The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy announces a September conference on Military Culture and Gender at the UB Center for the Arts. The conference is being organized by Lucinda Finley (SUNY Buffalo Law), Isabel Marcus (SUNY Buffalo Law), and Brenda Moore (SUNY Buffalo Sociology). It will present an interdisciplinary dialogue between scholars of military studies, gender relations, and human rights.

Description

The conference begins with a keynote address on Thursday evening, September 15, by Dr. Cynthia Enloe on “Women in the Military and Cultures of Militarization.” Dr. Enloe, from Clark University, is a leading feminist scholar of international relations and author of many books including Does Khaki Become You?: The Militarisation of Women’s Lives.

Conference sessions on Friday explore the dramatically increasing role of women on active duty in the U.S. military, as well as those in other western nations, over the last decade. Equally as important as the integration of women into military occupations that have been previously closed to them is what happens to them when they transition back into the civilian world.

Militarism and militarization, as aspects of international and national politics in war zones as well as in civil society, rely on constructions of nationalism or ethnicity that also rely on gender differentiation. The implications of militarism, militarization and nationalism on the status of women and women’s international human rights will be examined in the afternoon sessions of the conference.

Program

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Thursday Evening, September 15, 2005: 5:30 Reception
6:00 - 7:30 Welcome and Opening Remarks
Lucinda Finley University at Buffalo Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Cynthia Enloe Clark University, “Women in the Military and Cultures of Militarization” Introductions by Isabel Marcus University at Buffalo School of Law and Brenda Moore University at Buffalo Department of Sociology
Friday, September 16, 2005: 8:15 - 8:45 Coffee and muffins
8:45 - 9:00 Welcome and Opening Remarks
Uday Sukhatme Dean, College of Arts & Sciences
Lynn Mather Director, Baldy Center for Law & Social Policy

9:00 - 10:30 Women on Active Duty
Moderator: Brenda Moore University at Buffalo Department of Sociology
Elizabeth Hillman Rutgers School of Law, “Guarding Women: Abu Ghraib and Military Sexual Culture” Download paper
Katia Sorin Laboratoire Georges Friedmann, France, “The Participation of Women in Western Armed Forces: Between a Gender and Political Dimension” Download paper
Laura Miller Rand Corporation, “Investigating Sexual Harassment and Assault at the Military Academies” Task Force Report
Carol Burke University of California, Irvine, Department of English, “Images, Roles, and Controversies: Military Women in Iraq”

10:30 – 10:45 Break

10:45 - 12:30 Women Military Veterans
Moderator: Faith Hoffman Veterans Administration, Buffalo
Christine Hansen Miles Foundation, Connecticut, “The Cost of Sexual Violence in the U.S. Armed Forces” Download paper
Brenda Moore & Ron Armstead Congressional Black Caucus Veterans Braintrust, “Issues of African American Women Veterans”
Rani Desai Yale University School of Medicine, “Homeless Female Veterans: The VA Response”
Bevanne Bean-Mayberry University of Pittsburgh, Department of Medicine, “Assuring High Quality Care for Women Veterans: Predictors of Success”

12:30 - 1:30 Lunch break

1:30 - 3:00 Roundtable: Armed Conflict and the Human Rights of Women
Moderator: Isabel Marcus University at Buffalo Law School Rhonda Copelon, CUNY School of Law, “International Women’s Human Rights”
Ariane Brunet Rights and Democracy, MontrÈal, “A Pinch of Women’s Rights: The Soup of Militarization, Humanitarian Aid, and Fundamentalisms”
Lepa Mladjenovic Autonomous Women’s Center, Belgrade, Serbia
Judith Stiehm Florida International University, Department of Political Science, “Women Winners of the Nobel Prize for Peace: What Can We Learn from Them?”

3:00 - 3:15 Closing
3:30 - 5:15 Private meeting with participants to discuss anthology

Participants/Bios

Ron Armstead has been Executive Director of the Congressional Black Caucus Veterans Braintrust (CBCVB) located in Washington, DC, since its inception in 1988, and was a consultant for the late Secretary Jesse Brown’s Veterans Administration’s Advisory Committee on Minority Veterans. Ron holds a Masters Degree in City Planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a license in social work in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and is currently on an extended leave of absence from Howard University’s School of Social Work Doctoral Program.

