Kirkland Project News Spring 2002

hy the body? In some fundamental sense we are our bodies (as Our Bodies/Our Selves testifies). Certain dimensions of identity, especially race and gender, seem to be defined by bodily differences, and in countless ways we judge and classify others and are ourselves judged in turn on the basis of bodily appearance. Most of us are painfully aware of our bodily imperfections, especially when we measure ourselves against media images of perfect bodies. We may work assiduously to improve our bodies exercising, dieting, depilating, anointing, and adorning; in extreme cases we may deprive, mutilate or abuse our bodies. So there was a lot to say about the body.

Our series was successful beyond our dreams. A diverse group of faculty members kicked things off with a rousing discussion of “What the Body Knows” in early September. The large crowd that gathered in the Emerson Gallery also had the opportunity to see the Duane Michals show very appropriate to the theme of the series. Outside programming followed almost immediately: performance artist Kate Bornstein, a trans person who identifies as neither male nor female, packed Minor Theater. Hir performance, “Men, Women, and the Rest of Us,” charmed, amused and educated the standing-room only audience.

The fall series continued with talks by Nayan Shah, on “Sexualized Bodies through Law: Constructing Race and Gender,” and Elizabeth Watkins, on “Birth Control and Controlling Birth.” HT Chen and Dancers and Amber Hollibaugh came for mini-residencies. Chen's group met with classes, gave workshops, as well as performed. Hollibaugh, a long-time feminist activist, screened her film, “The Heart of the Matter,” gave a public lecture, “My Dangerous Desires,” visited several classes, and met with students through the Career Center and informally.

The programming continued in the spring with a panel on “Body Images” (Jan Fisher, Lynne Luciano, and Karen Smith speaking on cosmetic surgery and eating disorders), a poetry reading by Olga Broumas, and lectures by Henry Holden (“The Misconceptions Continue: How the Media Represents People with Disabilities”), and Susan Bordo (“Beauty on the Brain”). Tim Miller, an extraordinary performance artist, was on campus for a residency and performance of his piece, “Glory Box.”

Text Box: This spring we also ran our first film series, which was both fun and informative, and our first conference, “Questioning the Body.” The conference featured work by faculty, students, and staff and started some stimulating conversations that we hope to nurture in the future. And throughout the year there were brown bag presenta-tions by a wide variety of faculty, students, as well as members of the community, all of which tied into the thematic programming.

In the future, we hope to continue to work both with student organizations and faculty/staff initiatives. This year we strengthened ties with students, and co-sponsored events with various departments and programs, for instance, the Career Center, English, the Faculty for Women's Concerns, History, the Levitt Public Affairs Center, the Performing Arts at Hamilton, and Sociology.

he KP-sponsored College 130, “Coming of Age in America: Narratives of Difference,” was offered for the fourth time in the fall of 2001. Some 60 first-year students participated in this interdisciplinary course, now defined as a proseminar. Reading fictional and autobiographical coming-of-age narratives in the light of perspectives from the social sciences, students explored issues of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and disability, examining such institutions as the education, welfare, and the criminal justice systems. This year there was a special focus on the body as the Kirkland Project's theme for the year; among the many speakers who addressed students were Lorene Cary, author of Black Ice, and Bernard Lefkowitz, author of Our Guys (both books that students had read). At the end of the course, students designed activism projects to make a difference in their own sphere of influence, and selected projects were publicly presented.

On their evaluations, students wrote that College 130 “raised my awareness of social issues and taught me ways to deal with them. I am going to miss this class, and would recommend it to any incoming freshman”; “Though it was a lot of work, I learned a great deal”; “I think this is a great course for first years because it gets you thinking and open to new ideas”; “Extremely intellectually stimulating—classes most provoking!”; “I was intellectually challenged and was made aware of many new ideas that I had never thought about before”; “I loved it.” Instructors testify that the course is a joy to teach; it is rewarding above all because guiding students to think critically about social issues can make a real difference to their lives and the way they will act in the world.

