The Carter Series
The Carter Series
The Carter Series presents lectures focused on outstanding research on women, including the annual Faculty Research Award lecture. The series is intended to provide an opportunity to explore varied topics addressing contemporary feminism and to foster an environment in which feminist ideas may thrive.
Presenters include faculty, staff, and current and former students addressing topics and issues affecting women's lives.
The series is funded by the Mae and Robert Carter Endowment in Women's Studies and is presented by the Department of Women & Gender Studies.
Upcoming Events
Past Events
Welcoming Women: Co-Creating Communities of Refuge for Displaced Refugees Georgina Ramsay, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Delaware
Wednesday, October 4, 2023, 5 pm to 6 pm
What does "refuge" mean for women whose lives have been disrupted by conflict, war and violence? Is it possible to feel settled following such events, and after migrating thousands of miles away to a new and unfamiliar country? What experiences and value can women from refugee backgrounds bring to our communities, including the University of Delaware?
Georgina Ramsay, associate professor of anthropology at UD, will answer these questions and share findings from a year-long ethnographic project with displaced women and the volunteers who support them as the fall 2023 Carter Series lecture speaker.
Ramsay will consider how a focus on "social reproduction" in our efforts to welcome migrants and refugees into our communities can benefit migrant newcomers and their citizen neighbors, alike. Together, we can imagine and strategize ways to create supportive community connections and build more just and inclusive shared worlds
This event is part of the Women and Gender Studies department's celebration of its 50th year of teaching about, studying, and advocating for the rights of women and all marginalized people.
Body Image and Gendered Racial Identity Among Black Young Women
Thu 10/20/2022, 4 pm to 6 pm
Body Image and Gendered Racial Identity Among Black Young Women: Qualitative Interviews Exploring the Role of Social Media
Sophia Choukas-Bradley, University of Pittsburgh
Black young women navigate body image in the context of a complex social media environment, shaped by sociocultural context (e.g., gendered racism) and influenced by gendered racial identity development. However, Black women and girls' unique experiences have historically been underrepresented and undervalued in body image research. The goal of this study was to learn about Black young women's unique experiences related to social media and body image. In this talk, I will discuss preliminary findings from qualitative interviews with ten U.S. Black women in their early 20s. All women identified as cisgender; four identified as straight/heterosexual and six identified as mostly straight, lesbian or queer. Preliminary analyses revealed several themes regarding body image and social media:
(1) shifts in beauty standards related to social media (e.g., cultural appropriation of Black women's bodies and beauty ideals into mainstream beauty norms);
(2) critical awareness of and resistance to unattainable beauty standards;
(3) body dissatisfaction related to beauty standards; and
(4) positive representation of more diverse bodies through social media.
The results suggest that some social media experiences may be specific to gendered racial identity and gendered racism, highlighting the importance of further research investigating Black young women's unique lived experiences. I will discuss these findings through the lens of intersectionality theory and sociocultural–developmental theories regarding media influences on body image. This work was conducted in collaboration with Dr. Jioni A. Lewis and Brianna A. Ladd (University of Maryland).
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The Carter Series presents lectures focused on outstanding research on women, including the annual Faculty Research Award Lecture, funded by the Mae and Robert Carter Endowment in Women's Studies and presented by the University of Delaware's Department of Women & Gender Studies.
The Carter Series lectures are intended to provide an opportunity to explore varied topics addressing contemporary feminism and to foster an environment in which feminist ideas may thrive. Presenters include faculty, staff, and current and former students addressing topics and issues affecting women's lives.
Gendering Deafness
Tuesday, November 17, 2020, 4 pm to 5 pm
At the November 2020 Carter Series Lecture, "Gendering Deafness: Dorothy Brett in Art and Technology," the 2019 Faculty Research Award Recipient Dr. Jaipreet Virdi discussed painter Dorothy Eugiené Brett's technologies and artistic representations of sound to examine how her performative enactments of deafness enabled her to affirm her identity as a deaf woman. For nearly 60 years, Brett (1883–1977) made use of multiple hearing prostheses she collectively referred to as her "ear machines": trumpets, auricles, carbon acoustic devices, and vacuum tube hearing aids. She relied on these machines in crucial ways: as technologies of assimilation, as objects of power to affirm her class and gender roles, and tools for negotiating the often-contested boundaries between hearing and deafness. As deafness shaped Brett's physical and social environments, it also influenced her artistic style: many of her paintings embody her acoustemology, shaped by what she describes as a "different communication," containing elements of movement and rhythm aided by Brett's ear machines and her interpretations of sounds around her.
The link to view Dr. Virdi's recorded lecture is "Gendering Deafness: Dorothy Brett in Art and Technology."
Dr. Jaipreet Virdi, Assistant Professor, Department of History at the University of Delaware, received the 2019 Women's Studies Faculty Research Award. Dr. Virdi is a historian of medicine, technology, and disability. Her research and teaching interests include the history of medicine, the history of science, disability history, disability technologies, and material/visual culture studies. She received her Ph.D. from the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto (2014). Dr. Virdi's first book, Hearing Happiness: Deafness Cures in History (University of Chicago Press, 2020), rethinks how therapeutic negotiation and the influence of pseudo-medicine shaped what it meant to be a "normal" deaf citizen in American history. Examining how deaf/deafened individuals attempted to amplify their hearing through various types of surgical, proprietary, and/or technological "deafness cures," the book charts the dissemination of ideas about hearing loss from beyond medical elites to popular culture and the popular imagination.
