GLOBAL FEMINISMS
Fall 2001
ASSIGNMENT: Introduce a participant from the NGO Conference in Beijing.
You've been assigned to bring one of the participants in the 1995 NGO Conference to an informal gathering on August 31. In order to introduce her to the others present--most of whom have backgrounds that are vastly different from your guest's--you'll need to get to know her as well as you can without actually being able to speak with her in person. You'll need to do some research and take some notes.
First, carefully read your guest's personal essay from Voices of Women. How does her essay link up to broader questions about women’s status as articulated in The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action? What attracts you to this essay? In what ways do you identify with it, or recognize similarities between the writer’s concerns and your own? In what ways does the essay seem to represent something completely different from your own experience, ways of thinking, ways of living?
Next, identify something about the essay (an organization? A social issue? The author’s country of origin, or the author herself?) about which you would like to learn more, and do some library or web research. Bring in to class photocopies or printouts of images or text that you capture your interest. Prepare to introduce this author to the class, telling us something more than her essay in Voices of Women does.
Your research for this assignment will also serve as background for the first formal written assignment, the Web Ethnography due September 20(?).
RESOURCES AVAILABLE ON LIBRARY RESERVE
Women's Feature Service, Beijing! UN Fourth World Conference on Women
Forum '95: The Independent Daily of the NGO Forum on Women
NGO Forum on Women '95: Final Report
Look at the World Through Women's Eyes: Plenary Speeches from the NGO Forum on Women, Beijing '95.