NWSA SPEAKERS BUREAU
Thank you for your interest in the NWSA speaker's bureau.
NWSA is pleased to announce its speaker's bureau participants for the 2008-2009 academic calendar. These speakers address a wide range of topics of critical importance to Women's Studies and would make a valuable contribution to your institution's programming.
The speakers listed below have volunteered to give at least one lecture in the 2008-2009 academic year on behalf of NWSA, pending their availability.
Speakers donate their time to NWSA, and host institutions pay a $1,000 speaker's fee directory to the National Women's Studies Association, in addition to the speaker's travel and lodging expenses. Speakers' fees will support new and existing projects at NWSA.
If you would like to arrange a lecture or need further information, (please click here to fill out a request form.) Some speakers may be available to address topics other than those listed here. Please do not contact the speakers directly.
We currently have 16 speakers available:
camil.williams and veronica precious bohanan
AquaMoon
Topics:
- Resistance! Performance Feminism
- Hip~Hop does not exist in a bubble...
- Dismantling the Culture of Silence...
The Chicago Tribune has dubbed AquaMoon as, "An artistic team rooted in social services and revolution. They also happen to make some buttery-smooth, jazz-infused, soul-doused tunes that sound like a coffee house blend of Digable Planets and the poetry of Nikki Giovanni. Their art is, in many ways, a contemporary manifestation of the Black Arts Movement."
AquaMoon is the writing performance and artistic team of camil.williams and veronica precious bohanan. AquaMoon upholds its motto, "Dismantling the Culture of Silence," by helping to bridge the gap between the streets, hip hop feminism, performance activism, and academia.
The team's choreopoem AquaBeats and Moon Verses: Volume I follows in the tradition of Ntozake Shange and Eve Ensler and is the "sistagyrls" declaration of African American womonhood. Their second production Volume II: Brotha! Wassup Sun? was written in Black male voice to include men in their discussion of race, class and gender. AquaMoon has published books and cds, Om : My Sistagyrl Lotus, butta to fly: a poetic compilation of art and sound, and Aqua Beats and Moon Verses: Volume I.
In addition to their productions, the team has transcended the stage and page with a visual art exhibit, Activism through Art and Poetry. The team travels widely and works with educational inst
Carrie N. Baker
Smith College
Topics:
- Social Change from the Grassroots: The Women's Movement Against Sexual Harassment
- Sex, Trade and Trafficking (global or United States focus)
Carrie N. Baker is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Program for the Study of Women and Gender at Smith College. She holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Yale University and a J.D. and Ph.D. in Women?s Studies from Emory University. Baker's primary areas of research are women?s legal history, gender and public policy, and women's social movements.
Her recent book, The Women's Movement Against Sexual Harassment(Cambridge University Press, 2008), tells the story of how a diverse grassroots social movement brought sexual harassment to the public agenda in the 1970s and 1980s. She has also published articles in Feminist Studies, Women in Politics, The Journal of Women's History, NWSA Journal, The Journal of Law and Inequality, Emory Law Journal, and the online journal Women and Social Movements in the United States.
Aimee Carrillo Rowe
University of Iowa
Topics:
- Power Lines: On the Subject of Feminist Alliances
- Women on the Inside: Transracial Alliances in the History of Women's Studies
- The Rhythm of Ambition: 'Power Temporalities' in Indian Call Centers
- Feeling in the Dark: Empathy, Whiteness, and Miscege-nation in Monster?s Ball
- L is For_: Longing and Racialized Erotics in The L-Word
Aimee Carrillo Rowe is Associate Professor of Rhetoric and POROI (Project on Rhetoric of Inquiry) at The University of Iowa. Her teaching and writing address the politics of representation and feminist alliances, third world feminism, critical ethnography, and whiteness and antiracism. Her book manuscript, Power Lines: On the Subject of Feminist Alliances (Duke University Press, 2008), offers a coalitional theory of subjectivity as a bridge to difference-based alliances. Her writing appears primarily in interdisciplinary outlets such as Hypatia (Summer 2007), NWSA Journal (Summer 2005), and Radical History Review (Summer 2004). Works in progress include: a coauthored book (with Sheena Malhotra and Kimberlee Perez) on subject formation in Indian call centers; the politics of racialized belonging for mixed-race women in contemporary U.S. popular culture.
