Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women
Encyclopedia
The Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women at Brown University was established in Brown University
, Providence, Rhode Island
, as an interdisciplinary research center on gender
and society
. In addition to research, its mission also includes the preservation of the history of women at Brown and promotion of excellent teaching.
The Pembroke Center plays a unique role at Brown University. Founded in 1981, the Pembroke Center was named in honor of Pembroke College in Brown University
, and the women of Pembroke and its predecessor, the Women’s College. It also honors those early women who fought to gain access to higher education
and who raised the money to build Pembroke Hall in 1897. Although established to explore the cultural and social meanings of gender
, the Center’s research quickly expanded to include the many other differences critical to the understanding of gender: ethnicity, race, nationality
and economics
. In an era that seems torn by clashes of all types, the Pembroke Center explores the ways questions of difference affect our thinking and our world.
The Pembroke Center offers a broad range of research, teaching, and alumnae/i programs. Its interdisciplinary research program, which draws scholars from around the world, has earned a reputation for excellence. Its scholarly journal, differences, the premier journal in feminist cultural studies, enjoys a worldwide readership. The Center’s work to preserve the history of women at Brown and in Rhode Island has produced the Christine Dunlap Farnham Archives, a rich resource for scholars.
, after Pembroke College Cambridge University and retained that name until the 1971 merger of Pembroke with Brown. In 1981, a decade after the merger, the Pembroke Center was named in honor of Pembroke College and the history of women's efforts to gain access to higher education.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, numerous centers for research on women and gender
were established in the US. What distinguishes the Pembroke Center is its focus on the theoretical dimensions of the category of gender. While the name of the Center evokes the concrete historical achievements of women, the Center's research and teaching questions the self-evident meanings of the categories of "women" and "woman." While most centers and programs in the late 1970s and the 1980s were taking women as a starting point, the Pembroke Center's scholars and students were taking neither women nor gender for granted, but looking, rather, at the many and complex articulations of difference that produce such categories and give them their historically specific meanings. Leading historian and social scientist Joan Wallach Scott was founding director of the Center. The Pembroke Center is affiliated with the Sarah Doyle Women's Center
.
Funded in its early years by the Ford Foundation
, the National Endowment for the Humanities
, and the Rockefeller Foundation
, the Center now supports its programs largely through its endowment.
• An innovative collaboration with China’s Nanjing University
that examines the ways transnational developments affect politics
, higher education
, and the status of women. The Nanjing project enables the exchange of faculty and students as well as other joint research efforts.
• Research support of three postdoctoral fellows including: 1) global intellectual history of international law focusing on the role non-Western international lawyers have played in the construction of the international legal order, 2) a new history of how English became an academic discipline, and 3) the making of new kinds of expertise in the biological sciences and how craft practice shapes the production of biological knowledge.
• An archives project that digitized The Pembroke Record, the student newspaper of Pembroke College in Brown University from 1922-1970. Materials are preserved in the Christine Dunlap Farnham Archives at the John Hay Library
and made available to historians and other researchers.
program merged with the concentration in Sexuality and Society to form the Gender and Sexuality Studies Program. Gender and Sexuality Studies is an interdisciplinary concentration that examines the construction of gender and sexuality in social, cultural, political, economic, or scientific contexts. Each concentrator will focus on a well-defined topic or question and work closely with a concentration advisor to develop a program that investigates this focus area rigorously and supplements it with foundational courses in the relevant disciplines.
Typical areas of focus might include the acculturation of gender
, sexuality
and race in American politics
or activism; the construction of sexual and gendered identities in educational institutions or in various forms of visual media; a contrast between different cultural understandings of sexual identity
, a particular national literature
and history
. Such topics will frequently bring questions of gender and sexuality together; however students may also organize their concentrations to emphasize questions specifically related to gender or to sexuality if they wish. Introductory and methodology courses in the disciplines appropriate to students' focus will help them understand the principles grounding such practices as historical research, literary interpretation, and sociological analysis.
In 2009-10, the Pembroke Seminar pursued a multi-disciplinary examination of "Markets and Bodies in Transnational Perspective". This collective inquiry investigated questions about global flows of people and technology that involve reimagining the body and transforming what it means to be human.
In 2010–2011, the Pembroke seminar looks at "The Power and Mystery of Expertise". Seminar leader is David Kennedy, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
. The significance of expertise for rulership today is easy to see—in the vernacular of national politics, the management of international economic life, the arrangement of family and gender relations, and more. What is “expertise?” What part knowledge, what part common-sense—what portion analytics, argument, lifestyle, character?
In 2011-2012 the Pembroke seminar will review “The Question of Consent.” Seminar leader will be Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg.
The 2012-2013 seminar, “Economies of Perception” will be led by Timothy Bewes, Department of English.
