Session

Conference Registration- Cathedral of Learning

Session 1. Adoption Memoirs, Classic and New

Chair: Marianne Novy, English and Women’s Studies, University of Pittsburgh

Jean Strauss, from Beneath a Tall Tree

Lorraine Dusky, from Birthmark

Carol Schaefer, from The Other Mother

Emily Hipchen, English, University of West Georgia, from  Coming Apart Together: Fragments of an Adoption

Session 2.

Welcome: Nicole Constable
Anthropology and Associate Dean of Arts and Schiences, University of Pittsburgh

Introduction: Frayda Cohen, Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh

Keynote: Emily Prager - “Adoption --A Two-Way Street”

Response:  Toby Alice Volkman, Editor Cultures of Transnational Adoption

Session

Session 3. International Adoption

Chair, Frayda Cohen, Anthropology and Women's Studies, University of Pittsburgh

Barbara Yngvesson, Anthropology, Hampshire College, “Gifts and Returns: Transnationalizing the Family of Transnational Adoption”

Sara Dorow, Anthropology, University of Alberta (Canada), “'I’m not an alien’: Narrating Race, Space, and Kinship in Chinese Adoption”

Sandra Patton-Imani, Study of Culture and Society, Drake University, “Mother Lands and Racial Landscapes: Korean Birth Mothers and Korean American Adoptees Imagining Each Other”

Session 4. Adoption and its Challenges

Chair: Marianne Novy, English and Women's Studies, University of Pittsburgh

Signe Howell, Anthropology, University of Oslo. "Adopting and Raising Adopted Children in Norway."

Judith Schachter (Modell), Anthropology, Center for the Arts in Society, Carnegie-Mellon, "Circulating Children: Lessons from Hawaii for International Adoption:

Sally Haslanger, Philosophy and Women’s Studies, MIT, “Family, Ancestry, and Self: What is the Moral Significance of Biological Ties?”

Session 5.

Introduction: David Herring, Law, University of Pittsburgh.

Keynote: Dorothy Roberts
Law / Faculty Fellow, Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University, 
“Adoption and Culture: The Difference  Politics Makes”

Session 6. 1. Men Write Adoption Memoirs

Chair: Faith Adiele, English, University of Pittsburgh

Ralph Savarese, English, Grinnell College, from Reasonable People: A Memoir of Autism and Adoption

Peter McCullough, English Renaissance Literature, Lincoln College, Oxford University, “Opening Adoption Closets: Sexuality, Class, and Place”

Ned Balbo, Writing, Loyola College of Maryland, poetry and prose

Craig Hickman, from Fumbling Toward Divinity: The Adoption Scriptures

Session 6. 2. Adoption in Russia

Chair, Irina Livezeanu, History, University of Pittsburgh

Lilia Khabibullina, Social and Cultural Anthropology,   University of Barcelona, “Rethinking Family and Children in the Global Circulation of Russian Orphans”

Rick Wirick, from A Hundred Siberian Postcards

Robert McCall and Christina Groark, Office of Child Development, University of Pittsburgh, “Changing the Orphanage Culture to Improve Children’s Development”

Session 6.3 Adoptive Parents’ Language

Chair, Carol Singley, English, Rutgers University-Camden

William FitzGerald, English, Rutgers University-Camden, “Rhetorical Constructions of Identity in Transnational Adoption: Reading and Performing the ‘Waiting Period’ Online”

Juliette M. Ludeker, English, Purdue University,  “From Unplanned to Miracle: The Use of Metaphor in Adoption Webpages”

Miriam Klevan, Human Development and Social Policy, Northwestern University, “Meant to be Ours: The Uses of Fate in the Narratives of Adoptive Parents”

Session 7.1 Open Mike

Chair: Jan Beatty, Creative Writing, Carlow University

Preference will be given to those not already on the program, then to creative writing by those on the program for scholarly writing.

Session 7.2 Opening Birth Records: FIlm and Memoir

Chair: Jill Deans, Office of National Scholarships, University of Connecticut

Jean Strauss, filmmaker, will show and discuss her film "Vital Records".

