Fall 2005 - Issue #20                                   

 

News and Announcements

Hello Fellow DWC Members,

Welcome to fall. The leaves on the trees are busy turning brilliant colors and DWC members are, as usual doing brilliant things! I've included in this "Member News" section information on jobs changed, degrees earned, and karma found! Enjoy reading about your colleagues in the DWC, and make plans to join all of the Division's events at the upcoming meetings of the American Society of Criminology. See you next month!

Regards,
Amy D'Unger

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The DWC has a new virtual home! Visit the new website for the ASC's Division on Women and Crime at:

http://www.asc41.com/dir4/divdwc.html

 

Member News

JO-ANN DELLA GIUSTINA emailed with exciting news. Not only did she receive her Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from the City University of New York in the spring (her dissertation is entitled "Gender, Race, and Class as Predictors of Femicide Rates: A Path Analysis"), but she also started as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Bridgewater State College. Congratulations Jo-Ann! Here is her new contact information:

Dr. Jo-Ann Della Giustina
Department of Criminal Justice
Bridgewater State College
Hart Hall, Room 222
Bridgewater, MA 02325
508-531-2582 - phone
508-531-1761 - fax
jdellagiustina@bridgew.edu

DWC member HILLARY POTTER has been in the news (literally!), talking about her research on race and the response to Hurricane Katrina. The following Q&A with Dr. Potter appeared in The Denver Post on 10/13/05.

Criminologist Hillary Potter studies race, gender, class and crime, not natural disasters. But two weeks after Hurricane Katrina displaced hundreds of thousands of New Orleans, the University of Colorado sociologist found herself in the River Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana interviewing evacuees about their experiences. Potter sat with people as they smoked outside and complained about the heavily armed National Guardsmen patrolling the entrance. She took note of the different ways residents talked with her, an African-American woman, and to her graduate student, who is male and half Filipino, half white. "I've got data for at least four papers," Potter said. Her trip was funded by the CU Natural Hazards Center's quick response grant program.

Q: What did you intend to study?

A: "I became interested, when I started seeing all the media accounts of the looting, in how the residents were redefining, reframing so-called criminal activity. ... They referred to it as survival." Her interviewees denied taking any luxury items, and many developed their own morality around obtaining necessities: Some would go only into stores with open doors, others only where police themselves were taking essential supplies.

Q: What did you learn that you didn't expect?

A: Potter said she was surprised at the military feel to the evacuation shelter, something
that deeply bothered the evacuees she interviewed. "Several people I interviewed said, 'I feel like I'm in jail,"' Potter said. Security workers patrolled with handguns and rifles, and residents re-entering the shelter were required to pass through metal detectors. Many felt they were treated like criminals, Potter said.

Q: You said people in the River Center used two theories to describe the flooding.

A: "One theory was that the hurricane was an act of God to clean up all the corruption in government, the criminal activity of residents. ... Others said that the levees has been bombed. They really believed they were bombed. When I asked by whom, they said, basically, by rich, white people, those in higher classes, the government, the man. They said, 'Look at which parts of the city were flooded ... how long it took the government to respond."'

- Interview conducted by Katy Human, Denver Post staff writer

 

I received an email from SUE COTE with an update on her whereabouts. Sue is back working full time at Cal State, Sacramento (AKA "Sac State"), following a stint in state civil service, after she realized that her "heart is in teaching and research, and [she] enjoy[s] the intellectual stimulation and freedom that academe offers." Despite that fact, Sue reports that she learned a lot while working for the California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs and encourages anyone who hasn't tried state service to take the plunge and give something new a shot! Sue also reported that she received Tenure and Promotion (to associate) at Sac State-congratulations on that! Here is Dr. Cote's contact information:

Sue Cote, J.D., Ph.D.
Associate Professor
California State University, Sacramento
Division of Criminal Justice
6000 J Street
Sacramento, CA 95819-6085
Ph.: 916.278.6437
FAX: 916.278.7692
Email: scote@csus.edu

 

