Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper examines how gender, caste, class, ethnicity, and kinship operate and function inside the world of carpet factories in Nepal. The paper is based on the research "Women in Factory-based and Home-based Carpet Production in Nepal: Beyond the Formal and Informal Economy.” The paper looks at the ways gender, caste, class, ethnicity, and kinship networks influence the factory work culture, labor recruitment practices, and interpersonal relations among the workers. This paper illustrates how weavers' visual appearances, their engagement in certain practices, and their carrying of certain symbols reflect their demographic and cultural backgrounds.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This research is part of a case study of women and men’s work arrangements in Komsomolsk, a Central Ukrainian town. Data – collected through qualitative and survey research – examine the history and reorganization of garment work, and the gender and class effects within this process. In contrast to the experience of the predominately male workforce at the local mining enterprise, women workers in the local garment industry have confronted a dramatic reorganization of work; from a large factory offering hourly wages with benefits to micro-enterprises offering piece rates with no benefits. Although some women have prospered during this shift as small business entrepreneurs, the majority of women workers have experienced a decline in wages and job security. Observations of work reorganization in Komsomolsk’s garment industry suggest that the wage gap between women’s and men’s work is widening and that the condition of scarce opportunities are creating exploitive class relations between entrepreneurs and their employees within the garment industry.

Publication Type: Proceeding

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In educational literature considerable attention is given to diversity issues in teaching. In September faculty are often facing a class that looks like the United Nations in some universities. In other cases, where the student body is predominantly white, the challenge is to prepare students to embrace the world both domestically and globally that increasingly does not look like them. This raises several questions: Are the textbooks addressing issues of concern to these students whether they themselves are considered “diverse” or not? Is the curriculum changing to accommodate the history and contributions of those who are not of European descent? What paradigm should we be using?

Institutions of higher education are coming to terms with how to teach a diverse student body and what to teach. The question of what should be taught often hinges on the availability of instructional materials. Publishers are now racing to put out the appropriate texts that are inclusive. We examine the problems of writing and teaching about and at the intersection of racial, ethnic, sexual, and national origin diversity along with the administrative perspective of a changing curriculum and student body.

Supporting Publications:
Supporting Document

Publication Type: Individual Presentation
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: “Urban fiction” or “hip-hop lit” is a genre of literature that has developed a loyal fan base in the past few decades. Despite urban fiction’s popularity, there is little academic literature on the genre. Due to the “vulgar” and “salacious” content, nonconventional grammar use, and simplicity of the texts in this genre, these novels are often dismissed as tripe, beneath traditional literature, and not worth serious academic discussion or cultural acknowledgement. My main interrogations are: how have masculinity, femininity, blackness and whiteness been constructed in urban fiction? With these constructions in mind, what explains the genre’s popularity as well as its designations as unimaginative? Through cultural studies, historical and anthropological analysis this project argues that urban fiction’s unpopularity hinges on the genre’s narrow constructions of race and gender that often produce heteronegative and patriarchal versions of blackness and depart from middle class conceptualizations of respectability and black identity. Concurrently, the themes of ghetto romance, gangster tragedy and class ascension provide a unique alternative to “high” literature and is an explanation for its faithful readership. I conclude by asserting that the paucity of scholarship on this topic presents an excellent opportunity to explicate and theorize on this phenomena and its relationship to race, class, gender and sexuality, while repositioning the academic discussion on hip-hop from one that focuses on music and culture to a discourse that also considers hip-hop literature.