NEW FACULTY STARTING IN FALL 2009!
We are happy to report that are searches concluded. As both of our candidates have obligations for this coming year, they will both be deferring.
Our new gender and sexuality professor is Svati Shah. Svati received her PhD from Columbia University in 2006. Her research interests include the political economy of migration, sex work, development, and urbanization in South Asia and South Asian diaspora. Her publications include 'Open Secrets: Women Soliciting Construction and Sex Work in Bombay', in Sadhna Arya and Anupama Roy (eds) Poverty, Gender and Migration (SAGE, 2006) and 'Sexual Commerce and the Axis of Violence: A Feminist Debate Revisited', Gender and History 16(3), 2004. She is currently working on a book on sex work and migration in Mumbai's informal sector. She has also been involved in queer, progressive, and feminist South Asian organizations in the U.S. and in India.
Sarah Richardson, our feminist science studies candidate is a historian and philosopher of science. Her research focuses on race and gender in the biosciences and on the social dimensions of scientific knowledge. She has broad interests and expertise in the history and philosophy of molecular biology and genetics, philosophy of science, science and technology studies, and feminist science studies. Richardson's dissertation, Gendering the Genome, analyzes gender in the history of human sex chromosome genetics from 1900 to the present. Richardson coedited the forthcoming book, Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age (Rutgers, 2008).
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Our collaboration with Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, NC continues. We have just learned that Bennett President Julianne Malveaux has accepted our invitation to come to campus in late September. A progressive economist, Dr. Malveaux is best described as a scholar activist and civic leader. Her weekly columns appear in many newspapers across the country and she is well known for her appearances on radio and television national networks. She will give a public lecture on September 29th at 4:00 p.m. titled, "What's Trump: Race, Class, Gender and the 2008 Election" as well as have the opportunity to meet with us. See our events page for more information and other event listings. |
The fall 2008 newsletter has been printed and mailed. We were excited to do our newsletter in color for the first time! If you are not on our mailing list, e-mail Linda with your address.
Our collaboration with Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, NC continues. Check out the Africana Women's Studies Program at Bennett.
Click here to see an article in the Daily Collegian for an article on a local alumn, Janet Aalfs.
Our thoughts are with Arlene Avakian and Martha Ayres who are mourning the loss of their son Neal Ryan as well as their daughter Leah Ryan. Neal died suddenly in January. Leah passed this spring after fighting leukemia. Their obituaries are below:
Neal Ryan died very suddenly on Sunday, January 13, 2008 at the young age of 46. Loving friends and family gave him a send off by singing three of his favorite Beatles tunes: “Blackbird,” “All You Need is Love,” and “Let it Be.” Neal forged an independent and rich life. From an early age he loved music, especially rock and roll, and as he matured his brilliance was revealed when at a moment’s notice he offered rare and normally forgotten facts about American musical history from his amazing store of information about the artists and their contexts. He had a large stash of music, books, videos, and maps and he hunted for his collectibles at flea markets, tag sales, and record conventions where he was well known for his expertise. Neal had a wide variety of friends whom he often recruited to drive him to his various destinations, especially when the buses were not running and he was not able to get around on his own. He worked in food services for much of his life, most recently at Hampshire College. He is survived by his mothers, Arlene Avakian and Martha Ayres of Amherst, his sister Leah Ryan of New York City, and his father Jake Ryan of Ithaca, NY. Donations may be made in Neal’s name to the Youth Educational Programs Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at 1100 Rock and Roll Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44114. Neal – we love you and miss you.
Leah Ryan, playwright, author, teacher, gourmet cook, and noted cat butler, died of leukemia on June 12th in New York City. She had initially planned to die of emphysema in Paris, but was unable to secure funding. She was 44.
Born in Greenfield, MA on March 15, 1964, Ms. Ryan spent her early years hanging out with bad kids, smoking cigarettes, and questioning reality, then attended Holyoke Community College before it was cool. In addition to being a tableware sanitation engineer, Ms. Ryan also worked as a short order cook, nose-ring salesperson, angst-ridden telemarketer, and sandblaster.