ROBIN A. ROBINSON emailed details on a fantastic international conference that happened this summer in Prato, Italy. Robin presented a paper on historical lessons for restorative justice for delinquent girls. The presentation was based, in part, on an article that appeared in the March issue of Contemporary Justice Review, entitled "'Crystal Virtues': Seeking Reconciliation Between Ideals and Violations of Girlhood." The three-day conference was called "What Works with Women Offenders?" and was organized by Dr. Rosemary Sheehan of Monash University. Scholars and practitioners from around the world presented both research and program-related work. Plans are in the works for a follow-up conference in 2007, so get ready! Here is contact information for Robin, if you have questions about her research:

Robin A. Robinson, Ph.D., Psy.D.
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
285 Old Westport Road
North Dartmouth, Massachusetts 02747 U.S.A.
Phone: 508.999.8788
Fax: 508.999.8808
rrobinson@umassd.edu

 

SUSAN SHARP, our fearless leader, emailed to say that she is, well, fearlessly leading!! She has somehow ended up on the Dean's Executive Committee for Arts & Sciences, the College of Liberal Studies Executive Committee, the Faculty Senate Executive Committee, the Honors Council, and is serving as a Faculty Fellow for the College of Liberal Studies. In her "spare" time, she is completing a two-year study for the state of Oklahoma on incarcerated mothers and their children, as well as editing the fabulous new DWC/Sage journal Feminist Criminology and teaching 5 (yes, FIVE!) classes. Condolence cards can be sent to the following address:

Susan F. Sharp, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Oklahoma
780 Van Vleet Oval, KH 331
Norman, OK 73019
ssharp@ou.edu

 

Funding Opportunities

ANGIE MOE emailed to announce that she is the 2005-2006 Chair of the SSSP Minority Scholarship. The award is meant for advanced doctoral candidates with a focus on scholar-activism. The award includes $10,000 and support for conference attendance. Details can be found soon at: http://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/m/24/pageId/48. Angie said that she'd love to see some strong DWCers or DWCers' students apply! If you have any questions, you can email Angie at angie.moe@wmich.edu.

 

Upcoming Conferences

The annual meetings for the Western Society of Criminology will be held in Seattle, WA in February 2006. Abstracts are due November 1st. More information about the conference can be found at http://www.sonoma.edu/cja/wsc/wscpages/default.htm. The DWC's own Stacy Mallicoat is the Program Chairperson this year!

 

Publications and Publishing Opportunities

The October/November issue of Women, Girls, and Criminal Justice is devoted largely to articles about and reporting the content of the regional conference organized last May by DWC member ROBIN A. ROBINSON at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth called "Girls in Social Margins, Girls in Conflict with the Law." The issue has lots of content of interest to DWC members, so check it out!

Interested in writing a book review? The Division on Critical Criminology's journal, Critical Criminology: An International Journal needs your help! If you're interested in being a reviewer, please contact Sue Cote for a list of titles available for review, or you can submit the name of a book that you're interested in reviewing. Sue can be reached via email at scote@csus.edu.

The journal Critical Criminology is also in search of a new editor! You can find the position advertisement here: http://www.asc41.com/epa.html.

 

ROSLYN MURASKIN emailed with some publication information and some great publishing opportunities for DWC members. It's a Crime: Women and Justice, Fourth Edition will be coming out in the spring and contains over 50 chapters of cutting edge research and information. Check it out for your upcoming classes! Roz is also busily working on the manuscripts for Forgotten Offender: The Incarcerated Woman (Roxbury) and Media and Criminal Justice (Prentice Hall). She sends news of two publishing opportunities:

1. Manuscripts are needed for the Women's Series for Prentice Hall. Dr. Muraskin is the editor of the series.

2. The refereed journal A Critical Journal of Crime, Law, and Society (published quarterly) is in need of submissions.

You can reach Roslyn about either of these opportunities via email at Roslyn.Muraskin@liu.edu.

