2008 Conference Schedule
Preliminary Schedule
(subject to change)
Tenth Annual Women’s History Month Conference
Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY
Friday - Saturday March 7 - 8, 2008
Friday March 7, 2008
4:30–8 p.m.
Registration in Heimbold Lobby
6 - 8 p.m.
Heimbold 202
Opening Plenary
Welcome - Tara James, Associate Director, Graduate Program in Women’s History, Sarah Lawrence College
Keynote Address – Chana Kai Lee, Associate Professor of History and Women's Studies at the University of Georgia, and author of For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer
8 - 9 p.m.
Slonim House Living Room
Opening Reception, sponsored by the Graduate Student Senate
9 - 10:30 p.m.
Slonim House Living Room
Poetry Readings, hosted by Maria Consuelo James, Central Pennsylvania College
Saturday March 8, 2008
8a.m.-3 p.m.
Registration in Heimbold Lobby
8 - 9 a.m.
Breakfast Reception in Heimbold Lobby
9 - 10:15 a.m.
Reisinger Concert Hall
Plenary Session
Opening Remarks: Lyde Sizer, Co-Director, Graduate Program in Women’s History, Sarah Lawrence College
Plenary Panel: Warrior Womyn: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Black Power and Grassroots Feminism
- Safiya Bandele – Medgar Evers College CUNY
Sisterhood is Local: Feminist Organizing in Brooklyn, NY from the 1970’s – Present - Mae Jackson – Caring for Change
Aging Political Activists: Where are Our Sisters? - Robyn Spencer – Lehman College
In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens: Black Feminist Community Organizing in New York
10:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Breakout Session I
Panel: "Movement Mamas” Transgressive and Transnational Traditions of Black Female Activism
- Brittney Cooper – Emory University
Pauli Murray’s Black Female Braintrust: Towards a Hermeneutic of Elasticity in Black Power/Black Feminism Scholarship - Elizabeth Jones – Georgetown University Law Center
Activist Mothers: Diasporic Models of Female Leadership in the Black Power Movement - Brenda Tindal – Emory University
Beyond “Revolutionary Glamour”: A Critical Essay on Angela Davis as Cause Cèlébre of American Radicalism
Panel: Black Women’s Body Politics: Health and Sexuality
- Evan Hart – University of Cincinnati
“Guerrillas in the Midst”: The National Black Women’s Health Project - Yvonne, V. Wells – Suffolk University
How the Feminism of Michele Wallace Speaks to the Current Disintegration of Sexual Health in African American Women - John Gavin White– New Jersey City University
"What's Weighing Our Our Black Superwomen Down?”: Exploring the Correspondence Between Deviant Womanhood and Weight
Panel: “Why Can’t We Rightfully Claim Our Place in the World?”: Exploring Black Feminist Activism and Womanism
- Rose Afriyie – National Organization for Women
Black Feminist Movement Building - Carol Giardina – Queens College
Revolutionary Black Feminism - Sherie Randolph – University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Florynce Kennedy and the Creation of a Black Nationalist Multiracial Feminist Alliance
Panel: “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants”: Black Women Activist as Icons
- Joseph R. Fitzgerald - Gloucester County College
“Gloria Richardson: Midwife of Black Power” - Evelyn M. Simien – University of Connecticut
Intersections of Race, Class, and Gender in the Life of Fannie Lou Hamer - Claudia Fatimah Smith - Cincinnati Union Bethel Early Childhood Education Department
The Life and Times of Queen Mother Moore (1898-1996): Encounters with a Female Icon of the Black Power Movement - Linda Tomlinson – Clark Atlanta University
“The Fight is On”: Juanita Jewel Craft and the Dallas NAACP Youth Council
Workshop: Love Sex and Power: The Impact of Religion and the Bible on Black Women’s Sexuality
- Presenters: Lakeisha R. Harrison and Rev. Penny Willis – Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice
12:30 – 1:15 p.m.
Lunch Break, Heimbold Lobby
1:30-3:00 p.m.
Breakout Session II
Film and Discussion: “Hey…Shorty!”
Film produced by Girls for Gender Equity’s Sisters in Strength program and Malcolm X Grassroots Movement
- Mandy Van Deven – Community Organizing Coordinator Girls for Gender Equity, Inc.
- Ashley Lewis – Director of film, Girls for Gender Equality, Inc.
- Joanne Smith – Executive Director, Girls for Gender Equality, Inc.
- Emily May – Co-founder Hollaback NYC
Panel: “Separate Yourself and Deal With One Issue At A Time”: The Intersection of Race and Class in Black Women’s Activism
- Christy Garrison Harrison – Georgia State University.
