt, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Chicago
Seminar Leader: Sarah Fenstermaker, Professor of Sociology, University of California – Santa Barbara 

Friday, November 13, 2009
4pm - 5:30pm, HUM 117

Public Lecture:
The Part that has no Part: Sexuality, Autology, Genealogy and the End of Recognition in Contemporary Australia 
Elizabeth Povinelli, Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University

Wednesday, November 18, 2009
12pm - 1:30pm, Ken Kennedy Conference Room, Duncan Hall 3076

Public Lecture:
"I'm Not Too Aware Down There": Incorporating the Vulva into the Female Body Image 
Christine Labuski, CSWGS Postdoctoral Fellow, Rice University

Wednesday, January 27, 2010
12pm - 1:30pm, Ken Kennedy Conference Room, Duncan Hall 3076 (Venue to be confirmed)

Public Lecture:
“Never Again a Mexico Without Us”: Gender, Indigenous Autonomy, and Multiculturalism in Neoliberal Mexico
Melissa Forbis, CSWGS Postdoctoral Fellow, Rice University

Thursday, February 4, 2010
4pm - 5:30pm, HUM 117 (Venue to be confirmed)

Public Lecture:
Discussing the Undiscussable: HPV Vaccination, the Politics of Non-Knowledge, and the Limits of Queer Biocitizenship 
Steve Epstein, John C. Shaffer Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University

Friday, February 19, 2009
4pm - 6pm (open to Rice faculty, fellows, and advanced graduate students)

Feminist Research Group:
9/11 Cultures and Political Knowledge
Susan Lurie, Associate Professor of English, Rice University
Seminar Leader: Linda Kaufmann, Professor of English, University of Maryland – College Park

Friday, March 26, 2010

3rd Annual Graduate Symposium

Saturday, April 24, 2009
9am - 12:30pm

Seminar: Works-in-Progress on The Politics of Vulnerability
Distinguished Guest Scholar: Wendy Brown, Professor of Political Science, University of California – Berkeley

Events Contact: cswgs@rice.edu 
Angela Wren Wall, Center Coordinator, 713.348.5784
Brian Riedel, Projects Coordinator, 713.348.2162