Charis Thompson: "Three Times a Woman: A Gendered Economy of Stem Cell Innovation"

Charis Thompson

In her recent Life (Un)Ltd presentation, “Three Times a Woman: A Gendered Economy of Stem Cell Innovation,” Charis Thompson discussed the state of stem cell research in a pro-curial economy—that is, an economy that emphasizes the cure potential of stem cell research rather than the debate around the embryos used. Thompson, Professor and Chair of the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley, as well as the Associate Director of Berkeley’s Science, Technology, and Society Center, said that the anatomy of the state-based science economy has three parts, all connected to the question of how to sell the idea of voting for science that is ethically questionable and federally underfunded. The first part is pro-cures rhetoric to communicate that people are voting for cures, adding a moral imperative to the discourse. The second is procurement, the focus on which bypasses embryo politics. The third is biocuration, referring to chains of custody for, bookkeeping of, and compliance with stem cell research. Thompson pointed out that women are central to these issues: they are linked to them by virtue of occupying related positions as voters, care-ers, funders, advocates, and body labor and body parts donators, among other things.

In the first segment of her presentation, Thompson asked what happens when public funding of science research moves from the federal level to the state level. She said that “basic science” is good for the economy, that its results trickle down beneficially. This kind of research, when federally funded, is “firewalled” by the National Institute of Health, National Science Foundation, and Department of Energy, which are staffed by experts and use extensive peer review and analysis to review grant requests.  When science is state-funded, there is a change to the social contract, Thompson said, in that direct democracy allows the public to vote directly for funding research. In 2004, California’s Proposition 71 made stem cell research a constitutional right. Section 4 of Article XXXV was added to the California Constitution to support stem cell research, yet the terms “women,” “embryo,” and “egg” do not appear in the legislation. This is perhaps ironic since women in California voted for Democrat John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election—essentially, they voted pro-cures. Thompson said that women voted for and paid for (via their taxes) the research, but it is unclear whether or how they will benefit from it.

Next, Thompson discussed egg donor protection. She said that embryo politics became operationalized around the concept of what an “acceptable donation” is. California has become an embryo “tourist destination” because of the low restrictions on embryos in the state. Donations are often sought from college students, who are eugenically desirable and need the money that comes from donating. Thompson said that egg donor protection has become the women’s issue since Prop 71 passed, though this fact is sometimes mocked as paternalistic or even maternalistic. Lastly, Thompson raised some common questions about donors, including whether they should be paid, whether they should receive financial or health incentives, and whether they are being paid for bodily labors. She said that some of the usual forms of payment to donors are medical care benefits, the satisfaction of being part of the scientific process, and, through their participation, being on the fast track to experiencing the fruits of the research they assisted.

In talking about biocuration, Thompson used a certain company, which went unnamed, as an example. To further its stem cell research, the company was getting women to donate their eggs, but ran into financial trouble. Its venture capitalist support wasn’t in favor of scientific research, which it saw as too long-term for its investment. The company needed grants approved to continue its research, so in the meantime it turned to producing biological tools and cosmetics—a heavily gendered product, as Thompson pointed out. The marketing rhetoric for the cosmetics focused on “regenerative” words, linking its aims back to the company’s stem cell research. Overall, the company’s example calls into question the issues of research funding and transparency.

Lastly, Thompson discussed what should be done about these issues. She mentioned “The Belmont Report,” an ethics-in-research document from the late 1970s whose three principles are respect for persons, beneficence, and justice in the selection of research subjects; Thompson added that there might be disproportionate use of some women enrolled in stem cell research. Thompson also said a rhetorical change is needed. Gendered, raced, and classed benefits and demands of the innovative economy should be sought out and named. The Prop 71 text should use “women,” “egg,” and “embryo” in its language. And the promissory genre of Prop 71 should be made clear, with the likely and possible uncertainties and unintended consequences spelled out. (For example, “We might make cosmetics while we raise another round of venture capital,” and, “Not every taxpayer will have full access to the fruits of this research.”) People should know, Thompson said, what they’re contributing to in an innovation economy.

Thompson ended with a few questions for thought: Would the public vote for science in conditions of great hope, uncertainty, inequality, and possible trivialization? If not, should Prop 71 not have been funded? Should the nation remain the primary spender of tax money on research? And how do we revisit the social contract where science is involved?

