This conference honors anthropologist Louise Lamphere and her major gift to Brown University in support of Gender Studies teaching and research in cross-cultural and transnational perspectives. The history of this gift is fascinating because Lamphere, now a distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico, was a pioneer in early feminist scholarship and a junior faculty member in the Brown Anthropology Department in the 1970s. After being denied tenure, Lamphere became the lead plaintiff in a class action suit against the University for sex discrimination. The suit was settled by a consent decree in 1977 that mandated goals and timetables for the hiring and tenuring of women faculty. Over the years, the conditions of the consent decree resulted in many more women scholars joining the Brown's faculty. This story of gender studies scholarship and activism comes full circle with Lamphere's ground breaking gift to support visiting junior faculty appointments at Brown. The celebratory conference will serve as an opportunity to rethink the history of feminist scholarship in the 1970s and 1980s, to examine changing research paradigms in the present, and to hear about new lines of research by younger scholars and the promise of cross-generational collaborations.
Location: McKinney Conference Room, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.