Meena Alexander is Distinguished Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Hunter College and the Graduate Centre, City University of New York. Her poems and prose works have been widely anthologised and translated into several languages including Arabic, Malayalam, Hindi, Japanese, Italian, French, German and Swedish. Her works include the memoir Fault Lines (1993), selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the best books of that year; a volume of poems and prose pieces on the immigrant life, The Shock of Arrival (1996); the volume of poems River and Bridge (1996); the novels Nampally Road, (1991) and Manhattan Music (1997). Her new book of poems is Illiterate Heart (Triquarterly Books/ Northwestern University Press, 2002) .She is currently working on a commission from the Royal Festival Hall, London to compose a poem on New York for Poetry International 2002.
Siona Benjamin is a painter originally from Bombay, now living in the US. Her work reflects her background of being brought up Jewish in a predominantly Hindu and Muslim India. In her paintings she combines the imagery of her past with the role she plays in America today, making a mosaic inspired by both Indian miniature paintings and Sephardic icons.
Siona has an MFA in painting from Southern Illinois University and a second MFA in Theater set design from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with undergraduate degrees from J. J. School of Art in Bombay.
Siona has taught as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Trinity College, Hartford, CT where she taught a multicultural diversity course titled “Contemporary Asian Artists in the Diaspora”. She has been adjunct instructor at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL and a lecturer at Southeast Missouri State University.
Russell K. Hotzler currently serves as the Vice Chancellor for Academic Program Planning at the City University of New York, a position that holds system-wide responsibility for planning and program initiatives including those related to transfer and articulation. Prior to becoming Vice Chancellor Dr. Hotzler held the position of Interim President at York College, guiding the College through a period of administrative transition. This appointment followed his two-year tenure as Interim President at Queens College where he also directed the College through a period of administrative transition and restructuring. Dr. Hotzler joined the City University of New York as a faculty member at Queensborough Community College in 1971 where he taught and served Vice President for Academic Affairs prior to joining the University’s central administration in 1996 as University Dean for Academic Affairs.
Mahbubul Joarder is an educationist and a lawyer. He served as Professor of Law, Dean of the Law School , Chairman of the Department of Law and as a member of the Syndicate (Board of Governors) of the Islamic University. He was also a Lecturer in the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Dhaka and Islamic university are members of the Association of the Commonwealth Universities, London.
Sambhavi Lakshminarayanan is currently a faculty member in the school of Business at Medgar Evers College. Earlier she had been a faculty member at Stern School of Business, NYU. She had taught in the areas of Management and Operations Management. Her research included Intergar programming models (in Operations Research) as well as developing and applying student grouping methods to create diverse groups. Some of her current research is in the area of Diversity with particular emphasis on elementary schools.
Jaskiran Mathur is a Sociologist from India , with varied experience in gender issues, rehabilitation, development and voluntary work with rural and urban women in India and the US. She has been in the US since August ’98. Since then she has worked with the World Bank and UNESCO, and has also taught at teachers College, Columbia University and other colleges in New York and Westchester.
Pyong Gap Min is Professor of Sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center of CUNY. His areas of research interests are immigrants, ethnic identity, ethnic business, religion, and gender issues, with a special focus on Asian Americans. He is the author of three books, including Caught in the Middle: Korean Communities in New York and Los Angeles (1996), the winner of two national book awards. He is the editor or co-editors of five books, including The Second Generation: Ethnic Identity among Asian Americans (2002) and Mass Migration to the United States: Classical and Contemporary Periods (2002). He is the author of more than 60 journal articles and book chapters, mostly focusing on Korean and Asian Americans.
Wali Mondal is an Associate Professor of Business at the University of Redlands in California. He obtained his Ph.D. specializing in Resource Economics from the Ohio State University in 1984. Professor Mondal has taught in a number of universities including Henderson State University in Arkansas, Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand and North South University in Bangladesh. He has published extensively. The presentation is based on his recent book “Microcredit and Microentrepreneurship – Collateral Free Loan in Bangladesh” (Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2002: Academic Press and Publications, Ltd. )
Moinuddin Naser, joint Editor, Bangla Patrika, A New York Based Community Newspaper.North America Correspondent: Holiday, the weekend English Newspaper from Bangladesh. Former US Congressional Fellow, worked with congressman in the House International Relations Committee in Capitol Hill. Former Fellow of Panos Institute, London. Worked with different newspapers of Bangladesh. Masters in political science.
Rohit Parikh was born in India but all his degrees are from Harvard. He is three times winner in the Putnam Mathematical Competition. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Brooklyn College and also affiliated with the doctoral programs in Philosophy, Mathematics and Computer Science at the CUNY Graduate center. He has published in journals in various fields including the Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, Journal of Symbolic Logic, Philosophical Forum, Journal of Economic Theory and the Journal of the Asscociation for Computing Machinery. He is former Chief editor of International Journal for Foundations of Computer Science and is the current managing editor of the Journal of Philosophical Logic. Apart from CUNY he has taught at Stanford University, Boston University, Panjab University, New York University, Bristol University and SUNY at Buffalo. His current primary interest is in the interaction between the Logic of Knowledge and Game Theory with a view to understanding societal structures.
Sunita Peacock is currently Assistant Professor of English at Slippery Rock University, Pennsylvania, teaching classes, such as Eastern and World Literature. She graduated with her Ph.D. in English from Southern Illinois University in 1996. Her major field of study was Modern British Literature and her minor fields were Women’s Studies and Postcolonial Theory.
Dr. Peacock’s research interests lie in the examination of the narratives of South Asian writers in the United States. Recently, she had an essay published in the anthology, Violence and the Body: Race, Gender, And the State , Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN (2003). The essay looked at the violence in the lives of South Asian women in the United States. Dr. Peacock has published in several journals such as Commonwealth Novel in English and SALA (South Asian Language Association). Further, she has presented in international conferences, such as the Conference of the Humanities in Rhodes, Greece (2003) and The Conference of Arab Voices in the Diaspora at the University of Leeds (2002).
Minhaj Qidwai is a medical doctor from Pakistan, with a Masters in Health and Business Administration from the University of Oklahoma, and Hawaii respectively. He has more than 16 years of national and international experience in Healthcare teaching, training, research, sales and marketing. He is the contributing editor of “South Asian Insider”, a South Asian Newspaper. Dr. Qidwai wrote several research papers on Clinical trials, Breast Feeding Practices, Health Transition, Medico-Marketing etc., and made several presentations at international forums.
Parmatma Saran is Professor of Sociology at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of CUNY. He teaches courses on race and ethnicity, minority groups, and on India among others. He is the author of four books and more than dozen articles in professional journals.
Betty Lee Sung is Professor Emerita and Chairperson of Asian American/ Asian Research Institute. She is the former Chairperson of Asian American Studies Department at City College, CUNY. Professor Sung has published innumerable articles and seven books on Chinese Americans including Mountain of Gold (1967), and Chinese American Manpower and Employment , which won an outstanding book of the year award for 1976.
Thomas Tam is Acting Chairman of Asian American Higher Education Council, and Executive Director of Asian American/Asian Research Institute, as well as the President of Oishi Movies, Inc. which produced a feature: Sunrise on Mulberry Street . He received his Ph.D. degree in SocioMedical Sciences with honors from Columbia University, and other degrees in Film-making, Public Health, and Physics from Montclair State University, Columbia, and City College of New York.