Jean-Marie Apostolidès and the Society of the Spectacle

“Spectacle and Spectator: Ways of Seeing and Being Seen” was a recent conference organized by the UCLA Graduate Students Association of the Department of French and Francophone Studies and the Department of French and Francophone Studies. The conference’s keynote speaker was Professor Jean-Marie Apostolidès, Stanford University, whose October 12, 2012, talk was titled “Are We a Society of the Spectacle?”

Apostolidès explained how he has a critical view—what he called a “love-hate relationship”—with Guy Debord, whose theories on consumerism and spectacle have been an important part of Apostolidès’s work. The society of the spectacle, Apostolidès said, started in the 1920s with the rise of advertising; mass media and consumerism have taken over genuine human interaction in the decades since. In his 1967 book on the topic, Debord posited that life has been replaced with its representation via the central position of images in modern life. He defined “spectacle” as a system of consumer culture, commodity fetishism, and mass media.

Apostolidès pointed out how patriarchy is a key part of the society of the spectacle’s global construction, and how 1968 saw the “symbolic destruction” of patriarchy (symbolic because the two World Wars killed off “the idea of the father”).  In his own country, Apostolidès said, accepting French collaboration during WWII helped end the influence of parents and patriarchy. As a result, younger people in France came into power, which the older generation gave up because they knew the accusations were true.

After 1968, new technology developed, digitizing the modern world. This new technological society permitted everything to be transformed into images. (Apostolidès added that money, despite being an image, wasn’t included in this change, as it became magnetic—and therefore invisible—through credit cards and other means.) Relevant to the new society was Marx’s idea of use value vs. exchange value: images allow the use value in the contemporary world, while money permits everything to be transformed into exchange value. Apostolidès mentioned the films La jetée and Vertigo as examples of worlds where it’s impossible to distinguish between image and reality; similarly, he said, one cannot separate “actors”—the bourgeois class—and spectacle, and they are both essential parts of the society of the spectacle. (Here Apostolidès joked that he is like Moses, trying to lead the way to a society without spectacle, which he will never see.)

A major element of today’s society of the spectacle is the image of ourselves created by what people say about us online. Apostolidès calls this image the “mediatic ego,” and said that it is important, for example, when finding a job: employers search online for job applicants’ online presence. He described the mediatic ego as being “someone who bears my name and is not me, yet it is me, and [it] affects me finding a job or sexual partner.” The mediatic ego is bigger than the real self, and the problem therein is how to balance the two. Apostolidès also pointed out that in the past only some people (actors, etc.) had public images, whereas in today’s world most people do, to some extent, due to technology advances.

Apostolidès also discussed how film has played a role in the society of the spectacle. He argued that actors have been portrayed differently, and had a different impact, over the last hundred years: the “idol” of the silent era—Garbo, Brooks—who created a goddess-like ideal of femininity; the “star” of the years between WWI and WWII—Bardot, Monroe, Crawford—who created a “circulation” between young people, giving them an image to copy in order to create a personal self; and the “negator” of today—Huppert, Kidman—who are no longer stars. Apostolidès claimed that modern actors are unable to play things that are unlike themselves, contributing to a society of representation. Additionally, theater has undergone huge transformations recently: theatricality is no longer as obvious as it used to be. Apostolidès said that actors today often dialogue with the audience, and that many plays transform into a monologue with the audience. He distinguished between traditional theater, with personages and auditions that use Shakespeare passages, and modern theater, with actors playing characters similar to themselves and auditions of original monologues.

As for whether the society of the spectacle will last, Apostolidès said it depends. If we are at the beginning of a new kind of civilization, it might last for centuries to come. This generation is, Apostolidès said, between the influence of parents and whatever will come next. The next several generations will certainly be transformative, and technology may ultimately decide future changes. 

