Good morning and welcome to Gender Across Borders III: Research Transformations. Thank you all very much for coming, and thanks to our graduate committee members
Swati Bandi, Nicky Fox, Kimberly Girdlestone, Ruth Goldman, Emma H. Johnson, Paola M. Kersch, Amber O’Daniels, Hope L. Russell, and Laurie Sanders
I also want to extend special thanks to:
Faculty advisors Gail Willsky and Gwynn Thomas, Co-Directors Margarita Vargas and Rosemary Dziak, Associate Director Patricia Shelly, Lori Johnson, and Joseph Gardella
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This is the Gender Institute’s third biannual graduate symposium on women and gender. Each conference has been larger and brought in more geographically and professionally diverse crowd. This year, panelists from
With panels on hip-hop, medicine, pharmacology, ethics, women and global development, border-crossing, global gender practices, Buffalo activism and much more, this conference breaks new ground in the diversity of subject matter all oriented around the study of women and gender. This is one way in which the conference theme—“transformations”—suggests that the future of research depends upon cross-border dialogue among women and gender researchers. Another remarkable aspect of this year’s panelists is the large number who focus on gender practices, queerness, and the construction of sexualities, indicating the expansion of women’s and gender studies to focus on the category of gender in all of its complexity and fluidity.
The “transformations” theme is also intended to invoke the radical changes that have already taken place in women’s and gender studies and to encourage us to think of how to continue transforming the field this weekend and beyond. Our special session panelists for Creating a Space for Women in Science will begin by discussing their experiences and recommendations for women’s increased participation in sciences. Tanya Furman, our sciences keynote, will cap this special session with a discussion of women in the sciences emerging from her work as Pennsylvania State University Professor of Geosciences, Assistant Vice President & Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education, and a recipient of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring (2005). At 5pm today, our humanities keynote speaker, Layli Phillips, Associate Professor of Women's Studies & African American Studies at Georgia State University and editor of The Womanist Reader, will offer suggestions for transformations in politics and in women’s and gender studies through the framework of spiritual activism. And at 3pm tomorrow, faculty, graduate students, and panelists will meet for a summary roundtable that integrates the conference events to create a vision for research transformations.
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This year we have the most co-sponsors we’ve ever had, making the conference more interdisciplinary than ever before. I would like to thank the
Department of American Studies
UB Art Galleries
Association of Women in Science
Canadian-American Studies Committee
Frameline Films
UB Graduate Student Association
School of Engineering & Applied Sciences
Department of English
Feminist Student Association
Department of Global Gender Studies
Department of History
UB Humanities Institute
Jewish Graduate Students Association
and Erin Offer, producer and director of Counting Headz: South African Sistaz in Hip Hop
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In part because of these sponsorships, the Gender Institute has been able to spend money on making the conference as ecologically sound as possible. These efforts are happening because of the leadership of our sustainability coordinator Nicky Fox and Jim Simon at UB Green, who helped us with strategies and recommendations. We have purchased carbon offsets for the entire conference (including travel). But we also have worked to make our daily practice as sustainable as possible and we ask for your help.
energy-saving: please turn off or lower any lights you see as you go throughout the conference
using china and mugs instead of disposable food service: At the registration tables upstairs in Clemens 1004 there are a number of donated coffee mugs, provided by Campus Dining and Shops and UB Green. Please feel free to take one of these—they are yours to keep. In case we use all of those, Planned Parenthood of Western New York has also donated coffee mugs for use during the conference; if you’ll be using one of these, we’ve provided some identifying string so you know whose is whose. At the end of each day we’ll wash them—these are a temporary loan, so please feel free to use them but make sure to return them before the conference is over.
carpooling: Committee members will be making daily runs to the conference hotel and the university; please contact me for information about the carpool.
limited printed materials: we encourage you to recycle your programs and name tags in the boxes provided at the registration tables and to visit www.genderbuffalo.org for details that are not included in the print program.
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Finally, I want to mention a few small changes that took place after the programs were printed this week:
Today, at 1pm, the panel on Global Perspectives on Women and Development will take place in Clemens Hall 1004, not in Clemens 910.
Today, at 6pm, our reception following the keynote lecture will be held in the CFA Black Box Theatre, not in the CFA Atrium lobby as listed.
Tomorrow, we’re very excited to welcome English Ph. D. candidate Ryan Hatch as a co-respondent for panel 3B, Liberating Sex, at 9am in NSC 205.
And, although the change made it into the program, the error is listed on the poster, so I want to mention that the film screening at Squeaky Wheel Media Resources, originally planned for the conference, has been cancelled. We’ve found a really transformative alternative: the committee members and some panelists will be attending the Queen City Roller Girls bout between the Nickel City Knockouts and the Devil Dollies tomorrow at 7pm at the Rainbow Rink in
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Now, it’s my pleasure to introduce Laurie Sanders, a Ph. D. candidate in Biochemistry and a member of the graduate committee, who will say a few words to open our special session “Creating a Space for Women in Science.”
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