Senior international student Cristiana Oliveira and many other students and faculty from the Midwest and across the nation will present at the two-day 2002 Midwest Conference on Latin American Studies in Eau Claire.
Oliveira will be reading her paper, “Modernization and the status of Women in Brazil,” which focuses on racial and ethnic aspects of being a woman in Latin America.
Oliveira is one of three Eau Claire students who will be presenting their projects at the conference.
She has been working on the project with Rose-Marie Avin, professor of economics, for more than a year.
This year’s project is an extension of last year’s project, but this year Oliveira has included a closer study of race and ethnicity, she said.
“I think it is very good that we have something like this,” Oliveira said.
“There’s not a lot of diversity on the campus, and through this, we can show more diversity,” she said.
Obika Gray, professor of political science, and Eva Santos-Phillips, associate professor of foreign languages, co-coordinated the event, which is held in Eau Claire every year.
“The purpose of this event is to learn about how Latin America affects the United States, and how the United States effects Latin America,” Santos-Phillips said.
“This conference is so that people can learn about their neighbor to the south, seeing as how most people will deal with Latin America sometime in their work lives.”
Two of the panel discussions will contain over 20 paper presentations. In addition, two of the discussions will be presented in Spanish.
“Last year, one of our speakers was from Argentina,” said Santos Phillips. “This year they are mainly from the Midwest, but come from all over the nation.”