Frans B. M. de Waal

Ida Beam Visiting Professor

In 1981, Dr. de Waal accepted a research position at the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. There he began both observational and experimental studies of reconciliation behavior in monkeys. He received the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Peacemaking among Primates (Harvard University Press, 1989) a popularized account of fifteen years of research on conflict resolution in nonhuman primates. Since the mid-1980s, Dr. de Waal also worked on chimpanzees at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and their close relatives, bonobos, at the San Diego Zoo.

In 1991, Dr. de Waal accepted a joint position in the Psychology Department of Emory University and at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, both in Atlanta. His current interests include food-sharing, social reciprocity, and conflict-resolution in primates as well as the origins of morality and justice in human society. His most recent books discuss the evolutionary origin of human morality, and the implications of that we know about bonobos for models of human social evolution: Good Natured (Harvard University Press, 1996), and Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape (University of California Press, 1997).

A former Ida Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Iowa, Page duBois teaches classics and cultural studies in the Literature Department at the University of California at San Diego. Her most recent book is Slaves and Other Objects, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2003.

She is also the author of Centaurs and Amazons: Women and the Prehistory of the Great Chain of Being (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1982);
Sowing the Body: Psychoanalysis and Ancient Representations of Women (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); Torture and Truth (New York and London: Routledge, 1991); Sappho Is Burning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); and
Trojan Horses: Saving the Classics from Conservatives (New York: New York University Press, 2001).

She obtained her B.A. at Frankin Pierce College and her M.S. in Animal Science at Arizona State University. Dr. Grandin received her Ph.D in Animal Science from the University of Illinois in 1989. Today she teaches courses on livestock behaviour and facility design at Colorado State University and consults with the livestock industry on facility design, livestock handling, and animal welfare. She has appeared on television shows such as 20/20, 48 Hours, CNN Larry King Live, and has been featured in People Magazine, the New York Times, Forbes, U.S. News and World Report, and Time Magazine. Interviews with Dr. Grandin have been broadcast on National Public Radio. She has also authored over 300 articles in both scientific journals and livestock periodicals on animal handling, welfare, and facility design. She is the author of "Thinking in Pictures", "Livestock Handling and Transport," and "Genetics and the Behavior of Domestic Animals."

Cameron McCarthy teaches mass communications theory and cultural studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. He is Research Professor, Communications Scholar & University Scholar in the Institute of Communication Research. Cameron has also held appointments to the departments of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies. He has been a visiting scholar at Jesus College, the University of Cambridge, York University, The University of Newcastle, Monash University and the University of Queensland.

He has published widely on topics related to postcolonialism, problems with neoMarxist writings on race and education, institutional support for teaching, and school ritual and adolescent identities in journals such as Harvard Educational Review, Oxford Review of Education, The British Journal of the Sociology of Education, Studies in the Linguistic Sciences, International Studies in Qualitative Research, Qualitative Inquiry, Ariel: Review of International English Literature, Discourse, Educational Theory, Curriculum Studies, The Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, Urban Education, Education and Society, Contemporary Sociology, The Journal of Cultural Studies, Cultural Studies--Critical Methodologies, Interchange, The Journal of Education, and The European Journal of Intercultural Studies. Cameron has authored or co-authored the following books: Race and Curriculum (Falmer Press, 1990), Race Identity and Representation in Education (Routledge, 1993), Racismo y Curriculum (Morata, Madrid, 1994), The Uses of Culture: Education and the Limits of Ethnic Affiliation (Routledge, 1998), Sound Identities: Youth Music and the Cultural Politics of Education (Peter Lang, 1999) and Multicultural Curriculum: New Directions for Social Theory, Practice and Policy (Routledge, 2000). Reading and Teaching the Postcolonial: From Baldwin to Basquiat and Beyond (Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 2001). Cameron has published with his graduate students on Foucault and Cultural Studies entitled, Foucault, Cultural Studies and Governmentality (SUNY Press, 2003). He is currently working on a new anthology, Race, Identity and Representation, Volume Two. This book will address the impact of globalization, particularly since 9/11, on racial formation and structuration in modern societies and will foreground new theoretical and empirical work on race relations by major national and international scholars. It has been solicited by Routledge/Falmer for its "Critical Social Thought" book series. With Angharad Valdivia, Cameron is co-editor of the "Intersections in Communication and Culture" book series for Peter Lang/Institute of Communications Research.