Strangers in a Strange Land: Art, Aesthetics, and Displacement

Cities I Called Home, 2010

"Strangers in a Strange Land: Art, Aesthetics, and Displacement" is a two-day symposium organized by UCLA faculty members Saloni Mathur and Aamir Mufti to be held in conjunction with "Zarina: Paper Like Skin," the upcoming retrospective exhibition on the art of Zarina Hashmi. A New York-based artist of South Asian origin, Hashami has created an extraordinary body of minimalist works on paper that spans a period of some 40 years. The symposium will bring together scholars of a range of disciplines from literary studies to musicology to art history to examine some of the themes that animate Zarina’s work. The discussion will place her art at the intersection of important social, political, and cultural processes in contemporary global society, showing how it exemplifies the exilic imagination in modern art and aesthetic thinking.

Themes of displacement, dislocation, and dispossession become manifest in Zarina’s work through a tension posed by the stark geometrical minimalism of her canvas and its rich textural materiality. Zarina’s keen interest in geometry—she received a B.Sc. degree with honors from India’s Aligarh Muslim University in 1958 before studying woodblock printing and intaglio—is explicit in her work’s emphasis on structure, held in contrast with the actual substance of medium and technique: incision, puncturing, weaving, and sculpture. The tension holds a particular and vital role in establishing a critique and meditation in terms of the viscera of geographical memory and the stringency of imposed border control, colonial geography, and forced exile.

As art critic S. Kalidas remarks in a 2011 article in The Hindu, Zarina’s voice “raises oblique queries but refrains from making any final pronouncements.” Her work, as the artist herself states, participates in “observing spaces and distances,” with meditation on space and observer alike. “She takes her tactic,” writes Kalidas, “from the medieval Sufis who spurred inquiry into mathematics, astronomy, mysticism, metaphysics, music, and poetry and in doing so subverted the religious and political establishments of the day in favour of inclusion of the popular and the marginal. If ilm (knowledge), ishq (love) and haal (ecstasy) were their spectacular modes of protest and enlightenment, Zarina combines all three in her meditative art.”

"Paper Like Skin" reveals the breadth of Zarina’s vision and the versatility of her practice,” explains Hammer director Ann Philbin. “It joins a series of survey exhibitions organized by the Hammer that highlights important but under-recognized female artists such as Lee Bontecou and, most recently, Alina Szapocznikow. The presentation of Zarina’s work also emphasizes the museum’s commitment to the study and collection of works on paper through its Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts.”

Journey to the Edge of Land, 199

"Strangers in a Strange Land: Art, Aesthetics, and Displacement" will be held November 8th and 9th at UCLA’s Hammer Museum in Westwood. Homi Bhabha, Harvard University, will deliver the keynote address on November 8th at 7 pm. The symposium will take place on November 9^th from 11 am to 5 pm. The event is cosponsored by the UCLA Center for the Study of Women, Dean of the Humanities, Department of Art History, and Department of Comparative Literature.

For more information, see: http://hammer.ucla.edu/programs/detail/program_id/1433

UCLA Queer Studies Conference 2012: Friday, October 19

Organized by Maylei Blackwell and Uri McMillan, Queer of Color Genealogies, the UCLA Queer Studies Conference 2012, will take place this Friday, October 19, in 314 Royce Hall. Free and open to the public, the conference will feature four panels and two keynote addresses on a variety of Queer Studies topics. The panels of the one-day conference are: "Addressing the Community Needs of LGBT Youth of Color," featuring Laura E. Durso
, Angeliki Kastanis
, and Lisa Powell; "Queer Indigeneities Unsettling Settler Colonialism," featuring Jodi A. Byrd
, Qwo-Li Driskill, and 
Dan Taulapappa McMullin; "The Other Archive of Desire: Remapping LGBT Histories," featuring Kai M. Green, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, 
Horacio N. Roque Ramírez, and Alice Y. Hom; and "Transnational Aesthetics/Erotics," featuring Vanessa Agard-Jones, 
Chitra Ganesh, Lawrence La Fontaine-Stokes, and 
Roy Pérez. Panel presenters include scholars from a range of universities, as well as non-academic professionals in fields such as law and art. 

Sandra K. Soto, Associate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies, University of Arizona, is the morning keynote speaker. Her presentation is titled “For Those Who Were Never Meant to Survive: Queering Attrition in Arizona.” Soto's work focuses on Chicana/o and Latina/o literary and cultural studies, feminist theory, gender studies, and queer theory. Her latest, in-progress book uses queer theories to explore how critical transnational studies and U.S. ethnic studies connect in unexpected ways. At the University of Arizona, Soto is an Executive Committee Member of the Institute of LGBT Studies, as well as an affiliate of English, the Center for Latin American Studies, and the Mexican American Studies and Research Center.

