Renowned Italian independent filmmaker Marina Spada will present the capstone lecture in Arizona State University’s School of International Letters and Cultures’ International Artists Lecture Series from 6:30-9 p.m. Monday, April 15, in G. Homer Durham Language and Literature building room 2 on the Tempe campus.

A screening of Spada’s film “Il mio domani (My Tomorrow),” a question-and-answer session, and a discussion on the role of women in the Italian film industry will follow the lecture. Download Full Image

The International Artists Lecture Series was conceived by Juliann Vitullo, associate director of the school, to provide ASU students with an insight into art, literature and life across the globe.

“At the School of International Letters and Cultures, we emphasize the importance of learning about various cultures because that helps us better understand our place in the world,” Vitullo says. “The International Artists Lecture Series reinforces our goal by introducing and urging our students to seek different perspectives.”

Since its inception in 2012, the series has featured lectures by Japanese novelist Hirano Keiichiro, Austrian author Josef Haslinger, Mexican essayist Óscar de la Borbolla, Italian theatre artist Gabriella Ghermandi, American multi-media artist Sandow Birk, Egyptian novelist Miral al-Tahawy, and Brazilian activist and writer Regina Rheda.

Spada, the upcoming lecturer in the series, was born and raised in Milan, Italy, where she still resides. She got her start at an Italian television company before turning her attention to advertising production, becoming one of the few female advertisement directors in Italy.

In 1984, noted Italian actor and director Roberto Benigni of “Life is Beautiful” fame hired Spada to assist on his upcoming film “Non ci resta che piangere.” Disillusioned by her experience in commercial filmmaking, she became a professor of cinema in Milan before branching out as an independent filmmaker.

Enrico Minardi, a lecturer in Italian at the school, notes that Spada’s films are mostly based in the cosmopolis of Milan, and focus on the struggles and inner turmoil of native and immigrant women in Italy.

“Unlike mainstream filmmakers, Spada lets her characters, especially women, exist in an ambiguous, grey world – a world all of us are familiar with,” Minardi says. “She also takes great pains to draw out her characters; the subtle details play an important role in her films.”

Minardi says Spada’s films are a study in human interaction with space.

“Spada’s way of looking at spaces and cities is very rooted in the Italian culture,” Minardi says. “Her perspective on the codependency between a city and its people is hypnotizing. Cities and their forgotten stories come alive in her films.”

“Il mio domani (My Tomorrow),” Spada’s fourth film, stars acclaimed Italian actress Claudia Gerini and portrays the daily life of a woman in urban Milan. The film has been recognized at the International Film Festival of Rome and the Lincoln Center’s Italian Film Festival “Open Roads” in New York City.

The event is co-sponsored by the School of International Letters and Cultures and the Department of English. More information can be found at http://asuevents.asu.edu/international-artists-lecture-series-marina-spada

The Department of English at Arizona State University proudly presents its annual Ian Fletcher Memorial Lecture set for 6 p.m., April 11 in the Memorial Union La Paz Room.

This year’s event will feature distinguished scholar, Regenia Gagnier, professor of English and Senior Fellow of the ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society (Egenis) at the University of Exeter, U.K. Download Full Image

In her talk, “World Literature and What It Means to be Human in the Niche of Nature, Culture, and Technology,” Gagnier will consider the “great geopolitical commodities – bananas, cotton, tea, rice, petroleum, coffee, tobacco, sugar, water, waste, transport – around which literatures and lives are built.”

Gagnier has won numerous awards for her transdisciplinary teaching and scholarship on Victorian literature and modern culture. In 2006, she was made Honorary Centenary Fellow of the English Association, in 2008 elected to the Royal Society of Arts, in 2011 elected to the International Association of University Professors of English, and in 2012 received by the Queen at Buckingham Palace for heritage and scholarship in literature and theatre.

The Fletcher lecture series was established in 1991 and hosts prominent scholars in literary studies. The series’ namesake, Ian Fletcher (1920-1988), was a beloved member of the Department of English at ASU. A prominent scholar of late nineteenth-century English literature, but also a renowned poet and playwright, Fletcher bridged the creative and the scholarly, conveying a special sensibility for literary studies.

On this, the 25th anniversary of Fletcher’s passing, ASU celebrates his many achievements and enduring contributions as a professor for the Department of English. Also of note: Hayden Library houses the Ian Fletcher Archives in its Special Collections, with approximately 1,500 items primarily focused on the late Victorian period.

For more information about the speaker or the lecture series, please visit the website: http://english.clas.asu.edu/fletcher.

Arizona State University is one of five universities in the United States selected to participate in the new Women’s Leadership Program announced March 21 by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Higher Education for Development (HED).

Each university will partner with a higher education institution in Armenia, Paraguay, Rwanda or South Sudan to promote gender equality and female empowerment. (Official press release here.) Download Full Image

With funding from USAID totaling approximately $8.75 million, these critical higher education partnerships will promote and develop curricula and opportunities for women in business, agriculture and education in the targeted countries, thus supporting key national and local development goals aimed at fostering the advancement of women and girls. 