Cherríe Moraga

Ida Beam Visiting Professor

Moraga began publishing her works in the 1980s. She is one of the first and few Chicana/Lesbian writers of our times, setting the stage for younger generations of other minority writers and activists.

Along with her books Moraga dove into writing plays. The plays deal with the themes surrounding feminism, ethnicity, sexuality, and other gender-related issues. Her work in the theatre has contributed to the growth of the Chicano Theatre. Moraga is currently a member of a Theatre Communications Group and was the recipient of the NEA Theatre Playwriting Fellowship Award. Her most recent play, Watsonville: Some Place Not Here, won the Fund For New American Plays Award, from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The play was performed at the Brava Theatre Company of San Francisco in May of 1996.

Around the same time that she published her second book in 1983, Moraga co-founded the group "Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press ," a group that did not discriminate against homosexuality, class, or race. Moraga involved herself as well in organizing women-of-color groups against violence.

In 1981 Moraga wrote and co-edited This Bridge Called My Back with Gloria Anzaldu½, with whom Moraga often collaborated. Perhaps her most successful and attention-gaining book, it was the winner of the Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award in 1986.

Bob Shacochis won the National Book Award for his collection of stories Easy in the Islands. In response to that collection, Robert Stone called him "one of the most talented young writers working in America today" and Barry Hannah said, "If there's a better writer in the States . . . I ain't found him." Among his many other honors and awards are the American Academy of Arts and Letters Rome Prize, a James Michener Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. He is also author of a novel, Swimming Under a Volcano, and a second collection of stories, The Next New World. His journalism and essays frequently appear in Harper's and other national magazines. He is a graduate of the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Steven Anderson

Steven Anderson, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience at the University of Iowa. His research is focused on the neural basis of social, emotional, and moral behavior, based primarily on studies of individuals who have sustained damage to various brain regions. Dr. Anderson is Director of the Neuropsychological Rehabilitation Laboratory and Co-Director of the Memory Disorders Clinic at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.

Elizabeth Aubrey is Professor of Music and Head of Musicology at the University of Iowa. B.A., Grinnell College, 1973; M.Mus., University of Maryland, 1975; Ph.D., University of Maryland, 1982. Aubrey joined the UI faculty in 1982. Author of two books and numerous articles about the music of medieval France, she is a widely respected performer of early music, and has staged concerts and recitals in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. She is Founder and Music Director of Musick’s Feast, an early music ensemble based in Iowa City with the dual purpose of presenting high-quality performances and raising funds for local and worldwide hunger relief.

Chelsea Bailey is an assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at New York University. Her research interests and publications are about the affective experiences of children and adults in public and private contexts. She recently published "Bad Moms in Cyberspace" in Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education.

Antoine Bechara

Antoine Bechara is assistant professor of Neurology at the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine. His research interests include Neurobiology of Decision-Making: Anatomical, Psychophysiological, and Behavioral Aspects; and the Role of Emotion in Cognitive Functions: Anatomical, Psychophysiological, and Behavioral Aspects. He has published extensively in journals, such as Journal of Neuroscience and Science.

Agata Bielik-Robson is a 2003 participant in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. She received her M.A. from Warsaw University (1989, with distinction) and her PhD from The Polish Academy of Sciences in 1995, which gave her a special award for her thesis, “The Crisis of the Subject in Contemporary Philosophy.” She has presented papers in journals and at conferences prolifically over the past decade, as well as publishing the books, On the Other Side of Nihilism: Contemporary Philosophy in Search for a New Subjectivity (1997, IFIS PAN Press) , Other Modernity: A Hidden Life of the Modern Soul (2000, Universitas) and her translation of Harold Bloom’s seminal The Anxiety of Influence into Polish. Her recent work on the Romantic conception of subjectivity, The Spirit of the Surface. Romantic Prolegomena to Any Future Philosophy of Subjectivity (forthcoming in Polish, Universitas) aims, via its translation into English, “to show the Anglo-Saxon reader the unity, as well as actuality, of the Romantic movement perceived from both, British-American and Central European perspective.” Dr. Bielik writes, “although I was originally trained as a philosopher, I often find more inspiration in the field of literature than in strictly academic philosophical writings. I am a strong advocate of the ‘literary style’ in philosophy, as well as of bringing together these two crucial domains of contemporary humanities.”

