Two researchers in the field of women's studies will speak at a convocation at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday (Jan. 17) in Denison's Slayter Hall Auditorium. Nancy Hartsock, the architect of the concept of a "feminist standpoint" will speak on "Feminist Epistemologies: Power, Knowledge and Objectivity" while Christina Brinkley, an applied social scientist and demographer-sociologist, will speak on "Womanist/ Feminist Social Science Methods: Quantifying the Qualitative."

Throughout this year, a series of speakers sponsored by the women's studies department will focus on how we know things and what type of claims we can make for the knowledge that we have according to Professor Eloise Buker, director of the women?s studies program at Denison.

Hartsock is director of the Center for Women and Democracy at the University of Washington. She is the author ofMoney, Sex and Power: Toward a Feminist Historical Materialism(Northeastern University Press, 1984) which is "now a classic in political science and women's studies" according to Buker. Hartsock also has writtenThe Feminist Standpoint Revisited and Other Essays(Westview Press, 1998) and is co-editor of several other publications.

In the spring of 1996, Hartsock served as the Blanche, Edith, and Irving Laurie New Jersey Chair in Women's Studies at Douglass College of Rutgers University. She earned her bachelor's degree with special honors at Wellesley College, and her master's and doctorate at the University of Chicago. She has previously served on the faculties of Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Michigan. Hartsock has been president, vice president and program chair of the Western Political Science Association and holds memberships in the Society for Values in Higher Education and the American Political Science Association. Her articles have appeared in numerous journals and she has served on the editorial board of Feminist Economics: Journal of the International Feminist Economics Association and is currently associate editor of the International Journal of Feminist Politics.

Brinkley is associate professor of sociology and African American studies at Simmons College (Boston, Mass.), but has recently accepted a fellowship at the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research (Cambridge, Mass.) where she is focusing on the theoretical and methodological linkages among critical demography, critical race theory and critical race feminism. Her project seeks to address two questions: "What demographic analytical methods are particularly useful in critical, sex/race research?" and "What is the theoretical relationship among critical demography, critical race theory and critical race feminism?"

She recently completed a two-year project as chair of the 21st Annual Conference of the National Women's Studies Association. Brinkley served as the Black Scholar in Residence at Bucknell University and has served on the faculties at Southern Illinois University, the University of Rochester and Bates College. She earned her doctorate at Princeton University in 1978 and is a frequent contributor to journals and conferences. She is a member of the American Sociological Association and the National Women's Studies Association.

About Denison:

Denison University, founded in 1831, is an independent, residential liberal arts institution located in Granville, Ohio. A highly selective college enrolling 2,100 full-time undergraduate students from all 50 states and dozens of foreign countries, Denison is a place where innovative faculty and motivated students collaborate in rigorous scholarship, civic engagement and the cultivation of independent thinking.

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