RESEARCH AND SPONSORED PROGRAMS
ANNUAL REPORT OF RESEARCH CENTERS AND INSTITUTES
(For the period July 1, 2005-June 30, 2006)

CENTER/INSTITUTE: Center for the Study of Women and Society

ACTING DIRECTOR: Patricia Ticineto Clough
Pclough@gc.cuny.edu

NAME: Elizabeth Small
PHONE: 817-8895
E-MAIL: esmall@gc.cuny.edu

See attached for the following:

Mission

Since 1977, the Center for the Study of Women and Society has promoted inter-disciplinary
feminist scholarship. The focus of the Center’s research agenda is the study of gender, sexuality,
race, ethnicity, class and nation in relationship to the experiences of women and men in societies
around the world. Eighty faculty associates of the Graduate Center’s Women’s Studies Certificate
Program provide the Center with a wide net of expertise in many disciplines and fields, and
together they sponsor intellectual exchange, symposia and lectures among scholars within CUNY
as well as with visiting scholars from around the world. The Center also seeks to collaborate with
grassroots and professional organizations.

A. ACTIVITIES

A. Activities

1) The Center hosts The Conviction Project Seminar, a faculty/student seminar that provides
the scholarly underpinnings for The College and Community Fellowship Program (CCF).
CCF addresses two critical issues faced by people leaving prison: first, the need for college
education and second, the need for social and cultural support during the transition back into
our communities. Linked to CCF, the Conviction Project seminar analyzes “conviction”’ in its
two meanings: “to be found guilty of an offense,” and “to stand firm in one’s belief both in
thought and action.” The Conviction Project aims at linking the social activism of CCF with
academic studies and research goals and is an ongoing faculty and student seminar. Now in
its fourth year, The Conviction Project Seminar focused the readings on the history of the
development of the prison-industrial complex, addressing both the impact of the privatization
of prisons on those imprisoned and the intensification and extension of technologies of
surveillance into everyday life. This past year the Conviction Seminar focused on the links
between affect economy and political action. The seminar also is concerned with silencing
and censorship, traumatized memory and bodily discrimination, abjection or abuse, and the
role of education in relationship to these issues — inside and outside of prison.

@ 2) The Community Leadership and Education After Reentry (CLEAR)
CLEAR is a new program at CSWS, begun 2 years ago. It seeks to develop informed
leadership among formerly incarcerated women and men in New York State to affect policy


change by broadening the scope of paths to reentry and increasing opportunities for civic
participation and leadership for formerly incarcerated women and men. CLEAR draws on the
research activity of its members, formerly incarcerated women leaders and members of the
Center for the Study of Women and Society, who have recently concluded a six-month
analysis of reentry policy and programming. CLEAR’s academic researchers and formerly
incarcerated women and men leaders are currently writing a position paper which
summarizes current reentry research and policies and proposes a critical shift in thinking
about progressive policy reform. CLEAR’s position paper will be completed in November
2006

3) Collection of essays with an introduction by Patricia T. Clough about CSWS’s research
The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social will be published by Duke University Press in
January 2007. See attachment 1 Acknowledgements and Table of Contents

4) The Center also supports The Activist Women’s Voices Oral History Archive and Urban
Fieldwork Internships, which document the voices of unheralded activist women in
community-based organizations. The archive and internships were established under the
direction of Professors Joyce Gelb and Patricia Laurence to create linkages between activist
women and student and faculty researchers in the university. Students laid the groundwork
for multimedia Oral History Workshops for both the community and the university. In 2002,
the Activists Women's Voice Project received a grant of $57,000 from the Rockefeller
Foundation for New Immigrant Women: Identification and Inventory. The project, with
over 40 archival interviews and ongoing oral histories, interviewed women artists who work
with young people in the NYC community. The new project, funded by a Rockefeller
Foundation planning grant, is locating oral histories that document the mobilization and
experience of Latina and Asian American women in three American cities, as the foundation
of a National Women's Oral History Consortium.

