ARCHIVAL PAGE

We are delighted to announce our three keynote speakers

Urvashi Vaid	Urvashi Vaid is a community organizer and attorney whose involvement in the lesbian and gay movement spans over fifteen years. From 1986 to 1992, she served as Public Information Director and as Executive Director for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. In 1994, she was named one of Time magazine's "Fifty for the Future," a list of America's most promising leaders age forty and younger. Vaid is the author of "Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation," published in 1995 by Anchor/Doubleday. Vaid recently returned to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to become the new head of their Policy Institute. We are thrilled to have Urvashi open our conference on Saturday morning. She appeared at UIC to a packed house a couple of years ago and we are pleased to have her back to our campus.
Leslie Feinberg	Leslie Feinberg came of age as a young drag king in the factories and gay bars of western New York and southern Ontario in the 1960s. Since that time, Feinberg has been a grassroots activist, journalist, and lecturer on behalf of the lesbian/ gay/ bi/ trans movements. Feinberg is the author of the acclaimed novel, Stone Butch Blues, and the very personal account, Transgender Warriors. Feinberg's writings have also appeared as articles in Workers World and Liberation and Marxismmagazine. A 1992 pamphlet on transgender liberation led to Feinberg traversing the country with a slide show at locales ranging from Little Rock to Brown University. We will conclude our full day of workshops and programs on Saturday with Leslie Feinberg's informative and inspiring presentation. Check out the Transgender Warrior web site.
Michelangelo Signorile	Michelangelo Signorile was dubbed by Time as the man who invented "outing" in a column for the now-defunct magazine Outweek. His book, Outing Yourself offers step by step tips to coming out. His first book, Queer in America: Sex, the Media and the Closets of Power, examined three closets that keep gay people invisible -- the media in New York, politics in Washington, and entertainment in Hollywood. Signorile is a monthly feature writer for the national magazine OUT. His current book, Life Outside: Signorile Report on Gay Men: Sex, Drugs, Muscles and the Passages of Life offers a comprehensive analysis of the status of gay men in contemporary American society. Check out his new web site: Signorile in Cyberspace. He has been called everything from a "terrorist," "fascist," a "gay-left extremist," a "queer radical," a "leftist ideologue," to a "neo-conservative," a "puritan" and a member of "the new right." The attacks have proved one thing: like most people, Signorile is complicated. Michelangelo will offer the closing address for the conference on Sunday.

Back to the MBLGTCC home page