Jafari Sinclaire Allen, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African American Sudies, Yale University, is the afternoon keynote speaker. His presentation is titled “All the Things We Are Now: A Meditation on Black Queer Genealogies.” Allen’s work explores (queer) sexuality, gender, and blackness. He teaches courses on the cultural politics of race, sexuality, and gender in Black diasporas; Black feminist and queer theory; and ethnography methodology and writing, among other subjects. Allen has written ¡Venceremos?: The Erotics of Black Self-Making in Cuba (Duke University Press, Fall 2011) and edited Black/Queer/Diaspora, a special issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. He is currently researching cultural and political circuits of transnational queer desire in travel, tourism, (im)migration, art, and activism.

Maylei Blackwell is an Assistant Professor in the César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies and Women's Studies Department, and is affiliated faculty in the American Indian Studies and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies departments. Her research analyzes how women's social movements in the U.S. and Mexico are shaped by race, indigeneity, class, sexuality, and citizenship status, and how these factors impact the possibilities and challenges of transnational organizing. Most recently, she has sought to understand new forms of grassroots transnationalism by conducting research with farm worker women and indigenous migrants. Her latest book is ¡Chicana Power!: Contested Histories of Feminism in the Chicano Movement (University of Texas Press, 2011).

Uri McMillan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English. His research interests include cultural studies, feminist theory, queer studies, African American literature, and post-colonial literature and theory, and he has taught courses on contemporary African American literature, U.S. gay and lesbian history, post-Stonewall GLBT literature, narratives of racial difference, and Black and Latino popular culture and performance, among other topics. He has a manuscript titled Embodied Avatars: The Art of Black Performance under contract at New York University Press.

The UCLA Queer Studies Conference 2012 has been organized by Maylei Blackwell and Uri McMillan for the UCLA Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Program, with generous support from:

David Bohnett Foundation, UCLA Division of Humanities, UCLA Division of Social Sciences, UCLA Graduate Division, UCLA Office of Faculty Diversity and Development, UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics, UCLA Williams Institute for Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy, UCLA Bunche Center for African American Studies, UCLA Asian American Studies Center, UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, UCLA Center for Jewish Studies, UCLA Center for the Study of Women, UCLA Interdepartmental Program in Afro-American Studies, and the UCLA departments of Anthropology, Art History, Asian American Studies, Asian Languages and Cultures, Chicana/o Studies, Comparative Literature, English, Film Television and Digital Media, French and Francophone Studies, Gender Studies, Germanic Languages, History, Information Studies, Musicology, Psychology, Sociology, and Theater.

For more conference information, visit: http://lgbtstudies.ucla.edu/events/upcoming-events.html

Charis Thompson: "Three Times a Woman: A Gendered Economy of Stem Cell Innovation"

Charis Thompson

It's often argued that the methods of science reflect and reinscribe the theories and contradictions concerning gender and sexuality. In terms of the "stem cell science of gender," the debate engages theories concerning the moral status of the asexual embryo of somatic cell nuclear transfer, and the problem of how one can legitimately characterize the status of an embryo (for which there is no meiosis, no fertilization) within a heteronormative ethical framework. Charis Thompson—professor and chair of the Department of Gender and Women's Studies at UC Berkeley and associate director of the UC Berkeley Center for Science, Technology, and Medicine in Society—has spent her career engaging such bioethical concerns from a plethora of angles, situating the debate in its scientific, technical, moral, political, and financial ramifications. Her work explores the area in terms specific to stem cell research and its legislature, as well as to the bioethics of assisted reproductive technologies. As Thompson argues, social problems are increasingly funneled through questions of biomedicine, and so it has become the task of the bioethicist and the public alike to assess such problems within full view of the "choreography" of biology, society, and the individual, to the broad range of political and moral possibilities inherent in the development of technoscience.