The 2013-2014 seminar, “Habits of Living” will be led by Wendy Chun, Department of Modern Culture and Media.
differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies first appeared in 1989 at the moment of a critical encounter—a head-on collision, one might say—of theories of difference (primarily continental) and the politics of diversity (primarily American). In the ensuing years, the journal has established a critical forum where the problematic of differences is explored in texts ranging from the literary and the visual to the political and social. differences highlights theoretical debates across the disciplines that address the ways concepts and categories of difference—notably but not exclusively gender—operate within culture. It is published three times a year with a grant from the Helena Rubinstein
Foundation by Duke University Press
.
, the Christine Dunlap Farnham Archives focuses on nineteenth and twentieth-century Brown and Rhode Island women and their organizations. In addition to correspondence
, diaries
, photographs, newspapers, yearbooks, and memorabilia, it also includes a collection of oral history
tapes and videos. The materials on women are located throughout the University Archives and Special Collections. There is a 500-page Research Guide to the Christine Dunlap Farnham Archives which includes more than 1,000 entries describing the collection.
Also included within the Pembroke Center Archives is the Elizabeth Weed Feminist Theory
Papers collection, inaugurated in 2002, which preserves the legacies of prominent feminist thinkers. Its mission is to collect, arrange, describe, preserve, and make accessible the work of leading feminist theorists beginning in the 1960s
. With these papers, the Pembroke Center seeks to preserve the past in order to enhance the future of feminist theory. This collection continues the Pembroke Center's commitment to documenting the contributions of feminist scholars to cutting-edge research and making their papers available to scholars.
; publicize Pembroke Center activities through a newsletter
and other publications; present the Leadership for Change through Education Award to leaders who have made a difference through education; and support the academic and research programs of the Pembroke Center through their annual membership contributions. In addition, the Associates has established a financial endowment
of more than $4 million that augments the Center's budget.
The Pembroke Center Associates Council is the advisory board
of the Associates. Members of the Council are elected annually on a rotating basis for three-year terms. The Council, which meets three times a year on the Brown campus, is composed of committees that recommend initiatives for action by the Associates.
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
, Providence, Rhode Island
Providence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of Rhode Island and was one of the first cities established in the United States. Located in Providence County, it is the third largest city in the New England region...
, as an interdisciplinary research center on gender
Gender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...
and society
Society
A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...
. In addition to research, its mission also includes the preservation of the history of women at Brown and promotion of excellent teaching.
The Pembroke Center plays a unique role at Brown University. Founded in 1981, the Pembroke Center was named in honor of Pembroke College in Brown University
Pembroke College (Brown University)
Pembroke College in Brown University was the coordinate women's college for Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. It was founded in 1891 and closed in 1971.-Founding and early history:...
, and the women of Pembroke and its predecessor, the Women’s College. It also honors those early women who fought to gain access to higher education
Higher education
Higher, post-secondary, tertiary, or third level education refers to the stage of learning that occurs at universities, academies, colleges, seminaries, and institutes of technology...
and who raised the money to build Pembroke Hall in 1897. Although established to explore the cultural and social meanings of gender
Gender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...
, the Center’s research quickly expanded to include the many other differences critical to the understanding of gender: ethnicity, race, nationality
Nationality
Nationality is membership of a nation or sovereign state, usually determined by their citizenship, but sometimes by ethnicity or place of residence, or based on their sense of national identity....
and economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
. In an era that seems torn by clashes of all types, the Pembroke Center explores the ways questions of difference affect our thinking and our world.
The Pembroke Center offers a broad range of research, teaching, and alumnae/i programs. Its interdisciplinary research program, which draws scholars from around the world, has earned a reputation for excellence. Its scholarly journal, differences, the premier journal in feminist cultural studies, enjoys a worldwide readership. The Center’s work to preserve the history of women at Brown and in Rhode Island has produced the Christine Dunlap Farnham Archives, a rich resource for scholars.
History
The first two women were admitted to Brown University in 1891. In 1928, the Women's College in Brown University was named Pembroke College in Brown UniversityPembroke College (Brown University)
Pembroke College in Brown University was the coordinate women's college for Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. It was founded in 1891 and closed in 1971.-Founding and early history:...
