In commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the Montreal Massacre:

The Marriage Market and Women
Colin Decker, Mathematics

Many cultures throughout history have kept detailed marriage records. Marriage data is sometimes used by economists to gain a foothold in the study of other social phenomena for which direct data is not available. I will briefly introduce the notion of “marriage market,” and then discuss why economists feel it gives them insight into the effect of the legalization of abortion on female welfare, dowries, and famine.

The Lionne, the Insoumise and their Wardrobe: Rivalry in 19th-century Fashion Discourse
Nigel Lezama, French

In my discussion, I would like to share some findings, secondary in its place in my thesis, which focuses on vestimentary discourse in the works of Baudelaire and Eugène Sue, but of prime interest in uprooting the contrivances still at work in the 21st century. While researching 19th-century French women’s fashion magazines, I came across a curious omission: the prostitute – haute-couture’s best client – was completely absent, save for a few elliptical references, in these publications, which to me, stem more from rivalry than from prudishness. I have since been trying to understand what is at stake in this sisters’ rivalry.

Women in Violence: Spiderwoman’s Granddaughters Stage their Survivance
Jill Carter, Drama

In 1975, fueled by her determination to reach the age of forty (unlike so many American Indian women of her acquaintance) one New York-born Kuna-Rappahannock woman envisioned and mobilized a new, multi-racial, feminist collective. Now in its thirty-fourth year, Spiderwoman Theater was born in the midst of grief, pain, love, and irrepressible life. Its formation was an act of survivance. And its first full production Women in Violence was the vehicle through which three American Indian sisters and three non-Native colleagues wrote their resistance to the violence that affected them and that they had, in their turn, effected.