Student
Conference on Gender, Diversity, and Identity An International and Interdisciplinary Women's Forum |
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Free and Open to the Public! |
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Friday,
March 5, 2004
University
Union Saltair Room
9:00 a.m. -- 5:30 p.m. |
Presenters
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Michele
Moody-Adams,
who received her Ph.D. from
Harvard in 1986, is Professor of Philosophy and Hutchinson Professor
and Director of Ethics and Public Life at Cornell University.
Her areas of specialization are moral and political philosophy,
philosophy of law, feminist philosophy, history of philosophy
from Descartes to Kant, and applied ethics. Her publications
include Fieldwork in Familiar Places: Morality, Culture
and Philosophy (Harvard, 1997), "A Commentary
on Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race,"
Ethics (1999), "Culture, Responsibility,
and Affected Ignorance," Ethics (1994), "Race,
Class and the Social Construction of Self-Respect," Philosophical
Forum (1992-3), "On the Old Saw that Character is
Destiny, " in Identity, Character, and Morality: Essays
in Moral Psychology, eds. O. Flanagan and A. Rorty (MIT,
1991), "Gender and the Complexity of Moral Voices,"
in Feminist Ethics, ed. Claudia Card (University Press
of Kansas, 1991), and "Feminism and the Relativist Mystique,"
in Feminism, Multiculturalism, and Group Rights, ed.
Deen Chatterjee (Oxford, in preparation).
Hiba Al-Zahawi
was born and raised in Baghdad, Iraq. Currently in her
senior year at the University of Utah, she is majoring
in Computer Science and is in the Honors Program. Having
lived through the 1991 Gulf War in Iraq and now living
in Utah, Hiba has learned that in any conflict there is
always the "other" that needs to be considered.
She believes that from the American public's perspective,
she was the "other" during the war. Her experience
of wearing the Hijab (the head-scarf) as part of her religious
belief has also made her the "other"--a "foreigner"--in
Utah. Hard as it was in trying to adjust to a new culture,
she found strength in choosing to wear the Hijab. She
defied cultural norms and managed to express her identity
as a Muslim and an Arab in the Utah society. The third
item in her being the "other" is her major:
Computer Science. There aren't many, if any, women in
her computer science classes. However, here she is in
her senior year and still majoring in Computer Science,
so she feels she must have done something right!
Sarah
Alexander
is a senior in the Political Science department of Yale
University. She has been involved in globalization and
identity research through the online magazine YaleGlobal
as well as in her work for the Center for the Study of
Globalization. She is the past coordinator of a reproductive
rights advocacy group and an active member of the Yale
Women's Center. While working for an American NGO two
summers ago, she advised the Cambodian government on implementation
of a new domestic violence law. Last summer, she was in
France to research national identity among Algerian immigrants.
Her research interests include identity politics, comparative
political theory, human rights law, and gender studies.
Souad
T. Ali is a doctoral graduate student in the
Middle East Center of the University of Utah, Department
of Languages and Literature, working on a Ph.D. in Middle
Eastern Studies with a focus in Arabic and Islamic Studies.
Her Dissertation, Ali Abdel-Raziq's Islam and the
Basics of Governance: A Modern, Liberal Development of
Muslim Thought, is a study of the late Egyptian Thinker
Ali Abdel Raziq. Souad also holds a Masters Degree in
English Literature and wrote her Masters Thesis titled
Postcolonialism and the Emergence of African Feminism.
Souad currently teaches advanced Arabic at the University
of Utah.
Keerthi
Arani
emigrated from India to Spokane, Washington, with her
parents when she was three years old. She is currently
finishing her honors bachelors degree in English Language
and Literature at the University of Washington. Topics
which interest her include biology, health care, cultural
studies, feminism and racism. After graduation, she will
pursue a degree in medicine.
Evelyn
Carter belongs to the Little Red River Cree Nation
in Northern Alberta, Canada and lives in Edmonton, Alberta,
with her four children. Evelyn has her BFA from the University
of Alberta and is currently studying Arts and Cultural
Management at Grant MacEwan College. Evelyn is a painter
and a sculptor. Within her community, art is a way of
healing. She also sees art as a tool, a vehicle, to facilitate
memory, to keep alive the Cree's sense of power, particularly
as a Sovereign Nation.
Laura
Duzett hails from Portland, Oregon. Currently
a junior pursuing a bachelor of arts degree in philosophy
at Utah Valley State College, she enjoys writing and performing
music in the Salt Lake area. Her academic interests include
aesthetics, feminism, existentialism, and particularly
the philosophy of music. She hopes to continue her studies
and other interests in graduate school.
K.B.
Hom is
a Graduate Fellow in Communication and an Associate Instructor
in Political Science at the University of Utah. Her dissertation
will be centered around the topic of intercultural communication
patterns and the identification and empowering of minority
communities. She moved to Utah in 1999 after 25 years
in the District of Columbia, where she was active professionally
in multicultural community affairs. She has served in
local governments in Washington, D.C., Phoenix, and in
San Diego, where she obtained her Masters in Public Administration.
She is a member of the Salt Lake City Chinese Community
Church. Her youngest daughter, Melinda, is a Freshman
at the University of Utah, majoring in Photo-Journalism.
Hye-ryoung
Kang is a Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy at the
University of Colorado, Boulder. Her current dissertation
research, titled "Rethinking Global Justice From
a Transnational Feminist Justice Perspective" focuses
on a transnational feminist justice theory capable of
capturing the concerns and justice claims of women workers
in the global South.