, after Pembroke College Cambridge University and retained that name until the 1971 merger of Pembroke with Brown. In 1981, a decade after the merger, the Pembroke Center was named in honor of Pembroke College and the history of women's efforts to gain access to higher education.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, numerous centers for research on women and gender
Gender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...
were established in the US. What distinguishes the Pembroke Center is its focus on the theoretical dimensions of the category of gender. While the name of the Center evokes the concrete historical achievements of women, the Center's research and teaching questions the self-evident meanings of the categories of "women" and "woman." While most centers and programs in the late 1970s and the 1980s were taking women as a starting point, the Pembroke Center's scholars and students were taking neither women nor gender for granted, but looking, rather, at the many and complex articulations of difference that produce such categories and give them their historically specific meanings. Leading historian and social scientist Joan Wallach Scott was founding director of the Center. The Pembroke Center is affiliated with the Sarah Doyle Women's Center
Sarah Doyle Women's Center
The Sarah Doyle Women's Center is an organization at Brown University, founded in 1974, which "seeks to provide a comfortable, yet challenging place for students, faculty, and staff to examine the multitude of issues around gender"...
.
Funded in its early years by the Ford Foundation
Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is a private foundation incorporated in Michigan and based in New York City created to fund programs that were chartered in 1936 by Edsel Ford and Henry Ford....
, the National Endowment for the Humanities
National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency of the United States established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is located at...
, and the Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...
, the Center now supports its programs largely through its endowment.
Current projects
The current academic year projects include:• An innovative collaboration with China’s Nanjing University
Nanjing University
Nanjing University , or Nanking University, is one of the oldest and most prestigious institutions of higher learning in China...
that examines the ways transnational developments affect politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
, higher education
Higher education
Higher, post-secondary, tertiary, or third level education refers to the stage of learning that occurs at universities, academies, colleges, seminaries, and institutes of technology...
, and the status of women. The Nanjing project enables the exchange of faculty and students as well as other joint research efforts.
• Research support of three postdoctoral fellows including: 1) global intellectual history of international law focusing on the role non-Western international lawyers have played in the construction of the international legal order, 2) a new history of how English became an academic discipline, and 3) the making of new kinds of expertise in the biological sciences and how craft practice shapes the production of biological knowledge.
• An archives project that digitized The Pembroke Record, the student newspaper of Pembroke College in Brown University from 1922-1970. Materials are preserved in the Christine Dunlap Farnham Archives at the John Hay Library
John Hay Library
The John Hay Library is the second oldest library on the campus of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Located on Prospect Street, opposite the Van Wickle Gates, it replaced the outgrown former library, now Robinson Hall, as the main library on the campus...
and made available to historians and other researchers.
The Concentration
In fall 2006, the Gender StudiesGender studies
Gender studies is a field of interdisciplinary study which analyses race, ethnicity, sexuality and location.Gender study has many different forms. One view exposed by the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir said: "One is not born a woman, one becomes one"...
program merged with the concentration in Sexuality and Society to form the Gender and Sexuality Studies Program. Gender and Sexuality Studies is an interdisciplinary concentration that examines the construction of gender and sexuality in social, cultural, political, economic, or scientific contexts. Each concentrator will focus on a well-defined topic or question and work closely with a concentration advisor to develop a program that investigates this focus area rigorously and supplements it with foundational courses in the relevant disciplines.
Typical areas of focus might include the acculturation of gender
Gender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...
, sexuality
Human sexuality
Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...
and race in American politics
American politics
American politics is an area of study within the academic discipline of political science. It is primarily, but not exclusively, studied by researchers in the United States...
or activism; the construction of sexual and gendered identities in educational institutions or in various forms of visual media; a contrast between different cultural understandings of sexual identity
Sexual identity
Sexual identity is a term that, like sex, has two distinctively different meanings. One describes an identity roughly based on sexual orientation, the other an identity based on sexual characteristics, which is not socially based but based on biology, a concept related to, but different from,...
, a particular national literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
and history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
. Such topics will frequently bring questions of gender and sexuality together; however students may also organize their concentrations to emphasize questions specifically related to gender or to sexuality if they wish. Introductory and methodology courses in the disciplines appropriate to students' focus will help them understand the principles grounding such practices as historical research, literary interpretation, and sociological analysis.
Pembroke Research Seminar
The Pembroke Research Seminar brings together Pembroke Center Postdoctoral Fellows, Faculty Research Fellows, Graduate Fellows, other interested Brown faculty and selected students, affiliated Visiting Scholars, and distinguished guest lecturers. The Seminar meets weekly on the Brown campus. The research theme of the seminar changes annually.In 2009-10, the Pembroke Seminar pursued a multi-disciplinary examination of "Markets and Bodies in Transnational Perspective". This collective inquiry investigated questions about global flows of people and technology that involve reimagining the body and transforming what it means to be human.
In 2010–2011, the Pembroke seminar looks at "The Power and Mystery of Expertise". Seminar leader is David Kennedy, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...
. The significance of expertise for rulership today is easy to see—in the vernacular of national politics, the management of international economic life, the arrangement of family and gender relations, and more. What is “expertise?” What part knowledge, what part common-sense—what portion analytics, argument, lifestyle, character?
