Department of History celebrates Women’s History Month

Alice Fahs

PULLMAN — March is National Women’s History Month, and in its recognition the Department of History at WSU will host a series of public lectures presented by visiting scholars, faculty and graduate students. All events are free and open to the public.

Alice Fahs, associate professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, will speak at 4:30 p.m. March 5 in the Smith Center for Undergraduate Education (CUE), room 203. 

In her lecture entitled “Newspaper Women and the Making of the Modern, 1885-1910,” Fahs will reason that journalistic writings of turn-of-the-century American women were vital to the creation of a new public sphere for women and helped to bring about the modern era.

WSU anthropology doctoral candidate Lipi Turner-Rahman will speak at noon on March 6 in Wilson-Short Hall, room 333, presenting “Womanly Qur’anic Exegesis: The Thinkable, Unthinkable and Unthought.”

Turner-Rahman will explore the historical process of Qur’anic interpretation and the increasing engagement with the Quran by female Muslim scholars attempting to recover the egalitarian voice of Islam.

Matthew Avery Sutton, WSU assistant professor of history, will present “Sex and God in the City of Angels: The Kidnapping of Aimee Semple McPherson and American Culture” at noon on March 10 in Wilson-Short Hall, room 333.

Suttons’ lecture will focus on the controversy and yearlong media frenzy surrounding McPherson’s kidnapping and what they reveal about debates over changing gender roles of women, fundamentalism in public life and effects of new mass media on 1920s America.

At noon on March 13 in Wilson-Short Hall, room 333, WSU history instructor Yvonne Berliner will present “Chilean Women in Politics, 1964-1989,” a look at the influence of Chilean conservative middle-class women on their country’s politics and government.

“Women and Baseball” will be presented at noon on March 24 in Wilson-Short Hall, room 333, when WSU history instructor Frank Hill talks about how women have influenced baseball and why they have effectively been banned from playing the game professionally.

The final series lecture, “Gender in Transformation: German Mission Schools for Chinese Girls in Early 20th-Century Shandong,” presented by WSU senior history instructor Lydia Gerber, will take place at noon on March 30 in Wilson-Short Hall, room 333.

National Women’s History Month, whose 2009 theme is “Women: Taking the Lead to Save Our Planet,” will honor Rachel Carson, environmental pioneer and author of “Silent Spring” (Houghton Mifflin, 1962).

The month-long celebration includes 100 screenings nationwide of “A Sense of Wonder,” a documentary-style film based on the life and writings of Carson.  In Washington, the film will be shown in Coupeville, Chelan and Seattle.

Film screening dates and locations: http://www.asenseofwonderfilm.com/
National Women’s History Project: http://www.nwhp.org/