In addition to Arizona State, the partnering U.S. universities are Indiana University, Michigan State University, the University of Florida, and the University of California Los Angeles.

ASU’s component of the program, funded by a $1.3 million award to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences' Melikian Center: Russian, Eurasian and East European Studies, leverages a decade of partnerships between ASU and Yerevan State University (YSU) in Armenia.

The award will establish a Center for Gender and Leadership Studies at YSU that will develop new curriculum in women and gender studies, promote career advancement for women university graduates, conduct outreach activities, and advance public policy research on issues related to gender equality and women’s leadership.

Over the course of the three-year partnership, eight YSU scholars in areas related to women’s studies will be in-residence in ASU's women and gender studies program within the School of Social Transformation to participate in courses and develop syllabi and action-oriented research goals. The scholars also will be engaged in courses in the School of Public Affairs. The first cohort of scholars will arrive for ASU's Fall 2013 semester.

ASU’s partnership director is Victor Agadjanian, the E.E. Guillot International Distinguished Professor in the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics. A speaker of Eastern Armenian, Agadjanian has done pioneering research on social change in the former Soviet Union – including rural Armenia – and serves on the graduate faculty for the gender studies doctoral program at ASU.

Mary Margaret Fonow, co-director, is a professor of women and gender studies, director of the School of Social Transformation, and an internationally recognized scholar on women’s leadership and labor issues.

Stephen Batalden, co-director, is the Melikian Center director and an authority on Eurasian cultural history, the newly independent states of Eurasia, and the religious and cultural history of modern Russia. 

Alexander Markarov, the YSU deputy vice rector and head of the YSU International Cooperation Office, has served as principal investigator on other ASU-YSU grant partnerships and will serve as YSU’s partnership director for this program. 

Batalden says that the partnership goals are very much inspired by the vision of former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for successful development, articulated in USAID’s Gender Equality and Female Empowerment policy released in March 2012.

“A hallmark of Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State was policies recognizing that long-term peace and prosperity around the world are possible only when women and men enjoy equal opportunity to reach their potential,” he notes. “Since being folded into the State Department, USAID’s new policies on gender equality and female empowerment emphasize building high-impact partnerships, harnessing innovation, and conducting rigorous program evaluation.

“In each of these regards, the partnership really is a made-for-ASU kind of effort, bringing a lot of innovation and cross-disciplinary expertise to the table," says Batalden.

In October, professors Agadjanian, Batalden and Fonow visited Yerevan State to conduct a needs assessment. The partnership leadership team convened at ASU in January, including Gohar Shahnazaryan, associate professor of sociology at YSU and founding director of the Women’s Resource Center of Armenia – the largest NGO serving young women in post-Soviet Armenia and an important community partner in the new grant project. Shahnazaryan was also recently named director of the new Center for Gender and Leadership Studies at YSU, which will celebrate its official launch on May 7.

“Gohar Shahnazaryan has done wonderful work to establish and grow this NGO, and we’re delighted she has taken on the center directorship at Yerevan State,” says Fonow. “They are doing important advocacy in Armenia and the region in educating, organizing and mobilizing people around gender issues and violence against women.

“Reducing gender-based inequities locally, nationally and internationally informs our scholarship and teaching in women and gender studies at ASU, and we appreciate that this partnership will also bring insights to our own faculty and students,” she notes.

More than a third of the partnership budget is allocated for institutional capacity building at YSU. With 1.1 million residents, the capital city of Yerevan is home to more than a third of Armenia’s population, but the partnership will also support efforts to expand women’s access to higher education and leadership mentoring in rural communities.

Agadjanian says Armenia is a good social laboratory in the region for developing innovative initiatives to benefit women economically, politically and socially.

“Though Armenia is a fairly traditional, patriarchal society, it is open enough to absorb new ideas, to try new social experiments, if you will," Agadjanian says.

“Like many post-Soviet societies, Armenia once saw quite a rapid advancement of women under the Soviet system, as women joined the labor force and pursued higher education on a large scale over a few decades," he says. "After Armenia's independence in 1991, women's participation in household and community decision-making has also been fueled by necessity. With many Armenian men having to migrate to Russia for employment, women are taking responsibility for leadership in their homes and communities.

“But these changes haven’t solved the fundamental problems of gender inequality,” he explains. “And, in many ways, they have only added a new burden to women as they’ve assumed additional roles beyond the household duties without conditions being created to balance the pursuit of family and professional goals.

“Our collaborators want to build on and complement this early impetus with new models of empowerment for women that are compatible with local traditions and culture – integrating what’s positive and constructive (Armenia’s constitution, for example, includes specific protections for family, motherhood and children) and taking that respect for family and motherhood to a new level, by creating an environment where women have a real choice about their lives and the same opportunities and rewards that men enjoy.

“Of course, you can’t really change women’s lives unless you change men,” Agadjanian emphasizes. “So this partnership will also be about working with men – raising awareness about gender equality and getting leaders in education and NGOs on board intellectually, psychologically and culturally about the benefits of working on women’s leadership and advancement issues.

