Women’s Institute for Leadership and Learning

9:15am-10:30am – Session 1

“Food and Nourishment: Understanding Food Insecurity, Health and Food Activism in Communities of Color”

Location: Gould Hotel Board Room

Presenters: Denise Harrison, Kent State; Cynthia Trocchio, Kent State

This dialogue is centered around nutritional and health related issues in communities of color.  Given that people of color, African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and Asian Americans lead the way on health related illnesses based on consumption of highly processed, genetically modified, high fructose and sugar laden foods.  The aim of this discussion is to assist in developing platforms for changing the consumer mindset of consumption without question.

“An Analysis of Eco-feminist Perspectives in Anime”

Location: Seneca Falls Community Center

Presenters:  Alysah Berwald, St. John Fisher College; Melissa Guck, St. John Fisher College; Erica Mader, St. John Fisher College; Wendi Sierra, St. John Fisher College; Jill Swiencicki, St. John Fisher College

This session will explore how the concepts of femininity, motherhood, and nature are depicted in popular anime. While anime, Japanese animated feature films, are stylistically similar to western children’s cartoons, they frequently tackle complex and adult themes. The anime analyzed in this session, including Princess Mononoke, Ponyo, The Wolf Children, and Yobi, the Five Tailed Fox, each tackle environmental issues, often through the narratives of young women and their connection with the natural world.

“Emerging, Awakening, Naming The Path of Ecofeminist Recognition”

Location: Gould Hotel Ballroom

Presenters:  Jesse Curran, Stony Brook University; Ken Cooper, SUNY Geneseo; Lucia LoTempio, SUNY Geneseo; Devon Gawley, SUNY Geneseo; Jenna Chevrin, SUNY Geneseo    

On college campuses, even fewer students self-identify as ecofeminist than as feminist.  Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising since, as Susan Griffin writes, “underneath almost every identifiable social problem we share, a powerful way of ordering the world can be detected, one we have inherited from European culture and that alienates consciousness both from nature and from being.”  In her essay “Sometimes It Is Named,” Griffin suggests that underneath this “old structure” lies “another order of meaning” grounded in subjective experience, sensual knowledge, and the “life of the earth.” Rather than naming this sensibility as explicitly ecofeminist, Griffin’s essay emphasizes the connections amongst social justice, ecology, philosophy, history, art, and literature—which is to say there are innumerable, transecting intellectual paths with moments of potential recognition. This session, addressing education as a process of de-alienation, will be facilitated by five college professors and students, from various disciplines.  Each session organizer will read a passage from Griffin’s essay to familiarize participants with her analysis and our shared platform.  We will then invite the audience to join the dialogue and to focus upon interdisciplinary moments “prior to” and “after” ecofeminist self-identification.  Some of the questions we ask may include the following: How do institutions (medical, educational, virtual, etc.) fragment identity? What is the role of first-person experience in academic discourse? Must one identify as a feminist or environmentalist in order to participate in the “shift in consciousness” that Griffin describes? What are some of the most promising uses of ecofeminist theory for asking fundamentally different questions in/about your field?

Next Page >

Return to Itinerary