Student-organized conference looks at sexual violence

A student-organized conference at UW–Madison March 27-29 will help participants take “The First Step to Ending Sexual Violence.”

With reported increases in violent crime, conference themes will take on additional urgency, according to Shelley Curran, conference coordinator and a graduate student in policy analysis at UW–Madison’s La Follette Institute of Public Affairs.

“We live in a society which tolerates violence. In order to end the epidemic of sexual violence, we need to simultaneously end all forms of oppression and stop the silence about this issue,” she says.

To that end, conference topics will range from sexual power to self-defense strategies to feminist backlash and many more.

Speakers will include:

• bell hooks, professor of English at City College of New York. hooks, an expert on all kinds of oppression as cultural tools, will present the keynote address on collectively confronting sexism and oppression.
• Gail Dines, associate professor of sociology and women’s studies at Wheelock College in Boston. Dines will present a slide show lecture, “Pornography and the Media: Images of Violence Against Women.”
• Charles Derry, founder of the Gender Violence Institute in St. Cloud, Minn. Derry will consider manhood, rape and power.
• Michael Scarce, coordinator of the Rape Education and Prevention program at Ohio State University. His new book, Male on Male Rape, focuses on gay sexual violence.

Curran says that bringing the speakers together and coordinating the logistics of the conference offered 50 students from all academic walks of life valuable hands- on experience. “Most of them are undergraduates, and organizing such a large conference has given us all useful experience in collaborating, both with each other and with various university organizations,” she says.

The conference is free for members of the UW–Madison community; the cost for the general public is $75. Students at universities other than UW–Madison will pay $25.

Registration is required for all participants. Contact Curran at 265-8951 or mdcurran@students.wisc.edu.