Student Work Symposium
I attended several mini-talks/paper presentations during the Student Work Symposium, all of which were very interesting. The first, "Studies in the South Indian Beauty Service Industry" presented by Katie Glanz was an ethnography of Katie's experiences in 6 beauty salons in Hyderabad, India. She initially admitted that her interest in the subject was superficial, ethnocentric, and was inspired by her own personal fascination with aesthetics, which I thought was an important and honest side note and appreciated very much. Though Katie's presentation itself was a little dull (she was reading every word from her paper), she had some good points. Most interesting to me was that though all of the salons she went to seemed to resist Western culture and the "Westernization" of India quite openly, they had no qualms with skin bleaching products to make themselves appear whiter. The products sold were traditionally Indian in style aside from these whitening products, and the women undoubtedly recognized the Western influence that caused the popularity of these items. However, they had no real problem with it. Surprising.The next talk, "Feminist Fatherhood: A New Face of Fatherhood in America" by Charles Prince attempted to explain that the role of the father in America needs to be changed and why. He argued that men need to 'recast their masculinity' in order to raise children more productively, and looked specifically at black fathers to show why it is so necessary to change the role men play with their children. I don't know how much I agree with this exactly. Maybe the title is just a little misleading to me, because I don't really think of feminism as just the opposite of masculinity (maybe I should?) and I definitely don't think what Charles explained as "feminist fatherhood" was exactly feminist. It just sounded logical to me. He argued that the role of the father is more than simply earning money and discipline, that fathers should spend time with children and do things more associated with motherhood. I don't see that as feminist really...I did enjoy the presentation though. Charles was a very good speaker, and I agreed with his points though I would have phrased them differently.
Next was Nicole Powell's "Little Gay Gandhis: Providing a Safe Space and Empowering Sexual Minorities," whose title was immediately captivating. She discussed her work looking into and participating in an Austin organization, Out Youth, which has provided a safe, open environment for LGBT teens since its creation in the early 1990's. Her goal was to gain a better understanding of how a collective identity is created and maintained among all members of the organization as well as to understand how it serves as a safe place for its members. Her discussion was very organized, detailed and intriguing. She found that the organization allowed its member to speak openly about subjects that were otherwise ignored or rejected (sex, in particular, as well as identity as a member of the LGBT community) and to learn about other LGBT people. It was nice to hear that such an organization exits and strives to help those who are often neglected or rejected by much of modern society, and that it really is doing what it has set out to do.
The final presentation was originally titled "Transitioning to Post-Monogamy: A Political and Literary Critique On Marriage Reform" but became "A Critique On Marriage" by Remy Robertson and Andrew Dornon. They brought up a lot of great points about something I (like many other heterosexuals in Western society) had never really considered: why is heterosexual monogamous marriage considered 'the norm' to most people and why is that not generally disputed? They identified economic efficiency as a key factor, which I didn't exactly understand. If that were really the case, wouldn't two men together make more sense because men make more money than their female counterparts? They also discussed the naturalization of this partnership that has come after legislation. I really liked where the two presenters were going with this point, but it seemed like there were so many more facets to this issue that needed to be considered and looked at in order to make progress and to find answers. It was a very good start though.
I found the poster presentations significantly less interesting. It seemed like the majority were on subjects that simply do not interest me (a lot of science!) so that was a little rough for me. The set-up was also a little disappointing for me. As you know, I'm quiet and don't really feel comfortable just walking up to strangers and asking them about their work which I more than likely won't understand anyway. So that wasn't as good for me. I talked to some people I know at the SU Radio poster because I am a DJ for the station, but I guess because they knew me they didn't feel like they had to present for me so I didn't get much information out of that. I just got kind of frustrated with the part of the event and didn't really learn anything. Oh well. The talks were good, at least! I feel like a lot of what was brought up in them relates to understanding human behavior because I think gender as well as generally social identity, familial structure and sexuality have so much to do with that and are probably the most enthralling aspects of human behavior for me. I think we've actually already discussed some part of all of these issues for class.
posted by Rachel @ 4:42 PM
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