Joy Castro, professor of English, ethnic studies, and women's and gender studies, recently celebrated the publication of her book, How Winter Began (University of Nebraska Press, 2015, 198 pages). A collection of stories, How Winter Began is thematically linked by the lives of women, especially Latinas, and their experiences of poverty and violence in a white-dominated, wealth-obsessed culture. Featured characters and their stories include: Iréne, who gives the wealthy businessmen what they want, diving headfirst into a filthy river, thinking only of providing for her baby daughter as the men salivate over her soaked body emerging onto the bank; a young boy who tries to befriend the reticent younger sister of the town’s cruelest bully, only to discover the family betrayal behind her quiet countenance; and Josefa, a young bride, who is executed for murdering the man who raped her. The question at the heart of How Winter Began is how or whether to trust one another after the rupture of betrayal.
Alice J. Kang, assistant professor of political science, ethnic studies, and women's and gender studies, has authored a new book, Bargaining for Women's Rights (University of Minnesota Press, 2015, 498 pages). Gender relations in Muslim-majority countries have been subject to intense debate in recent decades. In some cases, Muslim women have fought for and won new rights to political participation, reproductive health and education. In others, their agendas have been stymied. Yet missing from this discussion, until now, has been a systematic examination of how civil society groups mobilize to promote women’s rights and how multiple components of the state negotiate such legislation. In Bargaining for Women’s Rights, Kang argues that reform is more likely to happen when the struggle arises from within. Focusing on how a law on gender quotas and a United Nations treaty on ending discrimination against women passed in Niger while family law reform and an African Union protocol on women’s rights did not, Kang shows how local women’s associations are uniquely positioned to translate global concepts of democracy and human rights into concrete policy proposals. And yet, drawing on numerous interviews with women’s rights activists as well as Islamists and politicians, she reveals that the former are not the only ones who care about the regulation of gender relations. Providing a solid analytic framework for understanding conflict over women’s rights policies without stereotyping Muslims, Kang demonstrates that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Islam does not have a uniformly negative effect on the prospects of such legislation. Dr. Kang will be presenting the research from her book in the second Women's and Gender Studies Fall Colloquium talk on Wednesday, October 28th at 3:30 in the Union.
