Wednesday, Apr 6, 2011
Student panels, a spoken-word performance and the presentations of the Ziegler-Gee Award and Virginia Cyrus Scholarship will highlight the annual University Day event.
by Sean Ramsden
The Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at Rider University will host its annual Gender and Sexuality Studies Colloquium in conjunction with University Day on Thursday, April 7. With a theme of Transgressions, the program includes student panels, the presentations of the prestigious Ziegler-Gee Award and the Virginia Cyrus Scholarship, and the keynote spoken-word performance by Yellow Rage, all of which will be held in the Sweigart Auditorium, Room 115. T-shirts decorated by students for the “Clothesline Project” will be on display during lunch in the Mercer Room of Daly Dining Hall. The entire Rider community is invited to attend any and all events.
Student panels in the Sweigart Auditorium are scheduled from 1:10 through 6:45 p.m., with such topics as, Women’s Roles, Religion and Globalism, Gender and Literature, Gender and the Media, and Taking Action: Gender and Sexuality Outside the Classroom. More than 20 Rider students will be presenting in the four sessions.
Dr. Sharon Mirchandani, associate professor of Theory and Composition at Westminster Choir College, is the 2011 recipient of the Sadie Ziegler-Bernice Gee Award. The award, established in 1986, honors faculty, staff and administrators who have contributed significantly toward ending gender-based discrimination on campus, in their fields, and in their communities. Dr. Mirchandani’s research has focused extensively upon female composers; her eponymously titled book on American composer Marga Richter is forthcoming from University of Illinois Press.
Mynik Pizzigoni, a Liberal Studies major in the College of Continuing Studies with a minor in the Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, is the recipient of the 2011 Virginia Cyrus Scholarship. A nontraditional student and the first person in her family to attend college, Pizzigoni will also be a featured student panelist in Taking Action: Gender and Sexuality Outside the Classroom.
The awards presentations will begin at 3:30 p.m.
The performance by Yellow Rage, scheduled from 7 to 9 p.m. in Sweigart Auditorium, features Michelle Myers and Catzie Vilayphonh, Asian-American poets and founding members of the spoken-word group. They have been featured on the HBO television series Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry and are featured on the DVD of the show’s first season. Yellow Rage has released two CDs, Black Hair, Brown Eyes, Yellow Rage, Volume 1 and Yellow Rage, Handle With Care, Volume 2. Through anger, pain, joy, celebration, sarcasm, and humor, their performances draw on diverse genres—ranging from hip-hop to theatrical monologues to song to free verse—and address topics such as cross-cultural conflict, sex trafficking, domestic violence, and anti-Asian discrimination.