Human rights activist, author to kickoff VCU's 2004-05 Crossing Boundaries Series

By Malorie Burkett

Human-rights activist and author Marjorie Agos'n will kickoff Virginia Commonwealth University's 2004-2005 "Crossing Boundaries" series, a year-long program of speakers, performances and events that explores how social, personal, religious and political boundaries are transcended.

Agos'n's lecture, "Poetry and Human Rights," is free and open to the public, and will take place Thursday, Sept. 23 at 7 p.m. in the School of Engineering Auditorium, 601 W. Main St.

Agos'n is a professor of Spanish at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, and a spokeswoman for the plight of women in Third World countries. She is the author of 40 books, most recently "Cartographies: Meditations on Travel." Her writing draws upon her Eastern European and Latin American heritage and her experience in exile, and covers subjects like her ancestry, women, children, the poor and the disinherited.

"Our duty is to provide our community with a link to some of the most provocative thinkers and ideas of our time," said R. McKenna Brown, Ph.D., director of VCU's School of World Studies. "The series fosters conversations with some fascinating pioneers who have blazed trails across a variety of boundaries and use a variety of media - whether it's the medium of poetry to address human rights, the Internet to unite children around the world, or diplomacy to resolve conflict - to share their experiences and expertise with us."

Throughout the academic year, Crossing Boundaries will feature guest speakers from varying backgrounds, including Craig Kielburger, who first became a champion for children's rights at age 12; Jorgen Flindt Petersen, a Danish film maker; Matt Sanford, paraplegic yoga expert and motivational speaker; Nasr Abu Said, an Egyptian Islamic studies scholar; and former Costa Rica President Oscar Arias Sanchez, the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize winner. Dates, times and additional speakers will be announced.

The Crossing Boundaries series is sponsored by the School of World Studies and the VCU Honors Program and is underwritten by a grant from the National Endowment for Humanities, which supports research, education, preservation and public programs in the humanities.

VCU's School of World Studies, the only program of its kind in Virginia, offers programs in anthropology, geography, languages, international studies and religious studies. The programs emphasize applied learning through both classroom and non-traditional classroom instruction like internships, study abroad and community outreach.

For more information on the series, call 827-1111, or visit http://www.has.vcu.edu/wld/index.html.