SLU 200: Symposium, Panels Celebrate Legacy of SLU's Women
03/20/2018
As Saint Louis University’s bicentennial celebrations continue, the University’s Women’s Commission, Department of Women’s and Gender Studies and Department of English have come together to host “Women at SLU: The Quest for Knowledge, Power, and Legacy.” The two-day events series is also sponsored by SLU’s Bicentennial Committee.
This event brings three units together to discuss both the challenges and opportunities women confront as female students, staff and faculty at SLU. External speakers will talk primarily from historical perspectives, while four panels will look more at current issues.
Two panels bring a diverse range of students, staff and faculty together to speak about everyday life as women at SLU and about women and leadership. A third roundtable explores how feminism has changed and is changing academic disciplines here, from the questions asked in academic discussions to the methods used in research. The final roundtable of graduate students and recent doctoral students explores the legacy of a recently deceased and cherished faculty member, Georgia Johnston, Ph.D., who was affiliated with both the Department of English and the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies.
As part of the discussions, there will be several opportunities for the speakers and the audience to interact informally, at meals and at a Friday evening celebration, which includes a silent auction to benefit the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies and the Women’s Commission.
All events are located in Room 124A of the Center for Global Citizenship unless stated otherwise. For more information on all of the events, visit the Department of Women's and Gender Studies' events page.
Symposium Timeline
- 2:45 p.m., Welcome.
- 3 p.m., Opening remarks by Michelle Lewis, director of SLU's Office of Equity and Diversity.
- 3:30 to 5 p.m., Panel 1, “Women and Leadership at SLU: Student, Faculty and Staff Perspectives.” This panel will feature Annesley Clark, Ellen Harshman, Ph.D., Mona Hicks, Ph.D., Donna LaVoie, Ph.D., Wynne Moskop, Ph.D., Sara Van den Berg, Ph.D., and Emily Witko.
- 8:30 to 9 a.m., Welcome bagel breakfast and coffee.
- 9 to 10:30 a.m., Panel 2, “The Impact of Feminism on the Disciplines.” This panel will feature Ellen Crowell, Ph.D., Jami Curley, Ph.D., Noelle Fearn, Ph.D., and Julie Rubio, Ph.D.
- 10:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m., Panel 3, “The Everyday Experiences of Women at SLU: Student, Faculty and Staff Perspectives.” This panel will feature Elisabeth King, Katlyn Martin, Jennifer Semsar, Tandra Taylor and Constance Wagner, J.D.
- 12:30 to 1:30 p.m., Catered lunch.
- 2 to 3:30 p.m., Panel 4, “Georgia Johnston, Ph.D. as Teacher and Mentor.” This panel is a memorial tribute to Johnston, who passed away in 2017. A roundtable tribute of six of Johnston’s former doctoral students reflect on her continuing legacy, featuring Margaret Sullivan, Ph.D., Ina Seethaler, Ph.D., Elisabeth Hedrick-Moser, Ph.D., Candis Bond, Ph.D., Annie Rues-Neidel, Ph.D., and Melissa Burgess, Ph.D.
- 4 to 5:45 p.m., V. Woolf Keynote Address and Reception. This event is also part of the memorial events dedicated to Johnston’s memory. Jane Garrity, Ph.D., University of Colorado-Boulder, will give the address. Her talk is, “The Haunting of Mary Hutchinson.” This talk seeks to counter the view that Mary Hutchinson’s writing is peripheral to more substantive accounts of modernity by demonstrating how her complex articulation of early 20th-century femininity has been unjustly trivialized because of its association with fashion. Garrity desires to revive interest in this brilliant but marginalized writer’s only book, Fugitive Pieces (1927), paying homage to Georgia’s commitment to recuperating non-canonical women modernists.
- 6 to 8 p.m., “Women at SLU: A Celebration and Silent Auction at the Saint Louis University Museum of Art (SLUMA).” Join the Women’s Commission and the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at their celebration and silent auction to honor the accomplishments of the women at SLU. Funds raised will benefit the Sister Shirley Kolmer Memorial Grant, the Women’s Commission grant that financially supports individual leadership development opportunities and community impact projects that advance women, and the Women's and Gender Studies Giving Circle Endowment, which provides support to student research. All members of the SLU community are invited.
There will also be a memorial brunch on Saturday, March 24, hosted by the Department of English.
Register now for the celebration and silent auction. No registration for the symposium or memorial is needed. Everyone is welcome to attend all the events. For questions, contact Jennifer Semsar.