Amy Kaler, Ph. D |
|
|
| Office Hours and Contact Information | Curriculum Vitae | Syllabi | Home Curriculum Vitae |
|
|
|
Research
and Teaching Interests Social demography; sociology of gender; historical sociology; political economy of reproduction and fertility; medical sociology; qualitative methods, especially personal narrative and life history approaches; linkages between global processes and local experiences; southern Africa July
2000-present: Assistant Professor. Department of Sociology,
University of Alberta (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada). Currently teaching
Sociology of Gender and Introduction to the Family 1998- 2000: Postdoctoral Fellow. Population Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania. Funded by Rockefeller Foundation.
I did research
into the global diffusion of the female condom and the social context of
community-based distribution of contraceptives in southern and eastern
Africa. I am also member of the Malawi
Diffusion and Ideational Change Project (three rural sites in Malawi),
working with Susan
Cotts Watkins, Eliya Zulu and others from the Population Studies
Center at the University of Pennsylvania and the African Population and
Health Research Center in Nairobi on a methodologically diverse study
mapping the social networks and the flows of information and resources
among men and women of different generations, with particular attention to
changes in ideas about HIV/AIDS and about fertility (ongoing). 1994-1998:
Editorial assistant for:
*History and Theory: Feminist Research, Debates and Contestations
(Barbara Laslett, Ruth-Ellen Joeres,
Mary Jo Maynes, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham and Jeanne Barker-Nunn, eds.)
*TANU Women: Gender and Culture in the Making of Tanzanian Nationalism
1945-1955 (Susan Geiger)
*and the works in progress of the Personal Narratives in Social Sciences
group (Barbara
Laslett, Mary
Jo Maynes and Jennifer Pierce) 1996-1997:
Research associate, Department of Sociology, University of Zimbabwe
(Harare,
Zimbabwe) (unpaid position) 1994-1996:
Teaching assistant, Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota
(Minneapolis, Minnesota)
*Courses: Race, Class and Gender; American Race Relations; Social Life
and Cultural
Change; Understanding Formal Organizations; Principles of Social
Organization 1990-1993:
Teacher of English literature, English language and other subjects.
Chindunduma Government High School, Shamva
District, Zimbabwe (employed by the government of Zimbabwe and the
non-governmental organization World University Service of Canada) 1987-1990:
Teaching assistant. McGill University (Montreal, Canada) 1988-1990:
Teacher and tutor for children with learning disabilities. Lansdowne
Learning Centre (Montreal,
Canada) 1993-1998:
Ph D in sociology (concentration in historical and comparative sociology),
minor program in feminist studies. University
of Minnesota.
Dissertation title: Fertility, Gender and War: the "Culture of
Contraception" in Rhodesia 1957-1980
Advisor: Ron Aminzade 1987-1990:
MA in comparative education (concentration in education and social
development). McGill University
Thesis title: The World Bank and Basic Education: Crisis and Response
in the 1980s
Advisor: Ratna Ghosh 1986-1987:
Diploma in Education (concentration in teaching English as a second
language). McGill University 1983-1986:
BA in English literature. McGill University Running
After Pills: Gender, Politics and Contraception in Colonial Rhodesia
Portsmouth NH: Heinemann (Social
History of Africa Series) "It's
Some Kind of Women's Empowerment": The Ambiguity of the Female Condom
as a Marker of Female Empowerment Forthcoming in Social Science and
Medicine "Who
Has Told You To Do This Thing?": Contraception as Subversion in
Rhodesia 1970-1980. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society,
25:3 (Spring 2000) 677-708 Visions
of Domesticity in the African Women's Homecraft Movement in Colonial
Rhodesia. Social Science History 23:3 (Fall 1999) 269-309 A
Threat to the Nation and a Threat to the Men: The Prohibition of
Depo-Provera in Zimbabwe 1981. Journal of Southern African Studies
24:2 (June 1998) 347-376. Maternal
Identity and War in Mothers of the Revolution. Journal of
the National Women's Studies Association, 9 (Spring 1997), 1-21 Review
of Pretty in Punk:
Girls' Gender Resistance in a Boys' Subculture (Lauraine leBlanc).
