WOMEN’S STUDIES 2024
Speakers
Keynote Speaker

Dr. Sue-Ann Barratt
Head – Institute for Gender and Development Studies
The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus
West Indies

PROF. FAWZIA AFZAL-KHAN
Director, Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies Program (2009-15)
Fulbright Specialist (2015-2022)
University Distinguished Scholar (2009)
Professor, Department of English
Montclair State University, USA
Title: “Patriarchy is only Part of the Problem”
Fawzia Afzal-Khan was Director of the Women and Gender Studies Program from 2009-15, Professor of English at Montclair State University, and recipient of the University Distinguished Scholar Award 2009/10. She is author of two books of scholarly criticism, Cultural Imperialism: Genre and Ideology in the Indo-English Novel (Penn State Press 1993), and A Critical Stage: The Role of Secular Alternative Theatre in Pakistan (Seagull Press, 2005). She is co-editor of The PreOccupation of Postcolonial Studies (Duke University Press, 2000), and Editor of the best-selling anthology, Shattering the Stereotypes: Muslim Women Speak Out (Interlink Books 2005). Her memoir: Lahore with Love: Growing Up With Girlfriends Pakistani Style was published by Syracuse University Press in 2010.
Afzal-Khan is a trained vocalist in North Indian Classical music, a published playwright and poet, and has worked as an actor and performer for Ajoka Theatre Troupe of Pakistan, as well as with the experimental theatre collective Compagnie Faim de Siecle of which she was one of the founding members. Her one-woman show Scheherezade Goes West and plays Sext of Saudade (co-written with Annie Lanzillotto) and Jihad Against Violence (co-written with Bina Sharif) have been published in The Drama review, and performed internationally.
She serves as Contributing Editor on The Drama Review, and is Founding Chair of the South Asian Feminist Caucus of The National Women’s Studies Association of North America, where she also served as a member of the Governing Council. She was recently named on the Editorial Advisory Board of a new peer-reviewed e-journal published by CUNY called Arab Stages. She was awarded 2 Fulbright-Hays Fellowships to Pakistan during AY 2015-16 and has just completed her final Fulbright Specialist appointment at Forman Christian College (FCCU) in Lahore in March, 2020.
She is Creative Director and Producer on an award-winning short documentary film about Pakistani Female Singers entitled Siren Song: Women Singers of Pakistan, for which she won a development grant from the National Endowment o the Humanities in 2011. Her most recent book is Siren Song: Understanding Pakistan Through its Women Singers (OUP: 2020), which was launched in February 2020 at the Karachi Literary Festival.

Pyong Gap Min
Distinguished Professor of Sociology at City University of New York
Director of the Research Center for Korean Community at Queens College
USA
Pyong Gap Min is a sociologist, currently a Distinguished Professor of Sociology at City University of New York, Director of the Research Center for Korean Community at Queens College and also a published author. Dr. Min’s areas of interest include immigration, ethnic identity, ethnic business, immigrants’ religious practices, and family/gender, with a special focus on Asian/Korean Americans. He is the author of six books, five of them focusing on Korean immigrants’ experiences. They include Caught in the Middle: Korean Communities in New York and Los Angeles (1996), the winner of two national book awards, and Preserving Ethnicity through Religion in America: Korean Protestants and Indian Hindus across Generations (2010), the winner of three national book awards, one in Korea and the other two in the United States. His last book is Korean Comfort Women: Military Brothel, Brutality, and the Redress Movement published just this year.
Dr. Min’s fourteen edited and co-edited books include Encyclopedia of Racism in the United States, 3 volumes (2005) and Asian Americans: Contemporary Trends and Issues, the Second Edition (2006). He was a Russell Sage Foundation fellow in 2006-2007, for writing his 2008 book, Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival: Korean Greengrocers in New York City. He received the Distinguished Career Award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association in 2012 and the Contribution to the Field Award from the Section on Asia and Asian America of the American Sociological Association in 2019.
Plenary Speakers

JANE F. MCBRIDE
Co-Founder
Friends of Thai Daughters, Inc.
Chiang Rai,
Thailand.
Title: “From Powerless to Empowered: transforming lives through education and love?”

Dr. Rafidah Abd Karim
Universiti Teknologi MARA
Malaysia
Title: “Gender in Orang Asli Community: The Bottom-up Approach in Empowering Women’s Voices”
Biography
Dr. Karim is a Senior Lecturer at Malaysia’s Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM). She has earned her PhD from Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris in Tanjung Malim, Perak, Malaysia. She has received the Lestari SDG-Triangle Grant, an UiTM research grant for Gender in Indigenous Community: The Role Empowering Jahai Tribe Women and Achieving Gender Equality to the Sustainable Development of Royal Belum State Park, a Lestari SDG-Triangle Grant and the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education’s Fundamental Research Grant Scheme for the research project Profiling Indigenous Feminism among Orang Asli for Gender Equality. She was named a Superlative Presenter for the 8th World Conference on Women’s Studies (WCWS 2022) and received the Best Paper Award for the 10th Annual National Teacher Forum 2018, Tangerang Selatan, Indonesia, and the 2nd Langkawi International Conference on Social Sciences 2018 (LICSS 2018) MDSG Conferences. She did receive the Excellence Service Award (APC) from UiTM Malaysia, as well as the Invention Diamond / Platinum Award/ Panglima Awang (Staff Category) from RIID (International Exhibition of Innovative Higher Learning Research Initiatives) and many other awards. Her recent research publications include “Jahai Voices of Malaysia: Exploring Indigenous Women Empowerment and Sustainable Development in the Royal Belum State Park,” published in the Journal of International Women’s Studies (Scopus under Review), and a book chapter on “Unlock the Opportunities for Women Leadership in Higher Education in Malaysia.” One of her studies, “A Case Study of Orang Asli Women’s Role in Achieving Gender Equality,” was published in the Journal of Educational Research & Indigenous Studies.
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