Jessica Birthisel | March 7, 2011
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| Photo by Louise O'Connor |
| Hilary Kahn, left, director of the Voices and Visions: Islam and Muslims from a Global Perspective project, and doctoral student Rosemary Pennington finalize plans for the upcoming Re-scripting Islam conference. |
Conference co-organizer, presenter and School of Journalism doctoral student Rosemary Pennington said the conference, Re-scripting Islam: A conversation between media professionals and scholars, aligns with the goals of the Voices and Visions project, in its third and final year of funding from the Social Science Research Council.
“Helping journalists and communication professionals gain a better understanding of Islam and Muslims has been part of what we’ve done from the beginning,” said Pennington. Many journalists follow the Muslim Voices Twitter account and blog. “We've been trying to do this with all our different media products. Continuing that conversation face-to-face in one physical location just seemed to us a good way to wrap things up.”
Pennington, project coordinator for Voices and Visions, said that in general, the media does not have a strong track record of accurate representation of Muslims or Islam.
“It's hard to do a good job when you don't have a lot of information about a group of people,” she said. “We've been trying to create an archive of content that will give people an introduction to Islam as well as to the diversity within Muslim experience. We can't give them everything, but we think we can serve as a good starting point.”
Pennington said the conference has been in the works for nearly a year. Voices and Visions has hosted conferences before, she said, so preparing for the upcoming event was mostly a matter of nailing down speakers, much like a journalist looks for sources.
“We have a pretty vast network of experts and contacts to draw upon and we started asking around, asking who they'd like to hear from,” said Pennington. “With those leads, we then started doing our own research on various speakers and then we ran them by our advisory board. Then it was just a matter of reaching out to who we'd like to invite.”
She said securing the conference keynote speaker, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter and Islam beat creator Andrea Elliott, was serendipity. Pennington had been following her work for years and contacted her speaker’s agency about someone else two years ago.
“When we started looking for a journalist to serve as our keynote, I thought of her and got in touch with my contact at her agency,” said Pennington. “Lucky for us, she was available.”
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| The Re-scripting Islam conference is set for March 23-24 and features several journalism students as presenters, panelists and organizers. Check the conference website for details. |
“I'm just excited to get these people, as well as our other speakers, in one place at one time,” said Pennington. “I expect to see some really vibrant discussions and to learn a lot.”
The conference is free and people can register through March 20. To register or to find out more information, visit the conference website.
The Voices and Visions project, directed by Pennington’s boss and conference co-organizer, Hilary Kahn, is made up of a partnership of the majority of Title VI centers on campus, as well as several of the professional schools, including the School of Journalism, and WFIU and WTIU. The Center for the Study of Global Change is the lead on the project. A full list of partners is available online.
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