 

"What I Did Last Summer"

Personal odyssey to Vietnam, July 14-24, 2005: Carole Garrison (Carole.Garrison@EKU.EDU)

"If you don't know where you're going, any road can take you there."
...I am finally on a real ZEN travel experience...we act like we know where we are going, but we simply go until we find somewhere we seem to want to be...which has turned into a rather unique experience. I arrived in HoChiMin with little complications other than an extra hour at the border because some lump head on the bus didn't have his visa with him! Cambodia's border guards where the typical lazy guys in cement huts...about 100 yards from 3 brand new enormous casinos...the Vietnamese had a proper building, even a luggage scanning machine...after that you knew you were in another country...good roads, factories, electric lines everywhere. (Oh and huge Catholic Churches in every hamlet) When I arrived in Saigon my driver was not waiting with my name reassuringly printed on a card...but some folks across the road in a travel bureau that scheduled tours to the cultural village graciously called him for me and he arrived within minutes. We quickly rearranged and simplified our travel agreement thru Meng's friend Mai Tran so off we went...but not to a bathroom and hotel in Saigon as I had expected but directly down the road to Dalat in the central highlands. My driver, who speaks negligible English, if any...made a unilateral decision to go up into the mountains then and there! It turned out to be the right decision, and we spent the first several hours climbing higher and higher past lush rice fields, rubber plantations, gorgeous mountain jungles, small and large hamlets (each with their own factory, gaudy villas...lavender is a popular color, catholic churches (occasionally Confucian pagodas as well) and a noticeable lack of urban planning or building codes!) But by nightfall, the well-kept 2-lane highway seemed narrow and treacherous! Happily my driver (who took 3 hours to finally get that I needed a toilet) avoided the shadowed people walking along the road, oncoming trucks and zigzagging motor scooters!

By 8 pm we were in the hearth thumpingly noisy mountain resort town of Dalat...in full swing! Like Hanoi it is a city of cafe's and like HoChiMin, a city of street hawkers, food peddlers and shops. I didn't seem to manage to make my driver understand I wanted to eat either, so I survived on the 4 packets of fruit chips Meng had given me in the morning. By the time we arrived I was too tired to eat. My earplugs, Boise earphones and Debra's meditation CD allowed me to sleep thru the din...but first I explored a bit of the street scene...and tried a cup of Vietnamese coffee (no wonder they only drink it in the morning. It's lethal...dam French influence!) For the grand sum of $12 I had a room and breakfast...I was up at 5:30, early enough to see the cleaners on the street sweeping up from the night before and the sellers returning to their spots to open for business and remake the whole mess over again! I decided I had had enough of Dalat so we went to the Ethic Minorities Museum before heading to the coast and NhaTrang.

This is probably a good place to note that there is a decided disadvantage to traveling alone. And having a driver who speaks no English and seems a bit annoyed to be asked to do more than drive...makes it doubly isolating. You simply have no one to help process all the sounds, sights, emotional and intellectual reactions that seem to bombard you every moment in this place...luckily I like my own company so I'm not complaining, just observing.

The top floor of the museum (in a huge French colonial style house from the 1930's) housed the war stuff...photos of French colonial exploitation of the ethnic tribes...and a startling black and white of an American soldier holding up his trophy...half a Vietnamese...the other, bottom half still lying on the ground where he had been cut in half by machine guns. A photo of a Vietnamese holding an American in the same way would have been just as startling…and disturbing, but in this case it was revulsion mixed with guilt and I suppose in the latter it would be revulsion mixed with anger. (I probably could have used some one to share that bit with!) We left Dalat behind us and took a twisty magnificent drive back down the Mountains until we started seeing sandy soil, scrubby hills and valleys carpeted in the wavy rich green of large rice fields...then we saw dense areas of coconut palm and salt farms and several large military cemeteries from the war...a few more turns and I was faced with the most incredible azure blue sea I had every seen since visiting the Mediterranean off the Italian coast. We were at Cam Ranh Bay...I felt like I had just woke up with Robin Williams in Good Morning Viet Nam!

