Hello colleagues!
Another academic year is upon us! In this newsletter, our committee presents an abundance of information about upcoming events (both inside and outside of ASC), innovative ideas on increasing writing and working towards a work/life balance, and a wonderful member spotlight. Please also don’t forget to check-out the “Around the Divisions” section to see what our colleagues in other divisions are doing as well.
If you have any comments or suggestions, please do not hesitate to email me. All the best for a productive start to the fall!
Warm Regards,
Jordana
Hello everyone,
I hope you are enjoying your summer and managing to be productive. I often reflect on how fortunate most of us in academia are to get this break. It enables us to travel, write and experience life quite unlike any other profession. Summer gets over too soon though!
For this edition of the newsletter, I have many updates. Some of these you may be aware of from my emails to the DWC Listserv. I am summarizing them below under two categories:
Early updates about the ASC Meeting:
We are very excited to announce three professional development workshops and three policy sessions this year.
Division on Women and Crime Professional Development Workshops:
1. Visionary Training Workshop – Wednesday, 9:30am to 10:50am
2. Reviewer Training Workshop – Wednesday, 9:30am to 10:50am
3. Teacher Training Workshop – Friday, 8:00am to 10:50am
Participants will receive a certificate of attendance from the DWC. Although these free workshops are open to all, they are limited to the first 30 participants and requires advanced registration. Please read detailed descriptions of each of these workshops and register to attend at this link: https://ascdwc.com/asc2018_workshops.
Division on Women and Crime Policy Sessions:
1. Justice for Currently and Formerly Incarcerated Women – Wednesday, 2pm to 3:20pm
2. Violence Against Women – Federal Prevention, Intervention & Research Efforts – Thursday, 2pm to 3:20pm
3. Women at Work in Criminal Justice Organizations – A Special Issue of Feminist Criminology – Friday, 2pm to 3:20pm
These policy sessions will bring in researchers, practitioners and advocates to discuss current policy issues. The policy sessions do not require any prior registration and are open to all. You will be able to see additional description, speakers and location details in the ASC Program.
Other updates and requests:
1. It is with great sadness that I announce the passing of Dr. Christine Rasche. She was a founding member of the Division on Women & Crime, an active scholar, mentor and friend to many. Chris was a huge advocate and essential contributor to the work of the DWC heading up the newsletter and maintaining the DWC archives for many years. She served on the DWC Executive Board and was Chair of the Division on Women & Crime from 1995 to 1997. She has been described by her colleagues and friends as a ‘force of nature’ – and will be very missed. To honor her memory, we are dedicating DWC’s newly restructured mentoring program in her name, it will be called “Dr. Christine Rasche Mentoring Program”. Please stay tuned for more information on how you can sign up to be a mentee or volunteer to be a mentor.
2. We are very excited about our student scholarship winners. This year we decided to give four new additional runner-up awards because the proposals we received were outstanding and the need so great.
3. We are very proud of the three DWC members who have won ASC honors and awards.
4. We are very excited to share the news that two of our very own DWC members have been elected to the ASC Executive Board: Dr. Sally Simpson has been elected ASC President (2019-2020) and Dr. Lynn Addington has been elected Executive Counsellor (2018-2021).
5. With donations from friends of DWC we established two new student poster awards. Please encourage your students to apply for these and other DWC awards. We look forward to meeting them at ASC.
6. We are fundraising to establish two new travel fund awards with a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Starting with the 2019 ASC, we hope to make one domestic award and one international travel award. A direct donation would be wonderful, but another way you can contribute towards these efforts is by assigning a portion of your book royalties towards this. It would be benefit many future generations of scholars.
7. Submissions to DWC’s journal Feminist Criminology have increased over the years and we have some great articles in the pipeline that have potential for being frequently cited. However, despite increasing the number of issues/pages in 2018 (from 4 to 5 issues and 400 to 500 pages) we had a significant backlog. With terrific assistance from Dr. Chris Eskridge we worked with Sage to increase the number of pages to 750 pages starting in 2019. This is truly exciting news for our scholarship!
8. Past DWC chair Amanda and I attended the congressional briefing in Washington, DC where another past DWC chair, Joanne Belknap spoke about why the next crime commission should focus on domestic violence research.
9. I am very excited to inform you that we now have firmer plans for Division on Women and Crime’s First Congressional Panel to be organized in Washington DC. The topic areas are broadly around (i) Women as victims: which will address necessary policy innovations to end violence against women; (ii) Women as practitioners: which will address policy suggestions to improve gender equity and quality of life for women who work in criminal justice organizations (such as FBI, Police, Correctional Officers etc.); (iii) Women as offenders: which will address policy innovations to support currently and formerly incarcerated women. It is likely going to be on October 11th or 12th of this year. We are awaiting more details and confirmations in this regard from an US Congressman’s office. If you think there is a pressing policy issue you would like to see addressed at this congressional panel, please email me.
10. I recently spoke over phone to two women stalwarts of ASC, Dr. Freda Adler and Dr. Margaret Zahn to compile the history of women at ASC and in DWC. The stories I heard were simply amazing. Please see Dr. Adler’s article titled “The ASC and Women: One Generation Without, One Generation With” which was published in the 1997 edition of The Criminologist.
I am sure the long email clearly indicates how busy we have been these past few months. I look forward to seeing all of you in Atlanta and hearing back from you at chair@ascdwc.com.
Thank you,
Sheetal Ranjan
Chair, Division on Women and Crime