Ruth Nemzoff, International Studies, Bentley College; Women's Studies Research Center, Brandeis University, "How Feminism Changed the Adoption System"

Session 8. Evening of Adoption Memoir, Poetry, Film

Lead by: Emily Hipchen, English, University of West Georgia

Nancy McCabe, English,  University of Pittsburgh at Bradford;

Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, English, University of Southern California;

Jeanne Marie Laskas, English, University of Pittsburgh;

Jean Strauss, filmmaker,  The Triumvirate; 

Sheila Ganz, from “Handbook on Healing for Birthmothers”; 

Jan Beatty, Creative Writing, Carlow University;

Mary Anne Cohen, editor, Origins: A Birthmothers’ Newsletter

Session

Session 9.1. International Adoption in TV, Documentary, Film, Print

Chair: Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, English, University

Elise Prebin, Anthropology, Harvard University, “Representations of Lost Children in South Korean Television”

Mark Jerng, English, University of California at Davis, “Writing Transnational Adoption Between Rights and Needs”

Diana Marre, Anthropology, Autonomous University of Barcelona and Institute of Childhood and the Urban World (CIIMU), “Public Understanding of ‘New’ Families: Representing International Adoption in Spain”

Session 9.2 Who is Allowed to Mother? Welfare, Class, the State, and the Family

Chair: Mary Lyndon (Molly) Shanley, Political Science, Vassar College

Claudia Nelson, English and Women’s Studies,  Texas A and M University,  “Adoption and Class in Victorian England”

Catherine E. Rymph, History, University of Missouri,  “Parents Who Are Not Supposed to Act Parental: Foster Parenting and Adoptive Parenting, 1950-1997”

Cynthia Ninivaggi, Anthropology, Georgian Court University,  “Lessons from their Silence: Twentieth Century Relinquishment and ‘Expert’ Discourse”

Session 9.3 Adoption and Race in American Literature

Chair: Carol Singley, English and Women's Studies, Rutgers University-Camden

Cynthia Callahan, English, Ohio State University at Mansfield, “Slavery’s Tangled Genealogies: Adoption and Racial Purity in Charles W. Chesnutt’s Fiction”

Lori Askeland, English, Wittenberg University, “The Shock of Recognition: Kinship Care Across the Color Line in U. S. Literature and Culture”

Martha Satz, English, Southern Methodist University, “Adopting America: Adoption as an Entree to the Immigrant Experience in Anne Tyler’s Digging to America and Gish Jen’s Love Wife”

Session 10.

Introduction: Jean Ferguson Carr, English and Women's Studies, University of PIttsburgh

Keynote: Susan Bordo, English and Women’s Studies, University of Kentucky
“Will the “Real” Parent (s) (s) (s) (s) Please Step Forward?: Beyond our Fantasies and Fears about Open Adoption”

Session 11.1 Adoption Novels: British, American, and Transnational

Chair: Marah Gubar, English and Children's Literature , University of Pittsburgh

Susan Howard, English, Duquesne University, "Transracial Identities in the EIghteenth Century Transatlantic Novel: Questioning National Identities in Charlotte Lennox's Euphemia"

Margaret Homans, English and Women’s Studies, Yale University, Adoption in Silas Marner and What Maisie Knew

Carol Singley, English and Women’s Studies, Rutgers-Camden,  “Sacrificing Sentiment in Edith Wharton’s Adoption Novel, Summer”

Session 11.2  Adoptive and First Mothers Blog Their Way through New Family Structures

Chair: Shannon LC Cate, English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Editor, LiteraryMama.com e-zine

Shannon LC Cate, “Challenging Adoption Blogs” 

Dawn Friedman, Op-Ed Editor, Literary Mama, “Someone Else’s Shoes: How Dialogue On-Blog Impacted a Real Adoption”

Susan Marie Harrington, English and Women’s Studies, Indiana University, Purdue University Indianapolis, “Adoption Online: The Creation of Narrative Spaces and Identity”

Jenna Hatfield, AdoptionBlogs.com,  “First Mothers Find  a Voice”

Session 11.3 “What Stories are Adoption Stories: Historians Talk about Memories, Bureaucracies, Narratives, and Numbers”

Chair, E. Wayne Carp, HIstory, Pacific Lutheran University

Ellen Herman, History, University of Oregon, “Of Numbers and Narratives”

Karen Balcom, History and Women’s Studies, McMaster University (Canada),  “Government Policy: Institutional Imperative and the History of Adoption: The Case of Canadian Adoption Exchanges”

Karen Dubinsky, History, Queen’s University (Canada), “Saving Cuba’s Children, From Operation Peter Pan to Elian Gonzalez”

Session 12.1 Approaches to Adoptees’ Identity: Myths, Metaphors,  and Genetics

Chair: Sally Haslanger, Philosophy and Women's Studies, MIT

Penny Callan Partridge, M.S.W. and poet, Adoption Forum and American Adoption Congress,   “Pandora and Pinocchio--Beginning and End of Adoptee Experience”

Jill Deans, Office of National Scholarships, University of Connecticut, “What’s in a Hole?”