Assisting the faculty (Gillian Gane, Dana Luciano, Steve Orvis, and Lisa Trivedi) in their four sections were TAs Redell Armstrong ‘02, Sarah McDermott ‘04, Byron Miller ‘02, and Koert Wehberg ’04 (all former College 130 students).

pring 2002 saw the continuation of the Kirkland Project program of spring residencies with visiting artists. Following on the model of the very successful visits of Ping Chong and Cheryl Dunye, we invited Luz Guerra and Sharon Bridgforth for a month's stay. During that time they taught a class, “Radical Writing,” led workshops, and organized performances.

Luz Guerra is a consultant and educator who works with social change organizations across the nation. She taught the first week of the “Radical Writing” course with Bridgforth and met with small groups of faculty and students, as well. These meetings were very productive; she helped the students to identify allies and support one another, and she helped faculty develop new pedagogies. In addition, she met with a core group of Kirkland Project coordinating council members to begin the long-range planning process, to be continued at the spring retreat.

Sharon Bridgforth is the author the bull-jean stories, performance stories published by RedBone Press; her newest piece, “Con Flama” is in performance at the Penumbra Theater. Because of the performative aspect of her work, Sharon made dynamic contributions to the campus while she was here, including presenting a staged reading with her daughter Sonja Perryman, facilitating the public presentation by her students, and visiting many classes and student groups.

It was a most exciting visit! On the next page is an account of what went on in the course.

s I reflect upon my Hamilton experience, I am grateful that I have had such wonderful times; most of those times were valuable products of learning in a challenging surrounding, but they were also shaped by the active, growing, and vibrant programs and courses sponsored by the Kirkland Project.

I began my four years in Hamilton with College 130, “Coming of Age in America: Narratives of Difference.” [See related article.] While classes were conducted as an open exchange of ideas between instructors and students, I felt more and more involved with not just the class but also the school. Some of the dialogues were so purposeful and so eye opening that they could reach into and change the vision of an eighteen-year-old recent immigrant.

As I continued my freshman year at Hamilton, I became an active participant of the Kirkland Project. In the Spring of 1999, along with seven other students, I worked in collaboration with Ping Chong, an award-winning playwright and activist, brought to campus as the artist-in-residence to create and present a community-based performance piece called “Undesirable Elements” in Wellin Hall. During the eight weeks every student wrote many essays about our experience of being mistreated, trivialized, kept out, ignored, assaulted, laughed at or discriminated against because of our gender, class, race, culture, and sexual orientation. While Ping Chong did most of the directing, writing, and conceiving, he entrusted the project to the eight of us, and gently guided us through the process of creating a piece, which arose from our common vision to share our different stories in one community, to let our voices be heard, and to have the audience listen up. To me, it was more than simply telling my stories on stage. My participation in the project meant that the rage I felt was no longer impotent. Before, when I experienced feelings of frustration, I didn't know exactly what to do except write them down in my journal. When I then had an audience to speak to, I realized that change was possible and that it could be the first step I took.

During my junior year I studied Japanese Language in Hikone, Japan. Perhaps it was the long time away, or maybe I left a part of me in Japan accidentally, but Hamilton seemed a little distant after I came back. One day Professor Rabinowitz told me about the “Radical Writing” class offered in the spring of 2002. It was an intensive four-week course facilitated by poet, playwright, and activist Sharon Bridgforth. Sharon provided a comfortable space for us to share our thoughts, tears, and laughs in free writing, poetry, short stories, and other forms. She also encouraged us to write in non-traditional formats—lay out the pages in creative, artistic ways, spell words the way they sound, and to write in any forms we could imagine as long as we knew the purpose of our stories. It was four weeks of unlimited possibilities for us.

The non-traditional writing style allowed me to dig deeper inside myself, and “to find the inner voice,” as Sharon would put it. And some of us found out that we are writers. As a result of this four-week stretching our creativity to the fullest extent, we, as a class, had a poetry reading open to the whole campus.

I am glad that I could wrap up my Hamilton experience with another unique Kirkland Project opportunity. A trivial matter? Perhaps in the scheme of things. But the possibility of achieving redress, even if it starts on a small scale, is self-perpetuating. The more I think I can achieve the more I try. If I were in another liberal arts school similar to Hamilton only without the Kirkland Project, I probably wouldn't have shared my stories with a purpose, even if I had wanted to. Even my work for the Asian Cultural Society might have been different; I might have only attended to interested members, helping them appreciate and learn about Asian culture. But because I was actively involved in many Kirkland Project programs creating awareness everywhere on this campus about current issues and events, not only could I grow with the knowledge I acquired, I could share the opportunities with others. Not every college student, or even every Hamilton student, has had the kind of experiences I have had. In the end, I am grateful that I chose to attend a liberal arts college with a program like the Kirkland Project, and was able to take such full advantage of them.

