Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty

L. Ayu Saraswati

The contact information for Prof. Ayu Saraswati is as follows: L. Ayu Saraswati 213 H Bailey Hall 864-2307 ayu@ku.edu

Assistant Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (Ph.D., University of Maryland, 2007). Faculty member at the University of Kansas since 2008.

Research Interests - globalization of visual and virtual culture, transnational feminism and transnational feminist epistemology, postcolonial feminism, women's body image and beauty ideology, intersectionality of gender, race, skin color, sexuality, and nationality, management of affects in a transnational context, and Southeast Asian/Indonesian women's studies.

Teaching Interests - gender and cybersexuality, gender and global popular culture, gender and consumption in a global context, women and globalization, transnational feminism, feminist media (including the new media) and cultural studies, race and whiteness studies.

My research explores mediated cultural transmission and the production of whiteness in a transnational context. Specifically, I am interested in how the shifting meanings of white skin color, as it intersects with other categories of identity such as gender, race, and sexuality, in Indonesia from the pre- to post-colonial period are embedded in histories of transnational flows of people, ideas, and cultural objects. Some of the sites I examine include Javanese adaptation of Indian folktales, beauty product advertisements and transnational women's magazines, postcolonial Indonesian novels, and the cyberspace as a transnational, visual/virtual, and "emotional" (affective) space.

I have taught "Theories of Feminism," "Women, Shopping, and Global Malls," "Women, Art, and Culture," "Women and Society," "Gender, Globalization, and Cyberspace," "Transnational Feminism," "Feminist Postcolonial Theories," and "Gender and Consumption." Classes I will teach include: "Gender and Sexuality in Cyberspace" and "Gender and Popular Culture in a Global Context."

Recent Articles

• "Female Beauty and Post-colonial Masculinity in Pramoedya Ananta Toer's Buru Tetralogy" (in Indonesian). In: Mediated Representation: Essays on Gender by Indonesian Writers, edited by Lisabona Rahman. Jakarta: Komunitas Utan Kayu, 2007.
• "State Violence, Women, and Patriarchal State" (in Indonesian). In: State and Violence against Women, edited by N. I. Subono. Jakarta: Yayasan Jurnal Perempuan (Women's Journal Foundation), 2000, 33-56.
• "GABRIELA: Women's Movement and Mass Mobilization in the Philippines" (in Indonesian), Women's Journal 14 (2000) 27-45.