Saturday, October 10, 2009, a workshop about women advocates of incarcerated men and women will be conducted at the 2009 Feminism(s) and Rhetoric(s) Conference which will be held at Michigan State University (MSU).The conference is sponsored by the Coalition of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric & Composition and hosted by the Rhetoric & Writing program at MSU. The conference will take place October 7-10, 2009. The theme for this year's conference is "Enabling Complexities: Communities/Writing/Rhetoric".
According to the conference web site, "So our aim in organizing FemRhet 2009 has been to bring together the unique breadth and diversity of our experiences as scholars, teachers, and community members in order focus on the complex knowledge work that we do together."
They add, "In bringing the conference theme—Enabling Complexities—to life, we believe that we have created a conference that both examines the knowledge work we already do as scholars and community activists and that creates more space for the complicated, difficult work that must follow if we want to adequately reflect the deep structure of connections/intersections/overlaps that are critical to our shared future."
Workshop panelists will include Efrén'smother, Velia Koppenhoefer, a Xicana community leader and MSU graduate student, and a former Michigan prisoner who was incarcerated 29 years and served as an advocate for women. Efrén will also be joining the panel via phone to offer his insight from the perspective of an incarcerated male.
There will also be discussion about the global campaign to free Efrén, and an update about the status of The Injustice Must End (TIME) Committee's petition to Gov. Granholm asking her to grant Efrén's commutation request seeking his release.
