Update After Wilma

Dear PISA members,

Hurricane Wilma did a number on us all, and we all hope everyone is ok and up to speed. The officers have met twice since the storm to pound out some conference details and we wanted to catch you up on the news.

1) First, we are happy to announce that with the help of Dr. Tamburri, we were able to get a wonderful keynote speaker for our conference--Dr. Tracy Denean Sharpley-Whiting. Below, please find her information, as well as information on several conference speakers including panel speakers and keynote speakers.

2) Also, we worked out our next social event. Because the semester has been extended, our end of the semester social event has been moved to Friday December 16th at 7pm. This event will be held, we are hoping, at Maguires Irish Pub and Eatery. A great pub with reasonable prices and fantastic music. Details will be emailed to you via internet invitations!

3) Next, we are putting out a call for papers from comparative studies students to deliver on the first day of the conference, Friday February 24th. This is an opportunity for students to practice presenting skills and an opportunity to share your work with other students. Deadline for paper submission is January 19th.

4) A call for artwork for the conference poster and program is also being extended. Deadline for artwork submission is December 26th.

5) We are still looking for students to help with setting up the conference. Although we know everyone is busy, please consider helping out this year! Remember, this is your conference! Get involved!

That is all we have right now. If you have any questions or thoughts please feel free to email PISA at PISA



2006 Florida Atlantic University Comparative Studies Conference: February 24th-25th The Arts, Culture and Society: Intersections of Class, Race and Gender

How do the intersections of race, class, and gender inform historical, sociological, linguistic, literary, and media studies? This conference will provide avenues of discussion relating to ethnic, class and sexual identity, collective consciousness, collective action, as well as the contribution that academic research can bring to such issues. The goal of this conference would be the creation of a dialogue toward the discovery and promotion of new insights on how definitions of race, class, and gender affect academic and public discourse. The conference activities will also include performance(s) by students in the program at/after the opening reception on Friday and an exhibit of student art (program and College) relating to theme/panels of conference.

Speakers:

Tracy Denean Sharpley-Whiting
T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting (Ph.D., Brown, 1994) (Director of African American and Diaspora Studies) teaches comparative diasporic literary and cultural movements, Francophone Studies, critical race studies, feminist theory, Jazz Age Paris, film and hip hop culture. Her books include Negritude Women (2002), Black Venus: Sexualized Savages, Primal Fears, and Primitive Narratives in French (1999), Frantz Fanon: Conflicts and Feminisms (1998). She has co-edited three volumes, the latest of which includes The Black Feminist Reader (Blackwell, 2000). She is currently working on two books, one on young black women and hip hop culture and the other on black women in Paris from the 17th to the 19th centuries.

Sherry Lee Linkon
Sherry Linkon is Professor of English, Coordinator of American Studies, and Co-Director of the Center for Working-Class Studies at YSU. Her research interests include women in nineteenth-century America, Jewish-American women writers, popular culture, working-class studies, and students’ learning in interdisciplinary courses. Over the past few years, Linkon has been exploring students' understanding of interdisciplinary as an abstract concept and as a concrete (but not always very clear) practice. She has moved from asking questions about "what is" -- how do students view interdisciplinary -- to exploring "what works" (incremental learning) and "what's possible." Her books include: Steeltown USA: Work and Memory in Youngstown with John Russo, University of Kansas Press, 2002 and Teaching Working Class, University of Massachusetts Press, and In Her Own Voice: Nineteenth-Century American Women Essayists. She co-edited Radical Revisions: Rereading 1930s Culture, and co-edited the newly released New Working-Class Studies. 1999.

Carlos Diaz
Dr. Carlos Diaz is a professor of multicultural education at Florida Atlantic University. A native of Cuba, he has earned tenure in the public school, community college and university systems of Florida. Diaz is editor and contributing author of Multicultural Education for the 21st Century published by the National Education Association. He is co-author of Global Perspectives for Education published by Allyn & Bacon. Diaz serves as a project director for a U.S. Department of Education grant that provided 180 full scholarships to teachers in south Florida.

Robert P. Watson
Robert Watson, Ph.D. is an associate professor of political science at FAU who has published 25 books and over 100 scholarly articles and chapters on such topics as the presidency, women in politics, civil rights, environmental policy, and election reform. A frequent media commentator, he has been interviewed several hundred times by local and national outlets such as CNN, NBC, MSNBC, USA Today, ... and appeared on CSPAN's Book TV program. Dr. Watson has served on the boards of several scholarly journals, academic associations, and presidential foundations and has won several awards for his community service and volunteering.