Gail Boldt is an assistant professor in the Ph.D. program in Language, Literacy, and Culture in the College of Education at The University of Iowa. She teaches seminars in theories of identity and representation, the writings of Michel Foucault, and media education and children's popular culture. She recently published "Oedipal and Other Conflicts," an article about gendered transferences in parenting, in Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood. Gail is currently working as a visiting scholar at The Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis.

Art Borreca is Associate Professor and Head of the Playwriting and Dramaturgy Programs in the Department of Theatre Arts at the University of Iowa. As a dramaturg, he has worked on productions at the Yale Repertory Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, La Mama E.T.C, Oxford Stage Company, and Theatre Project Tokyo, as well as at the University of Iowa. He is the organizer of the Theatre Arts Department's annual Iowa New Play Festival. His articles and reviews have appeared in Theater, Modem Drama, TDR (The Drama Review), and other journals; as well as in several books, including What is Dramaturgy? and Dramaturgy in American Theatre. Prof. Borreca holds Master and Doctor of Fine Arts degrees in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism from the Yale School of Drama.

Aimee Carrillo Rowe

Aimee Carrillo Rowe is an Assistant Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Iowa. Her research and teaching focus on third world feminisms, whiteness and antiracism studies, critical pedagogy, and the politics of spirituality and justice. Her recent writing appears Feminist Media Studies 3:2 (July 2003); POROI: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Rhetorical Analysis and Invention (Summer, 2003); Intercultural and International Communication Annual, 25 (2002); and Radical History Review (forthcoming).

John-Paul Chaisson Cardenas

John-Paul Chaisson-Cardenas, M.S.W., an immigrant from Guatemala, is the Administrator of the Iowa Division of Latino Affairs in the Department of Human Rights. Before his appointment he was the Training and Technical Assistance at the National Resource Center for Family Centered Practice (NRC/FCP) and the Executive Director of the Institute for the Support of Latino/a Families and Communities (ISLFC) at the University of Iowa. John-Paul has developed, coordinated and presented training and technical assistance for educational institutions, governmental agencies, community organizations, businesses, health organizations and social service systems across the United States, Mexico, Canada and Central America. His areas of expertise are Cultural Competence, Community Development and Strength Based Family Centered Practice. John-Paul is also adjunct faculty at the University of Iowa School of Social Work. Other government appointments include member of the Statewide Educational Equity Committee for the Iowa Department of Education, Chair of the Governor’s Taskforce on Minority Health and the Disproportionate Minority Confinement Taskforce. John-Paul is also the Chair of the Statewide Latino Conference and a former Diversity Chair of the Iowa Civil Liberties Union state board (American Civil Liberties Union).

David Depew

David Depew received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California at San Diego, after earlier graduate studies at the University of Chicago and the New School for Social Research. His dissertation was on the logical status of narrative explanations in the historical sciences. He soon discovered that the problems of explanation in history also arise in the life sciences, particularly in evolutionary biology . Since that discovery his primary work has been in the philosophy, history and, most recently, the rhetoric of biology. Of increasing interest are political, social, and ethical arguments that attempt to ground themselves in claims about human nature -- usually bad arguments. Depew taught for 23 years in the Philosophy Department at California State University, Fullerton. He has been jointly appointed in the Department of Communication Studies and in the Project on the Rhetoric of Inquiry since coming to the University of Iowa in 1995. He is currently serving as Executive Director of POROI.

Heriberto Godina is an assistant professor of English Education at the University of Iowa. His research examines issues of identity, language, and academic success for Mexican background students and other linguistically diverse populations. He correlates ethnographic methodology through a critical post-colonial lens that takes into account conflicted subjectivities, such as internalized colonization. In order to elicit positive educational outcomes for Mexican background students through this effort, Professor Godina has been articulating a theory related to "Mesocentrism." A term he coined to describes how culturally-relevant instruction can be "centered" through Mesoamerican ancestry. He teaches classes, such as Language & Learning and Sociolinguistic Perspectives in the College of Education.

