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2002-2003 Women's Lives Series
Negotiating Relationships: Love, Sex, and Friendship
We will explore the complexities of women's roles as friend, sister, daughter, mother, wife, and lover in the context of increasingly demanding public and private lives. We support women's right to be self-defined and intentional in their personal and professional relationships. Every woman carries with her a unique set of distinguishing/self-identifying characteristics that mold and enhance her interactions. We will encourage young women to use their strengths to identify and promote healthy relationships and when necessary have the courage to transform or end unhealthy ones.
Upcoming Events
- "Through the Family Door" with Annette Atkins
- "It's About the Figs, Not the Leaf:
Healthy Sexuality and Spirituality" with Monza Naff - “The Struggle For Gender Equality
Doesn’t Have To Be A Battle” with Allan G. Johnson - Century Project
- Other Noteworthy Events
Annette Atkins
“Through the Family Door”
October 9, 2002
7:35 p.m.
HCC Alum Hall, CSB
English writer Alan Bennett, observes “Every family has a secret and the secret is that it is not like other families.” We all know this truth because each of us comes from a family with its own shape, ethnicity, location, economy, temperament, talent, and values. If we pay attention, we know that families come in a wide variety.
Remarkably and oddly, the all-too-common notion of a "traditional family" erases a similarly wide variation in families in the past. That traditional family -- unbroken by divorce, suicide, and other human frailties -- never existed. That false picture is a dangerous one because it denies the very particularities and peculiarities that defined real families in the past. It also offers us little guidance today, when we're so worried about fissures in family life."
Drawing on her research in family history, Annette will talk this evening about family life in the past and some of its variations. She’ll also look at some ways in which our birth families shape our adult friendships and intimate partnerships. Our relationships suffer when we judge them by an inaccurate picture of family life in the past and they make more sense when we see ourselves more fully in our own family context.
Atkins has been a member of the CSB/SJU History Department since 1980, when she completed her PhD from Indiana University. She currently holds the Michael Blecker Professorship in the Humanities at SJU. Her recent publications include We Grew Up Together: Adult Brothers and Sisters in 19th Century America (2001); “Facing Minnesota,” in Minnesota Real and Imagined (2001); “Walk a Century in Their Shoes,” in Minnesota History (2001); “At Home in the Heart of the City: Minneapolis, 1840 – 1850,” (2003).
Monza Naff
"It's About the Figs, Not the Leaf:
Healthy Sexuality and Spirituality"
November 6, 2002
7:45 p.m.
Quad 264, SJU
Monza Naff's talk will explore women’s sexuality, creativity and our inner lives and values. Ultimately, this examined expression empowers us to achieve our full potential.
Naff, Executive Director of Inner Growth Services, Oakland, CA, is a teacher, writer, keynote speaker, consultant, facilitator of workshops on leadership development and community-making/team-building, creativity and spirituality and arts in the workplace, spirituality and sexuality, and ethics in contemporary culture. Throughout the United States, Naff has led groups of all sizes and in many settings (universities, corporations, community organizations, and spiritual communities) in deepening their conversation, unleashing their creativity, sharing ritual in times of celebration, mourning, and moving forward, galvanizing individuals into community.
Naff is the author of two books of poetry, Healing the Womanheart, winner of the 2000 Benjamin Franklin Award from the Publishers Marketing Association, and Exultation: A Poem Cycle in Celebration of the Seasons. She has completed a third book, Conscientious Objections: Poems and Stories, which will be published soon. Also in progress is her manual on ritual, To Brave the Pain: Non-Traditional Rituals for Times of Transition.
For 26 years Dr. Naff taught in colleges and universities, including the College of St. Benedict and St. John's University, most recently on the faculty of the Robert D. Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon in Eugene. Since moving to the San Francisco Bay Area seven years ago, she has been teaching privately as well as consulting, facilitating workshops and retreats, speaking at conferences, giving readings, and writing.
Allan Johnson
“The Struggle For Gender Equality
Doesn’t Have To Be A Battle”
January 29, 2003
8:00 p.m.
Stephen B. Humphrey, SJU
Co-sponsored with Men’s Lives
Unraveling the gender knot begins with getting clear about what patriarchy really is, about what it's got to do with each of us, and about how both men and women can see themselves as part of the process of change toward something better. Based on more than twenty years of work on gender issues, The Gender Knot charts a course organized around three questions:
- What are we participating in and how are we choosing to participate in it?
- How do typical ways of thinking about gender blind us to what's going on?
- What can men and women do to make a difference?
Dr. Johnson is a sociologist, writer, teacher, and public speaker who has worked on issues of privilege, oppression, and social inequality since receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1972. He teaches at Hartford College for Women of the University of Hartford and has worked with a variety of schools and organizations. He is the author of numerous books, including The Blackwell Dictionary of Sociology: A User's Guide to Sociological Language, 2e (2000); and Human Arrangements: An Introduction to Sociology, 4e (1996); The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy (Temple University Press, 1997) and Privilege, Power, and Difference (Mayfield, 2001).
Century Project
February 17-21, 2003
HCC, Alumnae Hall
Co-sponsored with Counseling and Health Services
Century is a chronological series of nude photographic portraits of women from the moment of birth through one hundred years of age. Many of the photographs are accompanied by personal statements written by the participants themselves. These are often highly personal and intensely moving. The subjects portrayed are, quite simply, real-life people. They are not stars or models. They span all ages, body types, and have a rich variety of experiences to draw upon and to share. CENTURY is about real women in real bodies, not the caricatures in the worlds of media and advertising. The track record of the project so far has been one of art being able to bridge educational and therapeutic gaps, and perhaps most importantly, to be able to stimulate thought and discussion about subjects that are often taboo in our society: namely nudity and sexuality, violence, health issues, aging, our attitudes toward women in general, and their portrayal in the media in particular.
Cordelle graduated from Hamilton College with a B.A. in Biology. He pursued a doctoral program in biochemistry at Brandeis University, but left shortly before becoming "Dr. Cordelle" to pursue photography, a long-held interest. He has been working on the Century project for the last 20 years, and has shown the exhibit for the last ten. CENTURY has been exhibited nationally in galleries, at colleges and universities, and even in churches.
For more information contact Mary Geller at 363-5601
or Annette Atkins at 363-2138.
Other Noteworthy Events
Watch for updated events in the Spring of 2003.
"Sex Signals"
February 2, 2003, 7:30 p.m., BAC
CSB Women's Week Activities
March 23 - 27, 2003