American Hustle – Women in the Culture Industry

by UT Austin post doctoral researcher Allyson Stokes
contributing to Work in Progress
The Sony hacking scandal of 2014 has Americans talking about gender inequality. One of the notorious leaked emails revealed that the two female stars of the film American Hustle, Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence, earned less back-end compensation for the film than their male co-stars, Christian Bale and Bradley Cooper (7% versus 9%). This despite the fact that all four actors are comparable in terms of star power, critical acclaim, and award nominations for their performances.
Information also came to light about a pay gap between top executives. Among the 17 Sony employees whose salaries topped 1 million dollars, there is only one woman – Hannah Minghella, Co-president of Production at Columbia Pictures. Even more striking is the fact that Minghella earns much less than her co-president, Michael Deluca, a man with the exact same job title. While Deluca’s salary is 2.4 million, Minghella earns 1.5 million annually. Full post. . .

Enjoying our 2015 prospective student visitors

It’s always fun to meet our future cohort members and finally put a face to a name.  As Austinites, we have a natural inclination to talk about how much we love it here, perfect for recruiting our new colleagues. Who will be back in the fall?

 

Esther Sullivan in the latest issue of Contexts

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by Eric Enrique Borja

In her photo essay “Same trailer, different park,” which is featured in the “In Pictures” section of the new issue of Contexts magazine, Esther Sullivan reflects back on two years of ethnographic fieldwork. She conducted her field work in closing mobile home parks to better understand individual and community-wide responses to mass eviction and community dissolution.

Esther writes:

“I’m in my Florida room inside the Silver Sands Mobile Home Court. It is a linoleum-floored, screened in porch that runs the length of my single-wide trailer. Fifteen feet away, in front of my neighbors’ powder blue mobile home, a decorative sign reads: “Welcome to Paradise.” I’m tending the orchids my neighbor across the street gave me when another of our neighbors left to move in with his children, abandoning an extensive orchid collection in his still-furnished mobile home. I mist my orphaned orchids to the sounds of an old radio. I hear country singer Kacey Musgraves croon, “Same hurt in every heart. Same trailer, different park.”

It resonates. All of us here in Silver Sands are being evicted. This 55-and-older mobile home park once housed about 130 residents. The few who had money saved or families willing to house them are already gone. The rest of us have six months to get our selves, our belongings, and our homes off the property…”

To read more, be sure to click on this link: “Same trailer, different park”

Beth Cozzolino instrumental in the creation and passage of the Graduate Student Bill of Rights

Beth daily texan

by Eric Enrique Borja

Our very own Beth Cozzolino has successfully passed the Graduate Student Bill of Rights. A project Beth has spearheaded since the Summer of 2014. If it were not for her hard work and dedication, as well as the help of fellow committee members (Margaret Clark, David Ottesen, and Jake Jordan), the Executive Board of GSA and some members of the Graduate Student Workers, this bill would have never passed.

Thank you Beth!

Here is a link to the Daily Texan article about it: GSA approves Graduate Student Bill of Rights and Responsibilities