“In the end,” says Agadjanian, “our comparative advantage as a university-based initiative is our ability to help build research-driven outreach and advocacy. The YSU faculty who come to ASU for training will gain the understanding and practical skills to go identify, study, analyze and produce recommendations and interventions based on robust research to address concrete problems facing their society.”

Palestinian villager Emad Burnat bought his first camera to document the birth of his fourth son, Gibreel. But what started off as a home video celebrating new life became a full-length film about the power of non-violent protest and political activism.

Burnat transformed into a filmmaker after Gibreel’s birth, when the Israeli army began to confiscate land from farmers in the West Bank village of Bil’in. Tensions between villagers and the army led to a series of violent events, all captured by Burnat and his cameras. Download Full Image

The resulting “5 Broken Cameras,” an Academy Award-nominated film, co-directed by Burnat and Israeli documentarian Guy Davidi, is one of 10 films being screened during ASU’s third annual Human Rights Festival, hosted at the Tempe campus April 5-7.

The three-day festival seeks to enhance awareness and understanding of a variety of human rights issues across the world. 

The showing of “5 Broken Cameras” is paired with the Official Tribeca Selection, “My Neighbourhood,” in which Israeli activists join their Palestinian neighbors to protest the forced evictions occurring in their community. The film offers a look into the oft-ignored stories of Palestinians and Israelis coming together in the name of justice. Afterwards, Sergey Gordey, producer of “5 Broken Cameras,” will Skype in for a discussion led by peace and justice activist Barbara Taft from Amnesty International, in order to further the audience’s understanding of the conflict, the human rights abuses that have been committed, and the prospects for peace.

“I was inspired to create a human rights film festival, in part, because in an academic environment it is easy to get lost in heady and sometimes terrible facts,” says LaDawn Haglund, Human Rights Film Festival director and associate professor of Justice and Social Inquiry in the School of Social Transformation. “Film, when done well, forces us to bring our hearts to the issues, helping us to empathize and, hopefully, spurring us to act.”

Several other award-winning films will be screened throughout the weekend, covering human rights issues that encompass the local, the global and the transcendently human.

“We Women Warriors” and “Four Stories Of Water” focus on Indigenous rights, in Colombia and within the United States, respectively. “A Fierce Green Fire” – a 2012 Sundance Official Selection – chronicles the environmental movement from its inception to the present, and Academy Award-nominated director of “Berkeley in the Sixties," Mark Kitchell, will be on hand for a live discussion.

A series of three short films will highlight human rights issues in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The festival will close with the award-winning “Bullied to Silence,” (Boston International Film Festival), and “Two Americans,” documenting Sherriff Joe Arpaio’s arrest of Phoenix grade-schooler Katherine Figueroa’s parents.

Each of the festival’s seven sessions will be followed by a discussion with filmmakers or subject-area experts, allowing for a deeper, more informative experience.

“I hope the audience leaves with a better understanding of the range of human rights problems that exist in the world today, as well as a stronger sense of what others are doing, and what they might do, to resolve them,” continues Haglund. “This is a tiny effort among many to transform society to be more socially just.”

The festival is sponsored by The Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics at ASU and the School of Social Transformation, both units of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; the Center for Law and Global Affairs; Amnesty International, Tempe chapter; Amnesty International, ASU student chapter; and the Global Institute of Sustainability.

All sessions are free and open to the public, but RSVPs are requested to aid in ordering refreshments: http://humanrightsfilmfestival 2013.eventbrite.com.

The Friday afternoon sessions will be held in the Schwada Classroom Office Building (SCOB). The Friday evening, Saturday, and Sunday sessions will be held in the Great Hall of Armstrong Hall, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law.

For a complete schedule of films and speakers, links to film trailers, and parking information, see http://humanrights.asu.edu/node/91. For more information, contatt LaDawn.Haglund@asu.edu.

Story by Zarina Guerrero, justice studies major, School of Social Transformation

A photographic mural of a Reconstruction-era Virginia log cabin dominates the hallway leading to African and African American Studies faculty offices in the School of Social Transformation, within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, in Wilson Hall. From afar it reads as one seamless piece of art, beckoning visitors to step into another place and time. But a closer look reveals more than 200 small prints, meticulously pieced together to create the 15-by-7 foot scene. 

The composition’s format parallels the historical detective work that ASU’s Angelita Reyes, professor of African and African-American studies and English, has done to give context to the cabin, which stands in the woods of a rural community in Mecklenburg County, Va., and to fit together a biographical voice for her ancestors and other African-American families who built lives on former plantation lands after Emancipation. Download Full Image

Reyes says the project began as a family effort to qualify the Civil War-era cabin for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places and the Virginia Landmarks Register; both were achieved in 2007.  

“The historic log cabin site is named after my great-grandfather, Patrick Robert ‘Parker’ Sydnor,” she explains. “Born in 1854, he was a stone mason and successful tombstone carver and he lived in the cabin intermittently during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.”   