Forthcoming in Gender and Society, Fall 1999 Review
of Africa's Population Challenge: Progress in Reproductive Health
(Population Association International). Forthcoming in Journal of Modern
African Studies, Winter 2000 Fertility
Running Wild: Elite Perceptions of the Need for Population Control in
Colonial Rhodesia. (2000) In Contraception
Across Cultures: Technologies, Choices and Constraints. A Russell,
MS Thompson and EJ Sobo, eds., London: Berg Publishers, pp.81-102 The
Female Condom and the Idea of Women: Technology, Rights and Representation.
Received a revise-and-resubmit notice from Gender and Society,
April 1999 (with
Susan Cotts Watkins) Disobedient Distributors: Street-level Bureaucrats
and Would-Be Patrons in Community Based Family Planning Programs in Rural
Kenya. Submitted to Studies in Family Planning June 2000 They
See Money and They Think It's Life: Elders' "Philosophy of
Money" in Southern Malawi. Submitted to Social Science History
July 2000 Many
Divorces and Many Spinsters: Marriage as an Invented Tradition in Southern
Malawi. Submitted to Journal of Family History
July 2000 1999:
Field research grant from the Mellon Foundation for in-depth interviews
with stakeholders in the diffusion of the female condom in Kenya and South
Africa and for interviews with clinic-based providers of the female condom
in Kenya 1998-2000:
Research grant from the Rockefeller Foundation for postdoctoral
work with Susan Cotts Watkins at
the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania 1997-1998:
Population Council Fellowship in Social and Historical Demography 1997-1998:
Martindale Research Scholarship (presented annually for excellence in
graduate student research by the Department of Sociology, University of
Minnesota) 1993-1998:
MacArthur Scholar, MacArthur Interdisciplinary Program on Peace and
International Co-operation (supporting graduate study and research at the
University of Minnesota and in Zimbabwe) 1997:
Woodrow Wilson Foundation Dissertation Research Fellowship in Women's
Studies 1997:
University of Minnesota Doctoral Dissertation Special Grant 1995-1996:
Anna Welsch Bright Memorial Award (presented annually by the Department of
Sociology at the University of Minnesota for excellence in a graduate
research proposal) 1995-1996:
Social Science Research Council International Predissertation Fellowship
(supporting intensive Shona language training, two pre-dissertation field
trips to Zimbabwe, and a semester at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
in Fall 1995) 1994:
Foreign Language and Area Studies (Title VI) Summer Fellowship (supporting
intensive language training at the University of Minnesota) 1987-1990:
Fellow of the Centre for Developing Area Studies, McGill University 1986:
Scarlet Key (McGill University, awarded for outstanding contribution to
university life) Nominated
for Graduate School Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (University of
Minnesota) by the Department of Sociology in 1997; declined in favor of
Population Council Fellowship Offered
Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship to the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign and University Fellowship to Northwestern University
in 1993, declined in favor of University of Minnesota *Demography
and the Grammar of Gender: Revisiting Watkins (1993) "If All We Knew
About Women ..." . To be presented as part of panel on Feminism and
the Future of Demography at the annual meetings of the Population
Association of America, March 2001 *"The
African and His Ways": Population Knowledge and the Taken-for-Granted
in Colonial Zimbabwe. To be
presented as part of the International Union for the Scientific Study of
Population seminar on the construction and circulation of population
knowledge, March 2001 *"I
Don't Want to Hear About Pills": Contraception, Gender and Power in
Zimbabwean Families 1970-1980. Presented as a job talk at Indiana
University, Emory University, McGill University, University of
Massachusetts-Amherst, Pennsylvania State University, University of
Oklahoma, University of Georgia, University of Southern Maine, Miami
University and the University of Alberta, October 1999-February 2000 The
Female Condom and Women's Empowerment. Presented in the seminar series of
the Medical Sociology Cluster of the Department of Sociology, University
of Pennsylvania, November 1999 "It's
Some Kind of Women's Empowerment": Ambivalence About Autonomy in the
Global Diffusion of New Technologies of Sexuality - the Female Condom in
Kenya. Presented at a workshop on southern African fertility changes for a
special issue of the Journal of Southern African Studies at the School of
Oriental and African Studies, University of London The
Female Condom and the Image of Women: Technology, Rights and
Representation. Presented at the annual meetings of the American
Sociological Association in August 1999. Disobedient
Distributors in South Nyanza, Kenya. Presented at the seminar series of
the Population Council Research Division in Nairobi, Kenya, March 1999 Disobedient
Distributors: Pills, Parity and Clashing Agendas in Rural Kenya (with
Susan Cotts Watkins). Presented at the annual meeting of the Population
Association of America, March 1999 The
Female Condom as Travelling Technology: Global Visions, Local Stories.