Tala
J. Manassah received her AB (with honors) from
the University of Chicago ('03), where she is currently
a graduate student. Her undergraduate thesis, written
under the guidance of Professor Martha Nussbaum, was on
the political philosophy known as cosmopolitanism. She
was the first undergraduate in the Human Rights Program
at the University of Chicago to be invited to give that
paper as a part of its workshop series. Her research interests
are primarily in ethics, human rights theory, and international
law. She is the author of "From Rage to Interlocution"
in the collection A Community of Many Worlds: Arab
Americans In New York City, eds. Kathy Benson and
Philip Kayal (Syracuse University Press, 2002) and the
co-author of We're In Print: A How-to Book For Kids
By Kids On How To Start Your Own Newspapers (UNICEF
Press 1997). She is an active member of the human rights
movement, and has been a delegate to several major UN
conferences 
Angela
Mazer
is
in her senior year at the University of California, Los
Angeles (UCLA), a student in the Honors Program and majoring
in International Development Studies with a minor in Policy
Studies. During her junior year (2002-2003), she participated
in two academic semester programs organized by the School
for international Training. The first was in Geneva, Switzerland,
where she studied the role of international organizations
and social justice, spending time at the United Nations
and other international institutions in Geneva. Her second
semester was spent in the Balkans, studying the important
aspects of "women and democratization" in a
post-conflict region. Angela met with women politicians,
professors and activists who are passionately working
towards greater female empowerment and participation in
all aspects of social reconstruction and stabilization.
Angela has spent the past 5 summers in the Balkans as
a camp counselor with the Global Children's Organization,
helping to run a camp for children from the different
ethnic and religious backgrounds in the region. Raised
in a Swiss-American, Jewish-Christian household in Salt
Lake City, UT, the issue of identity has always fascinated
her. She never felt part of any one group and subsequently
developed herself in arenas where religious/ethnic/racial
background was not the organizing principle.
Kaija
Rossi is a Ph.D.
student in philosophy at the University of Turku, Finland,
and an affiliate at the Graduate School of the Gender
System at the Christina Institute for Women's Studies
at the University of Helsinki. She is also a researcher
for the Finnish Academy Project on Biomedical Interventions
and Life. Her areas of specialization are social and political
philosophy, biomedical ethics, and feminist philosophy.
Kaija has given presentations at many Scandinavian and
international conferences and is the co-author of a book
in Finnish on biomedical ethics and has published in many
journals. 
Jennifer
Yip is currently a first year graduate student
in the Department of Politics at Princeton University.
Her work on Filipina domestic helpers was completed over
the summer of her junior year when she was in Hong Kong,
teaching fairy tales to middle school students. This research
later became her senior thesis, which she did under the
guidance of Professor Susan Okin. The thesis was awarded
the Robert M. Golden Medal for Excellence in Humanities
and Creative Arts at Stanford. She received her B.A. in
Political Science and honors in Ethics and Society from
Stanford in 2002. Between her undergraduate career and
graduate school, she took a year off and volunteered in
rural China. In the future, she would like to study the
ethics of humanitarian assistance. 
Ines
Campoverde was born and raised in New York
City and she loves to salsa! She received her Associates
degree from the Borough of Manhattan Community College
in Business Administration. Ines later obtained a Bachelor
of Science in Human Development & Family Studies
and a Minor in Business from the University of Utah
where currently she is a Ph.D. student in Counseling
Psychology. Her native language is Spanish and she loves
to speak, practice and work in Spanish. Her clinical
experiences range from criminal offenders to career
assessment with adolescents to women's issues. All of
her work is viewed through a multicultural/feminist
perspective. 
With
emphases in sociology and political science, Rachel
Meurer is an Integrated Studies student at Utah
Valley State College. As a single mother, women's issues
are a reality of Rachel's life and they have sparked her
activism and volunteer efforts at UVSC's Women's Resource
Center. Rachel plans to enter law school in the fall of
2005.
Poloko
Nuggert Mmonadibe is an international
student from Botswana. She holds a Bachelors Degree
in Social Work from the University of Botswana. She
is in her last semester of the Masters Degree program
in Social Work at the University of Utah College of
Social Work. At the University of Utah, she has interned
at Neighbors Helping Neighbors Initiative for the Aging
in the College of Social work, and currently she is
a practicum counselor at the University of Utah Women's
Resource Center. Her interests include working with
women and children, gender issues, and being familiar
with feminist perspectives.
The
focus of Aarti
Sahney's
doctoral research at the University of Utah is in cross-cultural
studies in women's history and international perspectives
on women's issues. Her research on Indian women's history
has exposed her to a range of questions about gender,
colonialism, and ethnicity. Her M.A. thesis dealt with
cantonment prostitution in colonial India, where she
focused on women who originally held a fairly high status
as courtesans for the elites in India. However, British
presence reduced these women to the equivalent of street
prostitutes, undermining their high status, lowering
their income and exposing them to the violence and harshness
of women serving British soldiers. As a bridge to her
masters work, Aarti now works on issues of the Indian
Diaspora and concentrates on theoretical topics of early
Indian courtships and compares them to sexual relations
in the early twentieth century United States. As a historian
who studies feminist issues, she looks into the effects
of ethnicity on gender, public and private spheres,
and women's role in work place and at home. These topics
have made her aware of various issues of gender, race,
class, and labor throughout the world.