She graduated with honors from Smith College as an Ada Comstock Scholar, winning the Denis Johnston prize for excellence in playwriting three times and the Jill Cummins MacLean Prize once. Ms. Ryan then earned her Artist Diploma in Playwriting at Julliard and her MFA from the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, where she won the Distinguished Teaching award and was twice chosen to take part in the annual Iowa Playwrights Festival.
Ms. Ryan’s plays are performed all over the United States, often by actors. Her conquests include the 21st Century Playwrights Festival at Theatre Row Theatre, the Chekhov Now Festival, The LITE Company, the Ensemble Studio Theatre, La Mama, the Turnip Theatre, Highwire Theater, Trapdoor Theatre, Penumbra Theater, New World Theater at UMass, and PlayLabs (at the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis). She collaborated with the creators of Just Say Blow Me, Birth of aNasian, Kate’s ChinkORama, and a piece for Brave New World: American Theater Responds to 9/11, at Town Hall in New York City, titled Special Price for You, Okay? Ms. Ryan’s work has been commissioned by several theatres, including Gorilla Rep, The Acting Company, Epic Theatre Center, and Echo Theatre of Los Angeles.
Ms. Ryan’s play Bleach, a dark comedy about the legacy of the Armenian genocide, received the Maibaum Award for plays dealing with issues of social justice, even though it was funny. Her family comedy Raised By Lesbians has been produced all over the US, including the upcoming performance at The New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC). In 2005, she was chosen as a resident artist at the Hall Farm center for Arts and Education in Vermont. She was a member of the Dramatists Guild, but refused to master the secret handshake.
She wrote scripts for the PBS children’s show Arthur, including a version of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, and an episode about cancer co-sponsored by the Lance Armstrong Foundation.
Ms. Ryan taught playwriting, English, and creative writing to a wide variety of students, including at The Laboratory Institute of Merchandising, where she was a professor in the Arts and Communications department and founder of their Writing Center. She also taught at SUNY Old Westbury, The University of Iowa, Fordham University, Hampshire College, Smith College, Holyoke Community College, the College of New Rochelle in the South Bronx, Riverdale Country School, and at elementary, middle, and high schools throughout the New York City public school system.
Ms. Ryan worked with groups of high school and college students at Vassar College and at New York Stage and Film's Powerhouse Theater Apprentice Training Program on productions of adaptations of the Chekhov plays The Seagull and Uncle Vanya. The Apprentice Company also performed her adaptation of The Oresteia, and will perform her adaptation of Gogol’s The Overcoat this summer. She received a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts for her work with Epic Theatre Center, creating modern adaptations of classic plays with groups of middle and high school students.
Her publications include the literary anthology For Here or To Go (Garrett County Press), which shamelessly exploited her years of shameless exploitation by the service industry; work in the anthologies Through the Kitchen Window, Even More Monologues By Women For Women, and The Best of Temp Slave, as well as in many small magazines. Her play Pigeon was published by Playscripts, Inc. Her short work appeared in 400Words, including the debut issue, and she was Fiction Editor and a regular columnist at Punk Planet magazine. She also wrote copy for post-modern greeting cards—the ones that are so cool you buy them without any idea why or for whom; and she reviewed books for The New York Post without once uttering the phrase “book reviews for non-readers.” She was working on a novel, The Other One, when she died.
Ms. Ryan is mourned by her mothers Arlene Avakian and Martha Ayres, and by friends, actors, students, writers, and work associates. When she was dying we were not all that surprised to hear laughter coming from her room when people came to say goodbye. We will sorely miss Leah Ryan’s remarkable talents, her kind, generous heart, and her acerbic wit.
Memorial contributions may be sent to the Leah Ryan Emerging Writers Fund, c/o Powerhouse Theater at Vassar College, Box 225, Poughkeepsie, NY 12604. Moira Gentry, July 8, 2008