03/19/2009
Tonia St. Germain, assistant professor and Gender Studies Program coordinator at Eastern Oregon University, will discuss wartime sexual violence, on Thursday, March 26, at SUNY Cortland.
Titled "Rape as a War Crime: Gender Mainstreaming in International Prosecution," the talk begins at 4:30 p.m. in Brockway Hall Jacobus Lounge and is free and open to the public.
The lecture, which highlights a month-long series of events celebrating Women's History Month at the College, is part of the Wagadu Lecture Series. Wagadu is a journal of transnational women's and gender studies at SUNY Cortland.
St. Germain, who teaches both gender studies and political science, will talk about the systematic use of sexual violence in war. Some of her discussion will stem from 1993 when it was discovered that Serbian forces had set up a network of rape camps enslaving women and girls, some as young as 12. Since then, the international community has begun to recognize that patterns of systematic rape in many countries are not just a byproduct of war but sometimes a deliberate weapon.
"I will analyze the experiences of the international legal trailblazers whose work transformed human rights law by making rape a war crime during the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia," she said.
"The lessons from these pioneers that can help the International Criminal Court better respond to war crimes in countries like Sudan, where the government has turned all of Darfur into a rape camp, or the Congo where it is more dangerous to be a civilian woman than a soldier."
St. Germain's areas of research include gender and the law, legal and pedagogical issues for women in higher education, as well as the movement to prevent violence against women and current public policy responses.
Prior to teaching in Oregon, she directed public policy for New York's statewide coalition of rape crisis centers New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault, where she lobbied for state legislation preventing violence against women.
Her dedication to feminist scholarship began as an undergraduate student at Wheaton College, where she studied with Sarah Weddington, the attorney who argued the Roe v. Wade abortion rights case before the U.S. Supreme Court. St. Germain earned her law degree from Antioch School of Law in Washington, D.C.
Women's History Month is co-sponsored by the Center for Gender and Intercultural Studies (CGIS); Latin American Studies; the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) Committee; the President's and Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Offices; TransAfrica Project; the Campus Artist and Lecture Series (CALS); the Art and Art History, History, Philosophy, Africana Studies and International Communications and Culture Departments; the Education Club; the Cortland College Foundation; the Cultural and Intellectual Climate (CIC) Committee; Planet of Women Equality and Respect (POWER); Affirmative Action Committee; Educational Opportunity Program; Professional Development School; Deans of Arts and Sciences and Education; the President's Committee on the Status and Education of Women (CSEW); the Women's Studies Committee of the CGIS; and the Women's Initiatives Committee.
For more information, contact Professor of Philosophy Mechthild Nagel, interim Women's Studies coordinator and chair of the CGIS, at (607) 753-2013.