BARBARA SMITH
Topic: "The Truth That Never Hurts: Thirty Years of Writing and Working for Justice and Change"
7:00 PM, McAlister Auditorium, Free to the Public

Barbara Smith, keynote speaker for the Women@2K Conference, is a Black feminist writer and activist who has been politically active since the 1960s. Her articles, essays, literary criticism, and short stories have appeared in a variety of publications, including The New York Times Book Review, Ms., The Black Scholar, Gay Community News, The Guardian, The Village Voice, and The Nation. She has edited three major collections about Black Women: Conditions: Five, the Black Women's Issue (with Lorraine Bethel), 1979; All the Women Are White, All the Blacks are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies (with Gloria T. Hull and Patricia Bell Scott), 1982; and Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, 1983. She is also the co-author with Elly Bulkin and Minnie Bruce Pratt of Yours in Struggle: Three Feminist Perspectives on Anti-Semitism and Racism (1984).
 

Smith is a general editor of the recent volume The Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History with Wilma Mankiller, Gwendolyn Mink, Maryse Navarro and Gloria Steinem (Houghton Mifflin, February 1998). Her most recent work is The Truth That Never Hurts: Writings on Race, Gender and Freedom, a collection of essays and articles published in fall 1998 by Rutgers University Press. She was the 1994 recipient of the $25,000 Stonewall Award for service to the lesbian and gay community awarded by the Anderson Prize Foundation. She served on the Board of Advisors for the New York Public Library's award-winning 1994 exhibition, "Becoming Visible: The Legacy of Stonewall." She was a Scholar-in-Residence during 1995-1996 at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City, and a Fellow at the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College during 1997-1997.

 

A guest on numerous television public affairs programs through the years, Smith has also appeared in several films, including "Pink Triangles" and Marlon Riggs' "Black Is, Black Ain't." She has lectured on college and university campuses throughout the country.

 

Barbara Smith is a co-founder of the Combahee River Collective, a Black feminist group which did political organizing in Boston from 1974-1980. She was co-founder and publisher until February 1995 of Kitchen Table Women of Color Press, the first U.S. publisher for women of color.

 

Barbara Smith was born in Cleveland, Ohio and lived in Boston for nine years from 1972 until 1981. She now lives in Albany, New York

 

WENDY CHAPKIS
Topic: "Beyond The Sex Wars"
12:15-1:45, Kendall Cram Room

Wendy Chapkis, our Friday plenary speaker, is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies at the University of Southern Maine. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at Santa Cruz.
 

Her scholarly work is primarily in the area of social stratification, with a special interest in the construction of such hierarchically organized identity categories as sex, gender and sexuality. Chapkis is the author of Beauty Secrets: Women and the politics of appearance (South End Press: 1986) and Live Sex Acts: Women performing erotic labor (Routledge: 1997). She is also the editor of two anthologies: Loaded Questions: Women in the military (TNI: 1981) and Of Common Cloth: Women in the global textile industry (TNI: 1983).

 

KRISHANTI DHARMARAJ
Topic: "Cents and Sensibility: Gender, Power and Economics -- Your value beyond the market economy"
12:15-1:45, Kendall Cram Room

Krishanti Dharmaraj, our Saturday plenary speaker, is a human rights educator and activist. She is currently the Executive Director and co-founder of Women's Institute for Leadership Development (WILD), an organization focusing on promoting human rights to address long term change in the United States through the conscious leadership and action of women and girls.
 

Through her work at WILD, Ms. Dharmaraj does the following:

-- develops strategies for implementation of international human rights standards, both nationally and locally;
-- provides a human rights perspective on and gendered analysis of U.S. foreign policy and global economics;
-- designs and conducts training on human rights and leadership for women and girls.

She has lectured extensively in the United States and abroad on topics including colonialism, imperialism and human rights; gender equity and violence against women; the politics of population control; breaking the silence about human rights violations against members of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities; and globalization, power and economic rights. She has conducted numerous workshops and training sessions on women's human rights, cultural relativism, homophobia and anti-oppression, international human rights treaties, and the political action of women and girls.

Currently, Ms. Dharmaraj is a member of the Board of Directors of Amnesty International, and is on the Citizen's Advisory Committee for Grants for the Arts in San Francisco.
 

She is an immigrant from Sri Lanka and currently resides in San Francisco. She holds Master's degrees in International  Relations and Business Administration.