Kimberly Leighton, Philosophy, Tufts University, “Genetic Artifacts: Digging up the Meaning of ‘Family Background’ in the History of Adoption”

Session 12.2 Legal, Ethical, and Psychological Approaches to New Family Structures

Chair, Sabine von Dirke, German, University of Pittsburgh

Annette Ruth Appell, Law, University of Nevada at Las Vegas,“The New Blended Families: Legal, Blood, and Fictive Kin Networks in Open Adoption”

Mary Lyndon (Molly) Shanley, Political Science, Vassar College, "Reflections on Anonymity in Human Sperm and Egg Donation"

Joyce Maguire Pavao, Center For Family Connections, “A Psychologist’s Responses to Open Adoption and Artificial Insemination”

Session 12.3 Internationally Adoptive Parents

Chair: Nancy McCabe, English, University of Pittsburgh at Bradford

Kristine Freeark, Center for Human Growth and Development,  University of Michigan, “Make Room for Daddy: The Impact of Father Involvement on the Adoption Dialogue in Transnationally Adoptive Families” (written with Katherine Rosenblum)

Mitch Levenberg, English, St. Francis College and New York University, Excerpts from a memoir about adopting in China

Chris Winston, Korean American Adoptee Adoptive Family Network, “Adoptive Parents, Race, and Children’s Ethnic Communities”

Indigo WIlliams Willing, Social Science, University of Queensland, "New Global Families: Celebrity Adopters to 'Ordinary' Australian Adoptive Parents"

Session 13. Business meeting of ASAIK

Session 14. Phil Bertelsen, Realization Pictures

showing and discussing his film, Outside Looking In: Transracial Adoption in America

Session

Session 15.1  Adoptees’ Interests, Children’s Interests, and the Law

Chair: Rhonda Wasserman, Law, University of Pittsburgh

Tanya Washington, Law, Georgia State University, “Being Seen, Heard, and Placed: The Best Interests of Prospective Adoptees as a Constitutional Bulwark Against Same-Sex Adoption Bans”

Richard F. Storrow, Law, Pennsylvania State University,  “Remaking the Family Through Special-Needs Adoption”

Cindy L. Baldassi, Law, University of British Columbia, “Constituted by the Law: Adoptive Identity in Disclosure Debates”

Session15.3  Health Issues in International Adoption

Chair: Amy Van Dyke, Program in Bioethics and Health Law, University of Pittsburgh

Heather Jacobson, Sociology, University of Texas at Arlington,  “A Leap of Faith: Managing Health Uncertainty in International Adoption”

Jessaca Leinaweaver, Anthropology, University of Manitoba, “Discourses of Health in Peruvian Adoption”

Sonya Martin, Medicine, New York University, “Biomedical Representations of Prospective Children at the International Adoption Clinic”

Session 16.1 Adoption, History, and Politics

Chair: Ellen Herman, History, University of Oregon

Steven Andrews, English, Grinnell College, “Abducted by Puritans: Adoption, Race, and the Politics of the New Frontier”

Allison Varzally, History, California State University at Fullerton, "Asian Adoptees and the Politics of Interracial American Families"

Marian Quartly, History, Monash University (Australia), “Political Representations of Adoption in Australia, 1977-2007”

Session 16.2 International Adoptees’ Identity Formation

Chair: Mark Jerng, English, University of California, Davis

Lori Delale-O’Connor, Sociology, Northwestern University, “Learning to Be Me: The Role of Adoptee Culture Camps in teaching Adopted Children Their Birth Culture”

Janet Eldred, English, University of Kentucky,  “Diasporic Orphans”

Jayashree Mohanty, Social Work, University of Pittsburgh and Christina Newhill, Social Work, University of Pittsburgh, “Ethnic Socialization and Identity Development among International Adoptees.”

Jeff Leinaweaver, Human Development and Organizational Systems, Fielding Graduate Institute, “The International Adoptee as Public Intellectual”

Good-byes. Those who wish will go to Foster’s at the Holiday Inn or another restaurant for lunch.