The interdisciplinary conference on Ethnicity: Theory and Practice in the 21st Century took place at the University of Lethbridge September 26-28.

Organized by Maria Ng, Department of English, and Michelle Helstein, Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education, paper proposals at the conference came from countries as far away as Nigeria and Australia.

Ethnicity proved to be an important topic, based on the wide response, as participants in the conference included scholars from Slovenia, India and throughout Canada.

Nasrin Rahimieh, professor of Comparative Literature and the Maseeh Chair and director of Dr. Samuel M. Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture at the University of California, Irvine was the keynote speaker as she presented The Question of Ethnicity in Modern Iranian Cultural History.

Panels at the conference included, Indigenous Cultures – Global Values, Ethnicity in Canada/North America and Gender and Ethnicity. Individual papers ranged from discussion of teaching modern Jewish literature to the ways Latina/o stereotypes are constructed in Hollywood comedies.

The sessions were all extremely well attended, energized by enthusiastic question periods following all 20 presented papers.

The conference was funded by the President's Office's Women Scholars Speaker Series, the Faculty of Arts & Science, Faculty of Education, the School of Health Sciences, the Departments of English, History, Kinesiology and Physical Education, and was ably assisted by Briana Struss and Brittany Thompson.