University of Venus

In early March 2013, I attended the 1st Biennial Latina/o Literary Theory and Criticism Conference at John Jay College in New York. I presented a selection from Chapter 2 of my dissertation (you can see an early draft of that here) and was very excited to share my work with other Latina/Latino studies scholars.

Picture this: one day, after a morning when you desperately tried to cope with a schedule without anything related to your academic credentials, that continued with a less academic business meeting and an even less intellectual afternoon of careful family budget planning, you have a moment of truth. For almost ten years, or even more, you had had a hard time trying to get the best grades at the university and read all the complicated and sophisticated books included in the bibliography.

Being first at anything is hard, but being first at college is a bewildering and sometimes terrifying experience.

I was sitting at my desk in the late hours of the night, trying to write a paper and I was absolutely where I did not want to be at that moment. Instead of having to write that paper, I would have preferred to have spent these hours watching a good film,or listening to some music while I read a good book.

What happens when you bring together sixty scientists, engineers, medical researchers, and gender experts in a series of international, collaborative workshops? You get something radically new. That’s the goal of Gendered Innovations. A Stanford startup, Gendered Innovations in Science, Health & Medicine, Engineering, and Environment adds value to science, medicine, and technology by deploying methods of sex and gender analysis.

Recently, Blade Nzimande, South Africa’s Minister for Higher Education and Training, announced that the country’s first universities to be founded since the ending of apartheid will open in 2014. Work on a university in Kimberley in the Northern Cape is set to begin in September, so that it can open in time for the beginning of the academic year in January. The second university will be based in Nelspruit, Mpumalanga, a significant agricultural district about 340km northeast of Johannesburg.

Sheryl Sandberg advises women to “lean in;” the dangling preposition in her book title tells me that Sandberg offers little substance. She offers process without a predicate. Yes, I just judged a book by its cover.

I have a friend who has been teaching and training for more than twenty years. He has a website where he’s a prolific writer on his area, is a frequent participant in online forums and debates, and is considered a valuable resource by his client list, which includes national organizations and various police/military personnel. We are both involved in the SlutWalk movement and he’s been instrumental in helping me understand social attitudes around rape culture, victim-blaming, self defence and the legal system. His influence has resulted in papers I’ve written, media interviews I’ve done around SlutWalk and my doctoral application research proposals.