Women’s Voices: Health, Politics, and Empowerment (virtual)

Join Lifetime Learning for an engaging conversation with Abby Palko, Director, Maxine Platzer Lynn Women's Center, and three faculty experts as they discuss issues impacting women internationally. Francesca Calamita, Associate Professor, General Faculty, Director of Undergraduate Programs in Italian Studies & Director of UVA in Siena and Florence; Tiffany King, Barbara and John Glynn Research Professorship in Democracy and Equity and Associate Professor of Women, Gender & Sexuality; and Farzaneh Milani, Professor of Middle Eastern & South Asian Languages & Cultures and Women, Gender & Sexuality will examine concerns of health and politics within the scope of women’s engagement and empowerment. The panel will share insights from their current scholarship and consider future directions in their research fields.

Speaker Biographies
 

Farzaneh Milani, Raymond J. Nelson Professor of Iranian Literature and Gender Studies, College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences

Farzaneh Milani is Raymond J. Nelson Professor of Iranian Literature and Gender Studies at the University of Virginia. She is the former Chair of the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures and past Director of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Middle East Studies Programs. Milani has published several books and articles in Persian and English. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, Ms. Magazine, Reader's Digest International, USA Today, All Things Considered, among others. She has presented more than 270 lectures nationally and internationally. A past president of the Association of Middle Eastern Women's Studies in America and a Carnegie Fellow, Milani was the recipient of the All-University Teaching Award (1999), Zintl Leadership Award (2015), and Cavaliers’ Distinguished Teaching Award and Professorship in 2020. The Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy invited Milani to join it as a member of its Board of External Experts for Literature in 2021. Milani will serve in that capacity for three years.

Francesca Calamita, Associate Professor, AGFM (Academic General Faculty Member) in the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese and affiliated faculty of the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality; Director of the Undergraduate Programs in Italian Studies and Director of UVA in Siena and Florence in the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences

Francesca Calamita is an Associate Professor, AGFM (Academic General Faculty Member) in the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese and affiliated faculty of the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. She is the Director of the Undergraduate Programs in Italian Studies and Director of UVA in Siena and Florence. Calamita works in the area of women, gender, and sexuality in European and global contexts, and she is internationally recognized for her publications on the fictional depiction of eating disorders and other complex relationships with body and food in Italian literature and culture. Women’s voices and visibility are at the center of her research and teaching, and she is a strong advocate for women’s rights in and outside the university context. The author of two monographs in Italian (Linguaggi dell'esperienza femminile - 2015; Visibili e influenti - 2023), co-editor of Starvation, Food Obsession and Identity (2017) and Eve Sinful's Bite (2020), Calamita is also the ideator and co-author of DiversITALY (2022), the first textbook around the world to teach Italian with gender equality.

Tiffany King, Associate Professor, Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences; Co-director at the Black & Indigenous Feminist Futures Institute at UVA

Tiffany King is an Associate Professor in the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. In the department, she teaches feminist theories and methods, Black and Indigenous feminisms, Black gender and sexuality, and transnational feminisms. King is the author of The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies which won the Lora Romero First Book Prize, and is a co-editor of the collection Otherwise Worlds: Against Settler Colonialism and Anti Blackness. King is also a co-director at the Black & Indigenous Feminist Futures Institute at UVA.

Abby Palko (moderator), Ph.D. Director, Maxine Platzer Lynn Women's Center

Abby Palko, Ph.D. is the Director of the Maxine Platzer Lynn Women's Center at the University of Virginia. She provides executive leadership for the Women’s Center, whose team includes Engaged Scholarship, Counseling, and Wellness Services. She leads a team of interns who work to celebrate women’s accomplishments across Grounds, including highlighting milestones in women’s education at UVA. Her scholarship focuses on cultural representations and contestations of mothering practices. Palko holds a Ph.D. in literature with a graduate minor in gender studies from the University of Notre Dame, an M.A. in English literature from Rutgers University, and a B.A. in English and French from Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia. Her self-care practices include needlepointing, jogging at a painfully slow pace, and reading novels, with a good cup of tea in hand. She and her husband are joyfully parenting their teenage child.