In 2011-2012 the Pembroke seminar will review “The Question of Consent.” Seminar leader will be Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg.
The 2012-2013 seminar, “Economies of Perception” will be led by Timothy Bewes, Department of English.
The 2013-2014 seminar, “Habits of Living” will be led by Wendy Chun, Department of Modern Culture and Media.
Postdoctoral Fellowships
The Pembroke Center annually supports three or four postdoctoral research fellows in residence for an academic year.Scholarly Publications
"d i f f e r e n c e s"differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies first appeared in 1989 at the moment of a critical encounter—a head-on collision, one might say—of theories of difference (primarily continental) and the politics of diversity (primarily American). In the ensuing years, the journal has established a critical forum where the problematic of differences is explored in texts ranging from the literary and the visual to the political and social. differences highlights theoretical debates across the disciplines that address the ways concepts and categories of difference—notably but not exclusively gender—operate within culture. It is published three times a year with a grant from the Helena Rubinstein
Helena Rubinstein
Helena Rubinstein , a Polish born Australian-American business magnate. She is the founder and eponym of Helena Rubinstein, Incorporated, which made her one of the world's richest women.-Early life:...
Foundation by Duke University Press
Duke University Press
Duke University Press is an academic publisher of books and journals, and a unit of Duke University. It publishes approximately 120 books annually and more than 40 journals, as well as offering five electronic collections...
.
The Pembroke Center Archives
Housed in the John Hay LibraryJohn Hay Library
The John Hay Library is the second oldest library on the campus of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Located on Prospect Street, opposite the Van Wickle Gates, it replaced the outgrown former library, now Robinson Hall, as the main library on the campus...
, the Christine Dunlap Farnham Archives focuses on nineteenth and twentieth-century Brown and Rhode Island women and their organizations. In addition to correspondence
Communication
Communication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast...
, diaries
Diaries
As a proper noun, Diaries, the plural of diary, can refer to:*Diaries: 1971-1976, an 1981 documentary by Ed Pincus*Diaries 1969–1979: The Python Years, a 2006 book by Michael Palin...
, photographs, newspapers, yearbooks, and memorabilia, it also includes a collection of oral history
Oral history
Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews...
tapes and videos. The materials on women are located throughout the University Archives and Special Collections. There is a 500-page Research Guide to the Christine Dunlap Farnham Archives which includes more than 1,000 entries describing the collection.
Also included within the Pembroke Center Archives is the Elizabeth Weed Feminist Theory
Feminist theory
Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, or philosophical discourse, it aims to understand the nature of gender inequality...
Papers collection, inaugurated in 2002, which preserves the legacies of prominent feminist thinkers. Its mission is to collect, arrange, describe, preserve, and make accessible the work of leading feminist theorists beginning in the 1960s
1960s
The 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...
. With these papers, the Pembroke Center seeks to preserve the past in order to enhance the future of feminist theory. This collection continues the Pembroke Center's commitment to documenting the contributions of feminist scholars to cutting-edge research and making their papers available to scholars.
The Pembroke Center Associates
The Pembroke Center Associates is a membership organization of more than five hundred members that was founded in 1983 to secure the programs of the Center. The Associates is a group of dedicated alumnae/i and friends who offer engaging programs to alumnae/i, students, and the communityCommunity
The term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...
; publicize Pembroke Center activities through a newsletter
Newsletter
A newsletter is a regularly distributed publication generally about one main topic that is of interest to its subscribers. Newspapers and leaflets are types of newsletters. Additionally, newsletters delivered electronically via email have gained rapid acceptance for the same reasons email in...
and other publications; present the Leadership for Change through Education Award to leaders who have made a difference through education; and support the academic and research programs of the Pembroke Center through their annual membership contributions. In addition, the Associates has established a financial endowment
Financial endowment
A financial endowment is a transfer of money or property donated to an institution. The total value of an institution's investments is often referred to as the institution's endowment and is typically organized as a public charity, private foundation, or trust....
of more than $4 million that augments the Center's budget.
The Pembroke Center Associates Council is the advisory board
Advisory board
An advisory board is a body that advises the board of directors and management of a corporation but does not have authority to vote on corporate matters, nor a legal fiduciary responsibility...
of the Associates. Members of the Council are elected annually on a rotating basis for three-year terms. The Council, which meets three times a year on the Brown campus, is composed of committees that recommend initiatives for action by the Associates.
External links
- Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women
- Brown Alumni Association
- Brown University
- Sarah Doyle Women's Center
- Christine Dunlap Farnham Archives
- Nanjing-Brown Joint Program in Gender Studies and the Humanities
- Nanjing University Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences
- Feminist Theory Papers