Calendar
Annual Theme Events for 2007-08
Gender and Technology
For the 2007-8 academic year, the Center for Women's and Gender Studies at UT Austin is proud to sponsor a year of thought provoking and stimulating events examining the interaction of gender and technology in contemporary social theory, empirical research and work practice.
How are our notions of gender technologically mediated? Conversely, how has technology become gendered? What does the gendering of technology mean for reproductive and public health technologies, the making of cultural artifacts and for information and security systems?
In a series of lectures, conferences, workshops, and film screenings, we will explore these and other questions with leading scholars, engineers, scientists, artists and filmmakers.
Films
Gender & Technology Film Series
Monsters, victims, trekkers, consumers, and saviors- these films examine how men and women face the challenges of an increasingly technological world. Come eat popcorn and share post-movie conversations with knowledgeable commentators about the serious questions these thought provoking movies raise.
Download a poster for the film series (PDF, 825K)
Fall 2007 Schedule
Tuesday evenings, 6:30pm (movie and commentary)
In Calhoun Hall, Room 100
Map to Location
September 18th
Gender Roles and Technology:
Desk Set (1957) | Download a flier for Desk Set (PDF, 300K)
Directed by: Walter Lang
Starring: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Gig Young, Joan Blondell
The mysterious man hanging about at the research department of a big TV network proves to be engineer Richard Sumner, who's been ordered to keep his real purpose secret: computerizing the office. Department head Bunny Watson, who knows everything, needs no computer to unmask Richard.
September 25th
Gender and Dangerous Technologies
Silkwood (1983)
Director: Mike Nichols
Starring: Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell, Cher, Craig T. Nelson
The story of Karen Silkwood, the Oklahoma nuclear-plant worker who blew the whistle on dangerous practices at the Kerr-McGee plant and who died under circumstances which are still under debate.
October 9th
Masculinity and Reproductive Technology
Twilight of the Golds (1997)
Director: Ross Kagan Marks
Starring: Garry Marshall, Faye Dunaway, Jennifer Beals, Brendan Fraser
When Suzanne Stein has a genetic analysis done on her unborn child, she discovers that although she has a healthy baby, the child will most likely be born gay, like her brother, David. She must decide whether to keep the child, or to have an abortion. Her family enters a crisis about love and acceptance as she makes this difficult choice.
October 16th
Gender, Technology, and the Heroic
Flight Plan (2005)
Director: Robert Schwentke
Starring: Jodie Foster, Peter Sarsgaard, Sean Bean, Kate Beahan
Kyle (Foster) has just gone through the trauma of losing her husband now, she and her six year old daughter Julia are flying his casket back to the United States on a plane she helped design. About 3 hours into the flight, Kyle wakes up from a nap to find Julia missing and no one remembers ever seeing her. As Kyle fights to discern the truth, she takes matters into her own hands.
October 30th
Women and Technology in the Real World
Shorts from Women Make Movies
Nalini By Day, Nancy by Night (2005) In this insightful documentary, filmmaker Sonali Gulati explores complex issues of globalization, capitalism and identity through a witty and personal account of her journey into India's call centers. Gulati, herself an Indian immigrant living in the US, explores the fascinating ramifications of outsourcing telephone service jobs to India -- including how native telemarketers take on Western names and accents to take calls from the US, UK and Australia.
Performing the Border (1999) Ursula Biemann's video essay is set in the Mexican-U.S. border town of Ciudad Juarez, where U.S. multinational corporations assemble electronic and digital equipment just across from El Paso, Texas, this imaginative, experimental work investigates the growing feminization of the global economy and its impact on Mexican women living and working in the area.
Writing Desire (2000) "Ursula Biemann's WRITING DESIRE is a video essay on the new dream screen of the Internet and how it impacts on the global circulation of women's bodies from the third world to the first world. Although under-age Philippine 'pen pals' and post-Soviet mail-order brides have been part of the transnational exchange of sex in the post-colonial and post-Cold War marketplace of desire before the digital age, the Internet has accelerated these transactions.
November 6th
Women as Technology
The Stepford Wives (1975)
Directed by: Bryan Forbes
Starring: Katharine Ross, Paula Prentiss, Peter Masterson, Tina Louise
Based on the novel by Ira Levin (author of "Rosemary's Baby"). Joanna, a photographer, and her family are the newest residents of the seemingly pleasant community of Stepford, Connecticut. Joanna finds it increasingly difficult to adjust in a town full of women who seem to smile all the time despite being both humorless and clueless. Joanna befriends fellow newcomer Bobbie and the two set out to investigate the strange behavior of these women and the suspicious pasts of the town's men, all of whom belong to an ominous secret society.
November 27th
Gender and the Technology of Art
Frida (2002)
Director: Julie Taymor
Starring: Salma Hayek, M’a Maestro, Amelia Zapata, Diego Lun, Alfred Molina
"Frida" chronicles the life Frida Kahlo shared unflinchingly and openly with Diego Rivera, as the young couple took the art world by storm. From her complex and enduring relationship with her mentor and husband to her illicit and controversial affair with Leon Trotsky, to her provocative and romantic entanglements with women, Frida Kahlo lived as bold and uncompromising a life as her husband. They were both political, artistic, and sexual revolutionaries, but their art and the way they produced it differed a great deal.
Conferences
Gender & Technology Spring Conference: Perspectives on Gender and Technology
Friday, April 11
9 am-5 pm, ACES 2.302
Conference sponsored by the Center for Women's and Gender Studies at UT-Austin
This conference will look at the interaction of gender and technology in the contemporary world from three perspectives: ways of knowing, ways of doing, and ways of changing. One set of papers will consider ways of understanding how cultural and social realities, especially notions of gender, are technologically mediated. Another will look at gendered constructs of "doing" technology: why are masculine interactions with technology generally considered the norm, and what are the "pipeline" issues for women entering technological careers in business or engineering. And a third set will examine the intersection of women and technology in the developing world, especially the use of technology as a tool for positive social change.
Because some of the most fruitful studies of gender and technology are interdisciplinary, all methodologies and approaches are welcome, from ethnographic studies to feminist theorizing (and all points in between). Scholars and practitioners in all fields are invited, whether from Law, Engineering, Sociology, Anthropology, Communication, government agencies, think tanks, etc.
Keynote speakers will kick off each of the three conference themes. Sessions will be a combination of invited papers and responses to a Call for Papers.
Lectures and Panels
Jan Cuny, Ph.D.
Friday, Oct 5 @ 3:30 pm, ACES 2.302
Jan Cuny is a Professor at the Universityof Oregon and Program Director for the Broadening Participation in Computing Program for the National Science Foundation. She has served in leadership capacities in such influential organiza-tions as the Computing Research Association's Committee on the Status of Women, the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, the National Center for Women in IT, and the Coalition to Diversify Computing. She won the 2007 A. Nico Habermann Award for her work toward broadening the participa-tion of all underrepresented groups in computing.
Lucy Suchman, PhD (Part of the Perspectives on Gender and Technology Conference)
Friday, April 11 @ 9 am-5 pm, ACES 2.302
Keynote Speaker: Lucy Suchman, PhD is Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University. Before coming to Lancaster, she held the positions of Principal Scientist and manager of the Work Practice and Technology area at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center. Suchman's book Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-machine Communication (1987) provided intellectual foundations for the field of human-computer interaction (HCI).