Beverly Guy-Sheftall
Spelman College
Unavailable for 2008 due to sabbatical leave
Topics:
- African American Women's Activism
- Global Black Feminisms
- A Retrospective on Black Feminist Thought
Guy-Sheftall is the founding director of the Women's Research and Resource Center and Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women's Studies. She is also adjunct professor at Emory University's Institute for Women's Studies where she teaches graduate courses.
She has published a number of texts within African American and Women's Studies which have been noted as seminal works by other scholars, including the first anthology on Black women's literature, Sturdy Black Bridges: Visions of Black Women in Literature (Doubleday, 1980), which she coedited with Roseann P. Bell and Bettye Parker Smith; her dissertation, Daughters of Sorrow: Attitudes Toward Black Women, 1880-1920 (Carlson, 1991); Words of Fire: An Anthology of African American Feminist Thought (New Press, 1995); and an anthology she co-edited with Rudolph Byrd entitled Traps: African American Men on Gender and Sexuality (Indiana University Press, 2001). Her most recent publication is a book coauthored with Johnnetta Betsch Cole, Gender Talk: The Struggle for Women's Equality in African American Communities (Random House, 2003).
Diane Harriford
Vassar College
Topics:
- Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud!: Women Organizing after Hurricane Katrina
- Women and Abu Ghraib
- Teaching Women's Studies in the 21st Century
- Black Women's Intellectual Tradition
- Revisiting Audre Lorde
Diane Harriford is associate professor of sociology and Director of the Women's Studies Program at Vassar College. She teaches courses on inequality, social construction of race, gender and sexuality and Black Intellectual History. Her current research interests focus on women's organizing in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She also has a forthcoming book from the University of Texas Press co-authored with Becky Thompson, When the Center is on Fire: Social Theory for Our Times.
Barb Howe
West Virginia University
Topics:
- Places Where Women Made History
- 19th and 20th Century Women Architects
Howe serves as the co-chair of the NWSA Program Administration and Development Committee and Director of the Center for Women's studies at West Virginia University. Her research interests focus on wage-earning women in 19th-century West Virginia cities.
Prior to becoming director of the Center for Women's Studies, she directed the WVU Public History Program for 20 years and has also written about the history of women in historic preservation and architecture. Her public service work has included numerous projects related to women's history, especially in West Virginia, and public history.
Irene Kai
Topics:
- Chinese American women history
- Redefining the American Dream
Irene Kai is a third generation American born and raised in Hong Kong. She is the author of award-winning The Golden Mountain: Beyond the American Dream (Silver Light Publications, 2004 ) chronicling four generations of Chinese women in her family spanning 100 years and two continents, and What Do You See? ( Silver Light Publications, 2006) which challenges the readers' perceptions and assumptions.
Kai graduated from the School of Visual Arts, NYC and the Royal College of Art, London and taught Graphic Design at Penn State University. Irene is an artist, author, publisher, teacher and activist. She has traveled extensively and now makes her home in Ashland, Oregon.
Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy
University of Arizona, Tucson
Topics:
- What is the subject of women's studies?
- Socialist feminism: what difference did it make to the history of women's studies?
- Major challenges in administering women's studies today
Kennedy was a founding member of Women's Studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo where she taught for twenty eight years. She has also written extensively about the development of Women's Studies as a field, and is co-author of Feminist Scholarship: Kindling in the Grove of Academe (University of Illinois Press, 1985) (with Ellen DuBois et al.) and co-editor of Women's Studies for the Future: Foundations, Interrogations, Politics (Rutgers University Press, 2005)(with Agatha Beins).
Her research pioneered the study of lesbian history, writing the prize-wining book, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community (Routledge, 1993) (with Madeline Davis). She is currently writing Searching for Julia: Marriage, Lesbianism and Class in 20th Century America. Using oral history, the book tells the life story of Julia Boyer Reinstein, an upper-middle class woman born in rural western New York in 1906.
