Five students who conducted international research with the support of Phillips Fellowships from Bates present their research in October. Presentations begin at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 10, and Monday, Oct. 15, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

They are open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-753-6952.

Three Phillips Fellows are featured in the Oct. 10 event.

A senior biochemistry major from St. Catherine, Jamaica, Shawna-Kaye Lester’s presentation is titled “Movement of Jah People.” Lester participated in a dance project with the Ndere Troupe, first in New York and then in the troupe’s hometown of Kampala, Uganda. There she was able to observe the dance styles of the African diaspora as they relate to African traditions and Uganda’s newest refugee populations.

Two seniors present “Addressing the Cycle of Poverty Through Education in Cambodia.” Anthony Begon is a resident of Peabody, Mass., double-majoring in political science and African American studies. Political science major Ross Van Horn hails from Highland Park, N.J. The pair will discuss their work with the nongovernmental organization Globalteer, teaching English to children in Siem Reap, Cambodia, and the practical perspective on human rights challenges in Southeast Asia the experience provided.

At 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 15, two senior Phillips Fellows describe their research.

An African American studies major from Brooklyn, N.Y., Leeanne Cunningham presents “Racism, Discrimination and Prejudice of African Descendents in Brazil.” Cunningham will recount her visits to several “quilombos,” Brazilian communities founded by escaped slaves, as she explored how the communities have evolved in a shifting cultural context.

A physics major from Bansbari, Nepal, Suresh Rana presents “Exploring Bangladeshi Communities to Understand Cross-cultural Perspectives and Religious Interpretations of Cancer and Cancer Treatment.” Rana visited various sites in Bangladesh to investigate access to cancer treatment and compare approaches by different cultures and religions.

Phillips Student Fellowships at Bates support students who design exceptional international or cross-cultural projects focusing on research, service-learning, career exploration or a combination of the three.

The Phillips Student Fellowships, Phillips Faculty Fellowships and Phillips Professorships at Bates are part of the Phillips Endowment Program, an initiative of awards, honors and opportunities funded by a $9 million endowment bequest made to the college in 1999 by Charles F. Phillips, fourth president of Bates, and his wife, Evelyn Minard Phillips.

Scholars and human-rights advocates will join survivors of the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda to discuss its origins and outcomes on Friday and Saturday, March 30 and 31, at Bates College.

Titled “Rwanda: From National Disintegration to National Reunification: The Legacy of the Genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda,” the conference is open to all free of charge. Sponsors of the event include the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

For more information, please contact Assistant Professor of French Alexandre Dauge-Roth, the event’s organizer, at 207-786-6281 or this e-mail.

This interdisciplinary gathering will gather speakers from Rwanda, Europe and the United States, including members of the Rwandan diaspora living in New England. “Envisioned as a place of encounter and relationship-building, it will allow survivors of the genocide of the Tutsi to share stories, struggles and hopes to promote a better understanding of this traumatic legacy,” says Dauge-Roth.

In a prelude to the conference, students in Dauge-Roth’s seminar “Documenting the Genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda” will offer posters and performances reflecting their correspondence with genocide survivors at 4:30 p.m. Friday, March 30, in Pettengill Hall. The presentations are part of the Mount David Summit, a celebration of academic achievement at Bates.

The conference itself begins with remarks and a reception at 7:45 p.m. Friday in Chase Hall Lounge. It continues with a day of panel discussions starting at 9 a.m. Saturday, March 31 in Pettengill Hall’s Keck Classroom (G52) and concludes with a Rwandan dance performance and remarks at 8 p.m. in Chase Hall. (Click the links for a full conference schedule and a list of participants.)

The panel presentations will proceed chronologically from a discussion about the origins of the genocide, to eyewitness accounts of the massacre, to an examination of the country’s efforts to rebuild and to effect national reconciliation.

Speakers include faculty in diverse disciplines from Bates, Bowdoin and Colby colleges and the University of Paris; experts on the genocide including a Human Rights Watch specialist on Rwanda, a Rwandan national prosecutor and the director of the Refugee and Immigration Services at Catholic Charities Maine; and survivors including founding members of an association for the genocide’s widows and children, and two authors who bear witness to the massacres in their works.

The event takes place about a week before the 13th anniversary of a genocide whose scale and ferocity stunned the world. As Dauge-Roth points out, 2007 is midway through the timeline for the Rwanda government’s Vision 2020, a program, devised in the wake of the tragedy, for the impoverished nation’s reconciliation, reconstruction and economic revitalization.

“We are 13 years after the genocide and 13 years before 2020,” Dauge-Roth says. “So it’s also a moment where we can learn, evaluate and reflect on what has been accomplished and consider what the challenges are in the longer term.”

Dauge-Roth, a Swiss native who started at Bates in 2005, organized the conference as an extension of his own research into the Rwandan genocide. He is exploring the personal, literary and film narratives created about Rwanda in the years since Hutu extremists massacred as many as a million Tutsi and moderate Hutu.

“I’m examining how these authors use an aesthetic of haunting,” he says. “These testimonies and documentaries find ways to haunt the reader and the viewer, so that we cannot go back to our usual business and forget about it.”

During a 2006 trip to Rwanda, Dauge-Roth established a network of genocide survivors who have corresponded with Bates students in this winter’s “Documenting the Genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda” seminar. (French is an official language of Rwanda.)

“I hope that students will reflect on what it means to listen to a survivor,” says Dauge-Roth. “There’s a lot to learn from them about the ability to struggle and to live on despite horrific loss.”

Several speakers from the Bates event will also take part in similar panels at Harvard University (5-7 p.m. March 27, Tsai Auditorium, South Building, S010), at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. (4-6 p.m. March 28, Hogan Campus Center, Room 519) and at the University of Colorado at Boulder (April 3).

