Keynote Speakers

Dr. Irene Lara is a professor at San Diego State University’s Department of Women’s Studies. Her teaching, scholarship, and creative writing is inspired by Chicana, Latina, and indigenous knowledge, Anzalduan thought, curandera praxis, and living in the Borderlands. In addition to publishing her work in venues such as Feminist Studies, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, La Tolteca E-Zine, this bridge we call home: radical visions for transformation, Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Frontlines, and the forthcoming Chicana M(other)work Anthology, Irene co-edited Fleshing the Spirit: Spirituality and Activism in Chicana, Latina, and Indigenous Women's Lives (2014) and the humanities-based textbook Women in Culture: An Intersectional Anthology of Gender and Women’s Studies (2016). She is also the founder of the research and “femtoring” seminar “CuranderaScholarActivism” and the co-founder of “Panocha Pláticas: Healing Sex and Sexuality in Community,” a reproductive justice workshop/healing circle. Irene was recently honored as a San Diego activist in Chicana Tributes: Activist Women of the Civil Rights Movement, Stories for the New Generation (2017) and is currently on sabbatical working on her next book, Healers in the Borderlands, based on in-depth interviews she has conducted with thirty Chicana cultural producers, activists, and curanderas decolonizing the spirituality/sexuality split.

Trevor J. Blank is Assistant Professor of Communication at the State University of New York at Potsdam. He is the author or editor of eight books, including: Folklore and the Internet, Folk Culture in the Digital Age, and The Last Laugh: Folk Humor, Celebrity Culture, and Mass-Mediated Disasters in the Digital Age. His research interests span digital culture, mass media, humor, public health, and the intersections of folk belief and contemporary legends.

Back to the main conference page