Arctic Visiting Speakers Series | Speakers Bureau

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--- SPEAKER BY NAME --- ALIA, Valerie BASKIN, Leonid BELOOUSSOVA, Ekaterina BILLSON, Janet Mancini BRET-HARTE, Syndonia BROADBENT, Noel D. BURNS, William CAHILL, Charles CLINE, Don COCHRAN, Patricia CORELL, Robert CRATE, Susan A. CRUMP, John DARBY, Dennis DE VROEDE, Jan DOMBROWSKI, Kirk FORMAN, Steven FEELY, Richard GLENN, Richard GORDON. Bryan GRADINGER, Rolf GRANTZ, Arthur GRIKUROV, Garrik E. HELENIAK, Timothy HUNTINGTON, Henry HUNTINGTON, Orville HUSKEY, Lee IL'INSKII, Vladimir V. IPELLIE, Alootook IRNIQ, Peter T. KELLER, Andrew M. KELLY, Brendan P. KLEIN, David R. KOIVUROVA, Timo KOKORIS, Moki KOZLOV, Mikhail LOBO, Susan LYBERTH, Angaangaq MACNAB, Ron MCGHEE, Robert MCROY, C. Peter MUKASA, Samuel B. MERCULIEFF, Larry OKKONEN, Steve OSGOOD DANA, Kathleen PACI, Christopher PAPUSHA, Alexander Nickolaevich POMEROY, John PUNGOWIYI, Caleb PUTILOV, Arcady A. RINNE, Arto ROBINSON, David A. ROE, Stephen SCHNEIDER, William SFORMO, Todd SMITH, Frank TAPE, Ken WENDLING, Neesha WILSON, Elana WOHLFORTH, Charles WOO, Ming-ko YANG, Daqing ZHANG, Tingjun ZARNKE, Randall L ZIKER, John

To view a complete list of speakers, click here.

Janet Mancini Billson, Ph.D.
Director, Group Dimensions International
Adjunct Professor of Sociology, George Washington University
300 Narragansett Avenue
Barrington, RI 02806
Phone: 401-465-6004 or 246-0797
Fax: 401-246-0527
E-mail: jmbillson@earthlink.net
URL: http://www.focusgroupdimensions.com

Janet Mancini Billson is a native of Canada. She attended one-room schools in southern Ontario and completed her education through high school in British Columbia. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from Brandeis University and was a professor of sociology and women's studies at Rhode Island College for 18 years. In 1999 she was named Alumni of the Year at Baldwin-Wallace College and in 2000 she received the national Sociological Practice Award from the Society for Applied Sociology.

A Danforth Associate and Woodrow Wilson Fellow, Dr. Billson is the author of Inuit Women: A Century of Change (forthcoming 2005, Rowman & Littlefield); Pathways to Manhood: Young Black Males Struggle for Identity (1996); Keepers of the Culture: The Power of Tradition in Women's Lives (1995/1999, which includes a chapter on Inuit women); Cool Pose: Dilemmas of Black Manhood in America (with Richard Majors, 1992/1993); Strategic Styles: Coping in the Inner City (1980), and numerous articles and book chapters on women and identity. She has lectured widely on women in Canada, Native women, Inuit women and their families, and Nunavut (Canada's newly-created territory that will give the Inuit greater political and economic control over their destiny).

As a sociologist, she specializes in gender and identity, particularly as affected by rapid social change and development. She has spent the last 14 years interviewing Inuit women and men on Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada. Between 1986 and 1990, Billson conducted dozens of focus groups among Native, immigrant, and minority women in Canada for Keepers of the Culture. She developed a unique feminist research methodology in order to ensure that women in each community engaged in the process of interpreting data, testing emerging hypotheses, and reviewing the final draft of their community's chapter.

Billson has served as associate editor of the Canadian Review of American Studies and is active in many professional organizations, including the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States, Sociologists for Women in Society, the Society for Applied Sociology, the Sociological Practice Association, and the American Sociological Association.

Billson is interested in speaking to all audiences. Her schedule is least flexible in December. Her lecture topics include:

• Her Powerful Spirit—Inuit Women in a Century of Change
• Keepers of the Culture: Common Pain and Uncommon Strengths Among Canada's Native Women
• Defining a New Inuit Identity: Taking Nunavut into the 21 st Century
• Gender, Power, and Ethnicity in North America: Significance in the Next Century

Billson is just finishing a new book, Inuit Women: A Century of Change, with Kyra M. Reis. It is a study of the impact of rapid social change and Canadian resettlement policy on Inuit culture and women's status and roles in Baffin Island. She is also interested in lecturing on this new work and showing related slides in order to stimulate discussion and obtain feedback from both general and academic audiences.

Billson is eager to meet other academics, students, and researchers who are interested in studying women, identity, and social change in the arctic and sub-arctic regions of Canada and the U.S. She loves to lecture and promote interaction around these crucial topics.