Presented at the annual meeting of the MacArthur Foundation Gender Network
in November 1998 Gender
and Generations in the "War of the Pills": Axes of Conflict in
the Struggle for Control of Young Women's Fertility in Rhodesia 1957-1980.
Population Studies Seminar Series, University of Pennsylvania in September
1998 Blood
and Boundaries: Local Ideas About the Body and Contraception in Shona
Communities at the Beginning of the Fertility Transition. Presented at the
annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, San Francisco,
August 1998 Cutting
Down the Nation: Nationalist Opposition to Population Control in Colonial
Rhodesia. Presented at the European Social Science History annual meeting,
Amsterdam, March 1998 Visions
of Domesticity in the African Women's Club Movement in Colonial Rhodesia.
Presented at the Social Science History Association annual meeting,
Washington October 1997 "Who
Has Told You To Do This Thing?": Contraception as Subversion in
Rhodesia 1970-1980. American Sociological Association annual meeting,
Toronto August 1997 Gender
Relations and Choice of Contraceptive Method: Some Historical Evidence
Feminist Studies Centre (Harare), May 1997 Social
Dynamics of Contraceptive Choice in Rhodesia. Presented in the Department
of Sociology/Centre for Applied Social Sciences Seminar Series, University
of Zimbabwe, May 1997 Gender
and Fertility in a Post-Colonial Moment: The Prohibition of Depo-Provera
in Zimbabwe 1981. International Conference on Gender and Colonialism in
Southern Africa, University of the Western Cape (South Africa) January
1997 Race,
Children, Bodies, Nations: The Social History of Birth Control in Rhodesia
1965-1980. Social Science History Association annual meeting, Chicago,
November 1995 *=invited
paper Invited
participant in Sage Press's Gender Lens Collective, which advises authors
of volumes in the Gender Lens series of surveys of sub-fields within
sociology Organizer
for the regular session(s) on women and development (Sex and Gender
Section) for the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association,
August 2000 Organizer
for a panel on the social construction of demographic categories
(Population Section) for the annual meetings of the American Sociological
Association, August 2000 Commentator
for panel on women and reproductive health for the annual meeting of the
American Sociological Association, August 2000 Moderator
for roundtable on the social construction of virginity at the annual
meeting of the American Sociological Association, San Francisco, August
1998 Manuscript
reviewer for Comparative Studies in Society and History and Demography Book
reviewer for Journal of Modern African Studies and Gender and Society
Member
of the American Sociological Association (section memberships in Sex and
Gender and in Comparative and Historical Sociology); the Social Science
History Association; and the Population Association of America English
and French (fluent), Shona (competent but not fluent), Portuguese and
Spanish (not fluent) Zimbabwe,
Botswana, South Africa, Kenya, Malawi
|
|
© 2000, Amy Kaler, University of Alberta |
|