Race, Sex, Power: New Movements in Black and Latina/o Sexualities
April 11-12, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
http://condor.depaul.edu/
Registration is now open!!!
Faculty from nine universities and colleges will hold the largest ever
conference on black and Latina/o sexuality on April 11-12 at the
University of Illinois at Chicago. "Race, Sex, Power: New Movements in
Black and Latina/o Sexualities," the culmination of more than two years
of planning, will bring together academics, activists, and artists to
address topics ranging from intimacy and desire to HIV/AIDS and teen
pregnancy to humor and Hip Hop.
Conference organizer Cathy Cohen, Professor of Political Science at the
University of Chicago, calls the conference "a bold effort to rethink what
sexuality means for the two largest racial minority groups in the US."
Dr. Jocelyn Elders, the former United States Surgeon General appointed by
President Clinton, will open the conference on Friday morning, April 11.
Sponsored by the participating universities with major funding from the
Ford and Arcus Foundations, "Race, Sex, Power" aims to set a new agenda
for studying, organizing, writing, and developing policy about
sexuality. Juan Battle, professor of Sociology at the CUNY Graduate
Center, argues that the conference is not only ambitious, but timely, as
sexuality is central to current political debates. "Same-sex marriage,
abstinence education, and abortion rights are all at the forefront."
Marysol Asencio, associate professor of Family Studies/Puerto Rican and
Latino/a Studies from the University of Connecticut at Storrs, adds that
the demographic shifts in the US mean that "sexuality has to be
confronted from the perspective of race, not merely to challenge the
pathologies historically assigned to Latina/o and Black Americans, but
to explore the dynamism and heterogeneity within these populations as
well."
The conference program takes sexuality and race in all their complexity.
Panels and speakers selected from hundreds of submissions will cover,
among other things: media, migration and immigration, religion and
spirituality, sexual tourism, reproductive rights, transgender,
community organizing, gay and lesbian civil rights, poverty, social
class, age, and the sex industry. Within the wide variety of approaches
in both method and topic, a key idea emerges. Sexuality can only be
imagined in the context of communities that are embedded in a national
and international context of changing sexual mores and deeply entrenched
habits of thought and representation.
One of the hallmarks of this conference, Cohen stresses, is its emphasis
on collaboration and inclusiveness. The complex coordination of nine
institutions permitted organizers to draw on a pool of expertise that no
one college or university could hope to contain. The unusual blend of
research, activism, and art encourages all participants to think outside
their personal assumptions and the conventions of their fields. Finally,
the organizers hope to draw an audience of specialists and
non-specialists alike. Asencio reminds us that knowledge about sexuality
is hardly confined to those who make a profession of its study.
Everyone, Asencio argues, is engaged in a critique of current sexual
conventions. The conference is simply the space where such knowledge can
be shared, rethought, and transformed.
LOCATION: UIC FORUM, 725 W. Roosevelt Rd., Chicago, IL
SPONSORING UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES:
Chicago State University
Columbia College Chicago
DePaul University
The Graduate Center, CUNY
Northwestern University
Roosevelt University
University of Chicago
University of Connecticut at Storrs
University of Illinois, Chicago
Conference Website: http://condor.depaul.edu/
For more information, contact: racesexpower08@gmail.com
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