But for Reyes the project became much more. Her interest expanded beyond her immediate family’s connection to the cabin when her research into the public archives “introduced” her to a woman named Vicey Skipwith (1856–1936), who purchased in 1888 – just 11 years after the military end of Reconstruction – this log cabin and six acres on the same land that Vicey’s parents had been enslaved.

“Skipwith became a wage laborer on the Prestwould Plantation after the Civil War, with census records noting her skills as a cook,” Reyes says. “She paid $62 for her six and one-fifth acres of land. She also paid 50 cents in taxes the following year. Sixty-two dollars in 1888 is the approximate equivalent of $1,500 in today's economy – still a substantial amount of money. 

“Vicey was among the thousands of newly freed people who established themselves in communities and purchased land throughout Virginia. Regardless of the quantity of acres, each purchase was a truly remarkable achievement,” Reyes observes. “I felt compelled to search for the voice of this spirited, non-literate woman, whose life spanned the last nine years of slavery, the Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction, the beginnings of the Jim Crow South, and the Great Depression in 1930s New York City.”

Reyes, who had grown up living in California, Honduras and New York City, but spent many summers on her grandmother’s farm in Virginia, began engaging in “memory telling” with some of the county’s older residents, whose knowledge of post-Civil War life and stories had been passed down from their own parents and grandparents. She scoured public records, U.S. Census databases, and Mecklenburg County Slave Schedules.

“When I was not in Virginia doing field work, I immersed myself in reading about women and slavery, Virginia history, vernacular architecture, navigable waterways, material culture, and the Civil War,” Reyes says. “And every time I went back, I introduced myself to new people, especially the elderly. They were also ‘libraries.’ As an African proverb tells us, when the elders die, libraries are gone. And so, I often went to the elders – black and white – in order to hear them talk through memory-telling.

“Because the church continues to be an important African-American social institution, I attended different churches on the Sundays of my field trips in order to connect to the elders and their informational stories,” she notes. “I needed to know about the generations of people who had their home places where Vicey Skipwith had lived. I talked with local people, trying to get access to the cultural past through the voices of the present.”

Combining these resources with greater truths emanating from knowledge of gender roles, emancipation, the rights of citizenship, and land ownership, Reyes says she was able “to fill in the spaces between documented history and collective memory,” crafting a story that gives rich context to the cabin and a glimpse into the inner lives and ambitions of Vicey Skipwith and her contemporaries.

In doing so, Reyes has ensured that the Patrick Robert Sydnor log cabin site functions as a material artifact of slavery and as an unconventional text for autobiographical truths beyond slavery. (Read a captivating account of Reyes' research at Common-Place.org, in a piece titled “Not Even Past: Six Acres and a Mule or Searching for Vicey Skipwith.”)

When the Sydnor Cabin was entered into the National Register of Historic Places and the Virginia Landmarks Register in 2007, it was with a designation of “local level of significance.” Reyes received official confirmation last month that additional documentation she provided about the property and Parker Sydnor’s work as a craftsman of grave markers had moved the Parker Sydnor Cabin to a level of “statewide significance.”

The state evaluation committee noted that Virginia “has very little documentation of non-white tombstone carvers, and the fact that Sydnor is a known African American carver with an associated and locally-sited body of work is very important.”

At ASU, Reyes teaches courses on women and gender in African and African-American Diasporas in the School of Social Transformation, and on material culture and cross-cultural studies in the Department of English, in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. With innovative research methodologies, her edited books and essays cover a range of topics that focus on women and public history, gender and sexuality, migrating subjects, and visualizing slavery in the Atlantic World. Her current book project focuses on symbolic watersheds and African-American oral narratives in Virginia.

One university in many places

Reyes’s research in Mecklenburg County turned up not only an Arizona connection to this project, but a genealogical and historical relationship to Arizona State University. During the course of her research, Reyes has met two brothers, Brad Sydnor and Doug Sydnor, who are architects in Scottsdale, Arizona. Their father, the late Reginald G. Sydnor, was the architect who designed the Hiram Bradford Farmer Education Building (1960) at ASU.  

“We discovered that the Sydnor brothers and I are descendants of a shared antebellum Sydnor lineage from Virginia,” explains Reyes. “A descendant of an enslaved Sydnor and Anglo descendants of the same collateral Sydnor slaveholder have crossed historical bridges and are now in collaboration on this Civil War-era project in Virginia. It’s exciting to be working to create a really new sense of place – one that will build new bridges of unity across cultures and shared history.”

More than 200 students from 12 middle schools and two high schools recently participated in the annual MESA Day organized by Arizona State University’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.

The MESA after-school program – the acronym stands for Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement – focuses on encouraging interest in those subjects among students from underserved communities. Arizona is one of several states that have developed its own version of the program. Download Full Image

Students from sixth through12 grades came to ASU’s Tempe campus for the latest regional MESA Day to test what they’ve been learning in various projects during the past few months.

