Andrea Smith and tenure at University of Michigan

Andy Smith, co-founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, is a brilliant Native American scholar and organizer. Her scholarship, research, and activism has impacted tens of thousands of Indigenous people worldwide (US, Canada , Australia , New Zealand , Northern Europe ) and her work provides a critical contribution to women of color movement building. Andy is the author of three books on Native American socio-history, and co-editor of the two recently published INCITE! anthologies. The Women's Studies Program at the University of Michigan , Ann Arbor , where she teaches, recently denied her tenure. The students and faculty at U of M are organizing the response below to this decision as well as to the status of women of color in academia.

Native Feminism Without Apology!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 25, 2008

Statement of University of Michigan Students and Faculty in Support of Andrea Smith’s Tenure Case
CONTACT: TenureForAndreaSmith@gmail.com

On February 22nd, 2008, University of Michigan ’s College of Literature , Science and the Arts (LSA) issued a negative tenure recommendation for Assistant Professor Andrea Lee Smith. Jointly appointed in the Program in American Culture and the Department of Women’s Studies, Dr. Smith’s body of scholarship exemplifies scholarly excellence with widely circulated articles in peer-reviewed journals and numerous books in both university and independent presses including Native Americans and the Christian Right published this year by Duke University Press. Dr. Smith is one of the greatest indigenous feminist intellectuals of our time. A nominee for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Smith has an outstanding academic and community record of service that is internationally and nationally recognized. She is a dedicated professor and mentor and she is an integral member of the University of Michigan (UM) intellectual community. Her reputation and pedagogical practices draw undergraduate and graduate students from all over campus and the nation.

Dr. Smith received the news about her tenure case while participating in the United States ’ hearings before the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination at the United Nations in Geneva , Switzerland . Ironically, during those very same hearings, the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decisions that restricted affirmative action policies at UM specifically were cited as violations of international law. At the same time, there is an undeniable link between the Department of Women’s Studies and LSA’s current tenure recommendations and the long history of institutional restrictions against faculty of color. In 2008, students of color are coming together to protest the way UM’s administration has fostered an environment wherein faculty of color are few and far between, Ethnic Studies course offerings have little financial and institutional support, and student services for students of color are decreasing each year.

To Support Professor Andrea Smith: The Provost must hear our responses! Write letters in support of Andrea Smith’s tenure case. Address email letters to ALL of the following:

* Teresa Sullivan, Provost and Executive VP for Academic Affairs, LSA, tsull@umich.edu
* Lester Monts, Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, LSA, lmonts@umich.edu
* Mary Sue Coleman, President, PresOff@umich.edu
* TenureForAndreaSmith@gmail.com

Write letters in support of Assistant Professor Andrea Smith’s tenure case by MARCH 31^ST 2008!

Voice your ideas on the web forum at http://www.woclockdown.org/

To Support Women of Color at Michigan and the Crisis of Women’s Studies and Ethnic Studies: Attend the student organized March 15th Conference at UM!!!! Campus Lockdown: Women of Color Negotiating the Academic Industrial Complex is free and open to the public. Speakers include renowned activists and scholars Piya Chatterjee, Angela Davis, Rosa Linda Fregoso, Ruthie Gilmore, Fred Moten, Clarissa Rojas, and Haunani-Kay Trask. For more information and to register, visit: http://www.woclockdown.org/.

TALKING POINTS YOU CAN USE IN YOUR SUPPORT LETTER:
• Smith is author of the following books:
- Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide
- Native Americans and the Christian Right: The Gendered Politics of Unlikely Alliances
- Sacred Sites, Sacred Rites
• Smith is editor and/or co-editor of the following anthologies:
- Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology
- The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex
- Native Feminisms Without Apology
- Forthcoming on theorizing Indigenous Studies
• She has published 15 peer reviewed articles in widely circulated academic journals including American Quarterly, Feminist Studies, National Women’s Studies Association Journal, Hypatia, Meridians, and the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion
• Smith is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards from organizations such as the Lannan Foundation, University of Illinois , Gustavus Myers Foundation, Ford Foundation
• Smith was cited in the U.S. Non-Governmental Organization Consolidated Shadow Report to the United Nations
• A co-founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence and the Chicago chapter of Women of All Red Nations, she has been a key thinker behind large-scale national and international efforts to develop remedies for ending violence against women beyond the criminal justice system. As a result of her work, scholars, social service providers, and community-based organizations throughout the United States have shifted from state-focused efforts to more systemic approaches for addressing violence against women. In recognition of her contributions, Smith was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.
• As of June 2007, Professor Smith’s book, Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide (2005) had sold over 8,000 copies. Three-fourths of these sales have gone to college and university courses. In addition, the leading Native studies organization, Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, organized a special panel about this book at their last annual conference (2007). The international impact of Conquest is evidenced by its reprinting in Sami ( Sweden ) and in Maori Institutions in New Zealand ; by Professor Smith’s invitation to participate in an academic workshop in Germany based on the book; and by the book’s frequent use in Native Studies classrooms in Canada .
• She has also played a key role in contributing social-justice based research, teaching, and community building at the University of Michigan .
• Under Andrea Smith’s mentorship, a large number of undergraduate and graduate students have grown as intellectual members of the UM’s campus community.

FACTS FOR DR. ANDREA SMITH’S TENURE CASE
• Her intellectual work contributes to the fields of Native American Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, Ethnic Studies, Religious Studies, and American Studies.
• Smith is jointly appointed in the Program in American Culture and the Department of Women’s Studies at Michigan .
• The Program in American Culture gave a positive recommendation for Smith’s tenure, while the Department of Women’s Studies gave a negative recommendation. After the tenure recommendations were released from the two departments, the College of Literature , Sciences, and the Arts reviewed the tenure file and also gave a negative tenure recommendation.
• She is currently the Director of Native American Studies at Michigan .

