Presidential Sessions- Saturday June 30

Presidential Sessions are intended to highlight emerging trends in feminist theory and the field of women’s studies or to revisit central questions that have long shaped the field.

1)Troubling Girlhood: Racialised and Indigenous Girls Negotiating Multiple Spaces

9:30-10:15 Gallery Hall, Picasso

Feminist girls studies urgently needs to theorize citizenship, colonialism, migration, locality, place and space as these intersect to mediate racialised (Canadian-born, immigrant, refugee, and Indigenous) girls’ everyday lives.  Millions of girls around the world face the reality of displacement, homelessness, migration, and dislocation.  While much of the discourse concerning uprooting and displacement has centered on movement from one country to another, uprooting and displacement are also a reality for many within national borders.

Presenters
Jo-Anne Lee, University of Victoria
Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, University of Victoria
Sandrina De Finney, University of Victoria
Winnie Chow, University of Victoria
Helene Berman, University of Western Ontario

2)Politics of Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Contact Zone: Indigeneity and Im/Migration

11:00-12:15 St. Charles Ballroom, Salon VI

Presenter

Inés Hernández-Ávila, University of California, Davis

Inés Hernández-Ávila (Nez Perce and Tejana) is Professor of Native American Studies and Director of the Chicana/Latina Research Center at the University of California, Davis.  She is active in MALCS, Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social, a Chicana/Latina/indigenous women’s scholarly organization, and she is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Council for Research on Women.  She is a member of the Latina Feminist Group who produced Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonios, which won the Gustav Meyers Center Award as one of the ten outstanding books of 2002 focusing on issues of human rights and bigotry. 

She is a poet and cultural worker as well as a scholar.
See: http://www.hanksville.org/storytellers/h-a/

Dr. Hernández-Ávila's research/publication areas include issues of indigeneity, identity and community, Native American women’s and Chicana creativities and feminisms, Native American women's literature (particularly poetry and performance), contemporary indigenous literature of Mexico.  She is currently completing several projects, including a documentary on FOMMA, the Mayan women’s center and theater troupe based in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico.

3) Hip Hop Feminism

1:30-2:45 St. Charles Ballroom, Salon V

Dr. Elaine Richardson is an Associate Professor of English and Applied Linguistics at Pennsylvania State University. Richardson, aka "Dr. E" has published several books. Her first book is entitled African American Literacies, a significantly revised version of her dissertation, focusing on teaching writing from the point of view of African American Language and Literacy traditions. Her most recent book is Hiphop Literacies, a study of Hiphop language use as an extension of Black folk traditions.  The book she is currently writing describes her experiences growing up as a girl from the hood of Cleveland, Ohio getting into the street life and how she climbed out of the underworld to further her education and become who she is today. That book is entitled PhD to PhD-from Po Ho on Dope to PhD: The Literacy Narrative of Dr. Elaine Richardson.

Richardson has also co-edited two volumes on African American rhetorical theory and one recently published anthology by artists, writers, scholars, and diverse women on Hiphop Feminism—Home Girls Make Some Noise.

In 2004, she was Fulbright lecturing/researcher at the University of the West Indies, Mona Jamaica.

She is the single mother of three daughters: Evelyn, Ebony and Kaila.  She is also an adviser to the African American Support Group, a high school extracurricular group that focuses on Black empowerment and higher education. Finally, Dr. E is a singer-songwriter and recording artist, using her voice to reach people who might be down, but not out.

Presenters

Elaine Richardson, Independent Scholar and Artist
Veronica Bohanan, AquaMoon SpokenExistence, Inc. (moderator)
Camillia Williams, AquaMoon SpokenExistence, Inc. (moderator)

4)Birds of a Feather Flying North: Latina Immigrants and the Immigrant Experience in the United States

5:00-6:15 St. Charles Ballroom, Salon IV

Dr. Juanita Díaz-Cotto is an Associate Professor of Sociology, Women’s Studies, and Latin American and Caribbean Area Studies. Within Latin America and the Caribbean, her areas of interest include: revolutionary movements; state formation; political economy; peasants; the military; feminist and lesbian feminist movements in Latin America and the U.S.; and the African Diaspora. Additional specialties include: Latinas(os) and other women of color in the U.S. and the impact of the criminal justice system on women and men of color in the U.S. and Latin America. One of Dr. Díaz-Cotto’s primary academic and scholarly objectives is to help students bridge the gap between theory and practice inside and outside the classroom.

Presenters:

Mirtha N. Quintanales, New Jersey City University
Yvette Louis, New Jersey City University
Juanita Diaz-Cotto, State University of New York, Binghamton
Lourdes Torres, DePaul University