Today@Sam Article
Events To Celebrate Women's History Month
March 1, 2017
SHSU Media Contact: Lane Fortenberry
Sam Houston State University will celebrate Women’s History Month with multiple events hosted by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences throughout March.
To start the celebration, Emily Nemens, writer, illustrator and co-editor of the Southern Review, will discuss her editor role on March 2 at 12:30 p.m. in Evans Room 212. At 5:30 p.m. in Evans Room 105, she will give a craft talk and read from her own creative work.
Phi Alpha Theta will present a Women’s History Month lecture by Nancy Baker titled “Texas Feminism ‘Between the Waves’” on March 7 at 4:00 p.m. in the Olson Auditorium in Academic Building IV.
Baker, interim associate vice provost and associate professor of history, will discuss Texas feminist legal reformers who modernized the state’s laws, bringing Texas from worst in the nation for women to first to have a unified, reformed Family Code of Law. She will focus on the activism of Sarah Hughes, Louise Raggio and Hermine Tobolowsky from the 1920s-1970s. Together, the three dramatically changed the state of women’s rights in Texas.
There will be three multilingual readings of literature by women: March 7 at 12:30 p.m. in Teacher Education Center Room 131; March 7 at 2 p.m. in TEC Room 341; and March 8 at 6 p.m. in The Woodlands Center Room 330.
SHSU faculty and student volunteers will present short bios in English of a female author who writes poetry or prose in a language other than English. They will then give short explanations of the work in English and read the short work in the original language. Each presentation will last five to seven minutes.
Ervin Malakaj, assistant professor of German, will present his program “Post-68 Nostalgia and the Personal Labor of Women” as part of the Honors College ProfSPEAK presentations on March 8 from 4-5:30 p.m. in Evans Complex Room 105.
“My presentation will showcase my work on the relationship of the 1968 antiauthoritarian movement and womanist filmmaking in Germany,” Malakaj said. “I look at one specific film in my talk: Helma Sanders-Brahms’s, ‘Under the Pavement Lies the Strand’ (1975).
“The film traces the relationship of an artist couple living in Berlin in the aftermath of the 1968 Student Movement,” he said. “While the male character falls into a philosophical depression, the female lead discovers, through her relationships with other women, one way to move forward after the failed revolution.”
Malakaj will discuss the way the film wants to complicate the lives of activists.
A women’s poetry slam hosted by Let’s Get Loud!, a new student organization dedicated to spoken word and poetry, will be held on March 8 at 5 p.m. at the Vortexan. The slam will feature SHSU students performing spoken word and slam poems in a competition-style event. Students have three minutes for their presentations.
Later that evening, Trevor Boffone, Houston-based scholar, educator, writer and producer, will present his 50 Playwrights Project and introduce Jasminne Mendez’s reading of “Island of Dreams” at 6 p.m. at the Vortexan. Mendez is a performance poet, actress, teacher and published writer. Boffone will facilitate a Q&A after the reading.
On March 9 at 5 p.m. in CHSS Room 110, there will be a screening of “Voices of Muslim Women from the US South,” followed by a panel discussion. Siham Bouamer, visiting assistant professor of French, will moderate the discussion.
The documentary explores the Muslim culture through the lens of five University of Alabama Muslim students. The film tackles how Muslim women carve a space for self-expression in the Deep South and how they negotiate their identities in a predominantly Christian society.
There will be a screening of “Audre Lorde: The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992,” followed by a discussion on March 21 at 5 p.m. in CHSS Room 110. Ervin Malakaj will moderate the discussion.
The film explores a little-known chapter of Audre Lorde’s prolific life, a period in which she helped ignite the Afro-German Movement and made lasting contributions to the German political and cultural scene before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification.
Jenny Dahlgren, record-setting hammer throw athlete and Olympian, will present her program “Rising Above Stereotypes and Setbacks: An Olympian’s Experience of Rejection and Failure” on March 23 at 4 p.m. in CHSS Room 110.
Dahlgren has won multiple national championships and represented Argentina in the 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016 Olympics. She has received numerous awards, including being named one of the five best female athletes of the decade. She recently published a children’s book titled “El martillo volador y otros cuentos,” the first in a series of tales about sportsmanship.
Lastly, Annise Parker will present “Women on Top: Top-Lessons in Politics and Leadership” on March 30 at 5:30 p.m. in the Criminal Justice Center Lower Auditorium. She will also host a student luncheon at noon at 1836 Steakhouse in Huntsville.
After working in oil and gas for 20 years, Parker served three terms as mayor of Houston, after terms as council member and controller. She was only the 10th woman and first openly LGBT mayor of a major American city. In 2010, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Parker was a member of President Obama’s Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience, and chaired the U.S. Conference of Mayors Criminal and Social Justice Committee.
She is currently a fellow at the Doerr Institute for New Leaders and Professors in the Practice at Rice University, as well as senior vice president and chief strategy officer at Neighborhood Centers, Inc. In addition, she serves on the board of FirstNet and Airbnb Mayor’s Advisory Board.
For more information, contact CHSS at chss@shsu.edu or 936.294.2200.
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