This weekend, the Women's and Gender Studies (WGS) department hosts “Sustaining Feminism: A Cross Border Conference,” a feminism conference with an international focus.

“This is unprecedented for Macalester.” WGS Chair Sonita Sarker said. “Never has WGS reached such a point of activity.”

Sarker, along with WGS professor Scott Morgensen and several students, has been planning this weekend's conference for over a year and a half. With over 70 presenters slated to speak and an estimated 150-200 participants from all over the world, Sarker hopes the conference will bring attention to Macalester’s WGS programming.

The main speakers at the conference include Tahirih Justice Center Executive Director and expert on female genital mutilation Layli Miller-Muro, activist and writer Surina Khan and University of California at San Diego Professor specializing in WGS issues Judith Halberstam.

University of California at Berkeley Ethnic and Women’s Studies Professor Norma Alarcón and Black womanist Charlotte Pfeiffer-Gillam will also offer plenary speeches at the conference.

The conference is open to all Macalester students. “This conference was meant to break the inside-academia, outside-academia border,” Sarker said. The workshops are scheduled all day Saturday and Sunday morning.

Additionally, the conference offers free screenings of several films in the John B. Davis Lecture Hall Saturday night.

“The conference reflects the specific contribution WGS offers,” Morgenson said. “We want to uphold the pillars of Macalester: internationalism, diversity, civic engagement and academic excellence. All of these are reflected in the conference.”

“[We hope to] showcase the power of Macalester's WGS program internationally. We want this to be where people come for the most current feminist theory,” Morgensen said.

Students played a large part in planning the conference and conceptualizing its themes. WGS major Jared Lodge ’05 was involved in the student planning committee for the conference. “I'm very excited to see the plenary speakers,” he said.

“There's going to be people from all around the world,” she said. “There's a lot of grassroots activism as well as scholarly research, and the partnership between them is interesting.”

The five keynote speakers for the weekend come from a variety of WGS backgrounds, including public service and human rights. “There is such a diversity of topics,” Morgensen said.

“We're trying to look at the rights of sexual minorities, racial minorities and cultural minorities simultaneously [with women's rights],” Sarker said.

Sarker hopes that students will not just “look at this as some sort of external conference hosted on Macalester's campus. There's a relation with their course work, and the sessions are a good starting point for anyone who hasn't studied [in this area].”

The conference is sponsored by a Ford Foundation grant. The WGS department was one of a dozen recipients, and one of two classified as academic institutions.

“[WGS has] a lot of untapped potential,” Sarker said. Sarker is hoping to engage the community through the conference and the other programs sponsored by the grant. “Responsibility and accountability to community is part of the definition of civic engagement,” Sarker said.

While the grant is only good for two years, Sarker and Morgensen hope that this weekend's conference will encourage further external sponsorship. “Success builds on success. We want this to be a springboard,” Sarker said. “The goal is to get [sponsors] to pour money into causes they believe in.”

The opening plenary session is from 6–8 p.m. in the John B. Davis Lecture Hall, but the first sessions will be held from 3–4:30 p.m. Grassroots Initiatives I will be in Carnegie 105 and Arts/Culture I in Carnegie 305.