Published Monday, March 08, 2004
Forum Features Female Activists
Off-Campus Event Concludes Student Research Conference
By Andrew K. Mandel and Lolita Paiewonsky
APPIAN STAFF WRITERS

For five women accustomed to creating a stir for their respective causes, the 2004 International Forum – itself a campus controversy this year – was a particularly placid evening of preaching to the choir.

An audience of about 150 attended the Forum, which was held off-campus at the First Parish of Cambridge on Feb. 27 after organizers and Harvard Graduate School of Education officials clashed over the panel’s appropriateness (please see related story).

Forum organizer and HGSE doctoral student Silvia Romero-Contreras, who said the event recognized “the subversive and transformative work of women worldwide,” asked audience members to expand their definitions of teaching and learning.

“Effective education can take many different forms…in art galleries, in plazas, at dinner tables,” Romero said.

True to Romero's words, the presenters took turns offering glimpses into the activist work they pursue—and the ways in which media plays an integral role in transmitting their respective messages.

Nurit Eini-Pindyck, a resident scholar at the Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center, is a visual artist from Israel who shared her “participatory installations,” performance art that involves challenging traditional conceptions of gender.

In one such installation, she set a dinner table and invited visitors to sit – serving them chocolate babies and genitalia.

“What does it mean?” Eini-Pindyck asked the audience. “Some say it’s provocative, some say it’s breaking taboos, some say, ‘So what?’”

Susan McLucas, founder of an effort to stop female genital excision in Mali, shared a music video created to raise awareness and change minds about the practice. She spoke of the challenges she faced while pursuing her work as a foreigner, saying how important it was for citizens of Mali to act as spokespeople for the cause.

Judy Norsigian of the Boston Women’s Health Collective shared the various ways in which the book she co-authored about female health, Our Bodies, Ourselves, is going global. Norsigian highlighted challenges faced by international colleagues attempting to translate the text for their own countries—including, in some cases, government sanctions against the publication of books at all.

Leading a form of domestic resistance was Caroline Pozycki, Ed.M. ’04, who developed Girltalkback, a project begun in Reno, Nevada, aimed at educating the public on “effective means to develop strong, healthy, independent women,” according to its website.

With the privilege of a Smith College education and the support of parents who were themselves activists, Pozycki said she sees it as her responsibility to help young women develop healthy self-esteem.

Pozycki, who considers herself as a moral development educator, said she takes “pleasure in raging against the machine,” using “punk-rock iconoclasm” to “flip the script” against mainstream expectations of young women.

Girltalkback’s in-your-face style may be part of an American tradition.

“Frida Kahlo,” an anonymous leader of the Guerrilla Girls, explained that her two-decade-old organization has used eye-catching posters and books – and their signature gorilla masks – to protest the lack of diversity in the art world.

“I don’t like wearing this mask, but it was the only way we could be taken seriously in the art world,” Kahlo laughed. “Somehow the schtick worked, and now we’re stuck with it.”

At the end of the panel, moderator and HGSE doctoral student Masum Momaya noted that activists work to make themselves unnecessary – and asked what would cause the panelists to retire.

While she says there will always be causes to support, McLucas believes that genital excision can end in her lifetime.

“The moment is right for this particular issue,” she said.

The other panelists were less optimistic, saying that issues like racism and sexism are not likely to disappear.

“I don’t expect to take this mask off anytime soon,” Kahlo said.

Andrew K. Mandel and Lolita Paiewonsky are members of the Appian Board of Editors.