More blog discussion here:
http://brownfemipower.com/?p=2362
http://brownfemipower.com/?p=2361

Campus Lockdown:
Women of Color Negotiating the Academic Industrial Complex

Hamtramck, Michigan: Painter Kathleen Rashid

Kathleen Rashid
Paintings: 1979-2008
15 March - 12 April 2008
Reception, Saturday, March 15, 6-10pm
2739 Edwin, 2nd Floor, Hamtramck
Hours: 12-5, Saturday and Sunday

2739 Edwin is just West of Joseph Campau, and 4 blocks North of Holbrook. There'spublic parking on Joseph Campau, and various other spots including twolots just North of the building.

MetroTimes Review

Titled

activist/artist/anarchist

anti-Zionist/radical hip hop artist/activist from Detroit

Dear friends, family, co-conspirators:

As some of you all know, I've been working with Invincible to start a new record label. Its called EMERGENCE and we'll be releasing Invincible's debut solo album "ShapeShifters" this May.

We've got a promotional campaign going where you can download the 3 song single "Sledgehammer!" from the new album for free. Go here to download: www.EMERGENCEmusic.net

From: ilana weaver (= Invincible)

Wutup fam!!

I hope this finds all of you well on your way to actualizing your greatest potential.
You have been inspirations, influences, and life support to me on my long journey with this music...i want to thank you for that :)

As most of you know i've had many chances to "make it big" by making big compromises over the years, and turned them all down, choosing the independent route instead. On that note, I'm extremely excited to announce the upcoming release of my debut solo album ShapeShifters (a lifetime in the making, coming out this May!) and the official launch of my label EMERGENCE
www.EMERGENCEmusic.net

Check out the site, the promo video, and download the single for FREE (those of you that already have "Sledgehammer!" and "In the Mourning" this includes a third banger called "Looongawaited").
in love and struggle,
invincible

EMERGENCEmusic.net
bling47.com
myspace.com/invincilana

affective archives: to kvetch or not

i don't want to be the class kvetcher; i want to be the classy chick who knows how to set up her theoretical frame and build a rigorous scaffolding of words that make meaning and matter. I love Jose Munoz's "rigor-mortis" in his essay "Ephemera at Evidence". We talked about this essay in relation to Ann Cvetkovich's An Archive of Feelings in KK's course on Monday. We also talked about Afrofuturism: I wonder what a productive conversation would look like between these seemingly dichotomous discursive terrains.

We started talking about AC's theoretical frame, and I don't know if we answered the questions. She firmly places her study within the larger bodies of knowledge on Trauma studies and in particular all the work written on the Holocaust. T and I wondered about U.S. racial histories and collective violence of slavery, its history to studying trauma as a collective and lived experience.

Some of the questions we posed to the class for discussion:

Tasneem Siddiqui and Deborah Alkamano
February 11, 2008
AMSTUDIES 552

Discussion Questions

How do we talk about whiteness and racial formation/constructions within An Archive of Feelings? How does Cvetkovich archive the intersectional?

We want to tease out some of the ways in which she sets up her historical framework. She contextualizes her readings and understanding of trauma through the lens of the Holocaust? How does this create a problematic in terms of U.S. histories and identities? Does AC equalize traumas: what does that eclipse and what does that encompass?

AC uses Freud’s death drive and pleasure principle to examine butch femme cultures. AC tries to take trauma out of the pathology paradigm. Trauma is a product of modernity and Avery Gordon “ghost of modernity”—Trauma is fleeting and intangible. How does her project take up these issues in ways that are productive?

How does she archive feelings? How does her argument congeal (does it?) around varying kinds of cultural objects? Does the privileging of affect make for an effective counter-public?

Our colleague, Anjali Nath, thought AF did not provide a way to talk about materiality or social movements/justice. What do you think?

Or, as Professor Keeling asked us, “what does the critical insight that there is no outside to Capital bring to an engagement with subcultures”?
_________________________________________

February 25th after class thoughts:

My favorite chapter was chapter three and apparently that is the one chapter that seems to be the most problematic in terms of argument and execution. I guess the Michigan context kind of piqued my interest. Also how does one heal from repetition. I heard about Repetitive Eye therapy and it is not to take too dangerous of a (serious and deadening) turn/tone to follow how one finds ways out of the labryinth of doom and gloom and numbness. How does one feel (again)? find feelings and not smash people and places?

as i said in class, i think this book is wonderful esp in terms of methodology and a myriad of textured readings of varying kinds of cultural objects that one can and cannot touch. I see her talk about race in relation to black and brown bodies and analyze class/trash as something in relation to white bodies. These readings render a limitation to her insights into Boys Don't Cry and Bastard out of Carolina since AC does NOT talk about whiteness, racial formation, and/or white privilege.

In her ACT UP oral history chapter (six?), she lets the lesbian participants create a very romantic picture of their work in the New York chapter. Only white liberals/"progressives" get all psyched to do CD/civil disobedience. Going to jail is something that a person w/ power and privilege can create/see as an option or as a radical act of disobedience. Others (POC) would have more fear to come under the arm of the state--risk life and limb. That part reminded me of anti-war activists who wanted to do CD for its own sake or who focused too much on which media would 'cover' the protest. if media were not there, god forbid, we would not be getting any play, any attention, and therefore our actions made no sense.

btw, i love this book even though, on a third read, i see its many issues. i still would love to write something that encompasses activist praxis, oral histories, affect, and personal memories. I think she set out a very ambitious project that borders on recording the ineffable and the untouchable. how brave. sentimental music. violins for sure. or clashes of civility: just keep livin': Le Tigre

class, crass, trash, smash: What's Touchy and Who feels?

nayj