Kim D. Hester Williams teaches nineteenth-century American literature, African American literature and culture, and U.S. Women and Gender/Feminist/Womanist literature. She also teaches in the Film Studies MA and undergraduate minor programs at Sonoma State University. Her current scholarship considers race, ecology, and Afro-eco-poetics with particular attention to the work of science fiction writer Octavia Butler.
Dr. Hester Williams is co-editor of a collection of interdisciplinary essays on race and environment, Racial Ecologies. The book collection also features her chapter, "Earthseeds of Change: Post-Apocalyptic Mythmaking, Race, and Ecology in The Book of Eli and Octavia Butler’s Womanist Parables." In addition to her scholarly work, Dr. Hester Williams writes poetry grounded in the long tradition of African American womanist poetics.

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The need for language bridges has been a constant presence since the beginning of interacting with members of different tribes and of different nations. The solutions used for this communication problem have taken different forms through the centuries. Nowadays, some think that the English language can rightfully claim to be the long-sought bridge. However, there are many reasons why this isn’t so, and more importantly, why it should not be so. In the search for a more efficient, just, and egalitarian bridge, the idea of a planned or constructed language has been around for the longest time. Of the myriad of projects proposed, only one has achieved all the evolutionary steps to become a fully functional and living language: the International Language Esperanto. In this lecture, the highlights of 130 years of Esperanto development are presented together with a perspective of the new possibilities opened by the omnipresent World Wide Web and with some serious reflection about the future of human communication.

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Ian Sanborn, a well-known storyteller, uses signing to express language and develops creative videos expressing movements and ideas. He creates storytelling videos to help deaf and hearing children develop their signing skills.
Ian is a graduate of the National Theatre of the Deaf and has presented at the Deaf West Theatre Workshop, directed the Little Theatre of the Deaf Productions “Beware of the Brindlebeast” and “Ladybug.” He studied counseling psychology at Johnson and Wales University. 

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Dolores Huerta is a civil rights activist and community organizer. She has worked for labor rights and social justice for over 50 years. In 1962, she and Cesar Chavez founded the United Farm Workers union.  She served as Vice President and played a critical role in many of the union’s accomplishments for four decades. In 2002, she received the Puffin/Nation $100,000 prize for Creative Citizenship, which she used to establish the Dolores Huerta Foundation of which she is founder and president. The Foundation is connecting groundbreaking community-based to state and national movements to register and educate voters; advocate for education reform; bring about infrastructure improvements in low-income communities; advocate for greater equality for the LGBT community; and create strong leadership development. She has received numerous awards: among them, The Eleanor Roosevelt Humans Rights Award from President Clinton in 1998. In 2012, President Obama bestowed Dolores with The Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.
Sponsored by the Dede and David Del Monte Lectureship Endowment

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