UpDate - Vol. 13, No. 24, Page 4
March 18, 1994
Women's Studies Program celebration marks 20 years

     The Women's Studies Interdisciplinary Program will celebrate its 20th
anniversary April 15-16 with a national conference on "Interdisciplinarity
and Identity," in Clayton Hall.
     Numerous workshops, panel discussions and performances are scheduled,
as well as two keynote speakers: bell hooks, associate professor of
American literature and women's studies at Oberlin College, and Emily
Martin, professor of anthropology at Johns Hopkins University.
     At the conference, hooks will discuss "Through and Beyond Identity
Politics" on the morning of April 15, and Martin will speak on "The New
Culture of Health: Women and the Immune System in America Today" on the
morning of April 16.
     "We wanted to choose people who offer something unique and who can
really speak to the diverse needs of women's studies," Kate Conway-Turner,
director of the women's studies program and one of the conference
organizers, said.
     "bell hooks is an interdisciplinary scholar and a powerful black
feminist. Women's studies programs grapple with being truly diversified and
not an enclave for the white middle class. hooks can speak to the real
breadth of women's studies and how we develop our identity as programs
through the merger of race, class and culture.
     "Emily Martin will speak to an issue that is on the cutting edge of
women's studies in the 1990s, as we become grounded in real issues like the
new culture of health and the impact of AIDS on our understanding of
women's health. As we are forced to look at AIDS, women are forced to
reevaluate the way they view health and the choices we make."
     Conway-Turner said the workshops for the event offer a great deal of
choice, an opportunity to see all of the riches in a women's studies
program. "There is something for everyone," she said.
     hooks earned her doctorate at the University of California at Santa
Cruz in 1983. Before assuming her current position at Oberlin, she was an
assistant professor of African and Afro-American Studies and English at
Yale University and a lecturer in women's studies at the University of
California.
     Her publications include Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual
Life; Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics; Talking Back: Thinking
Feminist, Thinking Black and Ain't I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism.
     Martin earned her doctorate from Cornell University in 1971 and has
held numerous grants and fellowships. Her research topics have ranged from
Chinese medicine and healing rites to reproduction in the U.S. Her current
research topic is immunology and the immune system in the U.S.
     Before joining the faculty at Johns Hopkins University in 1974, Martin
was an assistant professor of anthropology at Yale University. She has
chaired the anthropology department at Hopkins twice and in 1981 was named
the Mary Elizabeth Garrett Professor of Arts and Sciences.
     For more information on the conference, workshop offerings, fees,
child-care availability or to register, contact Jessica Schiffman, program
coordinator in the women's studies office at 831-8474.