The activities included games and competitions involving solar-energy technology, rainwater harvesting, prosthetic devices, rocketry and other applications of basic science and engineering.

Tempe Vice Mayor Onnie Shekerjian attended the event to talk to students about the importance of technological innovation and to watch the MESA Day awards ceremony.

MESA participation is growing locally, says Jan Snyder, an education outreach coordinator for ASU’s engineering schools. Three additional schools have joined recently and more are expected to follow in the near future, he says.

Most school teams go on to compete in the annual MESA state championship, which this year will be hosted by the University of Arizona in April.

Snyder, who has directed in the program at ASU for the past three years, says he is seeing its inspirational impact on young students. Some, who have gone on to study engineering in college, have told him “that if not for MESA they would not have considered engineering as a career.”

Motivational experience

One of those motivated by MESA was Ryan Madler, a recent graduate of Bradshaw Mountain High School in Prescott Valley.

Madler writes about his experience:

In high school I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to study in college. I had some ideas, of course, but I was unsure of what any of these fields of study I was thinking about would actually be like, or if I would even remotely like them.

I did think of becoming an engineer. My father is an engineer. From what I had seen of his work, engineering seemed like an interesting and rewarding career. But I didn’t know how I could determine if that career path would suit me.

To complicate things, the enjoyment I had once gotten from math was beginning to wane – not a good sign for an aspiring engineer.

Around that time, however, I joined two high school clubs – the Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA), a business club, and the MESA club.

MESA gave me an opportunity to work on projects that involved engineering in its most rudimentary form. I joined a wind-turbine challenge project team and we built a small windmill that performed a variety of tasks. It turned out to be a complicated project. The variables and potential solutions involved were almost endless, but I think that’s when I began to become fascinated by engineering.

I came to view engineering as a way to learn how to solve problems and challenges in unique ways, and to help improve the world. The wind-turbine project taught me about processes of designing and redesigning in ways similar to what real engineers do.

Through MESA, I was also able to meet several engineering professors at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and Arizona State University. I got the opportunity to go the ASU campus in Tempe when my team competed in MESA Day activities.  

The visit to ASU was a great experience. Something about seeing the campus alive with so many students made it appeal to me more than other college campuses I had toured.

In the end, though, it was the MESA program that had a profound influence on my decision to choose to go to ASU to study electrical engineering. I’m in the second semester of my freshman year and I’m enjoying my engineering classes immensely.

March is Women’s History Month, and the National Women’s History Project declared this year’s theme: “Women Inspiring Innovation through Imagination,” a celebration of women’s extraordinary contributions to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

At ASU, women are making discoveries and developing technologies across all four campuses in a wide range of disciplines. They serve as teachers, mentors and role models for students, colleagues and community members. But who inspired, encouraged and motivated them along their path to success? Download Full Image

Here, some of ASU’s notable researchers talk about their female role models in STEM.

Karen Anderson

My favorite role model in STEM is my mother, Elizabeth Bond. My mother had a master’s in physics before she was advised to leave science to have her children. After having six children, she went back, in her forties, to complete a PhD in physical chemistry. She then went on to have a successful career in industry. She also raised 7 successful scientists: two computer scientists, three mechanical engineers, one mathematician, and myself, a biologist.

My mother was always an "early adopter" of technology; she built a Heathkit personal computer with a soldering iron in the basement. We always joked that that is where the term "motherboard" came from. 

The greatest impact she had on my career was something so obvious that I did not recognize it until I became a mentor for young women. It never occurred to me, growing up, that I could not do science and math. I cannot tell you how many high school and early college girls I have mentored in the lab who doubted their own real capabilities. That is the single greatest gender difference I have observed.

Anderson is an associate professor in the School of Life Sciences in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) and a researcher with the Virginia G. Piper Center for Personalized Diagnostics in the Biodesign Institute.

Erika Camacho

My biggest dream, until I was taught by the late Jaime Escalante (profiled in the film “Stand and Deliver”) in high school, was to be a cashier. Given the low socio-economic environment in which I grew up, I did not believe that I could amount to much. As a child, school was a safe place where I could escape the hardships of my reality, even if just temporarily. Eventually I realized that, more than a temporary escape, it was my only path out of poverty. I chose math because I was not a native speaker. It was the only subject where I did not feel dumb or get laughed at because I could not give the answer.  

I never had a female math teacher until I got to Wellesley College. Since I began to pursue a STEM field, the main female role model that I have had is Lisette de Pillis. She is an accomplished researcher who has taken monumental steps in modeling cancer and coming up with multi-faceted, targeted, individualized therapies in close collaboration with medical professionals. Her mathematical models utilizing differential equations and optimal control have been the catalyst for an abundant amount of work focusing on various perspectives of cancer.  

I look up to Dr. de Pillis personally because she does it all and does it very well: She is an outstanding teacher, a great mentor, a phenomenal activist dedicated to women’s issues, a loving mother of three beautiful girls, and a wife who does her share of household work. This is what makes her my role model.

Camacho is an assistant professor of mathematics in the School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences in the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences.

