Africanist scholar to lecture, attend ILR conference

Seidman

Gay Seidman, one the nation's leading Africanist scholars, will give a free public talk titled "Institutional Dilemmas: Representation vs. Mobilization in the South African Gender Commission" on Thursday, Sept. 30, at 12:20 p.m. in 153 Uris Hall. Seidman's talk is part of Cornell's Institute for African Development's weekly seminar series.

Seidman, professor of sociology and chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has lived and worked in a number of African countries including Ghana, Zambia, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Her areas of interest include the sociology of economic change and development, labor, gender, social movements, political sociology and demography. She has written extensively on these topics in the context of Southern Africa. Her most recent book is Manufacturing Militance: Workers' Movements in Brazil and South Africa, 1970-1985 (University of California Press, 1994). She received her B.A. in social studies from Harvard University (1978), an M.A. in sociology (1982), an M.A. in demography (1989) and a Ph.D in sociology, all from the University of California-Berkeley.

Seidman also will be participating in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations conference "Strategies for Urban Labor Revitalization: Union Campaigns in Large, Midsize and Global Cities," on Friday, Oct. 1, and Saturday, Oct. 2.

Each semester, the Institute for African Development sponsors a campus visit through its Distinguished Africanist Scholar program. Distinguished scholars deliver free public talks that provide insights on contemporary African issues, challenges and future policy directions. In addition, the distinguished scholars participate in one or more classes and meet with students and faculty.

For more information about Seidman's visit, see the IAD Web site at http://www.einaudi.cornell.edu/africa/news/index.asp.