Dr. Linda Van Ingen
director of the Women’s Studies Program, University of Nebraska at Kearney, 308.865.8772
“NO LIMITS! Eco-Feminism & Artful Healing” conference will feature award-winning poet and playwright Lenelle Moise at the University of Nebraska at Kearney on Friday and Saturday, March 4-5.
Moise, whose address will be “Speaking Intersections,” will begin at 7 p.m. on Friday, March 4, in Ponderosa Room E, which is located on the second floor of the Nebraskan Student Union. As part of the Women’s and Gender Studies conference, Moise will also present a workshop at 10:20 a.m. on Saturday.
Moise is described as creating “jazz-infused, hip hop bred, politicized texts” about her Haitian-American identity. She has performed at the Louisiana Superdome, the United Nations and Off-Broadway at the Culture Project.
At age 20, Moise co-wrote “Sexual Dependency,” a film about cross-cultural machismo and U.S. media influence on the youth of the global south. The film won the International Film Critics’ Award at the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland, and has been screened at festivals and cinemas on four continents.
Her writings have been published in several anthologies, including “Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution” and “We Don’t Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminists.” She has also been published in the “Platte Valley Review,” “Utne Reader,” “Left Turn” and “Rethinking Our Schools.”
Moise is the 2010-2012 Poet Laureate of Northampton, Mass., and has received numerous awards, including the 2003 New WORLD Theatre Poetry Slam Champion, 2003 and 2004 James Baldwin Memorial Award in Playwriting, the 2007 Patchwork Majority Radio Award for Best Solo Album: Madivinez, the 2008 Black Women Playwrights Group Whisper Laugh Shout Award, and the 2005-2006 and 2009-2010 Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund Award in Poetry.
Moise is a native of Northampton, Mass., where she received her master’s in playwriting from Smith College in 2004. She tours the United States and Canada making appearances at theatres, bookstores, cafes and conferences.
The UNK Women’s and Gender Studies conference, which is free and open to the public, begins at 10 a.m. on Friday, March 4. There will be presenters from three Nebraska universities, as well as Nebraska Wesleyan, Kansas State University, University of South Dakota, Missouri State University, Hastings College, University of Missouri at Columbia and the University of Northern Iowa.
“‘No Limits!’ is a regional academic conference dedicated to crossing boundaries between disciplines and exploring a wide range of women’s and gender issues,” said Dr. Linda Van Ingen, UNK director of Women’s Studies. “Undergraduate and graduate students from throughout the Great Plains region will present their scholarly work and creative activities.”
On Friday, March 4, sessions will include: Women and Islam, Gendered Constructs in Public Spaces, Artful Healing, Challenging Stereotypes of Muslim Women: Overview and Focus on Saudi Arabia, Transnational Feminism Through Study Abroad, Adolescent Girls in Literature, Radical Women in the Second-Wave of Feminism, and Self-Concepts and Identity.
On Saturday, March 5, sessions will include: Hearing Women’s Voices; It’s Not What it Seems: Challenges to Patriarchal, Cultural, Dystopian Perceptions; Social Implications: Homelessness, Sexual Assault, Abortion; Ethnographic Approach to the American Muslim Experience in Nebraska; Women’s Agency in American History; and Gender Differences? Women, Business and Media.
The conference is supported by a UNK Faculty Senate Artist & Lecturers Grant and is co-sponsored by UNK, UNL and UNO Women’s & Gender Studies Programs, UNK Ethnic Studies, UNK International Studies, UNK String Project, UNK Women’s Center, UNK WGS Triota, UNK Queer-Straight Alliance, UNK Young Democrats, UNK Connections, Antelope Bookstore, Country Inn & Suites, Reynolds Series and Sandhill Cranefest.