Matthias Göritz is a 2003 participant in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He has taught at many German Universities as well as at Bard College in New York. A recipient of numerous fellowships, he has spent time in several European cities as well as New York and Chicago. His first book of poems, Loops, was published in 2001 in German and he has contributed prose and poetry to many magazines, anthologies and the major German newspapers Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Welt. He co-translated (with Chong Heyong) a book by the Korean writer Kim Kwang Kyu, entitled The Depth of the Shell and does frequent translations from the English for the German journal, Sprache im technischen Zeitalter, where he is also a contributing editor.

Since 1994 Laura Graham has been Director of the Xavante Education Fund, a Cultural Survival Special Project. She has served as a consultant for World Wildlife Fund and Unicef and works actively to support projects that benefit Xavante communities.

Conference Co-Director. Daniel joined the Iowa Rhetoric Department Fall 2000 after a two-year Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at the UCLA Humanities Consortium, Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies. Recently he has taught seminars on the rhetoric of passions and the problem of experience in the eighteenth century (typically cross-listed in departments of English and Communication Studies) and an introduction to the rhetoric and theory of popular culture. His current graduate seminar "The Promise of Empathy" is coordinated with the conference, and his students from the seminar have helped compose discussion questions for roundtables Friday and Saturday. Book projects nearing completion include a monograph The Politics of Emotion and an edited volume Heidegger and Rhetoric, which is forthcoming in the SUNY Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy.

Ben Kieffer

Ben Kieffer is currently a senior producer with public radio stations WSUI (AM 910) and KSUI (FM 91.7). A graduate of the University of Iowa in Journalism and Mass Communication, Communication Studies, and Global Studies, Kieffer has been employed at the stations since returning in 2000 from over a decade of media work in Europe. His activities in Europe began in 1989 when he covered the quiet revolutions of Eastern Europe as a public radio correspondent and then branched out into other work in film, video, multimedia and live presentation projects. Now, he spends most of his time hosting talk shows and Iowa Talks Live from The Java House broadcast on WSUI Iowa City/Cedar Rapids and WOI Ames/Des Moines.

David Klemm

David Klemm is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Iowa and teaches in the Theology, Ethics, and Culture program.

Rob Latham is Associate Professor of English, American Studies, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa. He is the author of Consuming Youth: Vampires, Cyborgs, and the Culture of Consumption (Chicago, 2002) and the co-editor of the journal Science Fiction Studies.

Jean Lloyd Jones

Jean Lloyd Jones holds and MA in History from the University of Iowa (1971) and an MA in Conflict Resolution from Antioch University (1997). She served in the Iowa Legislature for 16 years (1978-1994). A founding member and first chairperson of the Iowa Peace Institute, Lloyd Jones traveled to the former Soviet Union seven times, attending the International Peace Dialogue, and visited Japan and China with Sister State delegations, and hosted many international visitors.

Tom Lutz is the author, most recently, of "Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears" (Norton 1999) and the forthcoming "Cosmopolitan Vistas: American Regionalism and the Making of Literary Value" (Cornell 2004) and "Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers and Bums" (FSG/Northpoint 2005). He is Professor of English at U of I.

John Lyne is Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication at the University of Pittsburgh, where he also serves on the faculty of the graduate program in Bioethics and Health Law. His work has focused on rhetoric of science, argumentation, and philosophical issues in rhetoric.

Christopher Merrill

Christopher Merrill’s books include four collections of poetry, Brilliant Water, Workbook, Fevers & Tides, and Watch Fire, for which he received the Peter I. B. Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets; translations of Aleš Debeljak’s Anxious Moments and The City and the Child; several edited volumes, among them, The Forgotten Language: Contemporary Poets and Nature and From the Faraway Nearby: Georgia O’Keeffe as Icon; and three books of nonfiction, The Grass of Another Country: A Journey Through the World of Soccer, The Old Bridge: The Third Balkan War and the Age of the Refugee, and Only the Nails Remain: Scenes from the Balkan Wars. His work has been translated into sixteen languages. He has held the William H. Jenks Chair in Contemporary Letters at the College of the Holy Cross, and now directs the International Writing Program at The University of Iowa.

Allen Michie is a visiting assistant professor in the Literature, Science, and the Arts program at the University of Iowa. Otherwise he is an assistant professor of English at Iowa State University, where he specializes in eighteenth-century British literature. He has previously taught at Coastal Carolina University and Wake Forest University, and he has has degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Oxford University, and Emory University.