In terms of Zen, we managed unplanned to find a major exquisite waterfall and park... that I explored, even to crossing the gorge on a bamboo and bailing- wire bridge! Then as we drove thru Cham country I saw a large Cham temple off to the left. We found it and I went off to explore it too! It was from the 13th century and had 3 major temple units...the ticket guy was asleep so I snuck in past him and climbed up the small mountain to the ruins. Up there I found a worker resting...he took my picture and seemed genuinely pleased when I offered to return the favor and take his picture (with my camera of course)! I found a back access road down from the temples and a cross a construction site so I managed to pull off my little larceny with success!

Oh...lunch, a truck stop...a bowl of PHO, soup, with pork and noodles and a bottle of mineral water...15,000 dong...or a little less than $1 US.

I am now on the coast...the hotel we were meant to go to was full, but I found one close to the beach...and what a pristine, spotless, manicured beach it is...there are probably more trash cans than people! Tomorrow we will leave early for HoiAn, an ancient city near Hue...it is far and it will probably take us most of the day to get there...In the mean time. I have no idea where I am going or what I will be doing...don't worry, having a great time. Hugs

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Mai Tram,

Thanks for your taking care of this. I am now not sure that I can contact her! If you have time tomorrow, can you call your driver and ask to speak to her?

Thanks, Meng

Meng oi,

She arrived safely and on the car with the driver. The amount she has to pay the car rental + driver is usd830; she doesn't have to worry anything about the driver's food & accommodation.

Update from Vietnam: We left the pristine and upscale beach resort of NhaTrang early this am, but not before I took a brisk walk on the beach front (around 5:30...the whole city was up and either swimming or walking with the sunrise). The hotel owner's daughter took me for a coffee at one of the trendy new coffee shops, a favorite of young yuppie Vietnamese...then off to buy a small Baggett and some cheese for the 8 hour drive to HoiAn...It was a combination of a drive up US 1 on the Florida Gold Coast and the coastal hwy up the California coast...with water as azure blue as the Italian Rivera! Groves of coconut palms, salt farms and shrimp farms, and hectors of rice! My driver now can respond relatively easily to requests for the toilet and for food stops but every other question is left to my imagination to answer...for example, in many hamlets houses have red flags with the gold star signifying either a Vietnam vet or support for vets...but many towns and hamlets have none! Oh well...at least I get to pee on demand! We are in HoiAn...an ancient port...fantastic, old, elegant, more later. Hugs

I think I found my Karma...HoiAn is a colonial city more than 300 years old...many of the small houses and shops look like they may be at least that old. The city is crawling with French tourists and European kids/American kids with backpacks! There is an art gallery in every other shop...silk shops and coffee houses are stuck in-between the galleries! You can walk for miles...and see something every meter! I was up at 5 to try to get some photos while the sun was just painting the stucco gold! The Vietnamese were on the street eating at the small noodle shops that lined the sidewalks...but the tourist were not up so I had the city to myself for a short while! I stopped at one of the ubiquitous Internet shops...but they had no open computers...so the owner, Jimmy Nguyenn, took me up to his house to use his! I love this country! Anyway...I'm off to the streets again. At 2 pm we go to Hue!

We are now in Hue, the ancient capital of Vietnam...despite how beautiful and interesting everything is...the poverty and attendant social disparities are still evident. As the excitement wears off and you see the miles of small poor rural villages you can't avoid the dual reality that is Asia. The guy from the Internet yesterday turned out to be a local teacher, so we chatted about international politics for a bit before I continued...corruption etc is no stranger to here either. Before I left HoiAn, I managed to get lost and rescued...I was somehow stuck between the river and the back of the small houses. Rather than go back I called out "hello" and a woman came out and ushered me thru her small house...she looked vaguely familiar and then I noticed the men sitting on the floor making sandals, by the time we reached the front and a familiar street. I realized she had tried to sell me a pair of shoes just an hour earlier. With profuse thanks for my rescue and equally profuse apologies for not buying a pair of shoes...I went on my way. I decided I needed something non-Asian for lunch and found a little Italian bistro! I invited an elderly gentle man to join me...who turned out to be a Swedish Anthropologist studying the Chuo highland peoples (who live across the mountains of Vietnam, Cambodia and Lao! He was delightful and we discussed the Cambodian drug trials...he told me about an incident in Venezuela where they had a big controversy last year over a measles trial! Happily we both agreed on the problems of "development" and world savers and I had a lovely lunch. Now I am about to take an all day boat trip...I'm in a $10 a night, 5th floor walk up...but its AC and clean!