10/3/01 Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz, Comparative Literature, “The Greek Wedding: Escape from Patriarchy.”

10/24/01 Henry S. Rubin, Sociology, “Self Made Men: Essentialism in the Narratives of Transsexual Men.”

10/29/01 Sue Ann Miller, Biology, “Adoration and Fear: Selected Biological Views of the Body.”

11/15/01 Carole A. Bellini-Sharp, Theatre and Dance, and Deborah F. Pokinski, Art, “Body Sites: The Body in the Arts.”

11/27/01 Philip A. Klinkner, Government, “Whose Vote Doesn’t Count?: An Analysis of Spoiled Ballots in the Florida 2000 Presidential Election.”

3/11/02 Mary V. Rojas, Religious Studies, “‘She Bathes in a Sacred Place’: Didactics of Scratching Sticks in Native American Women’s Rites of Seclusion.”

4/8/02 Dr. Maria Burgio, Director, Psychological Services Center, New Hartford, “How Little Girls Become Women.”

4/18/02 Susan Keller, Dave Thompson, and Sue Viscomi, Physical Education, with Catherine Kodat, English and faculty member of the Committee on Athletics, "Title IX and Women's Athletics.”

4/29/02 Jay Hansford C. Vest, Religious Studies and Native American Traditions, “Native, Aboriginal, Indigenous: Who Counts as Native American?”

5/2/02 Redell Armstrong ’02 and Vincent Odamtten, English, “Fictional Re-Visions of the New World Slave: Identity and Agency through the Writings of Octavia Butler.”

he Kirkland Project continues to work with students by supporting student organizations dedicated to our mission, including student work on conferences and in our Brown Bag presentations, and through our associateships.

This year, we had two successful research associates, both pursuing projects related to issues of identity. Niknaz Moghbeli '02 worked with History professors Shoshana Keller and Lisa Trivedi on a paper titled, “‘Flag of the Revolution’: Veiling Practices in Contemporary Iran.” Nikki asked hard questions about veiling, and her conclusions challenged the assumption that mandatory veiling necessarily and simply restricts the movement of women in Iranian society. Mitchell Morse '02 worked with Robert Palusky on a year-long ceramics project; his work responds to the common question asked of gay youth: “are you born that way?” His talk, titled “It’s Not a Choice,” clarified the way in which aesthetic and ethical/political issues can be fused.

We are very proud to be able to continue to fund ($3000 each) two interns who are pursuing socially useful, unpaid work over the summer. For 2002 our Service Associates will be Mag Melvin '03 (Hamilton Horizon) and Jessie Turner ‘03. Mag will be helping to secure staff and a future for the Cofradia Bilingual school, which is dedicated to offering high-quality bilingual education to the disenfranchised in Cortes, Honduras; Jessie will be working at the Annunciation House in El Paso, Texas on issues pertaining to immigrants and refugees from Central and South America. We hope to expand this program in the future; currently we have to turn away many excellent proposals every year.

or the second year in a row several faculty and staff from the Kirkland Project and several Hamilton students gathered back at the College on January 16^th—just before the end of the holiday break—to live and work together for three days in Utica. The primary organizers, Jeff McArn, College Chaplain, Cheryl Morgan, associate professor of French, and Judith Owens-Manley, research coordinator in the Levitt Public Affairs Center, once again put together a wide-ranging program designed to provide students with several days of an intense, hands-on introduction to both the many extraordinary service needs and the many opportunities just down the road in Utica; the work was interspersed with visits to neighborhood restaurants and the superb Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute.

