The Department of Women’s Studies is presenting their 2012 Spring Speaker’s Series: Inconvenient Women: Gender Inequality in the Justice System. These lectures are free and open to the public.
The first lecture is:
Dr. Talia Welsh
Department of Philosophy & Religion/Women’s Studies, UTC
“Feminist Debates Regarding Sex Workers”
Wednesday, January 25th, 5:30pm
U.C. Lookout Room
American feminists were split in two in the 1980s during what has named “the porn wars.” The symbolic turning point in this battle was the proposed legislation to the city of Minneapolis in 1980 to ban pornography by Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon. Therein, they argued that pornography was a violation of women’s rights. Others joined in this discussion, documenting the damaging effects on women in general due to pornography and the dangerous world female sex workers experienced. Yet, many feminists strongly opposed this approach fearing the possible dangers to freedom of speech and seeing an unhappy harmony between this legislation and other existing and previous laws that tried to moralize sexual behavior, ones that often limited female sexuality. In this presentation, I discuss the debate between the “anti-pornography” and “pro-sex” camps in feminist thought and draw out the deeper philosophical issues regarding autonomy, freedom of speech, the essence of feminism, and the duty to consider consequences.
Future lectures:
Dr. Catherine Brekus (co-sponsor along with the Department of Philosophy & Religion–Martin Lecture Series)
Divinity School, University of Chicago
“Sarah Osborn’s World: The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Early America”
Thursday, February 16, 7:00pm
U.C. Auditorium
Dr. Sharon Redhawk Love, Dr. Helen Eigenberg, Dr. Tammy Garland, Karen McGuffee, JD, Sara Peters
Department of Criminal Justice/Department of Legal Studies/Women’s Center, UTC
“Injustices Against Women”
Wednesday, February 22nd – 5:30pm
Holt 209
Dr. Carrie Baker
Study of Women & Gender, Smith College
“Social Change from the Grassroots: The Women’s Movement against Sexual Harassment”
Wednesday, March 21st—2:00pm
U.C. Chattanooga Room
Dr. Marcia Noe & Emily Hurst
Department of English/ Women’s Studies
“One Girl Reporter, a Rope, a Canary, a One Act Play, and the Stanford Law Review”
Wednesday, April 4th – 5:30pm
U.C. Lookout
