‘Women in Action’ symposium set Feb. 26-27

2:40 p.m., Feb. 3, 2004--The Greater Philadelphia Latin-American Studies Consortium (GPLASC) is holding its annual symposium Thursday and Friday, Feb. 26-27, at Swarthmore College and the University of Pennsylvania, co-sponsored by several UD units.

Drawing women activists and scholars from Mexico, Puerto Rico and the United States, the symposium, “Women in Action: Social Transformation in Latin America,” will focus on issues affecting Latin- American and Latina women.

Marysa Navarro, president of the Latin-American Studies Association and renowned scholar of feminist activism in Latin America, will open the symposium with a keynote address at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 26, in the Scheuer Room at Swarthmore College. A reception will follow, and the symposium will continue with panel discussions from 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. and from 2-5 p.m., on Friday, Feb. 27, in the Terrace Room of Logan Hall at the University of Pennsylvania.

Guest panel speakers include Suzanne Cherrin, UD assistant professor of women’s studies; Julia Monarrez, professor of sociology at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Mexico; Wanda Colon, director of the Caribbean Project for Justice and Peace in Puerto Rico; Zulia Mena, Afro-Colombian activist and former member of the Colombian House of Representatives; Marta Ojeda, executive director of the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras, Mexico; and Laura Laski, senior technical officer at the United Nations Population Fund.

Cherrin, who will chair the morning panel on Friday, Feb. 27, teaches “Introduction to International Women’s Studies and Topics in International Women’s Issues: Latin America” at UD. She has written widely on several feminist topics and was appointed a fellow by the UD Selection Committee and the Salzburg Seminar at the academic session on social and economic human rights in Salzburg, Austria, in August. Her publications include “Women’s Studies in Transition: The Pursuit of Interdisciplinarity” and “Breast Cancer: A Critical Evaluation of the Advice to Women.”

The two-day symposium was organized by Persephone Braham, UD assistant professor of Spanish and acting director of the Greater Philadelphia Latin-American Studies Association. Braham also has organized the lecture “Killing the Girls: Unsolved Murders on the Border” with guest speaker Julia Monarrez, at 2 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 26, in the Trabant University Center.

Braham’s area of specialty is Hispanic-Caribbean literature. Her book “Crimes Against Persons, Crimes Against the State: Contemporary Detective Fiction in Mexico and Cuba” was published by the University of Minnesota Press this month. Currently she is researching monsters in Caribbean cultures for an upcoming book tentatively titled “New World Teratologies: Resemblance and the Feminine Monstrosity.”

The symposium is cosponsored by the University of Delaware Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, the Department of Sociology, the Women’s Studies Interdisciplinary Program, the Office of Women’s Affairs, the Office of Multicultural Affairs/Campus Diversity and the Latin-American Studies Program.

GPLASC is a consortium of Latin-American studies programs and scholars in the greater Philadelphia area, including the University of Delaware.

All events are free and open to the public. For more information, visit [http://www.sas.upenn.edu/lals].

Article by Becca Hutchinson

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