Looking Back, Moving Forward
Celebrating 35 Years of Women's Studies
The 5th Annual Women's Studies Student Conference has as its theme this year: "Looking Back, Moving Forward: Celebrating 35 Years of Women's Studies." This event will launch a year-long celebration of our department, including a Faculty Exhibit of our history through the College of Arts and Sciences and a Women's History Month lecture by renowned feminist scholar Beverly Guy-Sheftall, both scheduled for spring 2007.
The student conference will begin Thursday, November 30, 2006, with an opening reception and a spoken-word/dance performance by undergraduate students, titled Words of the Prophets. Both reception and performance take place in the University Art Museum, with the opening reception beginning at 4:30 pm and the performance beginning at 6 pm. The second day, Friday, December 1, 2006, continues with presentations of student papers and projects highlighting the theme of history and the study of women and gender, as requested in the Call for Papers.
Presenters include both undergraduate and graduate students at the University at Albany. We will also feature presentations by undergraduate and graduate students from Le Moyne College and Syracuse University respectively, thus making this year's conference a statewide event. A keynote address will be delivered by local community activist Nadya Lawson, University at Albany alumnae and President of the Holding Our Own Women's Foundation. Her keynote is titled "Minoring in Women's Studies, Majoring in Community," and begins at 12 noon. Presentations will take place all day in the Standish Room, third floor of the Science Library, the first session scheduled to begin at 8:45 am. The conference will close with an important roundtable discussion at 4 pm, "War, Terror, and Rape: Looking Back and Moving Forward," which will address recent concerns about sexual violence on campus and place the issue in both historical and global contexts. Participants on the roundtable will include a cross-range of faculty, students, residential life staff, and local community advocates addressing sexual violence.
The annual student conference began in Fall 2002 as a final project for the graduate seminar "Feminist Theory," in which students were expected to combine theory with practice and consider the conference format as a potential tool for activism and public education. (See this year's Conference Organizers.) It has continued each fall semester, highlighting different themes each year. This year's focus will call attention to the survival and growth of Women's Studies at the University at Albany and reflect on the impact of this field of study on the university and community at large. The conference is sponsored by the departments of Women's Studies, Africana Studies, Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies, Art, English, History, and Sociology, University Auxiliary Services, Multicultural Affirmative Action, the Center for Women in Government & Civil Society, and the Women's Studies GSO group, CATALYST.
Recent Student Conferences