Anita L. Allen, Deputy Dean for Academic Affairs, Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania Law School. Allen’s work has focused on the law and ethics of privacy and data protection, race relations and feminist philosophy. She is the author of numerous articles and several books: Privacy Law: and Society (2007); Why Privacy Isn’t Everything: Feminist Reflections on Personal Accountability, (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003); Uneasy Access: Privacy for Women in a Free Society (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, l988) and The New Ethics: A Guided Tour of the 21st Century Moral Landscape (Miramax Books/distributed by Hyperion Books, 2004).
Ann Fessler is an installation artist, filmmaker, adoptee and author of The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade.
(The Penguin Press, 2006) based on oral history interviews she
conducted between 2002 and 2005 with surrendering mothers across the
country. In 2008 Fessler received the Ballard Book Prize given annually
to a female author who advances the dialogue about women's rights and
in 2006 her book was selected by the National Book Critics Circle as
one of the top 5 nonfiction books of the year. Hear Ann Fesssler on Fresh Air.
Lynn Lauber, birth mother, writer, teacher, and book collaborator, has published three books with W.W. Norton. White Girls (1990) and 21 Sugar Street (1993), both fiction, that deal with the topics of birth families and adoption. Listen to Me, Writing Life into Meaning (2003), is part memoir, part exploration of writing as self-discovery. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times and a number of anthologies. She currently teaches personal writing workshops and is writing a memoir on her experience as a birth mother.
Deann Borshay Liem is Producer, Director, Writer for the Emmy Award-nominated
documentary, First Person Plural (PBS 2000), Executive Producer for
Spencer Nakasako’s Kelly Loves Tony (PBS 1998) and AKA Don Bonus (PBS
1996, Emmy Award), and Co-Producer for Special Circumstances (PBS,
2009) by Marianne Teleki. A
Sundance Institute Fellow and a recipient of a Rockefeller Film/Video
Fellowship, Deann is the Director, Producer, Writer of the new
documentary, In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee, which will be broadcast
nationally on PBS in Fall 2010. She is currently Executive Director of
Katahdin Productions, a non-profit documentary production company based
in Berkeley and Los Angeles, California. Learn more about DeAnn Borshay Liem on PBS’s Point of View.
Other
invited speakers include Marla Brettschneider, Naomi Cahn,, Meredith
Hall, Craig Hickman, Kate Livingston, Karen McElmurray, Adam Pertman,
John Raible, Lisa Marie Rollins, Elizabeth Samuels, Sarah Tobias.
There will be a day of documentary films on Thursday. Panels later in the conference will cover topics such as: Secrecy and
Policy; Lesbian/gay Secrecy Issues and Adoption; Complications of
Search, Reunion and Aftermath; Transnational Adoption as Immigration
Policy; Secrecy and Adoption: Historical Perspectives on the U.S., Europe, and Asia after World
War II; Birthmothers: Agency and Activism; Biological Preference
Critiqued and Analyzed; Secrecy and Openness: Legal Issues; Transracial Adoption in Contemporary American Literature; Adoptive Parents, Race, Difference.
There will also be an evening of creative writing and performance on
Friday, 4/30/10; this evening and all keynotes are free and open to the
public. All sessions free to MIT affiliates, and special rates are
available for non-MIT students and the un/underemployed.