5) The Institute for Tongzhi Studies (ITS) located at CSWS, continued in its efforts to host
the Speaker Series. Since Fall of 2003, ITS hosted 6 major speakers in the field of sexuality
studies, including: Cui Zi'en, leading Chinese underground queer DV maker, recipient of
Felipa Award by The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission in 2002; Dr.
Li Yin He of Chinese’ Academy of Social Science, prominent Chinese scholar and researcher
on gay issues in China; Zhou Dan, Founding member and legal advisor for Shanghai Hotline
For Sexual Minorities, licensed lawyer currently practicing in Shanghai; and Wan Yan Hai,
internationally known HIV/AIDS educator and gay activists, Director of Beijing AIZHIXING
Institute of Health Education. Huei-Chiu Chuang, awarding-winning writer & publisher,
with more than 20 years experience working in queer community in Taiwan. Through these
lectures hosted by the Center for the Study of Women and Society at The Graduate
Center/CUNY, we were able to provide our the audience with first-hand information about
current issues in Chinese queer studies and communities. Inspiring dialogues among ITS
staff, audience, and the speakers were mutually benifitial.

6) The Center co-sponsors activities with the Women’s Studies Certificate Program. An
annual Speakers’ Series presented thirty events each semester, including guest lectures,
small conferences, and one-day symposia (see attached poster for the Speakers Series of Fall
2005 and Spring 2006).


° 12) The Center co-sponsors activities with the Women’s Studies Certificate Program. An
annual Speakers’ Series presented thirty events, including guest lectures, small conferences,
and one-day symposia.

Institutional Publications:
- A web site for CSWS was designed and erected since 2001-2002 and maintained during

and redesigned 2005-2006.
-Events Calendars were designed and distributed
- Brochure for Center and College and Community Fellowship were designed and distributed

B. PLANS FOR THE FUTURE

Please provide a statement about the goals and plans for the center/institute for the academic year
2005-2006.

e 1) Preparations for publication with Duke University Press for 2007 the papers from Beyond
Biopolitics See Attachment 2 and also our web site.

e 4) Global Prisons. In collaboration with the Certificate Program in Women’s Studies and
with funding from WSCP, CSWS is preparing a new research project involving students
going to four sites of prison activism around the world. We are engaged with two other
institutions in this preparation, one at George Washington University and one at Rutgers

University

* 5) Speaker’s Series. Planning for 2006-2007: Feminist Analysis, Affect Economy, and
Psycho-Politics.

C. STUDENT EMPLOYMENT

You were recently asked to complete a student employment survey for 2003-2004. If you have
already done so, please proceed to the next question. If you have not done so, please attach the
survey to this questionnaire.

D. GRANTS AND INCOME

I. Please give a brief summary of the grant proposals your center/institute has
generated in the last year. Include those that have been funded, not funded, or
are pending, along with title, funding agency, and amount requested or awarded.
Please indicate whether these grants are administered by the RF, the GC Business
Office, or the GC Office of Development.

CCF Comitted Income
CUNY Vice Chancellor $15,000
42™ Street Fund $10,000


2. Please list currently active grants that were previously awarded.

Outstanding grants and letters of inquiry:
We are presently under consideration for grants, for CCF and for joint projects for
CCF and CSWS, CLEAR, at: Opens Society Institute and Jet Foundation

For extension of Facing Global Capital, Finding Human Security, we are at Ford and

Rockefeller
Development in Process: Helena Rubinstein $25,000
Faith Based Campaign $20,000
Lumina Foundation $25,000
Misc Corporate Foundation Requests $25,000
Fall Event $10,000
New York Womens Foundation $15,000

E. FINANCIAL SUPPORT

Budget, 2004-2005

Total Budget $14,460
Expenditures Tax-Levy Non Tax- Levy
P/T Salaries $ 6,810
OTPS $ 7,650
Total $14,460

Other Financial Support
Please list all account numbers and balances (as of the latest date in the year 2004) for additional
income not included in Item D above, which is being held either in the Business Office, the

Development Office, or accounts held elsewhere.

