Faculty News

Ellen Fuller is on sabbatical this year. She is using her time actively to conduct research for her second book project on women’s transnational social movements. The project focuses on Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence (OWAAMV), a group that engages in both local and global networking to address the reduction/elimination of military bases and violence against women and girls. She will conduct research in Puerto Rico, Okinawa, and the U.S. over the course of this year, and will present preliminary findings at the Southeastern Women’s Studies Association conference in April. Her first book, The Transnational Workplace in Japan: Conflicts of Culture, Gender, and Authority, will be published by Temple University Press this year.

Ann Lane continues her research on her current project, a book-length manuscript on the subject of consensual sexual relations between faculty and students. She continues to serve on the board of the Distinguished Lectureship Program of the Organization of American Historians, and was nominated for Woman of the Year 2007 by the Governing Board of Editors of the American Biographical Institute. She was also selected for inclusion in the volume Feminists Who Changed America, 1963-1975 (edited by Barbara J. Love, University of Illinois Press).

Farzaneh Milani is on administrative leave and completing a book manuscript tentatively titled, Remapping the Cultural Geography of Iran: Islam, Woman, and Freedom of Movement. She served as Guest Editor for special issues of Iran Nameh: A Journal of Iranian Studies (in Persian) and the Journal of Iranian Studies (in English). Both are devoted to the Iranian poet, Simin Behbahani.

Holly Shulman taught a new SWAG course in Spring 2007, Reading Women's Documents in the Digital Era. She is currently directing two students for an independent study of Dolley Madison and American Memory. She was elected to serve on the Committee on the James Harvey Robinson Prize of the American Historical Association. In January 2008 she helped organize a conference funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and held at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities on the future of scholarly documentary editions in the digital age. Her work on the Dolley Madison Digital Edition, funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, continues to progress and receive national notice, with invited presentations across the country. She has established an institutional research relationship with Montpelier, the historic home of Dolley and James Madison. She is also working with the National Civil Rights Museum on their project to honor Dorothy I. Height and the civil rights program of the National Council of Negro Women called “Wednesdays in Mississippi,” and with a documentary film team in Los Angeles on the same topic.

Karlin Luedtke was an Invited Speaker for U.Va.’s prestigious Unforgettable Lectures Series, giving a talk entitled “So Hoo’s a Feminist Anyway?” In April she will present a paper at the Southeastern Women’s Studies Association conference, titled “Making Sense of Pornography: Gendered Interpretations of Sexually Explicit Images,” which is based on her dissertation research. The Summer Transition Program, which she directs, hosted 77 pre-matriculated students — the largest group of incoming first years since the program was expanded five years ago.

Vanessa May is teaching two 200-level classes called “The Political History of Housework” and “Feminism, Conservatism, and American Values.” She is also teaching an upper-level seminar on “Women, Gender, and Sexuality.” After defending her dissertation, entitled “Working in Public and in Private: Domestic Service, Women’s Reform, and the Meaning of the Middle-Class Home,” in May 2007, Vanessa received her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in August. She is now beginning the process of revising the dissertation for publication, working on an article, testing the job market, and working on several conference papers. Although all that writing can be rewarding, Vanessa really enjoys meeting with students, reading their work, and hearing their ideas in class discussions.

Denise Walsh received the Best Dissertation Prize from the Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association in 2007 for her dissertation, “Just Debate: Culture and Gender Justice in the New South Africa.” She was also co-winner of the Journal of Southern African Studies 2006 Best Article Prize. Walsh has a forthcoming publication, “Citizenship, Gender and Civil Society in South Africa,” which is the lead article in the edited volume Organizing Across Divides: Gender and Democratization in South African Civil Society. This past fall, Walsh presented papers at two conferences. One of those papers, Rejecting the Culture-Women Rights Dilemma, will be the basis for her second book project on South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. Walsh was recently recognized by the Lantern Society for Leadership in Women’s Education and has been nominated for a University teaching award. She also was awarded a University of Virginia Summer Grant to complete her book on public debate and gender justice in South Africa.

Rina Williams presented a paper on “Hindu Law as Personal Law: Gender, Nation and Religion in the Hindu Code Bills, 1952-1956” at the Annual Conference on South Asia at University of Wisconsin-Madison. The paper will be included in an edited volume, Law and Hinduism: An Introduction, under contract with Cambridge University Press and scheduled for release this fall (edited by Timothy Lubin, Don Davis Jr., and Jayanth Krishnan). She is also starting another project comparing women’s rights organizations and their activities and international linkages in three countries of South Asia: India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Preliminary research on this topic will be presented at the Southeastern Women’s Studies Association conference in April.