Gregg C. Oden, Professor and Chair of Psychology and Professor of Computer Science at the University of Iowa, did his graduate work at the University of California, San Diego where he received the PhD in Psychology in 1974. Prior to coming to Iowa in 1990, he was a faculty member in Psychology and in Computer Sciences at the University of Wisconsin. His research interests are in the development of models of cognition and in the nature and interrelationships of physical, computational, and experiential realities. He is founding co-editor-in-chief of the electronic journal Cognitive Systems Research.

John Durham Peters is F. Wendell Miller Distinguished Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa. He received his BA and MA from Utah, PhD from Stanford. Has taught at Iowa since 1986. He studies cultural history of media and social theory.

Stephanie Preston received her bachelor's degree in the interdisciplinary major of Cognitive Science from The University of Virginia where she concentrated on neuroscience and philosophy. She received her MA and PhD in Psychology from The University of California at Berkeley. While at Berkeley, she studied food-storing animals such as squirrels and kangaroo rats as a natural model for memory and decision-making. Her dissertation was on the effects of stress on decision making in Mirriam's kangaroo rat. She also started a collaboration with proctologist Frans de Waal to write a theoretical review on the evolutionary and physiological bases of empathy; this was recently published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences. For the past year and a half she has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Neurology at the University of Iowa. With Antoine Bechara and the faculty at Iowa, she is doing empirical research on the substrates of decision-making and empathy in humans using psychophysiology and brain imaging.

Paula M. Salvio is an Associate Professor of Education at the University of New Hampshire. Her teaching and research interests include autobiography, curriculum theory and feminist pedagogy. Salvio's essays on the politics of emotion have appeared in Cambridge Journal of Education, English Education, Journal of Teacher Education, Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, Curriculum Inquiry and Cultural Studies. She is currently completing a book on the teaching life of Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Anne Sexton, to be published by SUNY press.

Mel Schlachter

Mel Schlachter is an Episcopal priest, currently Rector of Trinity Episcopal Church, Iowa City. He served for twenty-five years as a pastoral psychotherapist, twenty years in parish ministry as Co-Rector with his priest wife Barbara (now there is a situation requiring empathy! --MS), and a stint as a prison chaplain in the New York State system. Work with couples was a specialty in his counseling practice, hence one interest in this subject. He has been adjunct faculty at St. George's College, Jerusalem, and finds urgent the need and possibilities for mutual understanding in that part of the world. Schlachter is the father of two adult children, still requiring empathy.

Louis-Georges Schwartz Teaches film studies in the Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature at the University of Iowa.

Chivy Sok

Chivy joined the UICHR after five years of working at Columbia University's Center for the Study of Human Rights where she was the program coordinator and later program director. Prior to joining the UICHR, she worked as a consultant to the Cambodian Association of Illinois to help in the effort to establish the first Killing Fields Memorial and Museum in the United States.

Chivy earned a B.A. in Political Science from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1993 and a Master of International Affairs (MIA) degree from Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs with a special concentration in East Asia and human rights.

Thom Swiss is Professor of English and Rhetoric of Inquiry at the University of Iowa, editor of the Iowa Review Web--a journal of new media writing and art-- and author of two collections of poems. His most recent book is Unspun (NYU Press); forthcoming is a co-edited book on the subject of New Media Poetics (MIT Press).

Katy Tangenberg is Assistant Professor of Social Work at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. Prior to moving to Iowa in 2001, she taught in the M.S.W. program at the University of Washington, Tacoma. Dr. Tangenberg received her Ph.D. in Social Welfare from the University of Washington, Seattle in 1998. Her doctoral dissertation explored the physical and spiritual experiences of mothers living with HIV/AIDS, and their implications for social work practice, education, and research. More recent projects and publications have examined the relevance of spirituality to addiction, spiritual and political dimensions of faith-based social service delivery, international HIV/AIDS prevention, and the experiences of women over 50 living with HIV/AIDS. Her publications include articles in Social Work, Families in Society, Affilia, the Journal of Mental Health and Aging, and the Journal of Social Work Research and Evaluation. Dr. Tangenberg teaches courses focused on family-centered social work practice, cultural diversity, and the relationships between spirituality, health, and mental health. She received her M.S.W. degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1988. Her social work practice experience includes home-based family counseling, hospital social work specializing in women’s health, and case management with adolescent parents.

