UB Sets First "Gender Week" Observance

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Katha Pollit, a poet, essayist and columnist for The Nation, will deliver the keynote address of UB's first Gender Week, to be held Sept. 23-27 on the UB North Campus.

Sponsored by the Institute for Research and Education on Women and Gender (IREWG), the theme of the week will be "Gender Matters."

Pollit will speak at 3 p.m. Sept. 23 in the Screening Room in the Center for the Arts, North Campus. Her address, entitled "Gender Politics and the War on Terrorism," will focus on current U.S. policies and the role of women in the international community.

Gender Week will highlight a variety of issues important to women, including research, education, health and legal issues and will offer multi-cultural perspectives on gender and sexuality. Pre-eminent scholars and performing artists will lend their own unique perspectives to gender issues, comprising a wide variety of interdisciplinary lectures, presentations and performances designed to engage, challenge and appeal to the entire university community.

"We know that gender is an important consideration in everyone's daily life-in their intellectual life and in their professional and work life-and we want to underscore how important we consider the many dimensions of gender," says Isabel Marcus, UB professor of law and IREWG.

"There is an astonishing array of participants that indicate the diverse ways in which gender manifests itself," she adds, cautioning that while "there is a tendency to ignore gender or trivialize it or minimize it, we want to indicate the full richness of the ongoing discussions."

Among the highlights:

o The exhibit "Papers of Dr. Lydia T. Wright, M.D.: Activist, Educator, Healer" will open at 10 a.m. Sept. 25 in the Special Collections Reading Room, 420 Capen Hall, North Campus. The opening will feature Wright, a UB professor emeritus of pediatrics, African-American activist and longtime Buffalo School Board member, and Buffalo school Superintendent Marion Canedo.

The exhibit is co-sponsored by the UB Archives, the UB Libraries, the Graduate School of Education and the Poetry/Rare Books Collection.

o Two lectures-part of the week-long George F. Hourani Lectures in Moral Philosophy sponsored by the Department of Philosophy-will be given by Martha Nussbaum, a pre-eminent professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. The lectures, entitled "Shame and Stigma" and "Shame, Punishment and 'Moral Panics,'" will begin at 4 p.m. Sept. 25 in the Center for Tomorrow, North Campus.

o Mary Bisson, professor and chair of the Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences, will address the issue of attracting more women and girls to the sciences during a talk at 2 p.m. Sept. 25 in the Friend's Room in Lockwood Memorial Library, North Campus. Bisson is the first woman to be promoted to full professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and is the department's first female chair.

o The School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences will hold an osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease screening, education and risk assessment clinic for women from noon to 1 p.m. Sept. 25 in the Student Union Social Hall (Flag Hall) on the North Campus.

o Theatre for Change, a local theater group, will present "Sexual Harassment," a commissioned interactive performance from 7-9 p.m. Sept. 25 in the Black Box Theatre in the Center for the Arts, North Campus. The performance will focus on a topic pertinent to everyone in the academic community: harassment of a female student by a male professor. The performance will include a review of the university's sexual harassment policy and a question-and-answer session with the actors remaining in character.

o "Butterflies and Hummingbirds: Visual Perspectives on Gender, Culture and Sexuality," a digital-visual presentation by visual and public artist Alma Lopez, will be held at 7 p.m. Sept. 25 in the Screening Room at the CFA. The show, hosted by the University Libraries, will focus on representations of queer women of color in art, homophobia and censorship. Lopez is a co-founding member and art director of Tongues, a Queer Women of Color webzine, magazine and performance venue.

o The departments of Theatre and Dance and Modern Languages and Literatures will co-produce the drama "The Woman Who Fell from the Sky" (La mujer que cayó del cielo), a trilingual play performed in English, Spanish and Tarahumara-an Indian language from Northern Mexico. The play, about a woman found in the psychiatric ward of a hospital in Kansas City, will be held at 7 p.m. Sept. 26. in the Drama Theatre in the CFA.