Diane Negra, Professor of Film Studies and Screen Culture and Head of Film Studies at University College Dublin, is an internationally prominent film scholar and feminist critic who has lectured on five continents about the political and economic dynamics of race and gender in contemporary film. She is the author, editor or co-editor of seven books: Off-White Hollywood: American Culture and Ethnic Female Stardom (2001), A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema (2002); The Irish in Us: Irishness, Performativity and Popular Culture (2006); Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture (2007); What a Girl Wants?: Fantasizing the Reclamation of Self in Postfeminism (2008); Old and New Media After Katrina (2010); and In the Limelight and Under the Microscope: Forms and Functions of Female Celebrity (2011).

Assistant Professor of Health Promotion Director of Sexual Health Promotion Lab. "Let's talk about (pleasurable) sex: a couple-based approach to sexual health promotion"

Amy Lind is Mary Ellen Heintz Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati. She has a Ph.D. from Cornell University in city and regional planning. Her areas of scholarship include critical development studies, international political economy, transnational feminisms, global sexual rights, social movements, and studies of neoliberal governance. She is the author of Gendered Paradoxes: Women's Movements, State Restructuring, and Global Development in Ecuador (Penn State Press, 2005), editor of Development, Sexual Rights and Global Governance (Routledge, 2010) and co-editor of Feminist (Im)mobilities in Fortress North America: Rights, Citizenships and Identities in Transnational Perspective (Ashgate Publishing, 2013). Currently she is working on a co-authored book, Decolonial Justice: Resignifying Nation, Economy and Family in Ecuador. Her work has appeared in journals such as World Development, Politics & Gender, Rethinking Marxism, and the International Feminist Journal of Politics, as well as in several edited volumes.



Co-sponsors: Geography Department University of Kentucky and Gender and Women Studies University of Kentucky

The National Conference on Undergraduate Research is an annual student conference dedicated to promoting undergraduate research, scholarship, and creative activity in all fields of study. Unlike meetings of academic professional organizations, this gathering of young scholars welcomes presenters from institutions of higher learning from all corners of the academic curriculum. This annual conference creates a unique environment for the celebration and promotion of undergraduate student achievement, provides models of exemplary research and scholarship, and helps to improve the state of undergraduate education.

Learn more here.

Jana Morgan, Ph.D, comes from the University of Tennessee as WIPS' featured speaker this spring semester. Her research involves issues of inequality, exclusion and representation. Mainly, she focuses on exploring how economic, social and political inequalities affect marginalized groups and undermine democratic institutions and outcomes. She will be presenting her latest work titled: "Patterns of Inequality and Latin American Support for Redistribution."

Karen Tice will present on her new book, Queens of Academe:  Beauty Pageantry, Student Bodies, and College Life, which examines the themes of class, race, beauty, body, discipline, and self-regulation in the contexts of higher education and student cultures. 

Reception and book signing to follow.