Picture
Konai Helu Thaman
"The Human in the Context of Pedagogical Practices and Philosophies in the Pacific"

Brief Bio:
 Konai Helu Thaman is a current Professor of Pacific Education and Culture and the UNESCO Chair in teacher education and culture at the University of the South Pacific (USP), a regional institution owned by 12 Pacific Island Nations.  She received her school education in Tonga and tertiary education in New Zealand (B.A. Auckland University), California (M.A. in International Education at University of California, Santa Barbara), and the USP (Ph.D. in Education). Her current teaching and research interests are in indigenous education and culturally inclusive teaching, curriculum and research. Konai Helu Thaman is currently involved with other colleagues in documenting Pacific indigenous educational ideas and pedagogies, and developing Pacific frameworks and methodologies for research. She has researched and published in the areas of curriculum development, indigenous knowledge systems, culturally democratic teacher education and sustainable development.  She is a member of several international organisations including The Joint ILO/UNESCO Committee of Experts on the Recommendation Concerning the Status of Teachers and Higher Education Personnel (CEART), a Fellow of the Asia Pacific Centre for Innovations in Education & Development (APEID) and Oceanin vice-chair for the IUCN Commission on Education & Communication. In her spare time, Konai enjoys writing poetry and 5 collections of her poems have been published.
Picture

Susan Schweik
"The Human, the Person, and Disability Before the Law"

Brief Bio:
Susan Schweik is Professor of English and Co-Director of the Disability Studies Program at the University of California at Berkeley. She has served as the Associate Dean of Arts and Humanities and is a recent recipient of the Chancellor's Award for Advancing Institutional Excellence.  She is the author of A Gulf So Deeply Cut: American Women Poets and the Second World War, and, most recently, of The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public (New York University Press, 2009). In this watershed study of the ugly laws that draws from a huge range of cultural materials ranging from police reports to popular fiction, Schweik explores how, in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, municipal laws targeting "unsightly beggars" sprang up in cities across America. Seeming to criminalize disability and thus offering a visceral example of discrimination, these "ugly laws" have become a sort of shorthand for oppression in disability studies, law, and the arts.

A former Presidential Chair in Undergraduate Education for Disability Studies at U.C. Berkeley, Professor Schweik has been involved with the development of disability studies at Berkeley for nine years. She was co-coordinator of the Ed Roberts Fellowships in Disability Studies post-doctoral program at Berkeley (coordinated by the Institute for Urban and Regional Development). She has taught and co-taught undergraduate courses in Disability and Literature, Discourses of Disability, The Disability Rights Movement, Disability and Digital Storytelling, Psychiatric Disability, Literature and Medicine, and Race, Ethnicity and Disability, among others, and graduate courses in Body Theory and Disability Studies and Advanced Disability Studies. Her other teaching and research interests include twentieth century poetry, late nineteenth century American literature, women's studies and gender theory, urban studies, war literature and children's literature. She is a recipient of Berkeley's Distinguished Teaching Award.
Picture

Manu Meyer
"Hawaiian Epistemology and the Human"

Brief Bio:
 Manulani Aluli Meyer is the fifth daughter of Emma Aluli and Harry Meyer.  She is from a large family with roots in Wailuku, Kohala, Hilo and Kailua. Her ohana  are dedicated to Hawaiian health, law, education, arts, music and justice.  She has a twin sister named Moana who is the thrill of her life-time. She is an outdoor experiential educator and coach who entered the philosophy and teacher-education field because of the needs of our time.  She earned her doctorate from Harvard researching Hawaiian epistemology, or an indigenous philosophy of knowledge specific to her homeland Hawaii-nui-akea.   

Manu is dedicated to transforming ideas of intelligence, research, and science to better address the needs and honor the unique contributions of native peoples.  She is currently an Associate Professor of Education at the University of Hawaii in Hilo and founding member of Halau Wanana, a Hawaiian Center of Higher Learning preparing teachers for licensure in the Hawaiian charter school movement.  She was part of the first WINHEC accreditation team – World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium. She helps in the Food Sovereignty movement on all islands and is part of a large community garden at the Hilo Boys and Girls Club.  She is widely published and travels throughout the world enjoying her relations in a multitude of movements.  Her book: Ho`oulu: Our Time of Becoming, is in its second printing.  She grew up in the ocean surfing and exploring beaches and mountain streams.  She is a wahine kalai pohaku, a woman who carves stones. 

Picture

Salah D. Hassan
"Defective Sovereignty: Palestine, National Self Determination and the Global Order"

Brief Bio:
Sala D. Hassan is an associate professor in the Department of English at Michigan State University.  His areas of research and teaching include post colonial literature and theory, mid-20th century anticolonial intellectual movements. literature of empire, and Arab North American studies. He is co-coordinator of the project Islam, Muslims and Journalism Education (IMAJE), a website funded by the Social Science Research Cousin (http://www2.matrix.msu.edu/~image/?page_id=2). He has published articles in journals such as Social Text, New Formations, Socialism and Democracy, Radical History Review, Research in African Literature, Middle East Report and Co-edited with Marcy Newman a special of MELUS (Winter 2006) on Arab American literature.  He has edited and co-edited special issues of CR: The New Centennial Review under the following titles: "The Orgins of Postmodern Cuba", "Terror Wars", "Cultures of Occupations", and "The Palestine Issue".  He is the co-curator of the international web art exhibit RASHID & ROSETTA (http://www.rashid-and-rosetta.org/ros_home_e.html).