Archives for June 2007

Did anyone catch this charming little bit of fashion news?

MILAN (Reuters) - Italian designer team Dolce & Gabbana took a military theme to kit out men next summer, ranging from fatigues with tiny lights that glowed in the dark to camouflage patterned swim trunks. ADVERTISEMENT

On the first day of Milan’s spring/summer 2008 menswear collections on Saturday, Dolce & Gabbana’s signature line show was colored in army-inspired khakis, navy, black and white.

Models had tattoos and military-style haircuts, and wore baseball caps or square-crowned peaked soldiers’ hats.

Do you know what would be fun and cutting edge? In the middle of a bloody war, with people every day turning up decapitated or coming home injured and/or traumatized to a system that couldn’t care less about them?

Let’s dress up like soldiers! Only cooler! And less dead!

War is so great, isn’t it? Where’s Cynthia Enloe when you need her?

Posted by CNW at 06:04 PM
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My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Guard Your Eyes: Uncensored Iranian Voices is a slim essay collection published in 2006. Its editor, journalist Lila Azam Zanganeh, juxtaposed the narratives, interviews, graphic strips, photography and journalism of a formidable slate of Iranian artists and intellectuals. Marjane Satrapi, Azar Nafisi, Reza Aslan, Abbas Kiarostami, and Shirin Neshat are among those Zanganeh chose to challenge Western (mis)perceptions about Iran at the fiery modern moment of U.S. “wars on terror.”

Zanganeh dedicates the book to her parents, “who taught me to speak up.” And indeed, although her own voice appears primarily in her introduction and her essay selection, Zanganeh’s book is her personal response to the assumptions that she—as an Iranian women born in Paris who studied in the U.S.—moves among day to day.

Last week, Jill Morrison told us that “even one opportunity to challenge injustice serves as a catalyst for women to question the injustices in other parts of their lives.” In My Sister, Guard Your Veil, Zanganeh is both catalyst and a questioner for the high stakes that U.S.—Iran relations have for writers, artists, and intellectuals on both sides of the (unnecessary) divide.

Zanganeh studied literature and philosophy in France, before earning her masters degree in international affairs from Columbia University. She came to the U.S. in 1998 to teach literature, cinema and Romance languages at Harvard University, and has since become a regular contributor to Le Monde. She’s also been published in The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Nation, and La Repubblica.

And—catch your breath—that’s not all: she’s currently at work on a book about novelist Vladimir Nabokov, a project she chose instead of pursuing her PhD because she “craved the freedom, the white canvas.” Zanganeh says that her book “is a combination of fiction and non-fiction, a narrative about a real and imaginary relation with an ecstatic writer, a book about happiness.”

That said, here’s Lila:

Continue reading "Interview: Lila Azam Zanganeh" »

Posted by Anna at 07:30 PM
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Meet Jill Morrison.

Born and raised in New Jersey, Morrison went on to attend Rutgers University and Yale Law School, where she edited the Journal of Law and Feminism and was president of the Black Law Students’ Association. Today, she’s Senior Council at the National Women’s Law Center, the DC-based organization that has expanded opportunities for women and girls through the law since 1972.

All this is well and good. But translated another way, and it becomes vital. Jill Morrison is on the front lines of protecting your health care access … access that includes comprehensive reproductive health services.

She’s doing so in a time of unprecedented challenges. The recent Gonzales v. Carhart decision in the Supreme Court upheld the Federal Abortion Ban, not even deigning to permit so-called “partial-birth” abortions for the sake of the mother’s health—revealing skewed priorities that value the fetus more than a living woman. And that’s only the beginning…

As Deborah Siegel said in last week’s interview, “it’s important to really know the facts about where women today stand.” If Morrison is about anything, it’s facts. Specializing in religious restrictions to reproductive rights, she co-authored “Don’t Take “No” for an Answer: A Guide to Pharmacy Refusal Laws, Policies and Practices, National Women’s Law Center,” along with several other publications. Likewise, she works on NWLC’s “Making the Grade on Women’s Health: A National and State-by-State Report Card” project, which identifies and grades key health status and policy indictors for women.

Morrison’s particularly committed to challenging STDs and HIV/AIDS, racial and ethnic disparities, socioeconomic status, violence against women and cardiovascular health.

We owe her big.

Here’s Jill Morrison:

Continue reading "Interview: Jill Morrison" »

Posted by Anna at 01:23 PM
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The first thing to know about Deborah Siegel is that she’s everywhere.

At your local bookshop? Check. Along with co-editing Only Child: Writers on the Singular Joys and Solitary Sorrows of Growing up Solo, Siegel is the author of Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild, which hits stores today. Already, it’s receiving top-notch reviews.

Online? She’s there too. Siegel is the co-founder of The Scholar and the Feminist, a multimedia magazine devoted to feminist theoryand activism. As well, she blogs at Girl With Pen, a space she hopes will be a connecting point for writers, readers, and researchers. She’s also written for The Huffington Post and Mothers Movement Online.

In the news media? Natch. Siegel has contributed to Psychology Today and The Progressive, and has been the subject of articles in The New York Times and The Boston Globe, among others.

In Siegel’s spare time, she’s a consultant and conference presenter for a slew of organizations that fuse research on women and girls to media and policy. In 2001, she received her doctorate in English and
American literature from the Unviersity of Wisconsin-Madison.

In her new book, Sisterhood, Interrupted, Siegel traces the trajectory of feminist history, recasting generational misunderstandings in light of today’s reinvention of a powerful movement that is, in fact, true to its roots.

And here’s Deborah:

Continue reading "Interview: Deborah Siegel" »

Posted by CNW at 01:05 PM
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Have you missed us? It’s been pretty quiet here on the CNW blog for the last couple months, but get ready: we’re about to light a fire.

We’re initiating a literary-feminist interview series, talking to brilliant women and girls in all facets of the word-cycle: writers, editors, booksellers, journalists, cartoonists, publishers, teachers, zine-makers, and more. It’s CNW’s firm belief that ‘women’s words matter,’ and here on our blog, we will celebrate and engage them.

In tomorrow’s interview debut, we talk with Deborah Siegel, author of the brand-new title, Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild, as well as one of the founders of The Scholar and the Feminist, an online magazine.

Deborah discusses her new book, her reflections on feminisim’s trajectory and greatest challenges, how she fuses her identies as a writer and a feminist, and the place of online writing in today’s movement for gender equality.

Trust us, you won’t want to miss it.

Posted by Anna at 11:29 PM
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