Hue is a major street party right now celebrating the 30th anniversary of the "victorious" end of the war! Interesting time to be in Vietnam.
We leave tomorrow at 6 am for the 700 Klics to Halong Bay...and we'll probably stay 2 days and skip Hanoi altogether! Last night I took one of those culture boat tours on the perfume river...3 women sang and 4 musicians ...all who looked about as enthusiastic as the strippers in Bangkok's Pitty Pat street...the boat was crude and garish...plastic chairs and each pontoon was covered with sheet metal painted to look like dragons! But it was still fun to be on the river...and at one point all the people lit candles in paper lanterns and floated them out for good fortune...and endocrinologist from Saigon could speak English and she dragged me to the edge of the boat to participate! It was quite impressive to see the river lit up with small floating lanterns! I wound up on the same boat today (or at least its twin) for the daylong river trip to the famous Hue Pagodas and Ming Mang tombs! At the Pagoda, one of the relics was the car that the Monk drove in 1963 to the center of Saigon before getting out and setting himself afire to protest the war! At the main temple the monk invited me in to pray (I don't know why I have this affinity for Asian monks) but I did and he played a gong and cymbals while I bowed...he didn't let any others in. I was a bit shaken by all of this...but I must have pissed off the gods because later on the cruise back we sailed into a major monsoon storm and the glass doors of the boat blew in almost hitting one of the passengers. Then the wind picked up and we grounded and plowed into the embankment tearing off one of the dragonheads! We limped back to port...with a few more memories then we had counted on! I met a woman from Norway (late 30's or so) who quit her job at the bank and was embarking on her new life via a trip to SE Asia. There was also a young couple from Oregon who had just finished 2 years teaching English in Taipei. When I got back the hotel guy gave me a motor scooter ride to a local beauty shop to get my hair washed...in Thailand you get a neck massage, in Cambodia a good head scrub...in Vietnam, you get both of those plus a 15 minute full facial.... everything was going well to one of the girls clipped off all my finger nails! I haven't a clue why or whether I even paid for it...but I now have clean hair, no fingernails and it all cost $7! When I got back Trong took me to the citadel and the old city and palace. We agreed he would pick me up at 8 pm. I happily wondered thru the palace (a petit version of the forbidden city sans the "Starbucks coffee"...) and came out at 6pm.closing time. Since it was too early for dinner and Trong wouldn't be back for two hours I took a cyclo ride inside the old city ...and then back to the citadel...there is a large square and it was full of kite vendors, people exercising, ice-cream carts etc, so I bought an ice cream, a kite and sat down to wait.... my cyclo driver kept pestering me and sort of following me around hoping I was nuts and would eventually need him to return me to my hotel. In the meantime a man and women pushed their little girl over to talk to me. She was a small 6th grader, shy and soft spoken...but we managed to get a conversation going. Her father worked in a shoe factory and she was an only child. Mom stayed at home. I wound up giving her the kite and we talked about traveling to the moon. By now it was 7:45 and the girl's family, my cyclo driver, a photographer for tourists, and assorted others were worried that I would not be picked up and had joined my little circle of friends...after all who has a private car to travel in! None of them would leave me...(of course the cyclo driver was still hoping for a late evening fare)...but 8 on the dot my white car, not a taxi or hotel van, pulled up and I had about 12 people to shake hands with and bid farewell and looking both impressed and relieved.

