Speakers

Third Annual
4W Summit on Women, Gender and Well-being
and
41st Wisconsin Women and Gender Studies Conference

Our Bodies, Our Earth: Voice, Violence, and Peacemaking

Keynotes and Plenaries

All events on this page are taking place in the Pyle Center or the Chazen Museum, and are free and open to the public, however, registration is required. Please register here. IF you do plan on attending all or part of the conference, click on register in the menu.

Thursday, April 12, 2018

4:00pm Soffa Lecture and 4W Keynote (Chazen): Gender Inclusion for Lasting Peace by May Sabe Phyu, Director, Gender Equality Network (GEN)

5:30-8:00pm Chazen Evening in the Museum Event in conjunction with the exhibition Ancestral Modern: Australian Aboriginal Art, Docent-led tours of Ancestral Modern Exhibition; works by women artists in the Chazen; and hands-on art activities from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM | Mead Witter Lobby

Friday, April 13, 2018

9:00-10:15am Keynote Plenary I (Pyle Center Alumni Lounge): “We Need To Talk: Because Silence Is Sabotage” by  Janine Latus, truth speaker on sexual assault and intimate partner violence

2:15-3:30pm Summit Plenary II (Chazen): “Our Bodies, Our Land: Rainbow Serpent, Dreaming, Corroborree and Aboriginal Feminism”

In Australian Aboriginal culture, the land and the native’s body hold a symbiosis–. It is a site of identity, a lived experience that can never be captured within the frames of colonial cartography.  The imperial violation of the land resulted in the most disastrous violation of Aboriginal women’s lives causing economic, political, cultural, social and spiritual deprivation. Yet, the Aboriginal women never let the natal land die and through their individual ways of re-empowerment of the land and of themselves, they found the process of healing and resistance to the on-going processes and impacts of imperialism. The land may undergo distortion, adaptation, accommodation and improvisation under the traumatic effects of colonization, but the Aboriginal women withhold a spontaneous dialogue with the land that stands as an extension of the self, an anchorage to the cultural space of belonging, rootedness and antiquity. Just like in the Aboriginal cosmology death is not the ultimatum, the land can never become a derelict space of morbidity. How does Aboriginal Feminism evoke the landscape’s geology, paleontology and geography that evoke a tenacious hold on the human imagination? What intimacy and togetherness does Aboriginal women find between the land’s organic topography and their body in the midst of brutal violence and exploitation? By reflecting on rich Aboriginal art, literature and philosophy of Dreamtime, Rainbow Serpent and the corroborree dance, (Including the current Chazen Art Museum exhibition, Ancestral Modern: Australian Aboriginal Art) the speakers in this panel will discuss on the nature and scope of Indigenous women’s knowledge and feminism and their reflection on female corporeality and inseparability from the land.

• Dr. Devaleena Das (Women’s and Gender Studies), Northern Arizona University
• Dr. Margo Smith, Director of the Kulge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection at the University of Virginia
• Dr. Belinda Wheeler (from the School of Humanities and Social Science ), Claflin University, South Carolina
• Dr. Jeanine Leane, University of Melbourne, Australia

5:00-5:30pm (Pyle Center Auditorium): Presentation celebrating the launch of the Somos Latinas Digital History Project, through the Wisconsin Historical Society, and the publication of the book Somos Latinas: Voices of Wisconsin Latina Activists.

Somos Latinas History Project (Wisconsin Historical Society) and Somos Latinas: Voices of Wisconsin Latina Activists (WHS Press 2018) use an “asset based” research approach in which the successes and strategies for success are examined among the women rather than focusing on problems.  This approach gives the Somos women the opportunity to share what has worked in their dynamic lives rather than what is broken which is often the approach used by hegemony.  Borrowing from the Positive Psychology movement, Andrea (Tess) Arenas will discuss how this approach shaped both the project and book and share research findings.

• Andrea (Tess) Arenas, Emeritus Faculty Affiliate, Chican@ Latin@ Studies, UW-Madison
• Other presenter TBA

5:30-6:30pm (Pyle Center Lobby): New Publications Reception and book signings, featuring Somos Latinas: Voices of Wisconsin Latina Activists, and other new books by 4W Summit participants

Saturday, April 14, 2018

9:00-10:15am Summit Plenary III (Pyle Center Alumni Lounge): “African American Women Beyond the Stereotypes: Mental and Physical Health, Resilience, and Sustainability across the Life Span”

The lives of African American (AA) women—at home and at work—have changed dramatically in the past several decades. Among these changes are: aging of the AA female population; increased labor force participation of AA women, particularly women with children; delay in marriage and childbearing; and a rise in the proportion of AA female-headed single parent families. These trends contribute to AA women’s predisposition for chronic and mental health disorders, and influence access to health care and personal health beliefs and behaviors.

African American women’s health care is evolving to a model that increasingly views these women’s health in terms of the totality of their experience across the life span, including their expanded social and economic roles and the influence of culture, psychology, and social factors on their health. This biopsychosocial model of AA women’s health recognizes that health is the maintenance of psychological and social wellbeing as well as physical health.

Within this context, the African American Health Network focuses its efforts on perinatal health, as well as the health of women over the entire lifespan, including women’s health care utilization; sociomedical risk factors; women’s experience of depression and quality of life, and the physical and mental health effects of these women’s multiple roles as employees, parents and grandparents.

• Gale D. Johnson, Moderator, Director, Wisconsin Well Women Program (WWWP)
• Lisa Peyton-Caire is the Founder and President of The Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness
• Dr. Diane Gooding, Professor, Psychology at UW-Madison
• Chanel T. Tyler, MD, Assistant Professor, Maternal-Fetal Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison

1:45-3:00pm Summit Plenary IV (Pyle Center Alumni Lounge): “Indigenous Women Confronting Exploitation Locally and Globally”

This plenary panel discussion, sponsored by 4W STREETS (Social Transformations to End Exploitation and Trafficking for Sex), will highlight the work of exceptional indigenous women leaders working to confront sexual and other forms of exploitation of women and girls in their communities. We will hear about their advocacy strategies and approaches to change for the individual women affected and their communities more broadly. By comparing approaches to recovery and wellbeing for indigenous women across regions we will gain insights into how to make life better for all.

• May Sabe Phyu, Director, Gender Equality Network (GEN)
• Emily Loerzel, American Indian Center of Chicago
• Jean M. Geran, 4W Director for Human Rights, Child Protection and Global Policy and Co-Director of the 4W anti-trafficking initiative, ‘Social Transformations to End Exploitation and Trafficking for Sex’ (STREETS)
• Lara B. Gerassi, Assistant Professor at the School of Social Work and 4W Director of Sex Trafficking and Exploitation Research and Practice

5:30-6:00pm Closing and Raging Grannies sing us off (Pyle Center Alumni Lounge)

All events on this page are free and open to the public, however, registration is required. Please register here. IF you do plan on attending all or part of the conference, click on register in the menu.