Judy Norsigian
Executive Director, Our Bodies Ourselves
Topics:
- Stem Cell Research and Implications for Women
- The Impact of the Media on Women's Health
A co-founder of the BWHBC and co-author of all editions of Our Bodies, Ourselves, Norsigian is a graduate of Radcliffe College and an internationally renowned speaker and writer on a wide range of women's health concerns.
Her interests include national health care reform, tobacco and women, midwifery advocacy, reproductive health, genetic technologies, and contraceptive research. She has appeared on numerous television and radio programs including Oprah, Donahue, The Today Show, Good Morning America, and NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw.
Andrea O'Reilly
York University
Topics:
- Rocking the Cradle; Thoughts on Motherhood, Feminism and the Possibility of Empowered Mothering
- From Playpens to Playdates: Ideologies and Practices of Mothering in the 20th/21st century
- Mothers and Sons: Feminism, Masculinity and the Struggle to Raise our Sons
- Motherhood and Women's Literature
O'Reilly is an Associate Professor in the School of Women's Studies at York University where she teaches a course on motherhood (the first course on Motherhood in Canada). She is co-editor/editor of eight books including Mothers and Sons: Feminism, Masculinity and the Struggle to Raise our Sons, (2001), Mother Outlaws: Theories and Practices of Empowered Mothering (2004) and Motherhood: Power and Oppression, (2005) Toni Morrison and Motherhood: A Politics of the Heart, (2004) and Rocking the Cradle: Thoughts on Motherhood, Feminism and the Possibility of Empowered Mothering (2006). Her edited volume Feminist Mothering is forthcoming from SUNY press.
O'Reilly is founder and director of The Association for Research on Mothering, (ARM). Founded in 1998, ARM is the first feminist research association on the topic of mothering-motherhood, now with 600 members worldwide. In 1998 she was the recipient of the University wide "Professor of the Year" award at York University.
María Ochoa
San José State University
Topics:
- Hopeful Insistence, Informed Resistance: Writing and Social Agency
- Liberating the Historical Narrative: Crafting Transparent Authority
- Coloring Outside the Lines: Women of Color and Creative Expression
- Bucks for Change: Raising Funds for Progressive Issues
Born and raised in Oakland, California, María Ochoa earned a doctorate in History of Consciousness from the University of California Santa Cruz and a bachelor of arts in Humanities from New College of California. She has taught courses at San José State University, Cal State Hayward, University of California Santa Cruz, and Stanford University in the areas of art history, American, Chicana/o, cultural, ethnic, and women's studies.
Her books include Shout Out: Women of Color Respond to Violence, an anthology co-edited with Dr. Barbara K. Ige that includes findings derived from academic research, creative non-fiction, poetry, and visual art by more than 50 women and girls from around the world; Voices of Russell City: An Oral History About a Town and Its People about Mexican, African American, and ethnic white residents of a rural Alameda County community; Creative Collectives: Chicana Painters Working in Community, a series of oral histories conducted with artists active in the height of the Chicana/o Movement of the 1960s and 70s; a special edition journal Enunciating Our Terms: Women of Color in Collaboration and Conflict. Her writing also includes contributions to various reference books including Latinas in the United States: An Historical Encyclopedia and Encyclopedia of Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy.
She is the producer/director of Voices of Russell City, a social documentary film short that accompanies her book of the same name. Ochoa's most recent poetry is found in the PEN collection Oakland Out Loud: Poetry and Prose in Celebration of "There".
In recognition of her "contributions to the arts," the California State Assembly honored her as a Woman of the Year in 1999. Other awards include an artists' grant from the Creative Work Fund, two Ford Foundation research fellowships, a National Women's Studies Association prize for her dissertation, and a residency with the UC Humanities Research Institute. She is co-founder of the Research Cluster for the Study of Women of Color in Conflict and Collaboration at the University of California Santa Cruz.
María Ochoa teaches at San José State University in the department of social science and women's studies program. She has, in the past, served as the executive director of a visual arts center, coordinator for development (fundraising and public relations) at a women and girls' focused community foundation, and outreach worker for a women's multi-service center.
