By snoadmin
Historians from various universities spoke out about the evolution of women in Eurasia during the Eurasian Women and Self-Reliance: Religion and Education in the Contemporary World Conference at The Walter Pyramid Thursday.
The conference was a joint effort by the history departments of Cal State Long Beach and UCLA. With 150 people in attendance, the audience ranged from teachers and students not only from CSULB, but from Cal State Los Angeles, UCLA, Cypress College and others.
“People came for different sessions, and professors would bring their students,” said Ali F. Igmen, organizer of the event and assistant professor and director of the oral history program at CSULB. “We advertised everywhere to professors, students and the greater community.”
The conference consisted of three sessions of lecture and discussion about historical women’s issues from all over the world, including the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) to Muslim China to India. Each session had a panel of four speakers who discussed their primary research and essays that they composed for their specific topic in the conference.
“The purpose [of the conference] was to bring various scholars from various disciplines from ten different universities to generate interest among college students to do interdisciplinary work,” Igmen said.
Topics discussed included how women challenge reform and revolution in the USSR and Bulgaria, how women face educational reform and the writing of history in Muslim China, South Asia and secular Turkey, and how women and men negotiate modernity, space, identity and feminism in Yemen and India.
The conference ended with keynote speaker Choi Chatterjee, a historian from CSULA, who discussed the concept of the “self.” Chatterjee began with two stories that set the groundwork for her main discussion on how historians interpret human beings and what they are all about.
“There is an essential self, no matter how many masks you put on for different occasions, and historians have no theory on how to deal with daily life – that is where the self is located,” said Chatterjee during her talk.
“The speaker was really great,” said Arlene Rendon, a criminal justice major at Cypress College. “It was an interesting topic, and now I have a better understanding of men and women.”
