Sources: Michele Janette, 785-532-5738, mjanette@k-state.edu;
and Shireen Roshanravan, 785-532-5738, sroshanr@k-state.edu

Thursday, Oct. 21, 2010

PRESENTATION BY FEMINIST SCHOLAR-ACTIVIST MARIA LUGONES OCT. 28

MANHATTAN -- Internationally recognized feminist philosopher and educator Maria Lugones will be the featured speaker for the Kansas State University women's studies program at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 28, in the Town Hall Room at the Leadership Studies Building.

Her talk, "Multiplicity, Intersectionality and Decoloniality," will explore strategies for recognizing and resisting the interwoven violence of heterosexism, racism, cultural imperialism and global poverty. The presentation is free and the public is invited.

A trademark of Lugones is her explicit commitment to think from within struggle, according to Michele Janette, director of the women's studies program. Lugones' research is grounded in more than 30 years of grassroots work with post-colonized communities in Latin America and the United States.

This includes participation in a local Binghamton chapter of Incite! Women of Color against violence; collaborating with Critical Resistance NYC to strategize ending gender/sexual and police brutality in communities of color; working with Hispano communities in northern New Mexico to protect their land and water rights against corporate takeover; and her current work on the intersection of decolonization and gender violence within indigenous communities in Bolivia.

A native of Argentina, Lugones is a founding member of Esceula Popular Nortena, a folk school in Valdez, N.M., for radical movement and political education against cultural, racial, sexual and class oppression. She directs the Center for Research in Philosophy, Interpretation and Culture, and teaches at Binghamton University in the philosophy, interpretation and culture graduate program and in the comparative literature department. She is the author of "Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Resistance Against Multiple Oppressions," and is in the process of finishing two books: "Intimate Interdependencies: Theorizing Collectivism" and "Radical Multiculturalism."

Lugones' visit to K-State is sponsored and supported by: Fire, the Diversity Programming Council, the women's studies program, the departments of philosophy and modern languages, the cultural studies program of the department of English, the Dow Multicultural Resource Center at Hale Library, Hispanic American Leadership Organization, Manhattan Alliance for Peace and Justice, United Multicultural Women, Sigma Lambda Gamma, Alianza and the American ethnic studies program.

More information is available from Janette, mjanette@k-state.edu, or Shireen Roshanravan, sroshanr@k-state.edu.