Roya Hakakian

“Belonging Against All Odds: The Immigrant’s Journey”

Roya Hakakian (Persian: رویا حکاکیان; born 1966) is an Iranian American Jewish journalist, lecturer, and writer. Born in Iran, she came to the United States as a refugee and is now a naturalized citizen. She is the author of several books, including an acclaimed memoir in English called Journey from the Land of No (Crown), Assassins of the Turquoise Palace (Grove/Atlantic), and A Beginner's Guide to America: For the Immigrant and the Curious (Knopf).

Deeply influenced by both the longstanding literary traditions of her birth country and its historical turmoils, Roya Hakakian often draws her inspirations from highly political subjects and treats them with lyricism. She takes on the most pressing and difficult contemporary sociopolitical issues —exile, persecution, censorship— and injects them with relevance and urgency through her deeply observant and poetic sensibility to make these subjects accessible to all readers.

Join Roya Saturday, March 15 at 5:30 PM in the Clay Theater (Ground Floor)

a limited supply of Roya’s books will be available at her talk for purchase or bring your own copy for signing!

Johanna Buzolits, PhD

"Sustaining ourSelves in the Face of Systematic Cruelty"

Dr. Johanna Soet Buzolits joined the faculty at the Michigan School of Psychology in 2018. She is the co-owner and operator of Arbor Wellness Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan where she works with adolescents and adults on a broad range of mental health concerns including: depression, anxiety, trauma, eating disorders, managing chronic illness, recovering from toxic relationships, sexual and domestic violence.  She is a registered yoga teacher and combines body-based work with traditional psychotherapy.

Previous to these positions, she worked as a Project Director for the Michigan Domestic and Sexual Violence Prevention and Treatment Board supporting statewide initiatives to train providers of survivor services.  She worked as interim Assistant Dean of Students for the University of Michigan, leading efforts to address critical incident management and helping to develop protocols for appropriately responding to students in crisis.  She also served as the Director of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center at the University of Michigan. She has conducted research and written on topics such as trauma, sexuality, birth, college student mental health, instrument development, multicultural counseling and spirituality. She has taught clinical skills at Georgia State University and research and survey methodology at both the University of Michigan and Emory University’s School of Public Health.

Join Dr. Buzolits Sunday, March 16 at 1:00 PM in the Clay Theater (Ground Floor)

Roxanne Christensen, PsyD

Presidential Invitational Address and Closing

Roxanne Christensen describes herself as a little bit of East meets West, immigrating to America as an adoptee and growing up in a multi-cultural family with Persian, Indian, and American Southern heritage, contributing to the expansion of her worldview. She enjoys time with her spouse and teen children (and family cat, who is named Mouse in Farsi), friends, and extended family. She reads excessively, protects her quiet replenishments aggressively, games, plays music (her first language in America), and builds puzzles and Legos mindfully. Dr. Christensen earned a doctorate in Clinical Psychology with honors from the Michigan School of Psychology. She writes and guest lectures with an existential-humanistic perspective. She is a licensed psychologist in Detroit, Michigan, focused on trauma-informed wellness for women, people of color, and marginalized persons, as well as supervising early career professionals from a depth orientation and feminist multi-cultural lens.

Join Roxanne for the Presidential Address Friday, March 14 at 6:00 PM in the Clay Theater (Ground Floor)