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Women’s History Month begins with focus on hope

Women’s History Month kicks off this week with a series of short lectures under the umbrella of “Promoting Hope: Recognizing Women of Our Past and Present.”

You have two opportunities to catch these presentations:

  • 10:45-11:50 a.m. Wednesday, March 2, in the Magnolia Avenue Campus Community Room
  • 9:10-10:30 a.m. Thursday, March 3, in the Goins Auditorium on the Hardin Valley Campus

Read more about the lectures prepared by presenters Leslie Coffman, Toni McDaniel, Anna Childs, Drema Bowers and Geoff Fogleman below, and check out the Women’s History Month webpage for more upcoming events.

Assistant Professor of History Leslie Coffman:
After class one day early last month, a student asked me some version of, “How do you teach U.S. History and not be angry all of the time?” She was not the first person to ever ask me this, and I doubt she will be the last, but her question really got me thinking about not just promoting hope in U.S. history in general, but women’s history specifically. This short presentation is a crash course on early U.S. women’s history and the exceptionally talented women who write about them.

Professor of History Toni McDaniel:
“I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads.” From the essay How It Feels to be Colored Me by Zora Neale Hurston (1928).  Zora Neale Hurston, a woman for OUR times. She was born five years before Plessy v Ferguson (1896) enshrined segregation in law and died four years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, yet this novelist, journalist, anthropologist, folklorist, historian and social commentator soared above the constraints of her times and speaks to us today. In her words and in her life as a writer and scholar, Hurston reminds us of the strength of female empowerment and of embracing our own voices.

Instructor of English Geoff Fogleman:
“Intellect will always govern.” – Mary Wollstonecraft. It’s not an overstatement to say that Mary Wollstonecraft revolutionized education as we know it. From her early days spent educating herself when no one else would to opening a school for young girls to her masterful treatise on education equality, “A Vindication of the Rights of Women,” Wollstonecraft never shied away from an intellectual fight. The legacy of hope that Wollstonecraft fostered in her lifetime is evident in this very room and anywhere else throughout the world where men and women are taught the same information in the same classroom. Let’s celebrate her legacy of hope as she would want us to: together.

Assistant Professor of English Anna Childs:
I have been a teacher and a writer for as long as I can remember. One of my earliest memories is teaching my brother and my stuffed animals the difference between a noun and a verb. And in high school, I copied out — by hand — all the poems I loved from my dad’s Norton anthology into a pink notebook, with the intent to emulate those poets. While I’m grateful to actually be living out the goals I’ve held for myself since childhood, my accomplishments haven’t come easily. Like many in this area, my family has deep roots in Appalachia, which has provided me with much beauty, but also darkness and pain. Poverty, domestic violence and substance abuse have twined across my heritage like the grape vines in our woods in summer, and these aren’t easy to overcome. Through sharing my poetry and thoughts, I’d like to share the complexity of my experiences, which have been infinitely more challenging and affirming than I ever imagined.

Drema Bowers, Director of Student Care and Advocacy:
In January 2017, a student on the Magnolia Avenue Campus asked me if I attended the Women’s March on Washington the previous weekend. Although I did not attend the event, and haven’t participated in any marches, the months leading up to that event had caused me to reflect on my life. My reflections as a woman of color in East Tennessee raising three black children were written on pieces of paper in various locations and became my way of processing everything happening in the world around me. These reflections are primarily of my family and my fears. I’ll share a few of these reflections and end by sharing my unlikely connection with Phillis Wheatley.