The group was made up of eight students and five members of the Kirkland Project (including faculty, staff, and a spouse). For two nights, the students and two adults spent the night on the living room floor of the Westminster Presbyterian Church in downtown Utica. On the morning of the 18^th all of the overnighters began the day working with other volunteers in the church kitchen putting together bag lunches for their Meals on Wheels service. The group also prepared many of their own meals in the church kitchen over the course of the three days, saving time and money. Most of the working hours were devoted to a combination of education—a driving tour of the city, information sessions and tours at the House of the Good Shepherd, Resource Center for Independent Living, the Central NY Blind Association, and others—and much needed work on cleaning, renovation, restocking, cooking and serving food—at the Refugee Center, Hope House and the Utica Rescue Mission, as well as other sites.

The Kirkland Project continues to work on sustaining students' connection to Utica, and students and faculty alike have already begun to plan USE 2003, with veterans of USE 2001 and 2002 eager to shape and organize our next incarnation.

he Kirkland Project received a grant from the Women’s Fund of the Central New York Community Foundation to continue the work former Research Associate Jessica Ambrose ’02 began several years ago in the Clinton Middle School. This grant allowed Jessica, under the guidance of her advisor, Susan Mason, to expand her program to more schools in the area. Here are her words:

This fall I began a program for adolescent girls that centered on journal writing and discussion as outlets for thinking about identity formation. During the fall semester, I started groups in four area schools including Waterville, Westmoreland, New Hartford, and Donovan in Utica. Seven Hamilton women students were trained to act as facilitators; they then went into the schools and began groups with approximately 50 seventh grade girls. The girls, on the whole, enjoyed the project and returned week after week. The main goals of the program are to foster confidence, teamwork, communication, and a positive sense of body image through thinking, talking, and writing about the critical issues that girls face during adolescence.

Discussion topics included parents, body image, race, and media images, all topics that allowed the girls to further explore their own identity formation. The culmination was a day-long conference at Hamilton whose theme was “Girls Speak Out: Conference on Individualism and Group Identity.” The day was full of group activities: artwork, a campus tour, group discussions on the issues that girls face in the new millennium, and a lecture. The goal of the conference was to empower the girls and to introduce them to girls at other schools in the area.

For the spring semester, we added two more schools to the program. The spring conference brought together girls and their mothers to learn different communication techniques as well as separate the two groups for informative panel discussions. I am thrilled at the success of this program and look forward to what lies ahead.

ast summer, the College, on behalf of the Kirkland Project, won a Hewlett Pluralism and Unity grant of $150,000 (with a match of $157,640 from the College). Our successful proposal focused on introducing the study of gender, race, class, sexuality and other factors of human diversity into the curriculum, especially the new general education curriculum (i.e., the proseminars and the interdisciplinary sophomore seminars). For three years, twelve faculty members will be chosen to participate in an annual summer curriculum-development institute; ideally, eight will prepare courses for first- and second-year students focused on issues of diversity, while four will add components focused on some aspect of diversity to an existing course. The grant enables us to stipend each faculty member for doing this difficult and challenging work.

The first institute will be held this summer and will be facilitated by Professor Esther Kingston-Mann of University of Massachusetts (Boston). The point of the institute is at least in part to create a critical mass of faculty experienced in leading open discussions around difficult political issues. In order to create a support network, faculty members will have dinner meetings in the year following the institute. We have already begun to meld this year’s participants into a group through a variety of meetings and conversations. Needless to say, we are very gratified by our success in winning this award and we look forward to sharing with you the fruits of the experiment.

Enthusiastic students from the Kirkland Project's four year-old interdisciplinary first year seminar College 130, "Coming of Age in America: Narratives of Difference," have long asked for follow-up courses for sophomores. The Kirkland Project is thus especially happy to launch our first pair of topic-related interdisciplinary sophomore seminars on “Social Movements.” A group of four sections of Sophomore Seminar 230 in Spring 2003 will focus on environmentalism; the second group of seven sections of 230, to be offered in Spring 2004, will focus on social movements culminating in or arising “Around 1968.”

