A UC Santa Cruz professor relayed concepts of racialized imperialism as she delivered her insight into issues of humanitarian wars and feminism during the third part of an on-campus lecture series.
Neda Atanasoski brought her work in feminism to SF State for her 90-minute talk Sept. 18.
Atanasoski’s lecture branched through her work in inter-sectional feminism and gave listeners the breadth of concepts such as post-socialist humanitarian wars. She freely referenced texts that the class had focused on earlier that week but continued to give context for new listeners in the room.
“We can think about post-socialism as a global condition,” Atanasoski said. “As a re-arrangement of political action.”
Her work in the field spreads from media relations to the politics of religion in the U.S and Eastern Europe.
“This is part of my ongoing research project,” she said. Atanasoski spoke about keeping up with current events and staying educated about world conflicts to avoid losing interest.
“Often times when we hear about places in crisis in the news, we don’t even know where they are. I think it’s everybody’s individual responsibilities to inform themselves and think about the broader political stakes,” Atanasoski said.
She is the third to participate in the lecture series that works to combine scholarly engagement with both texts and their authors.
Jillian Sandell, SF State associate professor and coordinator of the series, introduced Atanasoski’s lecture as an “innovative argument” concerning human rights and imperialism in the aftermath of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Women and gender studies Assistant Professor Evren Savci, who attended the lecture and will be featured in the series in December, said these guest lectures provide a great opportunity to students.
“I think students would love to go to talks, but between their class schedule and work schedule, it’s a luxury to get to go,” she said. “So to get to go to fifteen talks and get credit for it is maybe the only way our students can do it.”
The class, WGS 305, meets twice a week – once in a normal lecture setting to discuss the week’s work, and again each Thursday to hear talks from local Bay Area thinkers. The weekly talks are open to whoever wants to attend.
“It’s a very interesting class because we do a lot of things in terms of feminism, but at the same time, with many outlets.” said student Connie Guzman,who is working toward a post-graduate degree in Women and Gender Studies.
“The thing I like about this class is that (Sandell) decided to pick a lot of the people who are in the Bay Area, so it makes it a lot more special,” Guzman added. “It brings out the aspect of San Francisco that people think about in terms of activism. We have so many outlets of things in academia just in our backyard.”
The next lecture in this series, “Beyond Bullying: Rethinking Queerness, Youth, and Schooling,” occurs Sept. 25 and features Jessica Fields, a professor of sociology at SF State.
