Fall 2008 Events
Tuesday, October 21, 2008 12:45-2:10 pm
Location: Hofstra University's Guthart Cultural Center Theater
Will Sarah Palin Kill "Choice," and Should We Try to Save It?
A lecture by Rosalind Pollack Petchesky
This talk will offer a critical rethinking of the language of "choice" and "private" decision-making in matters of reproduction and sexuality. It will examine the pitfalls of this language through an argument about international human rights discourse--its necessity and its insufficiency--and what Petchesky's new book calls "relational individuality." But the immediate, urgent context of this discussion at the moment must be the current US presidential election: How does the Palin factor--and more broadly, the gendering and racializing of the election--complicate further the already complicated meanings of feminism and reproductive and sexual freedom?
Rosalind Pollack Petchesky is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Professor Petchesky received a MacArthur "genius" award in 1995, and she founded the International Reproductive Rights Research Action Group (IRRRAG), which she directed from 1992 to 1999. Her many publications include Abortion and Woman's Choice: The State, Sexuality, and Reproductive Freedom (2d edition, 1990, Northeastern University Press), which won the Joan Kelly Memorial Prize of the American Historical Association and was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in its landmark decision, Planned Parenthood of Eastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992). Most recently, Petchesky's co-authored book (with Sonia Corrêa and Richard Parker), Sexuality, Health and Human Rights, was published by Routledge in 2008.
Thursday, October 30, 2008 11:10-12:35 pm
Location: Hofstra University's Guthart Cultural Center Theater
Fiction writer Susan Steinberg reads from her work
Susan Steinberg is the author of the story collections, Hydroplane and The End of Free Love. Her work has appeared in McSweeney's, Conjunctions, The Gettysburg Review, American Short Fiction, Boulevard, Columbia, and elsewhere. She has held residencies at The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the Blue Mountain Center, and NYU. She received a BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA in English from The University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is currently Associate Professor of English at The University of San Francisco.