Peter Taubman is the Assistant Dean of the School of Education at Brooklyn College in NYC. Recently along with some previous students of his, he started a New Visions school - Bushwick School for Social Justice. The school opened in September with 135 9th graders. Dr. Taubman recently stepped down as Head of Adolescence Education, but he is continuing un-officially in that role. He is one of the co-authors of Understanding Curriculum and has written several articles on identity formation, Lacanian psychoanalysis and education, and multicultural education.

Douglas Trevor is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Iowa. His first book, The Poetics of Melancholy in Early Modern England, is being published next fall by Cambridge University Press. He is the recipient of a Charles Ryskamp Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Mellon Foundation for next year. His interests are poetry, prose, drama, and the early modern understanding of the passions.

Russell Scott Valentino

Russell Scott Valentino earned his Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from UCLA in 1993. He is an Associate Professor at the University of Iowa with a joint appointment in Russian and in Cinema and Comparative Literature. His work has focused on 19th-century Russian and 20th-century Istrian literature and literary culture, as well as on the practice of literary translation. He is currently at work on a comparative study of the concept of virtue in Russia and the United States. His books include Materada (Northwestern 2000) and Vicissitudes of Genre in the Russian Novel (Peter Lang 2001), as well as Persuasion and Rhetoric (with Cinzia Blum and David Depew), forthcoming in 2004 from Yale University Press, and Between Exile and Asylum: An Eastern Epistolary, forthcoming in 2004 from the Central European University Press.

Agnes Wilcox

Agnes holds a B.A. in Communication from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an M.A. in English from Peabody College of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and an M.F.A. in Directing from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She has taught at New York University, the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center (Waterford, Connecticut), Webster University, and Washington University, where she has been an adjunct faculty member in University College for the last eighteen years.

Agnes has received an Advancement grant from The National Endowment for the Arts and a Summer Seminar grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. In St. Louis she has been honored by a YWCA Women of Achievement Award and a 2003 St. Louis Arts Award for artistic excellence.

Agnes is a member of Actors Equity, the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. (She was a member of the Teamsters, but has allowed her membership to lapse.) Agnes currently freelances as an actress in television and radio commercials, industrial film and feature film.

Ph.D. 2003, University of Illinois at Chicago. Vershawn comes to UI Rhetoric from the English Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he studied with Walter Benn Michaels, Gerald Graff, and Ralph Cintron. He is currently working on two book manuscripts. The first, tentatively titled, Your Average Nigga: Language, Literacy and the Rhetoric of Blackness, seeks to answer why education aggravates the gap between the black under class and the black middle class. An essay from this manuscript is forthcoming in College Communication and Composition sometime in 2004. His second project, which is closely related to the first, looks at how the class division in black communities is predicated upon what he calls the burden of racial performance. Vershawn examines this burden—how it is predicted and fulfilled—in twentieth century African American literature, including drama and nonfiction. An essay from this project can be read in the fall 2003 issue of the Minnesota Review. His teaching over the next few years will include first-year rhetoric courses and upper undergraduate and graduate courses that will focus on the rhetoric of identity (ethos theory) and African American literature.

Shimon Adaf is a 2003 participant in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He is a founding member of Ev, a literary group that seeks to introduce into Hebrew literature a new poetical language merging ancient and modern Hebrew. He received the Israeli Ministry of Education’s Award in 1996 for his first collection of poems, The Monologue of Icarus (Gvanim, 1997). His second collection, That Which I Thought Shadow is the Real Body , was published in 2002 by Keter, the publishing house in which he now works as editor. His work has been translated into English, Dutch, and Italian. He has done translations of John Cage, Mallarmé, De Chirico and Blanchot, as well as contributing weekly to a leading Israeli paper on subjects such as cinema, literature, and music. In 1994 he joined the rock group Ha’atzula (“Aristocracy”) as a songwriter and acoustic guitar player. They released their first album, Need , in 1996 and he has since collaborated with some of Israel’s most prominent rock artists.

Laila Farah

Dr. Laila Farah is a Lebanese-American feminist performer-scholar. She attended Lebanese American University and Eastern Michigan University while working toward her BA in Theatre and Communication Arts. She continued at Eastern Michigan University in order to complete her MA in Performance Studies and Communication. She received her Doctorate in Performance Studies at Southern Illinois University. She is currently an Assistant Professor in Women’s Studies at DePaul University and working on future performance pieces in Chicago, as well as touring with her production of “Living in the Hyphen-Nation.” Her research interests include research with and the performance of “Third World” women and women of color, postcolonial identities and “alien-nation,” and ethnographic and autoethnographic performance. Dr. Farah has taught such courses as the Cultural Politics of the Performing Arts, Contemporary Feminist Playwrights, Reader’s Theatre, Children’s Theatre, Women’s Studies and Performance Studies at Eastern Michigan University, Southern Illinois University, SUNY Potsdam, and DePaul University.

