Elena Featherston to speak at Women and Violence Seminar

Goshen College
College-Mennonite Church
March 11-12, 2004

Elena Featherston is a lecturer, workshop leader, writer, cultural critic and filmmaker. A political visionary, she has lectured on social theory throughout the United States and Europe since 1982. Her focus is varied: sexism, racism, reproductive rights, womens spirituality, multicultural democracy, heterosexism, womens rights, gender violence and multicultural alliance- building are some of the issues she address. An outspoken proponent for human rights, Featherston has appeared on radio and television in the U.S. and abroad. She has worked with the Green Party and ISD in Germany to end the neo-fascist violence there, coordinated the "Children Having Children" Conference with the National Council of Negro Women to address the fundamentals of teen pregnancy, devised diversity training materials for battered womens shelters, and taught journal writing techniques as a form of narrative healing.

Featherstons writings have appeared in numerous magazines and journals and her book Skin Deep: Women Writing on Color, Culture & Identity was published by The Crossing Press in 1994. She is the producer/director of the award-winning documentary "Alice Walker: Visions of the Spirit."

In 1988, Featherston co-founded REEL DIRECTIONS, a San Francisco-based film/video collective which fosters the creation of realistic and multi- dimensional images of women and people of color for cinema and television in countries around the world. In 1990, she co-founded Featherston and Associates, a group of cross-cultural lecturers, teachers and facilitators from diverse backgrounds who work to end all forms of oppression, particularly those based on race, ethnic or cultural background, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical ability and spiritual beliefs.

Featherston is currently working on a childrens book on ethnicity and color entitled This is Me; a documentary film which explores interracial relationships, "Under Our Skins"; and a book that fuses art, politics and spirituality, Weaving Change: A Guide to Personal and Political Transformation". She is an adjunct professor at New College of San Francisco in the departments of psychology and literature, and a candidate for the Beatrice M. Bain Research Affiliated Scholars Program at the University of California, Berkeley.

Memberships include: The African/Asian American Roundtable, Bay Area Committee on Reproductive Rights, Women Against Rape, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, the National Writers Union, Comparative and International Education Society(CIES), Women Make Movies, National Womens Studies Association, Black Women in Publishing, NAACP, Bay Area Video Coalition and the Film Arts Foundation.