1. Business Office
none

2. Development Office

none
3. Accounts held elsewhere

none
F. OTHER FINANCIAL SUPPORT

Please list any gifts received, contracts entered into, or other income not included in any item
above, such as registration fees, book income, luncheons, etc.


Attachment 1

Acknowledgements (for Affective Turn):

As the reader soon will learn The Affective Turn is a collection of essays whose authors have
been participants in projects supported by the Center for the Study of Women and Society at the
Graduate Center of the City University of New York from 1999 to 2006: the Conviction Seminar
and The CLEAR Project dedicated to the study of mass incarceration and the conditions of life
for women and men living with criminal convictions; The Future Matters Project dedicated to the
study of culture, technoscience and governance; and the Rockefeller Foundation funded project
on global capitalism, human rights and human securing, Facing Global Capitalism/Finding
Human Security: A Gendered Critique. I want to thank the administrators at the Graduate Center
for their support of the Center for the Study of Women and Society and its projects, especially
Frances Degan Horowitz, William Kelly, Steve Brier and Brian Swartz to name a few. I want to
thank the Ph.D. program in Sociology and the Women’s Studies Program at the Graduate Center
and the faculty of the Sociology Department at Queens College who generously gave me time to
be Director of the Center for the Study of Women and Society over the past six years. I want to
thank those of the larger intellectual community beyond CUNY who also participated in the
projects of the Center for the Study of Women and Society: Jonathan Cutler, Norman Denzin,
Richard Dienst, Michelle Fine, Stephano Harney, Janet Jakobsen, Michael Hardt, Jill Herbert,
Anne Hoffman Anahid Kassabian, David Kassanjian, Charles Lemert, Michal Mc Call, Randy
Martin, Barbara Martinsons, Brian Massumi, Mary Jo Neitz, Jackie Orr, Luciana Parisi, Jasbir
Puar, Amitah Rai, Joseph Schneider, Steven Seidman, Charles Shepherdson, Catherine Silver,
Tiziana Terranova, Judith Wittner, Angela Zito. I want to thank all my colleagues and fast made
friends at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton for their support while I was a member
there and to all those at Duke University Press, especially J. Reyonolds Smith who has done so
much to make this book project.come to completion. My warmest appreciation to Jean Halley for
her patient support through out and to Una Chung for her assistance in the final stages of this
manuscript and so much more. And to my family, especially my sister Virginia, my son
Christopher and the newest member of the family, Elizabeth.

Last but not least, I thank ‘the book group,’ all of its members, those whose writings are,
presented here, as well as those whose writings are not. The many hours that I have spent as your
teacher, the hours we have spent together reading and writing are memorable. Filled with the joy,
laughter and some tears that make for fresh thought, our time together has been for me an

experience of excellence in teaching and learning. It is to you that I dedicate the book.


The Affective Turn
Table of Contest

Preface: Michael Hardt

The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social
An Introduction
Patricia Ticineto Clough

The Parched Tongue
Hosu Kim

Techno-Cinema: Image Matters
Jamie Skye Bianco

Slowness: Notes Toward An Economy of Différancial Rates of Being
Karen Wendy Gilbert

Training Movement
Deborah Gambs

The Ambivalent Gift of Entropy in the Turbulent Era of Structural Adjustment
David Staples

Voices from the Teum
Grace M. Cho

In Calcutta, Sex Workers Organize
Melissa Ditmore

More Than a Job:
Affect and Control in the Training and Education Industry for Health Care Workers

Ariel Ducey

Haunting Orpheus: Problems of Space and Time in the Desert
Jonathan R. Wynn

Always on Display: Affective Production in the Modeling Industry
Elizabeth Wissinger

