NEW PALTZ — “Silencing Women: Voices of Resistance” is the title of this year’s fall conference sponsored by the women’s studies program at the State University of New York at New Paltz. Inspired by the controversy following last year’s women’s studies conference on women’s sexual freedom, the conference will explore the ways that social institutions, laws and culture have silenced women’s voices. It will also look at the various forms of women’s resistance, including the role feminism plays in expanding the terrain of women’s expression and the anti-feminist backlash that seeks to restrict it.
The keynote speakers for the conference are Elisa Dávila, Meredith Tax, and Rebecca Walker. Dávila is a poet, chair of the department of foreign languages, coordinator of the Latin American studies program and a member of the women’s studies faculty at SUNY New Paltz. Her talk is titled “Women’s Studies in the Time of Cholera.”
Meredith Tax, founder and president of Women’s WORLD (World Organization for Rights, Literature and Development), a global free speech network that treats women’s self-expression as a human rights issue, will discuss “The Power of the Word: Culture, Censorship and Voice.” Tax is the author of The Power of the Word: Culture, Censorship and Voice; Union Square; Rivington Street, and Families; and Woman and Her Mind.
Contributing editor to Ms. magazine and co-founder of The Third Wave, an organization devoted to promoting young women’s activism, Rebecca Walker’s keynote topic will be “The Silences of the Marketplace.” Walker is the editor of To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism. Her talk should be of particular interest to college and high school age women.
In addition to the keynote panel there will be more than 20 workshops held throughout the day. Among the workshop topics are: Aging Women’s Voices, Voices of Poor Women, Religion and Spirituality, Women Reclaiming Erased History, and Silence and Resistance in the Arts and Popular Media.
Additional workshops will be on Gender Identity, Welfare Recipients Speak Out, The Suppression of Women’s Ideas in Libraries, Silencing Lesbians Within the Family, and Censorship and Sexual Expression.
The conference will take place on Saturday, October 24, in the Lecture Center at SUNY New Paltz. Registration will begin at 8:30 a.m.; the keynote address will begin at 9 a.m. The conference will conclude with an 8:00 p.m. concert by the Women’s Percussion Ensemble,performing a variety of music including jazz, Brazilian, African, contemporary and classical pieces that celebrate women percussionists and composers. The concert will take place in the Julien J. Studley Theatre in the Old Main Building.
Free child care is available for the conference for those who pre-register by October 9 and make their needs known at that time. The conference registration fee, which includes the concert, is $20 and $5 for students. There will be a $10 fee for attending only the concert. As always, attendees are encouraged to pay more if they are able to, but should not be discouraged from attending if they are only able to pay a portion of the full fee. Interpretation for the hearing-impaired is available on request.
To receive a registration brochure, call (845) 257-3033, or write to the Women’s Studies Program, Southside House-SUNY, 75 S Manheim Blvd, New Paltz, NY 12561. For additional conference information call (845) 257-2975.