Bevanne A. Bean-Mayberry, MD, MHS, is currently an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh in the departments of medicine and health policy and management. She is also a staff physician and core investigator at the Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion (CHERP) at VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System. Dr. Bean-Mayberry received her bachelors in Human Biology at Stanford University and her masters in health science at Johns Hopkins University. She is a graduate of New Jersey Medical School and their respective internal medicine residency program. She is also a graduate of the VA Pittsburgh and University of Pittsburgh Women’s Health Fellowship in the Division of General Medicine. She has published and presented several papers and abstracts on health issues involving veteran women. She is a VA funded career development award recipient and her area of research focuses on quality of care for women veterans.

Ariane Brunet is the Women’s Rights Coordinator at Rights & Democracy. In March 2003 R&D published “Where are the Girls?”, a study funded by CIDA on Girls in Fighting Forces in Northern Uganda, Sierra Leone, and Mozambique co-authored by Susan McKay and Dyan Mazurana. Ms. Brunet has been responsible for the Canada Programme and the Middle East and North African Programme, in addition to representing the Centre at the United Nations Human Rights Commission. She is a co-founder of the Urgent Action Fund (UAF). UAF works in situations of armed conflict, escalating violence or politically volatile environments, precedent setting legal case or legislative action and the protection of women’s human rights defenders. Ariane Brunet was a board member of the Women's Caucus for Gender Justice and is now on the Advisory Council of the Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice (WIGJ).

Carol Burke, Associate Professor of English at the University of California at Irvine, is a folklorist whose ethnographic work has produced books that document the lives of Midwestern farm families, female inmates in our nation’s prisons, and most recently, members of the armed services. Burke’s latest book (Camp All-American, Hanoi Jane, and The High-andTight: Gender, Folklore, and Changing Military Culture, Beacon 2004) analyzes the military as an occupational folk group. Before joining the faculty at the University of California at Irvine, Professor Burke taught at Vanderbilt University, Johns Hopkins University, and the United States Naval Academy.

Rhonda Copelon is a professor at City University of New York School of Law; roundtable participant

Rani Desai is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Epidemiology and Public Health at Yale University School of Medicine. She serves as Associate Director of the Northeast Program Evaluation Center, the evaluation arm of mental health services in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Her research has included studies on pathological gambling, schizophrenia, substance abuse/dependence, the risk of suicide in psychiatric patients, and the mental health problems experienced by the homeless. Dr. Desai serves as the program evaluator for VA programs on homeless female veterans, and has served on several advisory committees to the VA on the mental health needs of female veterans, with particular attention to military sexual trauma.

Cynthia Enloe is Research Professor of International Development and Women's Studies at Clark University. She serves on the Advisory Boards of the Women and the Military Project of the Women's Research and Education Institute, the Gender and Security Project of the National Council for Research on Women and Boston Consortium for Gender, Security and Human Rights. She also serves on several editorial boards such as Signs, and the International Feminist Journal of Politics. Among her books are "Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics," "Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives." Her most recent book is "The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire."

Christine Hansen, Executive Director, The Miles Foundation, is a human rights advocate, having worked with victims of violence since 1978. Christine is the author of numerous papers, monographs, articles and chapters relative to sexual and domestic violence among armed forces personnel, families and partners. Publications include "A Considerable Service: An Advocate's Introduction to Domestic Violence and the Military," Domestic Violence Report, April/May 2001, "Judging Jurisdictions: Intimate Partner Violence and the Military, Family Violence Forum, Summer 2003, "Filing a Flight Plan: Policy and Social Change to Address Sexual Violence in the Military,"Sexual Assault Report, March/April 2004; The War At Home; Improving the US Armed Forces Response to Violence Against Women: Recommendations for Change; Confidentiality of Communications for Victims of Violence Associated with the Military; and Victim's Rights, Benefits and Transitional Compensation.