Alexandra Brewis Slade

The person that has been the most important in my approach and values as a scientist is my major PhD professor, Jane Underwood, who passed away last year. She was a pioneer in the study of Micronesia, investigating small island demography through long-term fieldwork. 

Jane’s scholarship was nothing short of exemplary. She was meticulous, doggedly ethical, utterly trustworthy, and knew precisely what she valued and wanted to do. She woke everyday excited to get to work, and was often in her office before dawn. She was a committed scientist in every way who refused to suffer fools, any form of whining, corner-cutting or university politics. She was, frankly, a force of nature. 

Jane was a trailblazer and powerful early role model in the academy for women. She fought inequity every day in her own inimitable way. At UCLA as a new faculty member she was not allowed into the faculty bar because she was a woman. She would have to stand outside the door to drink with her male colleagues inside. Jane got the policy changed by using the science that she loved to make a point, by demanding the implementation of chromosome tests to confirm that all the male faculty were, in fact, genetically men. 

Brewis Slade is a professor and director of the School of Human Evolution and Social Change in CLAS. She is also the director of operations for Obesity Solutions, a partnership between ASU and Mayo Clinic.

Karmella Haynes

I am lucky to have several role models who are women and strong leaders in the STEM fields. One I'd like to highlight is Tuajuanda Jordan, a scientist, professor, and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Lewis & Clark in Oregon.

Tuajuanda, like me, is an African-American woman in STEM who is simply fascinated by how our universe works, and she uses science as a tool to investigate it. She was a professor at Xavier University where she was quickly recruited as vice president for academic affairs. She went on to serve as a director at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute before moving to Lewis & Clark in Portland.

My postdoc advisor, Malcolm Campbell, introduced me to Tuajuanda when she visited Davidson College from the HHMI. I got to have dinner with her that evening. During the entire conversation, I could not stop thinking about how much I wanted to be like her. As some of my students might say, she is "the truth." In other words, her accomplishments, though impressive-looking, are a mere consequence of a deeply resonating brilliance and talent. She's even-keeled, wise, and fun to talk to. Ever since that meeting we have stayed in touch. I'm glad to call her my mentor.

Haynes is an assistant professor in the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. 

Ana Magdalena Hurtado

My favorite role model is my mother, Ines Hurtado. She was born in Colombia, completed medical school in Bogota and emigrated to Venezuela to work in pediatrics at a national hospital. My mother's education is in medicine (MD) and immunology (PhD) She was the first woman to receive an MD degree in Columbia in the late 1940s. Later, in the 1970s, she received a government scholarship to pursue a career in immunology in the U.S. She was accepted into New York University, and with my father, supported her five children on a teaching assistant salary.

My mother raised me and still takes care of me during my best and most excruciatingly difficult times. I started working with her in 1997 on projects on the origins of the human immunological response with data gathered among hunter-gatherers of Latin America. I am most inspired by her kindness, her generosity, her love for searching for the “truth,” and her critical thinking – she will not settle for answers to questions that are not consistent with logic and evidence.

Hurtado is a professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change in CLAS. She is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Leah Gerber

Jane Lubchenco has been the under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration since 2009. Nominated by President Obama in December 2008 as part of his “Science Team,” she is a marine ecologist and environmental scientist by training, with expertise in oceans, climate change, and interactions between the environment and human well-being. 

I met Dr. Lubchenco when I was a graduate student at the university of Washington. She came to speak in a marine conservation class that I was teaching in the San Juan Islands. As a postdoc, I had the opportunity to work with Jane on the Science of Marine Reserves NCEAS working group, which inspired the development of this field. As a mom and a scholar, I worry about balancing work and motherhood – Jane has been an inspiration on this front. She is a major contributor to the field of marine ecology, in the National Academy of Science, and importantly, worked half-time for over a decade when her kids were young. This reminds me that I can have a productive research career even with “slowing down” to spend time with my kids. 

Gerber is an assistant professor in the School of Life Sciences in CLAS who studies conservation science and policy. 

Feng Wang

My favorite role model is Jeannette Wing, head of the computer science department at Carnegie Mellon University, vice president of Microsoft Research International and assistant director for the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate of the National Science Foundation (NSF). 

I learned about Dr. Wing when she was with the CISE directorate at NSF. She promoted computational thinking, which extends the K-12 curriculum to teach students to form problems and find solutions represented in a way that can be effectively implemented by computers. I admire her vision, enthusiasm, and dedication to computational thinking, which is an important initiative since computers are so common in everyday 21st-century life. 

Dr. Wing is the first woman in the country leading a top computer science department (CMU). She is also third-degree black belt in Tang Soo Du and a dancer. She is a great role model who inspires me and gives me confidence about what a dedicated and hardworking woman can achieve.

Wang is an assistant professor of computer science in the School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences in the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences.

Jane Maienschein

As a child, I didn't really care about gender very much. A scientist was a scientist. My dad was a director at Oak Ridge National Lab, and he hired women physicists, so that seemed normal enough.  