The general goals of College 230 are to open students' eyes to the ways in which power and privilege and their distribution affect and organize human lives at different levels—not just political and cultural but also individual. The course aims to give students a sense of how agency works, how the disempowered seek to empower themselves and use existing power to achieve their ends, and finally, to inspire a sense of the possibility of activism for social change. Each course will spend some time examining the theory of social movements, as well as focusing on selected examples; while the individual sections will have different emphases, much of the curriculum will be shared. In order to give students a practical experience as well as an intellectual one, both versions of the course will include a service-learning component, which will culminate in public presentations. We hope that some or all of these will take place off campus, in the local schools and public library.

ntil recently, to study “gender” meant to study women; masculinity was often left unaddressed and unexplored, as if it were the natural expression of maleness. The Kirkland Project has chosen “masculinities” as its theme for the 2002-2003 academic year, in order to counter this tendency and to emphasize the fact that there is no one masculinity. Differences of race, class, sexual orientation and gender (for masculinity isn't strictly the purview of men) have enormous impact on the ways masculinity is shaped and experienced. We will ask how biological factors, cultural understandings, and media representations interrelate in the creation of what we see as “masculinity.”

Several public lectures by distinguished speakers, such as Anne Fausto-Sterling and Michael Kimmel, are already in the works. We are planning a spring conference, as well as college-wide discussions on the cultures of masculinity at Hamilton. We particularly want to bring together the activist and academic aspects of the topic.

he Kirkland Project is sponsoring a Social Justice Conference during Fallcoming weekend, October 4–6, 2002. If you are an activist or policy-shaper, a full-time worker or volunteer, a worker for a social justice organization or a reformer of an established institution, or are simply interested in social justice, please join us on Fallcoming weekend. We will celebrate social justice work, share ideas about creating positive social change, and provide an opportunity for students to meet people on the front lines of social activism.

A wine and cheese reception on Friday evening will kick off the conference. Bob Moses ‘56, Civil Rights veteran and founder of the Algebra Project, will give the keynote address Saturday morning. Following that, alumni/ae will host panel discussions centered on issues arising in social justice work. Patty Coleman K’76, Drew Days ’63, Nathaniel Hurd ’99, Lynn Kanter K’76, Nancy Roob ’87, and Sona Virdi ’94 are among those who will form the panels. Saturday evening there will be a reception and dinner. The conference will continue Sunday morning, closing with an opportunity for participants to meet in small groups focusing on specific interests.

Please join us for this celebration of the contribution that our alumni/ae have made to social justice change. More information on the schedule and panel topics will be posted on the Kirkland Project website as it becomes available. You may also contact us at kirkproj@hamilton.edu.

re you interested in being connected to current students or recent alumnae/i? The Kirkland Project wants your help in expanding our mentoring program for those who are concerned with social service or social change. We especially want to reach out to women and men of color. As a mentor you might assist students with research projects, help them explore/develop a career, provide internships, etc.

We would also like to start a program specifically focused on our ACCESS students, a group of low-income parents who are returning to school. These (mostly women) students have special needs and would greatly benefit from working with people who are out in the work force.

If you are interested in mentoring, even if you're not sure of what you have to offer, please contact us (see below). The mentoring program is administered through the Career Center, maintained as a separate program within their database. Note: should you sign up as a mentor, your phone number and address will be available ONLY through the coordinator of the program.

HE KIRKLAND PROJECT for the Study of Gender, Society and Culture is an on-campus organization committed to intellectual inquiry and social justice, focusing on issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, as well as other facets of human diversity. Through our educational programs, research and community outreach, we seek to build a community respectful of difference. Our goals are to:

· Prepare our students to live and work in an increasingly complex multiracial and multinational world.

· Foster student and faculty scholarship related to our mission.

· Develop and support curricula and pedagogies that challenge students to think critically and to make connections between classroom learning and the society in which we live.

· Initiate connections between the Hamilton community and the surrounding area, around the mission of the Project.

The Kirkland Project is named in honor of Kirkland College, from 1968-78 a college for women coordinate with Hamilton. The Project builds on Kirkland’s twin legacies of women’s education and innovative pedagogy, expanding on them to meet the global challenges that face contemporary male and female students, faculty and staff.

Special Kirkland Project 2001-2002 Program

Coming of Age in America

Spring 2002 Artists-in-Residence:

Sharon Bridgforth and Luz Guerra

Kirkland Project Reflections:

Zizhu Ma ‘02

Opportunities for Students

Events: 2002-2003

Kirkland Project

Kirkland Project