Layli Phillips
Georgia State University, Atlanta
Topics:
- Womanism: On Its Own
- Africana Studies/Queer Studies Intersections
- Women & Hip Hop
Phillips is Associate Professor of Women's Studies and a faculty affiliate of the African American Studies department at Georgia State University in Atlanta. She recently published The Womanist Reader (Routledge, 2006), an anthology of the first quarter century of womanist thought.
Her research has also been published in journals such as Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, The Journal of African American Studies, The Journal of African American History, and Sexuality & Culture. She teaches courses and conducts research on womanism, Black feminism, Black queer studies, and women and hip hop. She also conducts historical research on early Black psychologists Mamie P. and Kenneth B. Clark and writes on liberation psychology.
From 2000-2005, she served as coordinator of the NWSA Women of Color Leadership Project. She holds a bachelor's degree from Spelman College, a master's degree from Penn State, and a Ph.D. from Temple University.
Paula Rothenberg
Murphy Institute, CUNY
Topics:
- Multicultural Curriculum Transformation: Beyond Tacos and Egg Ross
- Now You See It, Now You Don't: Deconstructing the Politics of Privilege
- Snatched from the Jaws of Victory: Feminism Then and Now
Paula Rothenberg lectures and consults on curriculum transformation and issues of inequality and privilege at colleges and universities around the country. Her articles and essays appear in journals and anthologies across the disciplines and many have been widely reprinted. Formerly Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at William Paterson University, in Wayne NJ, and Director of The New Jersey Project on Inclusive Scholarship, Curriculum and Teaching, she is currently Senior Fellow at the Murphy Institute, CUNY. Author of Invisible Privilege A Memoir About Race, Class, and Gender (University Press of Kansas, 2000, paper 2004), her widely used diversity text Race, Class, and Gender in the United States (St. Martin's/Worth) is now in its seventh edition and her text anthology White Privilege: Essential Readings on the Other Side of Racism (Worth 2008) is now in its third edition. Her newest college text Beyond Borders: Thinking Critically about Global Issues was published in 2005.
Ann Russo
DePaul University
Topics:
- Violence and Resistance in Women's Lives
- Feminist Antiracism and the Struggle against White Privilege
Russo is an Associate Professor and Director of Women's Studies at DePaul University. Her research, teaching, and activism focus on issues of sexual, racial, and homophobic harassment, abuse, and violence in women's lives.
She has authored or edited six books and numerous articles. Taking Back Our Lives: A Call to Action in the Feminist Movement makes central to feminist work how interlocking systems of oppression and privilege shape experiences and responses to violence.
Her latest co-editing project with Sandra Jackson is Talking Back and Acting Out: Women Negotiating Media Across Cultures, which highlights women's stories of resistance to negative and limited images in mass media and popular culture. She is involved in many local organizations focused on interpersonal and state violence against women and women's resistance to that violence.
Stephanie A. Sellers
Gettysburg College
Topics:
- Native American Gynocracies
- Native American Culture and Links with American Women?s Suffrage
Stephanie Sellers, Ph.D. is the Native Americanist at Gettysburg College and teaches in several departments. Her first book, Native American Autobiography Redefined: A Handbook, reexamines ethnographic texts around the turn of the 20th century, particularly analyzing portrayals of Native women.
Her most recent work forthcoming from Peter Lang Publishing, Native American Women's Studies Primer, offers a traditional indigenous critique of some feminist terminology, practices, and theories. Most importantly, it is a guide for college instructors and community leaders to teach indigenous cultural perspectives about women in order to empower all women.
Susan M. Shaw
Oregon State University
Topics:
- Girls with Guitars: Women, Feminism, and Rock & Roll
- I Am Woman: Southern Baptist Women, Feminism, and Contradiction
- We've a Story to Tell: Southern Baptist Women in Ministry
- Transforming the Curriculum: Thinking about the Disciplines in terms of Power, Privilege, & Difference
Susan M. Shaw is director of Women Studies and director of the Difference, Power, and Discrimination Program at Oregon State University. She is the author of God Speaks to Us, Too: Southern Baptist Women on Church, Home, and Society and co-author of