Making Parents: The
Ontological Choreography of
Reproductive Technologies
(MIT Press, 2005)

Beyond inquiry into the ontological status of the asexual embryo and its associated politics, Thompson has argued that the gendering of regenerative (stem cell) medicine as a practice is complicated on two fronts: the rise of egg donation for research as the women's issue and the role of the market (as well as the academy and public) in "procurial" life science. The question of whether egg donor protection is by nature an instrinsic women's issue is further negotiated within the intersection of national and transnational economies, as well as economic health care disparity as it concerns race and class, policy and national health care priorities, and the public interest.


Thompson's upcoming presentation, "Three Times a Woman: A Gendered Economy of Stem Cell Innovation," promises to be a powerful insight into the gendered divisions inherent in the institution of regenerative medical research. The presentation, organized by the UCLA Center for the Study of Women, will be held Wednesday, October 24th, at 3 pm in Humanities 193.

According to Ben: Hollywood's Summer Fare

At first glance, this year’s mainstream American summer movies seem predictably dominated by male superheroes and other archetypes meant to appeal to teenage boys:  Abraham Lincoln resurrected as a vampire hunter, Will Ferrell and Zack Galifianakis as competing politician buffoons, Mark Wahlberg as a slacker with a beloved talking teddy bear and a long suffering girlfriend.  It was exciting to see that Christopher Nolan emboldened his female characters in The Dark Knight Rises, but still slightly frustrating that its deliciously cast female characters (Anne Hathaway’s Selina/Catwoman and Marion Cotillard’s Miranda), described by many as the highlights of the film, were relegated to the sidelines.  But I’ll try to avoid the knee-jerk griping. What films did this summer provide that were made for, about, or by women, and how did they hold up? 

Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows adapts a soap opera that has some of my favorite strong female characters in television history: company head/matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, the hard-edged and mysterious Dr. Julia Hoffman, and vengeful diva witch Angelique.  Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, and Eva Green do justice to these great characters (originally played by Joan Bennett, Grayson Hall, and Lara Parker).  I can’t say the same about the screenplay.  In particular, Dr. Julia Hoffman, whose manipulative face-offs with Barnabus Collins were essential to the series’ delicious drama, is pushed in the background and reduced to a few punch lines and a last minute plot twist that seem rushed and somewhat inexplicable.

I did not see Snow White and the Huntsman, although I heard that Charlize Theron gives the most over-the-top, operatic insecure evil mother performance since Faye Dunaway snarled “And I hear them say she’s getting old!” in 1981’s Mommie Dearest.  Is this the kind of female representation I want in the only truly femme-centric, live action summer blockbuster?  Not really.   But between Snow White and the Huntsman and Prometheus, I’m glad to see that Theron is back.  I also loved the praise heaped on the documentary Katy Perry: Part of Me (co-directed by Jane Lipsitz) by people ranging from film critics to Jane Fonda!  Finally, Madonna: Truth or Dare for our times.

Many have said that women and gay men made Magic Mike a hit, and you can count me as one of them.  I completely agree with Manohla Dargis, who pointed out that the film reverses “the old cinematic divide between the sexes that finds so-called passive women who are looked at by so-called active [heterosexual] men.” I have to admit that I found it pleasurable to see men gleefully objectified.  When Channing Tatum dances, there is no question that he’s a movie star.  He’s even pretty charming when he speaks.  That said, I found the movie’s reverse fallen-woman plot less engaging than its scenes of spectacle.  I know that two wrongs don’t make a right.  But it seems unfair that Paul Verhoeven’s fallen-woman picture about contemporary stripping (dancing!), 1996’s Showgirls, is a bitchy, backstabbing blast, while Magic Mike (which has practically the same plot structure) insists that we wallow in Mike’s nobility.  Joanna, Adam’s tough, realistic sister (played by Olivia Nunn), who tries to balance her own career while dealing with Adam’s drama, was, for me, the most compelling aspect of the film’s narrative.

