Women’s History Month Events:

• Lena Williams: It’s the Little Things: Everyday Interactions that Anger, Annoy and Divide the Races

Description: A program on ending interracial misunderstanding. Although legal segregation ended decades ago, the sense of separateness and division between blacks and whites seems more intractable than ever. We work together, go to school together, and live near each other, yet beneath it all there is a level of misunderstanding that breeds mistrust and a level of miscommunication that perpetuates mutual hostility. Stepping back from academic theorizing and political posturing, Lena Williams offers a candid, sensible, and humorously informative approach to improving racial relations.

Based on her experiences as well as what she has learned from focus groups across the U.S., It’s the Little Things catalogs the common and avoidable ways through which mutual antagonism is perpetuated — the gestures, expressions, tones, and body language that get under the skin of both blacks and whites.                                                                        

Speaker:  New York Times Author Lena William

Date: Tuesday, March 1, 2005                                 

Time: 7:00pm                       

Location: Vance Academic Building Room 105  

Book signing to occur after program. Co-Sponsors: Committee for the Concerns of Women, Office of Multicultural Affairs and African American Studies Department

• African American Women and the American political system: From Maria Stewart to Condoleeza Rice (Puppet, Parrot, Paragon or Policy-Maker?)

Date: March 3, 2005

Time: 12:30-2:30pm

Location: Founder's Hall

Panelists:

Dr. Ange-Marie Hancock, Yale University, Department of Political Science and African American Studies

Dr. Julia Jordan-Zachery, Howard University, Department of Political Science

Dr. Renee White-Discussant, CCSU Department of Sociology

Dr. Walton Brown Foster-Moderator, CCSU Department of Political Science

Lecture is co-sponsored by African-American Studies, Women's Studies, Department of History, Department of Philosophy, and Department of Political Science.

• International Woman’s Day

Movie: A Woman’s Place: Changing a Man's World so It's Also A Woman's Place"

We bet you wouldn't think that there would be similarities in the fight for equality in South Africa, India, and the Midwest in our own United States. A Woman's Place profiles women from three different countries who are fighting for balance and equality in today's world. The central question that the documentary explores is "Can new laws change old way?"

Date: March 8, 2005                            

Time: 7:00pm

Location: Robert Vance Academic Building Room 105

Sponsor: International Office and International Student Organization

·         Spinning out of Control: Addictions

A short discussion of addictions such as gambling, alcohol and other drugs will be followed by a panel of three individuals in recovery who will share their very personal stories and then answer candid questions from the audience.  Concurrently, a booth will be set up all day in the lobby of the Student Center to allow students to take home free informational materials and some giveaways.

Date: Wednesday, March 9, 2005

Time: 12-1:30 pm

Location: Carlton Room Student Center

In observance of Women’s Addictions Month and National Problem Gambling Awareness Week.

Co-sponsored by: Ruth Boyea Women’s Center, Natural Helpers: a program sponsored by DMHAS and organized by CCSU’s Counseling and Wellness Center, Connecticut Council on Problem Gambling

• Women’s History Luncheon

Date: Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Time: 12:00pm- 2:00pm

Location: Alumni Hall

Speaker: Sarah Weddington

The attorney that successfully argued the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973, Sarah Weddington is a well-respected teacher, attorney, and legislator who has secured her place in history as an advocate and defender of women’s issues. From her former position as a Texas state legislator, to her place as President Jimmy Carter’s special assistant on women’s issues, to her precedent as the youngest woman ever to try—and win—a case before our nation’s most prestigious court, Weddington has set the example of successful female leadership that has lent itself to transforming the landscape of American history forever.

Ticket Cost: $20.00 (Call Centix at 832-1989)     

Sarah Weddington

Student Talk:  

Date: Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Time: 4:00pm

Location: Founders Hall

Topic: The History and Argument of Roe Vs. Wade 

Sarah Weddington, the young Texas lawyer who argued Roe v. Wade before the Supreme Court shares the inside story of her historic role, including the subsequent years of controversy that have taken abortion rights from the courtroom to the ballot box.

Co-Sponsors: Office of Multicultural Affairs, Committee for the Concerns of Women, History Department

• The Grasinski Girls Talk"

Speaker:  Dr. Mary Patrice Erdmans, associate professor of sociology, is author of the new book The Grasinski Girls: The Choices They Had and the Choices They Made (Ohio University Press, 2004).

Description: an oral history of the author’s mother and five aunts, whose life stories provide a snapshot of American normalcy in the middle of the 20th century.. Born in the 1920s and 1930s, the women created lives typical of women in their day: they went to high school, got married, had children, and, for the most part, stayed home to raise those children. And they were happy doing that. They took care of their appearance and married men who took care of them. Like most women in their cohort, they did not join the women’s movement and today either reject or shy away from feminism.” Meet the Grasinski Girls.

Date: Friday, March 18, 2005

Time: 12:00pm – 1:00pm

Location: Marcus White Living Room

• Ethlie Ann Vare: Forgotten Women and Their Unforgettable Ideas

Ethlie Ann Vare, co-author of Patently Female: From AZT to TV Dinners, Stories of Women Inventors and their Breakthrough Ideas, presents an entertaining and eye-opening account of the "hidden" women behind familiar products, discoveries and innovations. Vare demonstrates conclusively that women have been inventing and discovering since the beginning of time, from mundane but useful things like drip coffee and the windshield wiper to transforming inventions like COBOL computer language and the cellular phone.

Date: Tuesday, April 5, 2005

Time: 7:00pm

Location: Vance Academic Building Room 105

Co-Sponsors: Ruthe Boyea Women’s Center, Student Activities Office, Committee for the Concerns of Women, School of Techology

• The June Baker Higgins Gender Studies  Conference

Keynote Speaker: Catherine Blinder

Topic: Not Your Mother’s Feminism

Date: Friday, April 1, 2005

Time: noon-6:00pm

Location: Alumni Hall, Lawrence J. Davidson Hall

For more information, please contact Renee White,832-3137 or Cindy Pope, 832-2799

• Here Comes the Bride: Women, Weddings, and the Marriage Mystique

Speaker:   Dr. Jackie Geller         

 Date: Wednesday, April 13, 2005

 Time: 12:00pm

 Location: CCSU Bookstore       

 Sponsor CCSU English Department

 For More information contact Gil Gigliotti at 22759