Contact
Kristin Peterson
kpeterson@dom.edu
(708) 524-6452
March 2, 2010
Dominican University presents Gender & Women Studies Conference
Dominican University and Concordia University Chicago will present the second annual Gender and Women Studies Mini Conference on Saturday, March 20 from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. in Parmer Hall, 7900 W. Division Street, River Forest. The half-day conference will feature formal paper, poster and art presentations by students, faculty and staff at both universities. All work will address the themes of gender or the study of women.
During Women’s History Month in March, Dominican University will also hold two other lectures on women and gender. Joey Mogul, an attorney with the People’s Law Office, will present a lecture titled “Fags, Queers, Dykes, and Butches: The State’s Use of Sexism and Homophobia to Execute Gay Women and Men” on Wednesday, March 24 at 3:30 p.m. in the Social Hall. Mogul will examine how the sexual orientation of defendants has been used against them in capital murder trials. Statistics show that as many as 40 percent of all women on death row are lesbians.
As an attorney, Mogul focuses on civil rights cases that involve police misconduct, criminal cases brought against individuals engaged in street demonstrations and other forms of First Amendment expression, and capital defense cases. She was active in the litigation and community organizing around the Chicago Police Department torture cases. She is an adjunct law professor at DePaul University College of Law.
Stephanie Young, assistant professor in communication studies at the University of Southern Indiana, will present a lecture on “Personal Stories, Collective Pasts: Examining the Artworks of Esther Parada” on Monday, March 29 at 3:30 p.m. in the Springer Suite of the Crown Library. Drawing upon theories in feminism, rhetoric, and collective memory, Young will explore how Chicago-based artist Esther Parada (1938-2005) utilized personal and familial photographs in her artworks to construct imaginative and critical visual understandings of collective pasts. Parada is recognized as a significant contributor to feminist contemporary photography, and she was successful at recreating visions of familial memory and communal pasts.
Young wrote her dissertation on Parada’s memory art. Her other research interests include rhetorical criticism, visual rhetoric, collective memory studies, gender studies, and issues of race and identity. Currently, she is working on an autoethnographic piece that explores how the performance and interrogation of an interracial identity can be used as a tool for encouraging classroom discussions about race, racial identity and interracial relations in the United States.
The cost for the Gender and Women Studies Conference is $20. Both of the lectures are free and open to the public. For more information or to register for the conference, contact Christina Perez, associate professor of sociology and director of the Women and Gender Studies Program at Dominican, at (708) 524-6693 or cperez@dom.edu.
Founded in 1901, Dominican University is a comprehensive, coeducational Catholic institution offering bachelor’s degrees in the Rosary College of Arts and Sciences and master’s degrees through the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, the Brennan School of Business, the School of Education, the Graduate School of Social Work, and the School of Learning and Continuing Studies. In the 2010 issue of America’s Best Colleges, U.S. News & World Report ranked Dominican University in the top 20 of Midwest master’s level universities and included it as one of 15 Midwest “Great Schools at Great Prices.”