"They Were Black Nationalists and They Didn't Even Know It”: Ella Mae Brayboy; The First Black Deputy Voter Registrar in Atlanta, Georgia and Dorothy Bolden, founder of the National Domestic Worker's Union - Premilla Nadasen – Queens College
Johnnie Tillmon: Black Visionary for Welfare Justice - Rickie Solinger - Independent Scholar
The First Welfare Case: Challenging the Meaning of Marriage, the Meaning of Money and the Meanings of History after the Voting Rights Movement in Selma, Alabama
Panel: “Our Prison Is This Whole Society”: The Power of Rhetoric in Black Power Activism
- Angela D. Coleman - Sisterhood Agenda
The Black is Beautiful Movement - Christina Greene – University of Wisconsin
“Power to the Ice Pick!”: Gender and Black Power Rhetoric in the Joan Little Sexual Assault-Murder Case - Heather Ostman – Westchester Community College
The Rhetoric of Womanhood in Angela Davis: An Autobiography
Roundtable Discussion: For Assata: The Power of Intergenerational Black Feminist Practice
- Ebony Golden – New York University
- Nia (Nancy)Wilson – Spirit House
- Alexis Pauline Gumbs – Duke University
Panel: “I Am So Hip Even My Errors Are Correct!”: Women and the Black Arts Movement
- Takiyah Nur Amin – Temple University
A Change is Gonna Come: First Steps in Examining the Contributions of African-American Female Choreographers to the Black Power/Black Arts Movement, 1960-1970 - LaShonda Barnett – Sarah Lawrence College
"You Took My Teeth!": Black Women & Black Power Musical Discourse - Nikki Skies – Performance Artist
Women in Black Arts Movement, Hip Hop & Slam: The Legacy, The Demise, The Repetition
3:15-5:00 p.m.: Breakout Session III
Panel: Precursors and Legacies
- Natanya K. Duncan – University of Florida
Women of the Universal Negro Improvement Association: A Way toward Understanding Black Nationalism in the 1920’s - Juandalynn Jones-Hunt and April Ruffin – University of NC-Greensboro
The ‘F’ Word of Feminist Scholarship: FACADE, What Feminist Theory Taught Us About the Harlem Renaissance - Ageenah A. Saleem – University of Cincinnati
Unsung Woes: A Brief Analysis of Contemporary Feminist Involvement in the Prison Industrial Complex
Panel: The Few and The Furious: Black Panther Women and the Revolution
- Mary Frances Phillips – Michigan State University
Black Women’s Language Patterns in the Protest Writings of Panther Women - Kenya C. Ramey – Temple University
"Revolution Has No Gender&rdquo: The Women of the Black Panther Party - Brittney Yancy – University of Connecticut
“Sisters! Revolution Is Here!”: Women’s Leadership and The Black Power Movement
Panel: “If Justice is to Prevail, There Must be a Struggle”:
Black Women’s Resistance and Self Defense
- Phyllis Lynne Burns – Otterbein College
“Let’s Worry the Line”: Ending the Service of Black Women - Jacqueline Lynch – Benedict College
Ramona Africa: A Defiant Warrior - Shannen Dee Williams – Rutgers University
"Liberation is Our First Priority": Black Nuns, Soul Politics, and the Formation of the National Black Sisters Conference
Panel: “I Cannot Be Comprehended Except By My Permission”:
African American Women’s Identities in the Era of Black Power
- Maria D. Davidson – University of Oklahoma
Black Feminist Subjectivity: A Deleuzian Approach - Nzadi M. Keita – Poet-in-Residence/Visiting Assistant Professor, Ursinus College Ursinus College
“Lucille Clifton and Sonia Sanchez: Naming and Renaming the Self - Nicole A. Watson – NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study
Black Art? Black Power?: Adrienne Kennedy's theater and (re)presentations of African-American Identity
5:00 – 5:30 p.m.
Heimbold Lobby
Reception
5:30 – 6:30 p.m.
Closing Plenary
Play Reading: "Living Sacrifice"
Written by Rhone Fraser, WBAI, Co-producer of Tuesday Arts Magazine
Featuring Rhone Fraser and Tonya Edmonds
This documentary play is based on the collected speeches, writings, and interviews of Fannie Lou Hamer, and her autobiography, To Praise Our Bridges, as well as the two biographies, For Freedom’s Sake by Chana Kai Lee and This Little Light of Mine by Kay Mills. It traces in chronological order the scenes that most completely characterize her experience of struggle first as a Mississippi sharecropper and later as civil rights activist.
Brooklyn College is co-sponsoring the women’s history conference this year with Sarah Lawrence College. On March 5 and 6th, Brooklyn College will hold a pre-conference symposium on women in the Black Freedom Struggle. For more information about the symposium, contact Jean Theoharis at JTheoharis@brooklyn.cuny.edu. Below is the schedule:
Women in the Black Freedom Struggle Spring Symposium Series
The Brooklyn College Women in the Black Revolt mini-conference
March 5-6 (co-sponsored with Sarah Lawrence College’s Black Power/Black Feminism women’s history conference on March 7-8)
Wednesday, March 5: 4:30-6 p.m. Black Power/Black Feminism
- Joy James (Williams College)
- Sherie Randolph (Hofstra)
- James Smethhurst (U-Mass,Amherst)
- Robyn Spencer (Lehman)
Thursday, March 6: 12:15-1:30 p.m. Women in the Black Panther Party
- Angela LeBlanc-Ernest (independent scholar)
- Ericka Huggins (former BPP member)
Thursday, March 6: 3:30-4:45 p.m. Women and Black Radicalism
- Eric McDuffie (University of Illinois-Champagne)
- Dayo Gore (U-Mass, Amherst)
- Komozi Woodard (Sarah Lawrence College)
- Premilla Nadasen (Queens College)
- Chana Kai Lee (University of Georgia)
The Graduate Program in Women History thanks the following co-sponsors:
Susan Guma and the Office of Graduate Studies
Mary Spellman and the Office of Student Affairs
The Graduate Student Senate
Natalie Gross, Director of Diversity and Campus Engagement
The Faculty in Global Studies
The Office of College Events
The Office of Communications