UGA will celebrate Women’s History Month in March with events across campus, including a keynote address by AnaLouise Keating, an author and professor at Texas Woman’s University.
“ ’Our History is Our Strength,’ this year’s theme for Women’s History Month, speaks so brilliantly to the purpose of this month-long celebration,” said Juanita Johnson-Bailey, director of the Institute for Women’s Studies. “Women have contributed so much to our society, yet so often their influences are minimized, forgotten or regrettably unknown. And so it is very appropriate that each March we take the time to applaud the historical contributions of women and celebrate our involvement, impact and power in shaping this world. Our history is our strength and the strong foundation on which we women stand and continue to deliver.”
The university’s observance will begin March 1 when Nwando Achebe of Michigan State University will discuss a female Igbo king from the colonial period in Tim Cleaveland’s “Introduction to African History” course at 9:30 a.m. in 221 LeConte Hall.
On March 2, Achebe will give the 19th annual Darl Snyder Lecture. She will speak on “Journeys through African Womanhood: Painting a Counter-Narrative” at 10 a.m. in Masters Hall of the Georgia Center for Continuing Education Conference Center and Hotel.
Women’s History Month will formally kickoff March 3 at 6 p.m. in Room 171 of the Miller Learning Center with a screening of For the Next 7 Generations, a documentary about the formation of the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers alliance. This event is hosted by the Institute for Women’s Studies and co-sponsored by the Women’s Studies Student Organization.
The 18th annual Women’s Studies Student Symposium, “Feminist Research Across the Disciplines” will be held March 4 from 1:25 p.m. until 7 p.m., in rooms 250, 268, 348 and 350 of the Miller Learning Center.
The Institute for Women’s Studies Friday Speaker Series will feature a lecture on “Excrement, Myth and Mr. Clean: Thoughts on Gender and Wim Delvoye’s Cloaca,” by Isabelle Wallace, art history, March 5 at 12:20 p.m. in Room 245 of the Miller Learning Center.
To celebrate 100 years of International Women’s Day, the Institute for Women’s Studies also will host a reception and roundtable discussion March 8 from 2-5 p.m. in the North Tower of the Miller Learning Center. The discussion will focus on the 2011 theme “Equal Access to Education, Training and Science and Technology: Pathway to Decent Work for Women” and will feature various female faculty from across campus.
On March 9, Carol Hunstein, chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, will give the annual Edith House Lecture at 3:30 p.m. in the Hatton Lovejoy Courtroom, Hirsch Hall.
The Women’s History Month keynote address will be given by Keating March 23 at 2:30 p.m. in Masters Hall of the Georgia Center. She will give a lecture entitled “From this Bridge Called My Back to This Bridge We Call Home and Beyond: U.S. Women of Colors’ Radical Visions for Transformation.” A reception will follow the lecture in the Kellogg Concourse.
Keating is the co-editor of This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions of Transformation and the forthcoming Bridging: How and Why Gloria E. Anzaldua’s Life and Work has Transformed Our Own and the editor of The Gloria Anzaldua Reader.
Another IWS Friday Speaker Series lecture will be held March 25 at 12:20 p.m. in Room 245 of the Miller Learning Center. Daleah Goodwin, history, will give a lecture entitled “‘Of Rare Power and Skill:’ (re)Introducing the Life and Work of Miss Hallie Quinn Brown.”
IWS’ Women’s History Month closing event will be a screening of The Children’s Hour, a film from 1961 based on a 1934 play of the same title and starring Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine. The film will be screened March 28 at 7 p.m. in Room 214 of the Miller Learning Center. The film tells the story of two women who run an all-girls’ boarding school and struggle after a rumor that they are having a lesbian affair sweeps the school. The event is being hosted by the Institute for Women’s Studies and co-sponsored by the LGBT Resource Center and Lambda Alliance.
On March 30 at 12:15 p.m., Njeri Marieka-Cleaveland, an independent consultant on African affairs, will speak on “Exchanges with Maasai Women Leaders” on the fourth floor of Memorial Hall as part of the Apero Brown Bag Lecture Series.
Women’s History Month at UGA is sponsored by the Institute for Women’s Studies, part of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.