Now I’m especially fascinated with Beatrice Mintz – a developmental biologist who explores fundamental questions about how embryos develop. She did work on putting together two different mouse embryos and showing that they could combine and form a perfectly healthy mouse. This is an amazing idea – 1+1 = 1, as far as embryos go!  

She's inspiring for her energy and dedication to exploring hard questions. I figure if she can still go to the lab in her 90s, surely it won't hurt me to work all the time! And to remember that it's fun and exciting – although I will never dress as elegantly as she does. 

Maienschein is a Regents’ Professor, President’s Professor and Parent’s Association Professor in the School of Life Sciences in CLAS. She is also director of the Center for Biology in Society.

Meenakshi Wadhwa

Growing up in a middle class family in India, I did not have many female role models in STEM. I attribute my determination to become a scientist to my parents, who strongly believed in education as a means of empowerment and independence, and who encouraged me to achieve my goals even if it meant that I had to leave my home country. 

As I became more interested in science, I also became aware of the contributions of pioneering women scientists. I particularly look up to Austrian physicist Lise Meitner, who overcame daunting political and personal odds and made significant contributions to the field of radioactivity. This is an area of science particularly close to my heart, as I routinely rely on radiometric methods for age dating Solar System materials. Dr. Meitner obtained a doctorate degree from the University of Vienna in 1906, a time when women were traditionally not even allowed to attend universities. In collaboration with German chemist Otto Hahn, she discovered nuclear fission and gave the first theoretical explanation of the fission process. 

Being Jewish, Dr. Meitner was forced to flee Nazi Germany in 1938. Dr. Hahn went on to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1945 for discovering nuclear fission. Many historians now believe that Dr. Meitner deserved to share in this prize, but her exile and separation from her collaborator likely led to the Nobel committee’s failure to understand her role in the discovery.

Wadhwa is a professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and director of the Center for Meteorite Studies in CLAS.

Independent filmmaker Aurora Guerrero will visit the Valley for two screenings of her movie “Mosquita Y Mari,” which has earned acclaim at the Sundance, Guadalajara, and San Francisco International Film Festivals. In addition to the screenings, Guerrero will lead a master class focusing on independent filmmaking. All three events are free and open to the public.

“Mosquita Y Mari” will be screened at 6 p.m., April 2 in room 230 of the Memorial Union on ASU’s Tempe campus, and at 7 p.m., April 3 in the Kiva Lecture Hall on the university’s West campus. The master class is set for 4 p.m., April 3, also in the Kiva. R.S.V.P.s for the class are requested at EntreNosotrasPhx@gmail.com but the class will be open to the public as space permits. Download Full Image

“We are extremely pleased to bring this talented Latina filmmaker to the Valley,” said Ilana Luna, assistant professor of Latin American studies in ASU’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences. “Anyone with an interest in the filmmaking process will be fascinated by Aurora’s stories of how her career in the field has unfolded.”

Guerrero has more than a decade of filmmaking experience. She has directed award-winning short narrative films. Based on the strength of the script for “Mosquita Y Mari,” her first feature-length script, Guerrero was awarded the 2005 Sundance/Ford Fellowship and the 2005 Paul Robeson Development Grant. She was selected to participate in the 2005 Sundance Native/Indigenous Lab, 2006 Tribeca All Access Filmmaker Program, and 2009 Film Independent Producer’s Lab.

“Mosquita Y Mari” also was awarded the 2011 SFFS/KRF grant, LG Cinema 3D Fellowship, and the 2012 Sundance Institute/Time Warner Foundation Fellowship for post-production. Her accomplishments as an emerging writer/director earned Guerrero a slot in Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film.”

Guerrero’s film is a coming of age story that focuses on a tender friendship between two young Chicanas. Yolanda and Mari are growing up in Huntington Park, Los Angeles and have only known loyalty to one thing: family. Growing up in immigrant households, both girls are expected to prioritize the well-being of their families. Yolanda, an only child, delivers straight A's and the hope of the American Dream while Mari, the eldest, shares economic responsibilities with her undocumented family as it scrambles to make ends meet.

The Rotten Tomatoes film review website gives “Mosquita Y Mari” a 91 percent positive rating. According to the Hollywood Reporter, “It’s a robust work of self-discovery for two girls at the most awkward and confusing years of their young lives, and a testament to Aurora Guerrero’s storytelling prowess.”

Guerrero’s visit to the Valley is sponsored by Entre NosOtr@s, a cross-campus collective of ASU faculty, graduate and undergraduate students who are working together to foster awareness of transnational Latin American, Chicano/a and Latino/a studies and social justice movements.

This event is made possible by sponsorship from ASU Libraries; Barrett, the Honors College at the West campus; the Committee for Campus Inclusion; Comparative Border Studies; the Graduate and Professional Student Association; the Institute for Humanities Research; New College’s School of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies; the School of Social Transformation and the Women & Gender Studies department.

