2012 Conference - Gendered Borders

The 2nd annual Gender Matters conference was held at Governors State University in University Park, Illinois on April 13-14, 2012. 

2012 Conference Program

Click here to download the 2012 conference program. 

2012 Theme: Gendered Borders

Keynote Address - Friday, April 13th @ 1:30pm

The 2012 keynote address, "Gentrify My Love: On the Borders of Neighborly Desire," will be delivered by Dr. Richard T. Rodríguez. Rodríguez  is Associate Professor of English and Latina/Latino Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he is also affiliated with the Department of Gender and Women's Studies and the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory.  He received his B.A. in English from the University of California, Berkeley and his Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz. His research, teaching, and writing are grounded in Latina/o cultural studies, literary and film studies, critical theory, and queer studies. He has published articles and reviews in American Quarterly, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, American Literary History, Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, Velvet Barrios: Popular Culture and Chicana/o Sexualities, A Concise Companion to American Studies, and Gay Latino Studies: A Critical Reader.  His book, Next of Kin: The Family in Chicano/a Cultural Politics, was published by Duke University Press and won the 2011 National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Book Award.  Recently named a Conrad Humanities Scholar, a designation supporting the work of exceptionally promising associate professors in the humanities within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois, he is currently writing a book on queer Latino representation and the politics of social space.

Featured Performance - Saturday, April 14th @ 10:15am

Dr. Laila Farah will present our featured performance, excerpts from her performance piece "Living in the Hyphen-Nation." Farah is a Lebanese-American feminist performer-scholar. She attended Lebanese American University and Eastern Michigan University while working toward her BA in Theatre and Communication Arts. She continued at Eastern Michigan University in order to complete her MA in Performance Studies and Communication. She received her Doctorate in Performance Studies at Southern Illinois University. She is currently an Associate Professor and Graduate Director in Women’s and Gender Studies at DePaul University. She continues to work on future performance pieces in Chicago, as well as touring with her production of Living in the Hyphen-Nation. Her creative scholarship includes research with and the performance of “Third World” women and women of color, postcolonial identities and “alien-nation,” and ethnographic and autoethnographic performance. She is active locally and nationally, and globally in gender based initiatives through various organizations including the National Women’s Studies Association and the Arab American Action Network, and the International Oral History Organisation. Dr. Farah has taught Performance of Gender, Women in the Middle East, International Women Film Directors, Women in Chicago Theatre, and Transnational Feminisms , and other  Women’s Studies and Performance Studies courses at DePaul, Southern Illinois University, and SUNY Potsdam. 

Conference Schedule Overview

• 8:30–9:30 am: Registration, Breakfast, and Welcome
• 9:30–10:45 am: Concurrent Session 1                
• 11:00–12:00 pm: Concurrent Session 2                  
• 12:00–1:30 pm: Lunch            
• 1:30–2:30 pm: Keynote Address - "Gentrify My Love: On the Borders of Neighborly Desire"           
• 2:45–4:00: Concurrent Session 3                    
• 4:15–5:30 pm: Concurrent Session 4
• 5:30–7:00 pm: Reception