Guest scholars from as far away as Cameroon, Bulgaria and Russia are scheduled to speak at a day-long conference on international gender research Wednesday, June 4, in the Campus Center Assembly Hall. Open to the public, the conference is intended for faculty, students, and those interested in women's, area, and ethnic studies.

"The conference will bring together a group of presenters and scholars ...to talk about the main research priorities both globally and on women in Africa, Russia and Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean," said Professor Iris Berger, one of the conference organizers.

The conference is being organized by the Center for Latino, Latin American, and Caribbean Studies (CELAC) and the Institute for Research on Women (IROW). Early registration is encouraged.

University at Albany faculty and students who pre-register for the June 4 conference will be charged $5. Cost to the general public is $15, and the cost to register the day of the event is $20. Lunch is $10, payable in advance, and is optional. Checks may be made out to University Auxiliary Service and mailed to: Gender Research in Global Perspective, Institute for Research on Women, SS 341, University at Albany, Albany, N.Y., 12222.

A second event, a faculty development institute, will be held June 5-8 in the Campus Center and the Humanities building. Forty participants for the institute will be selected from faculty applicants who are revising existing courses or developing new courses to include significant coverage of women and gender in international contexts. Conference speakers, women's studies and area studies scholars, and curriculum specialists will run workshops and discussions during the institute. Participants may be from any discipline and will receive a stipend to help cover expenses. The deadline for applying to the faculty development institute is April 30. However, faculty members who are still interested in applying should contact Deborah White, research associate at IROW, in Social Science 341, by phone at 442-3311, by fax at 442-4936, or e-mail at [email protected], to find out whether applications are still being taken.

The conference and the faculty development institute are funded by the Ford Foundation and the University, and are organized in conjunction with the three-year project Internationalizing Women's Studies: Cross-Cultural Approaches to Gender Research and Teaching.

Scheduled conference speakers and their topics include:

• Cheryl Johnson-Odim, Loyola University, Chicago, "The Role of Theory in Feminist Struggle." She is the author of For Women and the Nation: A Biography of Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti of Nigeria; co-editor of Expanding the Boundaries of Women's History.
• Asuncion Lavrin, Arizona State University, "Researching Women and Gender in Latin American History." She is the author of Women, Feminism and Social Change in the Southern Cone 1890-1940, Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, and Latin American Women: Historical Perspectives.
• Nalova Lyonga, University of Buea, Cameroon, "Women in African Literature." She is the author of Natural Democrats: Women and the Leadership Crisis in Cameroon Literature and African Women in Feminist Theories (forthcoming).
• Kornelia Merdjanska, Sofia University, Bulgaria, "North American Feminism: A View from Eastern Europe." She is co-editor of the forthcoming Women's Time and What's in a Name? and is the author of Does Feminism Speak East-European?
• Anastasia Posadskaya-Vanderbeck, Rutgers University and Moscow Center for Gender Studies, "Women and Politics in Russia and Eastern Europe," editor of Women in Russia: A New Era In Russia's Feminism; co-author of Democracy Without Women is No Democracy: Women's Struggles in Post-Communist Russia.

In addition to Berger, conference and institute organizers include Edna Acosta-Belen, director of CELAC, Francine Frank, director of the Center for the Arts and Humanities, and Gwen Moore, director of IROW.