About The Center

The Center for Gender in Global Context (GenCen), in International Studies and Programs (ISP), draws together the strengths of the program in Women, Gender, and Social Justice (WGSJ) in the College of Arts and Letters (CAL) and the College of Social Science (SSC) and the Women and International Development Program (WID) in ISP. These programs have historically looked at gender in the US and in international contexts, respectively. The new center emphasizes women and gender in a global context, with distinctive new programs promoting teaching, research, and outreach relevant to 21st century concerns.

The center's Mission Statement describes its purpose as follows:

The Center for Gender in Global Context is an interdisciplinary center in International Studies and Programs focused on gender, feminist, and women's studies. Its affiliated faculty and students study how women and men from diverse racial, ethnic, national, and sexual backgrounds live in and engage with the world and how processes of global change affect gender relations locally, nationally, and internationally. Working in conjunction with the academic colleges, the center promotes outstanding undergraduate and graduate education, facilitates research and scholarship of the highest caliber, and undertakes innovative outreach and active learning initiatives.

In teaching and active learning, the center also works with colleges and departments to provide students with academic and active learning opportunities focused on gender and global change through gender-related degrees, specializations, and minors. In addition, new co-curricular activities will help students develop cultural competencies and global consciousness, including gender-focused internships, research mentoring, and study abroad programs. These and other active learning experiences will deepen students' understandings of gender relations, the cultural and material politics of place, and the relationships between global and local transformations in real-world contexts. Students will be prepared to be socially responsible citizens, professionals, and leaders of the 21st century.

Outreach to Michigan communities, families, and schools will increase knowledge about how local lives are affected by global processes and heighten appreciation for gender, racial, ethnic, sexual identity, and other forms of diversity.

The center concentrates on gender and women's studies through interdisciplinary, comparative, transnational, and trans-cultural approaches. It connects faculty and students in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, residential colleges, agriculture and natural resources, and professional fields and has support from all associated academic deans. Those affiliated with the center will consider how global flows of ideas, people, trade, and new communication networks are transforming women and men's lives and gender relations, and they will examine how gendered power structures affect processes of globalization. The intersections of gender identities with racial, ethnic, sexual, socioeconomic, and other differences will be highlighted in the context of global change.

Anne Ferguson and Lisa Fine, Co-Directors
Meet the Staff!

SPOTLIGHT

The Center for Gender in Global Context is pleased to announce special guest speaker:
Dr. Valentine M. Moghadam
Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies
Director of Women's Studies
Purdue University.

Monday, April 14, 2008

10:00 am to 12:00 noon
Room 201 International Center
"Key Issues in International Women's Studies"
This is a great opportunity to speak with Dr. Moghadam about some of the priority women's studies issues globally as well as in the US.

3:00 to 5:00 pm
Spartan Room C, International Center
"Feminism on a World Scale"
Since the 1990s a growing literature has connected womens movements and organizations to global processes and has examined the ways that womens organizations engage with the world of public policy. This lecture examines the relationship between globalization and feminism on a world scale, with a focus on three types of transnational feminist networks that emerged in the 1980s and continue to be active to this day: networks that target the neoliberal economic policy agenda; those that focus on fundamentalism and insist on womens human rights, especially in the Muslim world; and womens peace groups opposed to conflict, war, and empire. The lecture will draw attention to how world-systemic processes unite women across the globe around common grievances and goals, while also noting the continuing fault-lines, including those within global feminism.

Dr. Valentine M. Moghadam joined Purdue University in January 2007.  From May 2004December 2006 she was Chief of the Section for Gender Equality and Development of the Social and Human Sciences Sector of UNESCO in Paris, France.  Prior to that, she was Director of Womens Studies and Professor of Sociology at Illinois State University.  Born in Iran, Dr. Moghadam has devoted much research to development, social change, and gender in the Middle East, North Africa, and Afghanistan, but she also studies and publishes on the social and gender dynamics of globalization, transnational feminist networks, civil society and citizenship, and womens employment in the Middle East.

Support for GenCen provided by: