Donna Maeda Associate Professor  Department of Religious Studies Occidental College Los Angeles, California

Academic and Professional Work:

“Agencies of Filipina Migrants in Globalized Economies:  Transforming International Human Rights Legal Discourse,” Berkeley La Raza Law Journal, Spring 2003.
 
"Reproductions of Whiteness at the California Law Review," Dec. 2002.
 
“Intimated Futures?  The Masking and Unmasking of Anti-Racist Ideologies by Interracial Agents,” book review of Interracial Intimacy:  The Regulation of Race and Romance by Rachel F. Moran, Asian Law Journal, Spring 2002.
 
"Subject to Justice:  The 'Cultural Defense' and Legal Constructions of Race, Culture, Nation," Postcolonial America, ed. Richard King, Bloomington, IL:  University of Illinois Press, 2000.

"Sacred Identities and Essentialized Difference:  A Postcolonialist Reading of Feminist Spirituality's 'Subject.'" Forthcoming.

"Affirmative Action, Proliferating Difference, and Ruptures in Justice,"  Forthcoming.

"Racializations of Religion and Culture in Constitutions of 'America.'"  Work in progress.

"'Race, Gender and Justice':  New Technologies and Student Empowerment." Works & Days 16 (1998): 319-332. Co-author.

"Teaching about Race, Gender and Justice:  Bridging the Digital Divide,"Diversity Digest, a publication of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, vol. 3, no. 1, Fall 1998.  Co-author.

"Race, Gender and Justice:  Teaching with Technology at Occidental College,"American Studies Association Newsletter, vol. 21, no. 3, Sept. 1998.  Co-author.

"The 'Other' Woman:  Irreducible Alterity in Feminist Thealogies," Religion 27 (1997):  123.

"Critical Race Theory and Practice:  From the First Amendment to Affirmative Action," Speakers series, Occidental College, November 1995-November 1996.  Series co-organizer with Prof. Gabrielle Foreman, with assistance from Prof. Ron Buckmire and Alma Marquez.  Funded in part by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

"Affirmative Action: A Dialogue on Race, Gender, Equality and Law in America," American Bar Association (ABA) Network, Focus on Law Studies, vol. XIII, no. 2, Spring 1998.  Invited discussant.

"Police Brutality in the California Police State," Occidental College, November 11, 1998.  Co-organizer, with Rosie Baldonado, Ken Davison, Sara Hunt, Eva Margolis, Kianna Nesbit, and Prof. Gabrielle Foreman.

Mellon Technology Workshop, Occidental College.  Participant, Summers 1997, 1999.

New Media Classroom Project, American Social History Project and American Studies Association joint initiative, New York, 1997-1998.

American Academy of Religion (AAR).

Committee on the Status of Racial/Ethnic Minorities in the Profession, Member, 1994-1997.
Asian North American Religion, Culture and Society Group, Co-Chair, Steering Committee, 1998-.
 
Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS), member.

Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U).

"Boundaries and Borderlands III:  The Search for Recognition and Community in America,"
Seminar Leader, July 2000.
Knowledge Network and Peer Review, Advisory Board member, 1999-.
American Commitments: Diversity, Democracy  and Liberal Learning Initiative, Participant, 1994-1997.
 
National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum (NAPAWF).
National Governing Board, Member.
Educational Access Working Group, Chair.
Author, "Educational Access Platform Paper."
Civil Rights Working Group, Member.
Platform Paper collection, Co-editor.
 
Asian Pacific American Support Group (APASG),  University of Southern California.
Member, Board of Directors, 1996-2000.
Chair, Mentoring Committee, 1996-1997.
Member, Scholarship Committee, 1997-1999.
 
Click here to see my complete C.V.

Courses:

• CSP 1  Race, Gender and Justice (team-taught):  In this course, we explore legal, cultural, and theoretical issues and contexts that affect how different people and communities conceptualize justice in the United States.  We begin the course by considering readings that challenge the idea that the meaning of "justice" impacts all of us equally.  The course also examines the racialized, gendered, and class-based struggle over the meaning of rights, nation, and freedom during the post-Reconstruction Era through reading Charles Chesnutt's novel, The Marrow of Tradition, and viewing D.W. Griffith's movie, Birth of a Nation.  We connect these historical texts to contemporary questions related to notions of "equal protection under the law" and privacy that stem from interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment by considering themes of (national) inheritance and legal, contractual and cultural relationships.  Here the course examines the legal policing of private spheres in the areas of marriage, race, gender and sexuality.  Click here to see the 1997 version of the course.

• RELS 355  Boundaries and Borderlands:  Religion, Culture, and Postmodern Conditions: This course examines questions about transformations of religions and cultures that occur when physical, experiential, geographic, and intellectual borders are crossed and blurred. We consider cultural hybridities, re-mapped borders of culture and difference, postcoloniality, transnational migrations, and other postmodern conditions as sources for re-conceiving identities, relationships between religions and cultures, and social transformations.  Click here to see the 1998 version of the course.

• RELS 253  Bioethics: This course investigates ethical issues in areas of life, health, and death. We examine ethical issues in human reproduction (such as prenatal diagnosis, artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, surrogacy); euthanasia; AIDS; and other relevant areas. We look at relationships between religion and culture in the formation of ethical discourses in these areas. How do religion and culture shape assumptions about beginnings and endings of life? About maintenance of health, treatment, and caretaking? How do factors of human differentiations and classifications (such as race, class, gender, culture) affect assumptions about options, choices, and treatment? How do we participate in the construction and maintenance of "the ethical" in the arenas of bioethics?

• RELS 350  Religion, Rights, and Justice: Liberal political theory provides a great deal of the moral language of modern "western" culture. With growing concern for interdependence and the well-being of all persons, the language of "rights" and "justice" is increasingly applied to international and intercultural contexts. This course examines rights theory as an ethical framework. We place the focus on rights in a context that notes the cultural production of particular kinds of individualism. In doing so, we will raise questions about the limitations of theories of rights and justice. In particular, this course will look at problems in approaching issues of race, gender, and religious and cultural "difference" within liberal justice.  In order to do so, we will develop an understanding of some central concepts, such as equality, liberty, and rights; consider conceptions of personhood entailed by these notions; examine religious assumptions underlying moral "rights-talk"; and critically assess the production of otherness and marginality in such discourse through the consideration of issues of gender, culture, and race. For whom does the language of rights work? What can and cannot be said about justice in the language of rights?

• RELS 390  Special Topics:  Reading Race and Religion in Law and Literature: This course examines the relationship between structural and cultural elements in the construction of "race."  We will analyze the interactions between legal/structural constructions of race (such as racial prerequisites for U.S. citizenship, census categories, etc.) and religious and cultural  factors that shape the contexts of perceiving "difference."  Possible texts include Comfort Woman, by Nora Okja Keller; Memories of My Ghost Brother, by Heinz Insu Fenkl; Paradise, by Toni Morrison; City of God, by Gil Cuadros; Jasmine, by Bharati Mukherjee; Song of the Hummingbird, by Graciela Limon; and Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko.  We will also read legal cases and theoretical works as companions to these literary texts.

• CSP 20  Race, Gender, Culture: Re-Imagining "Justice" in the U.S.:  This course will examine ways that race, gender, and culture shape perspectives on justice in the U.S. Rather than considering these concepts as unchanging aspects of personal identities, we will consider the complexity of intersecting social categories (race, culture, gender, sexuality, and class) that challenge assumptions about both individualism and sameness within any group. By reading works in literature, law, and theory, we will explore multiple strategies of resistance and social change that develop from analyses of these factors of social experience. While race, gender, sexuality, class and culture will be critically analyzed as categories of experience for all people, the course will pay particular attention to voices often marginalized as "other" in the context of U.S. discourses on justice.

• CSP 1  Race, Class, Gender:  Women of Color in the U.S. (team-taught):This course examines gender, race, and class as categories of analysis for understanding the experiences of persons in U.S. society.  In an attempt to elucidate conceptions and ideas which shape cultural, social, and sexual identities, women of color are our primary focus.  By moving women of color from their historically marginal position in the curriculum to the center of our attention, we begin to explore ways of transforming knowledge about culture and society.  Specific readings, discussion, and writing center on themes of identity, difference, and resistance in the lives and experiences of U.S. women of color.

Bookmarks:

  Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Gender

  Community and Other Organizations

  Civil Rights

  Law Resource Page

  Search Engines and Indexes

  Newsmedia

  Web / Pedagogy

  Religious Studies

  Cultural Studies

  Postcolonial Studies

  Travel Links

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