The summer’s animated films brought with them many thrilling surprises.  Brave (co-written and co-directed by Brenda Chapman) introduced Pixar’s first female protagonist after 10 male-dominated films.  The story of Merida, who must rely on her archery skills to undo a beastly curse, continues in the happy tradition begun with the success of Spring’s blockbuster The Hunger Games.  I will never tire of movies geared towards young people that feature women utilizing their archery skills to survive and potentially overthrow patriarchal villainy.  Paranorman, about a boy whose best friends are horror movies, ghosts, and Elaine Stritch, finally, after 29 long years, gave me a character whose life directly resembles my own. The story’s plot revolves around Norman’s efforts to mollify a witch who has placed a curse on his small town.  He seeks help from, among others, an openly gay jock and a fabulously feminist, confident, bookish classmate who questions why witches must always be portrayed as ugly.  The movie’s gender dynamics, its complication of “good” and “evil,” and its powerful portrayal of mainstream society’s fierce efforts to crush difference are exhilarating and delightful to behold.  For me, Paranorman was the must see movie of the summer.  It is that rare animal in Hollywood: a feel -good film that tells the truth about life’s darkness.  I saw it twice in one weekend.

Watching Paranorman, I kept thinking something that I almost never think while watching contemporary Hollywood fare: “This is such a sane movie.”  Miraculously, I felt the same way watching Hope Springs, the ceremonial Meryl Streep summer vehicle.  She and Tommy Lee Jones play a middle aged, middle class couple who try to revivify their marriage and their sex-life with help from therapist Steve Carrell.  Hope Springs, written by Vanessa Taylor, is a mid-budget Hollywood dramedy that takes the issues of middle aged people seriously while still inspiring genuine, smart, laughs.  It’s a romantic comedy that dares to explore what happens long after the couple meets and gets together.  In other words, it’s a unicorn.  I haven’t seen such beautifully acted, uncomfortably realistic therapy sequences since the 1970s.  Speaking of which, I am so delighted that this film rectifies one of my pet peeves by making the bold and shocking suggestion that therapy can actually help people deal with their problems.  Usually it seems (to me, anyway) like films only offer romantic attachment or violence as possible solutions.

It was with some trepidation that I attended Sparkle, a remake of the 1975 film of the same name.  I had to see it because I am in love with girl groups, 1970s cinema, and, of course, Whitney Houston.  I could not miss the opportunity to see her doing something new one more time, even though I knew that it would depress me.  Sparkle (written by Mara Brock Akil) is depressing because Houston still had the intense charisma, screen presence, and vocal power (if not vocal range) that made us love her.  It confronted me, once again, with all that I miss.  However, it’s even more depressing because its most engaging, forceful sequences fetishize the self-destruction of Sister (electrifying Carmen Ejogo), a beautiful, talented, ambitious singer who is punished for her confidence and quick (somewhat unrealistic) rise to fame with drug addiction and a viciously abusive husband.   The movie preys on what it perceives (accurately, perhaps) as the audience’s craving for the destruction of the beautiful and talented.  A deliriously stylized, visually graceful sequence in which Sister’s husband (Mike Epps) beats her with a belt is as odd and confounding as it is disturbing.   I’ve seen Lady Sings the Blues (1972), The Rose (1979), and What’s Love Got to do With It (1993), and I feel like I have seen this story enough.  Like the original, Sparkle offers an alternative option for talented black women in the wholesome rise of its title character, played by the very charming (if hardly electrifying) Jordin Sparks.  But why do movies like Dreamgirls (2006) and Sparkle insist that in order for one talented woman to rise, another must fall?  I know that these movies are, more and less, based on real stories: Billie Holiday, Janis Joplin, Tina Turner, Diana Ross, Florence Ballard, Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston.  I suppose that I want our culture, and the movies, to come up with different scenarios for its most brilliant performers.  

-- Ben Sher

Contributing to the Cultural Capital of Mauritius

Françoise Lionnet, professor in the Department of Comparative Literature, director of the African Studies Center, and faculty affiliate at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women, has recently published two books in the small island nation of Mauritius in Africa.

"Being able to publish in Mauritius was important for me because it was a chance to actually put my work in front of people who know best what I’m talking about. If I’m going to get constructive or useful reactions, I need to get it from there more so than from my colleagues in the U.S.," says Professor Lionnet.

These books, "The Known and the Uncertain: Creole Cosmopolitans" and "Writing Women and Critical Dialogues: Subjectivity, Gender and Irony" are also recognized by their French titles, "Le su et l’incertain: Cosmopolitiques créoles de l’océan Indien" and "Ecritures féminines et dialogues critiques."

For more information about Professor Lionnet and her work, see the UCLA Today article Scholar raises profile of life and literature of little-known island nation.