Elizabeth L. Hillman, Associate Professor of Law, Rutgers School of Law, Camden, studies military justice, American legal history, and gender and sexuality in the law. She co-directs the Marshall-Brennan Fellowship Program, which sends select law students into Camden high schools to teach courses on the Constitution and public education, and teaches constitutional law, women and the law, military justice, and sexuality and crime. A veteran of the U.S. Air Force, she previously taught history at the United States Air Force Academy and at Yale University. Her published work includes Defending America: Military Culture and the Cold War Court-Martial (Princeton University Press, 2005).

Isabel Marcus is a professor of law at the University at Buffalo Law School. Her current research interests include women’s human rights, feminist jurisprudence, and domestic violence.

Laura L. Miller is a social scientiest at the RAND Corporation. She conducts research on gender relations in the military, and on the sociology of military operations. She has studied the lives of soldiers through observations, discussion groups, one-on-one interviews, and over 4,000 surveys. This research has resulted in many publications, including "Feminism and the Exclusion of Army Women from Combat" (Gender Issues 1998); "From Adversaries to Allies: Relief Workers' Attitudes Toward the U.S. Military" (Qualitative Sociology 1999); and L. Miller and J. A. Williams, “Do Military Policies on Gender and Sexuality Undermine Combat Effectiveness?” Pp. 361-402 in Soldiers and Civilians: The U.S. Military, American Society, and National Security, (Cambridge, MA: BCSIA-MIT Press, 2001).

Lepa Mladjenovic Autonomous Women’s Center, Belgrade, Serbia; roundtable participant.

Brenda Moore, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University at Buffalo, has been recognized many times for her work as a sociologist researching in the fields of race and ethnic relations, military sociology, gender, and social stratification. She has received the American Society for Engineering Education Visiting Scholar Award to the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute every summer since 1997. In 1994 Moore was appointed by then President of the United States, Bill Clinton, to be a member of the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC). The ABMC is responsible for commemorating the U.S. Armed Forces in places where they have served since April 6, 1917, by designing, constructing, operating and maintaining permanent American military burial grounds on foreign soil. Moore is the author of: To Serve My Country, To Serve My Race: The Story of the Only African American WACs Stationed Overseas During World War II (1996) and Serving Our Country: Japanese American Women in the Military During World War II (2003) for which she obtained a Ford Foundation Faculty Research Grant.

Katia Sorin did postdoctorate research at the Canadian Forces Leadership Institute (Royal military college) on women in leadership roles (Le leader est-il un Ítre asexuÈ ? Etude sociologique des femmes dans des positions de leadership au sein des Forces canadiennes). Sorin also conducted research for the French defense about the situation of women in the Western countries (Des femmes militaires en Occident, quelles leÁons pour la France ? Allemagne, Canada, Espagne, Pays-Bas, Royaume-Uni, with Yolanda Bosch, Brigitte FrotiÈe, Gerhard K¸mmel, RenÈ Moelker and Vincent Porteret, report, C2SD, 2004), and about the conditions of life of the soldiers in Europe (Les conditions de vie des militaires en Europe, with Christelle Koudgil, Vincent Porteret and FranÁoise Piotet, report, C2SD, 2003)

Judith Hicks Stiehm is Professor of Political Science at Florida International University where she served as Provost and Academic Vice President for four years. Her specialties include political theory, social change, the status of women, and civil-military relations. She has been a Visiting Professor at the U.S. Army Peacekeeping Institute and at the Strategic Studies Institute at Carlisle Barracks. Her books include It’s Our Military Too!: Women and the US Military (Temple, 1996), and U.S. Army War College: Military Education in a Democracy (Temple 2002). Professor Stiehm has served on the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Military, as a consultant to the United Nations Commission for the Advancement of Women and to the Lessons Learned Unit of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, holds the U.S. Army Distinguished Civilian Service Medal, and appears in the most recent edition of Who’s Who.

Workshop Organizers

Contact Brenda Moore at socbrend@buffalo.edu for information or with any questions about the substance of the conference. For questions about logistics, contact Ellen Kausner in the Baldy Center at ekausner@buffalo.edu .

Driving Directions & Parking

Driving directions and information about parking on UB's North Campus can be found here.

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Baldy Center For Law & Social Policy
511 O'Brian Hall, University at Buffalo Law School
Buffalo, NY 14260
716.645.2102