Karen Beckwith, Ph.D. Flora Stone Mather Professor of Political Science-Case Western Reserve University

Dear Colleagues:

Happy New Year and welcome back to campus (I hope you got away for a while).

The Friday Public Affairs discussions begin again on January 19, in the Baker-Nord Center, Room 206 of Clark Hall, 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m..

We’ll start off with Karen Beckwith, our Flora Stone Mather Professor of Political Science, who will comment on the role, or absence, of “women’s issues” in the 2006 election. Professor Beckwith is a leading scholar of women’s political participation. She has done extensive work on women in legislatures not only in the United States but in Britain, Italy, and elsewhere. Among her other work is a concentration on social movements, including gender in coal mining conflicts in both the United States and United Kingdom. She is founding co-editor of Politics & Gender, the research journal of the Women and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association, a former President of that section, and co-editor of the Oxford University Press book series on women and politics.

We’ll be in Baker-Nord for this week and next (January 26). After that, I hope our more permanent venue will be ready.

The Friday Lunch is brown-bag, with beverages provided by the Office of University Communications, and cookies by generous donors to the Center for Policy Studies. Everyone is welcome for stimulating discussion.

Best regards,
Joe White

More About Our Guest

Karen Beckwith received her B.A. from the University of Kentucky (1972) and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Syracuse University (1977, 1982). Teaching primarily in the areas of political parties, political movements, and women, gender, and politics, she has special interests in the United States and West Europe, particularly Britain and Italy. Author of numerous scholarly articles, she is the co-editor of Women’s Movements Facing the Reconfigured State (Cambridge, 2003) and author of American Women and Political Participation (Greenwood Press, 1986).

Professor Beckwith is the founding editor, with Lisa Baldez (Dartmouth College) of Politics & Gender, the journal of the Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association. Published by Cambridge University Press, Politics & Gender launched its first issue in March 2005. Additional information is available on the Women and Politics Research Section’s webpage and on the Cambridge University Press webpage. Inquiries and submissions should be sent to politicsandgender@cambridge.org.

She has also been co-editor of the Gender and Politics Series of the Oxford University Press, and served as President of the American Political Science Association’s Women and Politics Research Section. Professor Beckwith has recently been appointed to incoming APSA President Robert Axelrod’s Task Force on Inter-Disciplinarity. She has also been appointed as Chair of the Sophonsiba Breckinridge Prize Committee (for the Best Paper on Women and Politics) of the Midwest Political Science Association (2007). She is co-organizer of the recent conference seminar on “Political Women and American Democracy,” at the Program for American Democracy at the University of Notre Dame (May 25-27, 2006).

Curriculum Vitae

Courses

Spring Semester Schedule

Beginning on February 2, the Friday Lunch will move back to Crawford Hall, in ROOM 9. Room 9 is within the Inamori Center, on the basement level of Crawford.

It is very kind of Bill Deal, Director of the Inamori Center, to make this room available on a regular basis. Thank you, Bill!

Room 9 seats 35, with a central table and also chairs along the wall. It should be a better setup than Guilford. If we expect a large crowd, we may be able to open a partition and join up with Room 11.

There will, however, be a class in the room until 12:20. Therefore it will not be possible to get there much before the lunch begins. On the other hand, people who are a bit early should be able to hang out in the Tomlinson food court. I believe the underground passage from Tomlinson to Crawford will be restored when construction is finished.

Coffee will be provided from the SAGES Café. Which should mean very good coffee.

The tentative schedule of speakers, so far:

January 26: Ken Ledford, Associate Professor of History, on the new German foreign policy of Chancellor Merkel. In Baker-Nord.

February 2: Ken Grundy, Marcus Hanna Professor Emeritus of Political Science, on subject to be determined

February 9: Paul Schroeder, Visiting Lecturer in Political Science and from Families of the Fallen for Change, on what to do in Iraq

February 16: Mark Turner, Professor of Cognitive Science, on cognition and politics

February 23: Mel Goldstein, Professor of Anthropology, on why the Chinese are winning in Tibet

March 2: Susan Helper, Professor of Economics, on strategies for American workers within the current global competition.

March 9: Baiju Shah, President, Bioenterprise Corporation, on the new economic prospects in Cleveland.

March 16: Break

March 23: Mike Aronoff of Cuyahoga County on the evaluation of sexual predators for the courts – are they really dangerous, and can we predict if they will reoffend?

March 30: Barbara Morrison, Assistant Professor of Nursing, on how current patterns of care for Moms and newborns deny them the peace and quiet and bonding they need.

April 6: Open

April 13: Marixa Lasso, Assistant Professor of History: Drugs, War, and Coffee in Colombia

April 20: Mark Joseph, Assistant Professor, Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences: Mixed-Income Development as an Approach to Addressing Urban Poverty

April 27: Christine Cano, Associate Professor of French, on the French elections (this date falls between the first round and the runoff election)