ABOUT Living in the Hyphen-Nation: Dr. Farah has been performing this performance piece around the country, and recently in particular in response to sept. 11th and the events following, specifically those pertaining to moslems, arabs and moslem-americans and arab-americans. The show critically examines institutional racism as enacted by the US govt. in terms of secret evidence, racial profiling, legislation that has passed, and general demonization and creation of the other of these above mentioned groups. It is specifically gendered in tearing down stereotypes of arab women and the veil, and chronicles two separate autobiographical accounts of Dr. Farah's journies to and from the middle east. The show is linked through poetry by Haas and Suheir Hammad, as well as Laila Hallaby.

Musick's Feast

Musick's Feast is based in Iowa City, Iowa. Its music director, Elizabeth Aubrey, is a professor of music at the University of Iowa; other members include Darlene Bergman, Marvin Bergman, Barbara Evans O’Donnell, and John Spomer. Each of these musicians has years of experience performing early music. In addition to this core group of singers, other musicians, including instrumentalists, are invited to participate in specific concerts.

Besides presenting its own programs, Musick's Feast sponsors a series, called Musick's Feast Presents, featuring other ensembles who have agreed to donate a concert to the cause of hunger relief. The organization strives to keep its overhead as low as possible, and because of the generosity of a few individuals, every penny generated by concerts is donated to organizations that help feed hungry people, locally and globally.

Musick's Feast is incorporated in the State of Iowa as a charitable and educational organization and is recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) corporation.

The efforts of Musick's Feast are rooted in our local community, and we have been able to make contributions to hunger relief efforts in eastern Iowa but also to worldwide agencies. In our first season, 2000-2001, our concerts generated $5798,which we distributed among The Salvation Army, Heifer Project International, the Linn Community Food Bank, Table to Table Food Rescue, The Iowa City Free Lunch Program, and the Johnson County Crisis Center Food Bank. In our second season, 2001-2002, we increased our receipts by nearly 50% and were able to donate a total of $8683.96 to America’s Second Harvest, Table to Table, the Johnson County Crisis Center, and Heifer Project International.

Yevgeniya MYAGKA (pen name, Kononenko)is a 2003 participant in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. She is a well-known Ukrainian poet and fiction writer who has published, under the pen name Yevgeniya Kononenko, a book of poetry, two novels, and a number of short stories. She has received several prestigious literary awards, including first prize at the Granoslov Awards for her book of poetry, First Snow Waltz (1997) and the Suchasnist award for her novel Imitation (2001). She is now working on a new novel and a collection of short stories. She is participating courtesy of the U.S. State Department.

Gregory Norminton is a 2003 participant in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He is the author of The Ship of Fools (2002, Sceptre), which he also helped translate into French. He holds a BA from Oxford University in English Language and Literature as well as a classical acting degree from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. His awards include a Writer’s Award from the Arts Council of England in 2003, and a BBC “Making Waves” award at the Brighton Festival in 2000. He has acted on television and written plays for radio. His new novel, Arts and Wonders, will be published in 2004.

Marcin Sendecki is a 2003 participant in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He belongs to the generation of Polish poets that gathered around the counter-culture quarterly bruLion (Rough Draft) and which is sometimes referred to as “The New Barbarians” (or as the “O'Haraists,” due to the influence of Frank O'Hara and other New York School poets). Mr. Sendecki has written four books of poetry, most recently, Opisy przyrody (Descriptions of Nature, 2002) and Szkoci Dol (Scottish Pit , 2002). He co-edited the anthology of poetry, Dlugie pozegnanie. Tribute to Raymond Chandler (The Long Good-bye. Tribute to Raymond Chandler, 1997). He has been translated into numerous languages and has published books of selected poems in German and Portuguese. In the U.S., he was included in the Chicago Review ’s New Polish Writing. He currently works for Przekroj, a weekly cultural and social magazine.