“My hope is that these conferences will be a key step to building personal relationships with Rwandan community partners for future projects,” Dauge-Roth says.

McNaron’s book explores the ways in which higher education welcomes gay and lesbian scholarship but not gay and lesbian scholars. She focuses on her own experience as an “out” lesbian and reports on the experiences of 300 gay and lesbian scholars with at least 15 years of experience in their profession. The book received a 1997 honorable mention for Outstanding Book Awards, Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America.

An award-winning teacher and widely published scholar, McNaron is the author of I Dwell in Possibility: A Memoir (Feminist Press, 1992), Voices in the Night: Women Speaking About Incest(Cleis Press, 1983) and The Sister Bond: A Feminist View of a Timeless Connection” (Pergamon Press, 1985). She co-edited New Lesbian Studies: Into the 21st Century (Feminist Press, 1996).

McNaron received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, her M.A. from Vanderbilt University and her B.A. from the University of Alabama. She taught at All Saints Episcopal College before moving to the University of Minnesota, where she has been a member of the faculty for more than 30 years. Her areas of interest include Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, lesbian poetry, feminist criticism and pedagogy, and Milton.

McNaron’s talk is sponsored by the Multicultural Center. For more information, call 207-786-8215.

Robert Drinan, an ordained Jesuit priest, professor of law at Georgetown University and internationally recognized human rights advocate, will discuss the ethical and legal challenges facing the United States as it pursues national domestic security in a talk titled America’s War on Terrorism: Human Rights, Civil Rights and Homeland Security at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 29, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave. The public is invited to attend free of charge.

Drinan has advocated for international human rights for more than three decades. During the 10 years between his deanship at Boston College Law School and joining the Georgetown Law Center faculty in 1981, he represented Massachusetts’ 4th Congressional District in Congress from 1971 to 1981. Drinan chaired the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice of the House Judiciary Committee. Drinan has served on private delegations to the Netherlands, South Africa, Sudan, Israel and the former Soviet Union, and on privately sponsored human rights missions to Chile, the Philippines, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Argentina, France and Vietnam.

A regular contributor to law reviews and journals of policy and opinion, Dinan is the author of The Mobilization of Shame: A World View of Human Rights (Yale University Press, 2001). Anyone interested in human rights will read Robert Drinan’s informative, passionate and challenging book with deep concern and hope,” said author Elie Wiesel.

Drinan’s other books include The Fractured Dream (Crossroad, 1991); Stories From the American Soul (Loyola U. Press, 1990); Cry of the Oppressed: The History and Hope of the Human Rights Revolution (Harper & Row, 1987); God and Caesar on the Potomac: A Pilgrimage of Conscience (Michael Glazier, 1985); Beyond the Nuclear Freeze (Seabury, 1983); Honor the Promise: America’s Commitment to Israel (Doubleday, 1977); Vietnam and Armageddon (Sheed & Ward, 1970); Democracy, Dissent and Disorder (Seabury, 1969); and Religion, the Courts and Public Policy (McGraw-Hill, 1963).

Drinan serves on numerous committees devoted to human rights. Currently a member of the American Bar Association (ABA) House of Delegates, Drinan is a past chair of the ABA Section on Individual Rights and Responsibilities. In addition, he serves on the board of directors of the International League for Human Rights, the Lawyers’ Committee for International Human Rights, the Council for a Livable World Educational Fund, Americans for Democratic Action, and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. He is one of the founders of the Lawyer’s Alliance for Nuclear Arms Control and the National Interreligious Task Force on Soviet Jewry.

As part of their week-long visit to Bates, Obrad Savic and Natasha Lazovic will also show a film, Predictions of Fire, at 7 p.m. Oct. 8, in Room 105 of the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St. The public is invited to attend both events free of charge.

Savic is the founder of Belgrade Circle, a non-governmental organization which provides a voice of opposition to the war in Yugoslavia and the Milosevic regime and supports a democratic civil society which would protect human rights. Belgrade Circle maintains ties with similar dissident groups throughout the former Yugoslavia, with contacts in Sarajevo, Zagreb, Ljubljana and Skopje. Savic, who received his doctoral degree from Zagreb University in what is now Croatia, teaches philosophy and cultural criticism at Belgrade University and is the author of several books and articles.

Lazovic, a student at the university and a Belgrade Circle activist, hosted Bates students during a recent college Short Term program which visited Belgrade and Zagreb in May.

Dennis Browne, associate professor of Russian at Bates and the leader of the Short Term program, which produced documentaries based on interviews with lifelong residents of the two cities, will host Savic and Lazovic during their stay.

Located midway between the coast and mountains in south-central Maine, Bates is a 142-year-old undergraduate college of the liberal arts and sciences and is rated among the top 25 national liberal-arts colleges by U.S. News & World Report. Bates offers majors in 23 academic departments and six interdisciplinary programs, and encourages independent study, research in collaboration with faculty members and participation in off-campus programs. Bates does not require standardized-test results for admission.

Jack Donnelly, a professor in the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver, will discuss “The United Nations and Human Rights: Past Achievements and Future Prospects.” The talk, in the Benjamin Mays Center, is open to the public at no charge.

Donnelly’s lecture is part of a series sponsored by the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, “Transnationalism and the United Nations After 50 years.”

Donnelly is the author of the books “International Human Rights,” “Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice” and “The Concept of Human Rights,” and of numerous articles and monographs. He has lectured around the world on human rights and civil liberties.

Before joining the faculty at Denver in 1992, Donnelly taught at the University of North Carolina, the College of the Holy Cross, Tulane University and Mills College.

He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Georgetown University and a doctorate at the University of California.