Contact: Ralph Derickson

Yolanda Pierce

Gwen Pough

Nikky Finney

LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 7, 2005) -- Black women’s bodies from a historical, sociological, and academic perspective will be the focus of the 11th annual Black Women’s Conference set for March 30-31 at the University of Kentucky.

Attendance at the conference sessions is free and open to the public. There is a $15 charge to attend the Thursday luncheon. All the sessions will be held in the UK Student Center.

The conference is sponsored by the UK African American Studies and Research Program and is expected to be very well attended, said conference coordinator Yolanda Pierce, assistant professor of English and African American Studies.

“This will be a gathering of some of the most prominent black women scholars in the country,” said Pierce, an author whose most recent book, “Hell Without Fires: Slavery and the Antebellum Spiritual Narrative,” was published in February by the University Press of Florida. (Contact Pierce at ynpier2@uky.edu or call (859) 257-6960).

The conference kicks off at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 30, with a Town Hall Meeting Lecture titled “Black Women, Beauty, and the Market.” The speaker will be Maxine Leeds Craig, assistant professor and graduate program coordinator in the Department of Sociology and Social Services at California State University, East Bay, Calif.

Craig is the author of “Ain’t I a Beauty Queen: Black, Women, Beauty and the Politics of Race,” published in 2002 by the Oxford University Press.

The conference continues at 10 a.m. Thursday, March 31, with the Anna Julia Cooper Address titled “I Know You See Me in the Video … Video Vixens, Hip-Hop Magazine Centerfolds, Black Women and Body Image.” The speaker is Gwen Pough, associate professor in the Writing Program and the Department of Women’s Studies at Syracuse University. Pough is the author of “Check It While I Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip-Hop Culture and the Public Sphere,” published by the Northeastern University Press in 2004.

At noon Thursday, March 31, Nikky Finney, associate professor of creative writing at UK, will deliver the Mary McLeod Bethune Lecture. Finney’s lecture is titled “Pluck and Guts: Re-naming Our Daughters.” Finney is an award-winning poet and the author of “Rice” and “The World Is Round.”

At 5 p.m. Thursday, March 31, the Doris Y. Wilkinson Distinguished Lecture will be delivered by Kimberly Wallace-Sanders, assistant professor of Women’s Studies at Emory University. The title of Wallace-Sanders’ lecture is “ Ain’t Your Mamma Aunt Jemima: Maternal Obsessions and the Black Female Body.”

Wallace-Sanders is the author of “ Skin Deep, Spirit Strong: Critical Essays on the Black Female Body in American Culture ,” published by University of Michigan Press in 2002 and “ Mammy: A Century of Race, Gender and Southern Memory, ” forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press.