The University of Miami’s School of Law, along with the Human Rights Center of the University of Diego Portales (Chile), the Center for Reproductive Rights, and the Human Rights Institute of Columbia Law School, will host the conference “Gender Justice in the Americas: A Transnational Dialogue on Sexuality, Violence, Reproduction, and Human Rights” from February 23-25.

The conference, to be held on UM’s Coral Gables campus, will include leading scholars and advocates from more than 20 countries in North, South, and Central America as well as the Caribbean. Participants will examine recent law and policy developments at the local, national, and international levels in the areas of human rights, women’s rights, gender, sexuality, and economic justice, as well as the legal and advocacy strategies employed by the women’s and human rights movements in the region to deepen their effect.

The goals of the Gender Justice Conference are multifold. One of the main purposes is to promote a transnational exchange between advocates and academics working on sexual, reproductive, and women’s rights issues in the Americas. Additionally, the conference will serve as a catalyst for the revitalization of the women’s rights movement in the Americas. Ultimately, the organizers hope the conference will foster the development of a new network of advocates and scholars across the region engaged in using the international human rights framework as a tool for advancing women’s human rights.

The Gender Justice Conference will feature renowned international figures such as Elizabeth Abi-Mershed, the adjunct executive secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights; Susana Chiarotti, member of the Advisory Board for the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women’s Rights; Rebecca Cook, professor of law at the University of Toronto; and Nancy Northup, executive director of the Center for Reproductive Rights. UM School of Law Dean Patricia White will give opening remarks on Thursday, February 24.

For more information, visit www.law.miami.edu/genderjustice.

Scientists and Engineers Expanding Diversity and Success (SEEDS) is sponsoring a negotiation workshop on Friday, February 25 in the Hurricane 100 Room at BankUnited Center. Designed to build understanding of mutual-interest-based negotiation and solution-finding, the workshop will be led by Barbara Butterfield, a member of the Committee on the Advancement of Women Chemists through the National Science Foundation

During the workshop participants will evaluate their personal problem-solving styles. Case practice will include a competitive job offer, committee service, salary increase, and ensuring research resources. The morning session, which is open to junior faculty members, will run from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m.; the afternoon session, which is open to post docs and graduate students, will run from 1 to 5 p.m. The workshop is made possible through a SEEDS Working Within Fund managed by steering committee member Barbara Whitlock, associate professor of biology in the College of Arts and Sciences. For more information and to RSVP, please visit www.as.miami.edu/seeds.

Images of life and daily activities in Haitian communities will be the focus of a special exhibition in February at the University of Miami’s Wynwood Project Space.

Presented by UM’s Department of Art and Art History, “Haiti FotoKonbit: Third Vernacular Photography” will feature photographs taken by Haitians in their home country and Miami.

The exhibition runs from February 8-25 at Wynwood Project Space, 2200A NW 2nd Avenue, Miami, with an opening reception on Saturday, February 12 from 6 to 10 p.m.

FotoKonbit is a movement created to engage and empower Haitians to tell their own stories and document their communities through photography.

Inspired by the Creole word “konbit,” which can be defined as the coming together of similar talents in an effort toward a common goal, FotoKonbit educators use their skills as photographers, educators, and artists to impact the lives of their participants and the public through photography. By partnering with established Haitian grassroots organizations in Haiti and in the Haitian Diaspora, FotoKonbit is uniquely positioned to inspire hope through creative expression and provide Haitians with the opportunity to document their reality and share it with the largest possible audience.

A full schedule of exhibitions can be viewed at www.as.miami.edu/art. For more information about the exhibition or Wynwood Project Space, call 305-284-2543 or e-mail [email protected].

Robin Holder's "Descending Into the Valley of the Kings"

The Department of Art and Art History and Africana Studies will present “Atum Energy: Channeling Kemetic Metaphysics,” an art exhibition celebrating Black History Month.

The show, curated by international art curator Ludlow Bailey, will run from February 1 to 28 at UM’s College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) Gallery, 1210 Stanford Drive, Coral Gables campus. The exhibition is free and open to the public. A special opening reception will be held on Friday, February 11, from 6:30 to 9 p.m.

The exhibition will feature the works of African-American artists Robin Holder and Kerry Stuart Coppin, Haitian-American artists Asser Saint-Val and Nzingah, Jamaican-American artist Kristie Stephenson, and black British artist Everton Wright.

Bailey has curated shows in Europe, the Caribbean, and the United States. He has lived in Egypt and travelled extensively in Africa. A lifelong student of Egyptology and metaphysics, he holds degrees from both Brown and Columbia Universities. Bailey currently resides on St. Thomas in the United States Virgin Islands.

Rafael Soriano

Rafael Soriano: Other Worlds Within, a Sixty-Year Retrospective will be on view at the University of Miami’s Lowe Art Museum from January 29 through March 27, 2011. A preview lecture and reception will be held on January 28, 2011 from 7 to 10 p.m. The lecture will be given by Alejandro Anreus.

Born in Cuba, Soriano is one of the major Latin American artists of his generation. Soriano broke with regional and folkloric themes that once dominated Cuban art in the mid-1920s. He first mastered geometric abstraction as a style in the 1950s, but by the late 1960s had defined his signature approach to painting. His work embodies a style best described as “Oneiric Luminism,” combining a purely abstract form of light, form space, and shadow with an interest in poetic and metaphysical impulses.

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