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by
LOIS DUBIN (Religion) and ALICE HEARST (Government), Organizing
Fellows
During the spring semester of
2007, the project successfully con-tinued its multi-faceted
explorations of marriage and divorce. As faculty and student
fellows addressed a range of social, cultural, and legal
issues in diverse historical and contemporary settings and
through different media, we developed greater appreciation
of one another’s approaches and of the value of combining
different disciplinary perspectives. Individual fellows were
often pleasantly surprised to discover the relevance of another’s
work that initially seemed far afield from their own. By
the end, faculty and students generally felt that they had
substantially advanced their own research agendas through
their work with the group.
Once again, as in the first
semester, we invited a number of guest speakers whose excellent
presentations
sparked lively
discussions and greatly enriched our thinking. The project
opened in January with a presentation by Dirk Hartog,
Professor of History at Princeton University. His Man
and Wife in America explores how
husbands and wives experienced marriage and separation
within the 19th-century American legal regime.
It was particularly interesting to hear him reflect on
the arguments of the book five years after its publication
date.
That conversation was especially informative for students,
as it introduced them to the ways in which scholarly work
evolves over time.
Subsequent sessions were equally
engaging. Suzanne
Gottschang,
an anthropologist at Smith College who specializes in 20th
century China, introduced seminar members to the complicated
kinship system in China, and discussed how the Chinese
Revolution has altered (and not altered) traditional ways
of thinking
and practices of marriage and kinship. Jutta Sperling,
an historian at Hampshire College, joined the group to
talk about dowry systems in early modern Italy and how
dowries
functioned as means of inheritance and disinheritance for
women. Gail Perlman, a local family court
judge in Northampton Massachusetts, offered a judge's perspective
on family law
in the United States today; a former social worker, she
surveyed developments in family law in recent decades and
offered
critical reflection on changing legal models. Peggy
Cooper Davis, a law professor at New York University,
discussed how race and gender considerations complicate
legal assumptions
about marriage, divorce, and citizenship in America.
The
project also held a number of public events. In April,
we sponsored a panel discussion
on the legal and political
aspects of gay and lesbian marriage, both in the United
States and internationally. The panel was composed of two
guest
speakers; Lee Badgett, an economist at
the Univ-ersity of Massachusetts, and Jennifer
Levi,
a law professor at Western New England College School of
Law. Badgett has written extensively
on the myth of gay affluence. She is currently working
on the European and U.S. experience with gay marriage,
looking
particularly at the fiscal impact of same-sex marriage.
As an attorney with Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders
in Boston, Levi was extensively involved in the litigation
resulting in the legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts.
She is now involved, as well, in litigation involving the
dissolution of some of those marriages. The public panel
was well attended, attracting some sixty or so audience
members.
The Fellows enjoyed a follow-up panel at our regular session
the next morning.
The project also sponsored several
public film screenings, continuing the series started in
the fall. The three films
presented during the spring were Scenes from a Marriage, La Séparation,
and The Squid and the
Whale. Ingmar
Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage explored
the dynamics of a long term relationship and its eventual
demise in Sweden;
the latter two films focused particularly on divorce in France
and the United States respectively.
Considerable time was taken
up with the presentation of projects by individual seminar
members. Lois Dubin presented her work
on a new book, Rachele and Her Loves, an exploration
of the regulation of marriage and divorce in early modern
Europe,
especially the tensions of competing state and religious
authorities and the creation of civil marriage by centralizing
modern states during the late 18th century. Alice
Hearst introduced her work on
children, cultural identity and contested custody matters,
while Ernie Alleva explored contemporary
philosophical work on same-sex marriage. Jennifer
Heuer discussed
the ways in which marriage was used as a tool of nation-building
in Napoleonic France, and Ginetta Candelario engaged
the seminar in a discussion of her work on rethinking the
value
of maternal labor, both by exploring Dominican feminist thought
and activism between 1880 and 1960, and by looking at how
maternal labor is discounted in the contemporary father’s
rights movement in the United States.
Student Fellows also
presented their work. Caroline
Fox '07 discussed shifts in ideas
of gender relations in Spain during the transition from Franco’s
dictatorship to a democratic regime. Beth Prosnitz
'07 explored how Internet dating services
affect the customs of arranged marriages in India. Concerning
marriage in the United States, Maureen Sarna '07 introduced
the group to the phenomenon of covenant marriage; Cara
Gaumont '07 explored images of celebrity motherhood
in popular culture; and Sarah Sherman '07 discussed
the resistance to marriage in some sectors of the gay and
lesbian community. Lisa
Redmond '07 focused on contract and status as two
different building-blocks for structuring marital rights.
The students also planned
and presented a panel discussion of their projects during
the “Celebrating Collaborations” weekend in April.
On the whole, the project enriched
and complicated individuals’ perspectives
on the study of marriage and divorce. It was successful in
creating ties among a number of faculty members, laying the
groundwork for future collaboration. It was also successful
in introducing students to independent scholarly work; at
the end of the Project, many students commented that they
now had a much better grasp of the research process. Through
the Kahn Institute, they also learned the value of sustained
discourse and disagreement among a group of engaged scholars. |
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Fellows
Final Project Report
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