James Luna, prominent Native American performance and installation artist, will speak at the Simon Ortiz and Labriola Center Lecture on Indigenous Land, Culture and Community at 7 p.m., March 21, at the Heard Museum in downtown Phoenix.

Luna will present “Phantasmagoria,” an interactive lecture and performance that will serve to inform the public, but also push the boundaries and leave people reconsidering any preconceived notions about the native population. Download Full Image

As a highly respected member of the art community, Luna is best known for his ability to bring Native American cultural issues, such as economic stability, historical misrepresentation, acculturation and substance abuse, to life via performances, exhibits and installations.

“For the most part, these are issues that are close to me as a native person. I want people to be touched by this, but also see we are not the only ones who are labeled as substance abusers or are misrepresented in history,” he said.

With each performance, Luna says he tries to create something exciting and unexpected for the audience. It is this freedom to be spontaneous that allows him to create visuals and characters as a means for sharing his art.

The partnership between Luna and Simon Ortiz, Regents’ Professor of English and American Indian Studies at Arizona State University, unites what Luna describes as “the old guard.” Both Luna and Ortiz have braved a path for younger artists to chart new territories. Younger generations are now shying away from traditional images, and are following Luna’s technique of using varying subjects and methods.

“Right now we are at a very exciting time in American Indian culture," he said. "Artists, writers and musicians are all emerging and creating these wonderful bodies of work that don’t necessarily look like traditional native pieces.”.

With 35 years experience, more than 41 solo exhibitions and 85 group exhibitions under his belt, Luna says that he is still learning new ways to say things and take risks. He has received numerous grants and awards throughout his career and most notably in 2005 was selected as the first Sponsored Artist of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian presented at the 2005 Venice Biennale’s 51st International Art Exhibition in Venice, Italy.

The Simon Ortiz and Labriola Center Lecture on Indigenous Land, Culture, and Community is sponsored by ASU’s American Indian Policy Institute; American Indian Studies Program; Department of English; Faculty of History in the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies; Women and Gender Studies in the School of Social Transformation (all units in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences); Indian Legal Program in the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law; The School of Art in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts
and Labriola National American Indian Data Center; with tremendous support from the Heard Museum.

To learn more, visit http://english.clas.asu.edu/indigenous.

Many citizens of Tribal Nations in Arizona live in remote locations that are not easy to access. Counting people who live in the 22 Tribal Nations that cover almost 30 percent of the land in Arizona is a challenge, and there is a concurrent lack of analysis that interprets the data.

“Tribal-level census data is not analyzed by any entity in the United States," said Pat Mariella, director of the American Indian Policy Institute at ASU. "In addition, there is no center in any agency specifically devoted to information on the American Indian population in Arizona. Tribes are often forced to contact a range of agencies to gather information on their own populations that is important to planning for the future.” Download Full Image

The Tribal Indicators Project at Arizona State University will gather, prepare and analyze American Indian census data in a partnership between tribes, the American Indian Policy Institute, American Indian Studies and the Center for Population Dynamics at the university. Researchers will analyze data from the U.S. Census and the relatively new American Community Survey that replaced the census’ long form that included socio-economic characteristics of the U.S. population.

ASU is the only academic institution conducting or providing analysis of tribal scale data from U.S. Census and American Community Survey data, according to ASU social scientists.

One of the best uses for the data is in planning to meet the goals of a vibrant American Indian population. Researchers at the university will begin by examining population and socio-economic information and analyze the accuracy as well as trends in coordination with tribes.   

“Tribal governments need this type of data to plan for the future. Looking at trends and data really gives us a good idea of what is going to come about," said Carol Lujan, American Indian Studies associate professor with ASU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. "The U.S. Census shows that the American Indian population is fast growing and a young population. Data from tribes can help show needs for things like schools. That kind of information is very useful.”

Analyzing trends over time will provide an accurate picture of how Indian country is changing and evolving. Although American Indians make up approximately 5 percent of the state’s population, American Indians living in reservation communities are still the poorest people in Arizona as well as in the United States, according to American Community Survey data. At the same time, many tribal nations are important contributors to the state’s economy through business ventures including gaming, tourism, agriculture, energy and hospitality.

“We really want to get a good picture of the American Indian population," Lujan said. "This has been lacking for researchers. There are pockets of data from agencies, but it’s difficult to find that information in one place. Tribes usually do not have the resources to extract Census data and analyze or compare it with national or regional trends. Unlike counterparts in local and state government, tribal leaders are often forced to operate in a data vacuum.”

Counting the American Indian population can be challenging for a population that frequently travels.

“We’re pretty mobile. We go back and forth from the reservations to the cities to work and get an education. In addition, very remote areas add to the issue of undercounting,” Lujan said.

Graduate students will work as demographers and assist with the Tribal Indicators Project. Eventually, plans call for the project to expand on a national basis and include an interactive website.

“It’s interesting to look at population trends,” Lujan said. “The Census Bureau is working to improve their counts for American Indian nations, but there are always people that are missed. The populations that are missed are usually ethnic groups, including American Indians.”