Conable Conference addresses gender and violence

Registration is under way for the 2013 Conable Conference in International Studies, April 4–6 at Rochester Institute of Technology. The conference—“Gender, Violence and Justice in the Age of Globalization”—brings speakers from around the globe to RIT to present their research on topics such as mass marriages in Africa, human trafficking, intimate-partner violence and enslavement, among others.

The three-day conference features keynote presentations on Thursday, April 4, and Friday, April 5, along with daily panel discussions.

Highlights include a talk by Judith-Ann Walker, director of the development Research and Projects Center, or dRPC, in Kano, Nigeria. Walker presents “Gender and Coercion in State-Sponsored Mass Marriages in Nigeria,” at 6:45 p.m. Thursday, April 4, in Louise M. Slaughter Hall, room 2230. At 12:15 p.m. on Friday, April 5, Catherine Cerulli, director of the Susan B. Anthony Center for Women’s Leadership at University of Rochester, presents “The Globalization of Gender-Based Violence? Next Steps for Prevention.”

Registration information and the full conference schedule are available at the RIT Conable Conference in International Studies Schedule website.

“This conference seeks to examine the critical crossroads at which local and global gender-based violence campaigners and justice advocates find themselves today,” says Benjamin Lawrance, the Hon. Barber B. Conable Jr. Endowed Professor of International Studies at RIT. “We wish to explore the conflicts, commonalities and resolutions in approaches to gender-based violence among feminists and other philosophical and ideological frameworks in the global south and global north. And we are interested in how increasing transnational and global activities, such as trade liberalization and other economic developments, are creating new kinds of violence, and/or encouraging and remedying violence.”

The conference is named for former Rochester-area politician and diplomat Barber B. Conable Jr., who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1964 to 1984 and as president of the World Bank from 1986 to 1991.

For more information, contact Lawrance at bnlgla@rit.edu.