15 hours of driving and two bowls of Pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) and we arrived in Halong Bay. When I wasn't sleeping I entertained myself with looking at these immensely ugly houses that the Vietnamese have been building since 2001 (at least that's what the dates on some of the roofs suggest) they will be extremely embarrassed by these in the future. They look like 1-4 story cement gingerbread Victorians with clock towers, fake cupolas etc! Amazing and in all kinds of pastels including my all time favorite, lavender purple! We passed many Viet war memorials...villages selling pineapples, selling coconuts...and of course acres of arid country side and poor rural villages. Got to go...we are here, I only saw the fabled shapes coming in at night...creepy in the darkness. Later! Hugs.

Probably my last e-mail from Vietnam...imagine a place where life is so simple, you entertain yourself by parking your motor bike along a bridge and spend the evening looking at the lights from Haiphong port! If HoiAn was wonderful, Halong bay is Nirvana...each turn of the boat was a new breathtaking vista...nothing you could capture with a 35mm camera, nothing you can describe! My boat was a low-end tourist junk, probably meant to accommodate 12-16 tourists! Of course it was only I and my 3 twenty-something crew (a cook and souvenir seller, the mate and the captain)...we had some English lessons and they tried out my Bose earphones, Meatloaf and queen CDs! Of course there had to be a small snafu or it wouldn't be an adventure. They dropped me at one tourist site where you can walk up thru the cave to the top of a large island and view the whole bay...and then meet your boat on the other side! Well my ticket wasn't good for this little bit of sightseeing and "no ticket-no cross". My boat was gone but I managed to hitch a ride on an upscale hotel Junk. They seemed pleased to rescue me and drop me off at the harbor on the other side of the bay! After my unexpected arrival my crew spent a lot of time looking at my ticket and then took me to another spot that was included in my fee! The weather is so humid that with the heat and haze, much of the bay looked ghostly until you got within range...I sat on the prow listening to Bette Midler sing "Do You Want to Dance"...watched large and small junks, fishing boats and house boats glide in and around the outcroppings as if they were floating on air! I met a Chinese family from Tennessee who were on a pricey tour and some Japanese women who managed not to break a sweat! I climbed 250 steps up one look out point and gave up...my mother would have made it to the top! This is indeed one of the most beautiful places on earth and this indeed has been a wonderful week, if only life was always this easy and this full of new experiences...hugs
Well if you are a 4 star traveler this little trek would not have made you happy...I didn't just not stay in 4 stars...I stayed in NO star hotels, ate soup off the sidewalks and rice and pork in roadside dumps! (Not that I was a backpacker by any stretch of the imagination, my own car and driver certainly qualified me for the "privileged" traveler category.) I am so happy I did this, in fact I was depressed all day back to Saigon on our last drive...it didn't matter if we drove for hours and all I had was endless country side and an occasional Bette Middler or Meatloaf on my CD player...I was completely at peace. Each stop was more interesting than the one before and Halong Bay was incredible! I adored my quiet, good-humored driver (who was delighted I'm sure to drop me at my last hotel and bid me goodbye so he could get home to his wife) and think it was an incredibly lucky match for this trip!

I climbed up the "not quite finished" North Vietnam memorial at the DMZ and looked over the peaceful countryside of waterways, rice patties and farmers to the "not quite finished" South Vietnam war memorial...and couldn't quite figure it all out! We are back in Nha Trang for the night...HoChi Min tomorrow and Cambodia Sunday if all goes well. Meng...I will call you from the bus station when I get I, or please call my driver in the morning tomorrow, Saturday, after 8 am and we can talk about arrangements his number is on the email from Mai Tran
Last night in NhaTrang we stayed again with the same folks and I was treated to dinner, a coffee shop and breakfast! In Hue, I had to share my room with the driver and I think I must have frozen him to death with the AC! Oh well...

I catch the morning bus for Phnom Penh...Meng called today and so far Soucha has not had the baby so I may be in time. Even with $10 dollar hotels and $1 dollar meals, I'm broke, renewed and happy!