Wire
Jean Halley

Losses and Returns: The Soldier in Trauma
Greg Goldberg and Craig Willse


Attachment 2
Beyond Biopolitics: state racism, life and death.
Edited by Patricia T. Clough, Craig Willse and Tiziana Terranova

The essays collected in Beyond Biopolitics: state racism, life and death are drawn from the
conference Beyond Biopolitics, held in New York City in Spring 2006, and a later
conference, Future Matters: communication, biopolitics, racism, organized primarily by
Tiziana Terranova and held in Naples, Italy, in Spring 2006. Both conferences were
sponsored or /co-sponsored thorough the Center for the Study of Women and Society, The
Graduate Center/CUNY. The Naples conference was held at the Universita degli Studi di
Napoli ’L’Orientale.’

Conferences:

The focus of both conferences was on the relationships of race/racism and technologies of
biopolitical control and economies of affect. Those who presented addressed the continuities
and discontinuities between colonialism and neocolonialism, slavery and affective labor,
settlement and diaspora, subject identities and bodies, and macro and molecular
organizations of populations. Presentations would offer accounts of race both in historical
and transnational contexts and analyzed the various situations that constitute race and
racism in multiple locations of the world today, The hope was to go beyond what we
perceived to be the limitations of thinking race in terms of the intersections of class, gender,
sexuality and nation, especially as intersectionality is appropriated in neoliberal reform,
and functions to elaborate and justify new forms of violence, terror and bodily subjection.

In addressing these issues, the presentations and discussion raised questions that will be
more fully addressed in the proposed volume. There is the concern that the idea of
biopolitics used by Foucault, among others, be carefully situated both historically and in
terms of the geopolitical exigencies of the present—including a politics of theory. A set of
questions emerged putting biopolitics in tension with attempts to understand genocide,
slavery, mass incarcerations and detention, migration, war and occupation, endemic illness
and ecological emergencies:

1. Does a preemptive politics concerned with disaster, catastrophe and turbulence take
us beyond a tension between the law and the state of exception?

2. What is the present relationship of capital, life and death? What histories assist us
in addressing this question and how?

3. At what levels of life shoutd our concerns with governance and economy be
addressed, such as the molecular, the populational, the ecological and the
technological.

4. Is there more than one racism? Or what is the relationship of racism to
temporality, identity, language, technology, the bodily, and memory.

Our hope is that the volume will clarify and deepen these questions, as well as establish new
questions for future work.


Beyond Biopolitics: State Racism, Life, and Death
Table of Contents

I. The law, the state of exception, and preemptive politics

Necrologies: Bare Life & the Body Politic
Eugene Thacker

Thanatopolitics
Eyal Weizman

The Tragedy of Constitutional Law: Race, Internment, Sexuality
Sora Y. Han

II. Capital, life, and death

Strange Circulations: The Blood Economy in Rural China
Ann S. Anagnost

Necro-political Surveillance: Immigrants from Turkey in Germany
Cagatay Topal

From the Race War to the War on Terror
Randy Martin

Towards A Political Ecology of Bio-Commerce
By MK Dorsey ©

Governance and Blackness
Fred Moten and Stefano Hamey

Reckoning with History
Richard Dienst

III. Molecular-, nano- and, cyber-politics

Mnemonic Control
Luciana Parisi and Steve Goodman

National Enterprise Emergency: Of Race, War, and the Weather
Brian Massumi

Moving Race and Contagion from Metaphor to Ontology
Amit S. Rai
IV. Racisms, bodies, memory

Individuation, affectand racial subjectivities of power
Couze Venn


Title?
Saadiya Hartmann

Folding Trauma and Protest of the Vietnam War
Una Chung

Queer Mediators, Seriality and the Imeldic Body
Robert Diaz

Fascia and the Grimace of Catastrophe
May Joseph

Notes on waste, grief, and monstrous excess
Grace MI. Cho