Where's the Outrage? Conference March 19 at Illinois State

Illinois State University will host the Where’s The Outrage? conference on gender-based violence in a global context on Wednesday, March 19, starting at 9:30 a.m. in the 3rd Floor East Lounge at Bone Student Center.  The conference, which features an array of internationally-recognized speakers, is free and open to the public.

After the 9:30 a.m. coffee and welcome, the conference will begin at 10 a.m. with the Physical and Psychological Varieties of Violence session.  The first speaker is Dr. Mardge Cohen who will speak on “Women in Rwanda: Another World is Possible.”  She is the former director of Women’s HIV Research at the CORE Center, former Cook County Hospital physician for 30 years and a current member of Women’s Equity to Access to Care and Treatment (WE-ACTx), a group that facilitates primary care for women infected with HIV through rape during the 1994 genocide.  Dr. Carole Warshaw will speak on “Domestic Violence and other Forms of Lifetime Trauma.”  She is executive director of the Domestic Violence and Mental Health Policy Initiative, director of the National Center on Domestic Violence, Trauma and Mental Health, University of Illinois faculty member and committee chair for the group that wrote the American Medical Association Guidelines on Domestic Violence.  Adriana Portillo-Bartow will speak on “The Psychological and Spiritual Impact of Disappearances.”  She is an award-winning human rights activist and survivor of the war in Guatemala, has served as deputy director of Amnesty International’s Midwest Regional office and currently works with the Integrated Services in Schools program developing social justice and human rights curricula.

At noon, Mary Fabri will present the keynote address, “Rape as a Tool of War: A Comparative International Perspective.”  She is the senior director of the Marjorie Kovler Center for Treatment of Torture Survivors of Heartland Alliance in Chicago.  Fabri has written extensively on the psychological consequences of torture, refugee mental health and cross-cultural psychotherapy. 

At 1:30 p.m., Dr. Irene Martinez will start the Women Resisting and Responding to Violence session with “Art, Laughter and Learning as Resistance among Political Prisoners in Argentina.”  She is a dancer, writer and visual artist who practices internal medicine and was a founding member of the Kovler Center.  Martinez is a survivor of the “Dirty War” in Argentina where she was held a political prisoner and adopted by Amnesty International as a Prisoner of Conscience.  The second speaker will be Illinois State faculty member Rebecca Saunders who will address “Women, State Violence and Justice in South Africa.”  Saunders has written on issues of trauma and human rights and is currently working on the book “Literature, Philosophy and the Challenge of Justice.” 

At 3 p.m., the Structural Violence, Family and Home session will feature Catherine Christeller on “The Violence of Inequality and HIV among African-American Women.”  She is the founder and executive director of the Chicago Women’s AIDS Project.  Lynette Jackson will speak on “Finding Lost Girls: Gendering Diasporas and Reimagining Home.”  She is a professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago and a longtime activist on issues of gender, race and sexual orientation as well as the author of a book on psychiatry in colonial Zimbabwe.  Mary Black will address “The Effects of Trauma on Maternal/Child Relationships.”  She is an occupational therapist working at the Kovler Center and works with families at WE-ACTx in Rwanda. 

For more information, contact Rebecca Saunders at rasaund@ilstu.edu