Dear Loyola Community,
Women's History Month in March honors and celebrates the invaluable contributions of women throughout history and their historical and contemporary efforts to advance gender equality and justice. It also provides all of us at Loyola the opportunity to reflect on the historical developments in the struggle for women’s rights and equity in our own community.
Loyola’s commitment to supporting women through education goes back more than a century, to the university’s first female graduates in 1913. In the wake of the Women’s Rights Movement, women at Loyola sought to deepen the mission for gender equality on campus by establishing Loyola Women's Resource Center in March 1975 in City College, directed by Carol Deinhardt Mawson, a Ph.D. candidate in psychology at Harvard University and an Assistant Professor of Psychology in Loyola’s City College. The Loyola Women's Center was the first university women's center in Louisiana.
The WRC closed in 1980; however, the feminist spirit it inspired persisted on campus. A women's studies committee was convened in 1987 by Professors Nancy Anderson, Barbara Ewell, and Connie Mui who established a Women’s Studies minor in 1989 and reopened Loyola’s Women's Resource Center in 1995. Today the Women’s Studies Minor is one of the largest minors on campus with a twenty-member staff/faculty committee from a variety of departments and with an exceptional cohort of students.
Since I assumed the position of director of the WRC in 2015, I have had the great privilege of working with brilliant student staff members to continue to advance the mission of gender equity through the practice of intersectional feminism. This year we have had the great honor of working with visiting scholar, Professor Negina Khalili, a women’s rights legal expert, who served in the Attorney General’s Office in Kabul, Afghanistan as a Senior Director for the Elimination of Harassment and Violence Against Women. In the wake of the Taliban takeover, Professor Khalili became one of the Taliban’s primary targets, and she had to flee her homeland.
Professor Khalili has brought extraordinary expertise in global women’s rights work to the WRC in her current role as associate director, and she has worked closely with me and the WRC student staff to develop new programs, including a roundtable on women’s rights in Afghanistan featuring international experts, which we will host this month during Loyola’s annual Peace Conference.
Our commitment to intersectional feminism influences all our work at the WRC. We believe our programs and projects give students a critical understanding of women and gender across history and cultures and promote social justice on women’s issues. I’m excited about the series of events we’ve planned this month with a variety of community and university partners, including the Women’s Studies Minor, the Department of History, the Department of English, Newcomb Institute at Tulane University, the Scholars Strategy Network, Lemon Pepper Student Organization, and the Peace Conference. We invite the Loyola and larger New Orleans community to join us in celebrating and honoring Women’s History Month at the following events:
Book and Career Talk with Novelist Jess Armstrong: “I Wrote A Book: Now What?”
Thursday, February 29, 12:30-1:45 PM, Marquette Hall 315
Women's History Month Reception and Meet & Greet
Friday, March 1, 3:30-6:00 PM, Marquette Hall 315
Roundtable and Networking Event: “Empower Her: ‘Lift As We Climb’
Friday, March 8, 3:30-6:00 PM, Nunemaker Auditorium, Monroe Hall
Nancy Fix Anderson Women’s Studies Essay and the Barbara C. Ewell Creative Writing contest deadlines. Interested students should contact me: pbboyett@loyno.edu or co-chair of Women’s Studies, Dr. Annie McGlynn-Wright: aemcglyn@loyno.edu.
Deadline Sunday, March 10
Women’s Lecture Series Part I: “The Poor Clares and Art in Early Seventeenth-Century Macau, China”
Susangeline Patrick, Associate Professor of World Christianity, Nazarene Theological Seminary
Tuesday, March 12, 12:30-2:00 PM, Monroe Hall 251
Register to attend online
Women’s Lecture Series Part II: Medicine and Partnership: Julia Rush and Early American Medicine
Sarah Naramore, Assistant Professor of History, Northwest Missouri State University
Tuesday, March 19, 2024, 12:30-2:00 PM, Monroe Library Multimedia Room 2
Register to attend online
Peace Conference Panel: “Remember Afghanistan: The Power of Memory in the Historical Narrative and Contemporary Struggles to Address the Disempowerment of Women, the Devastation of Human Rights, and the Displacement of Refugees” Saturday, March 23, 2024, 2:00-4:00 PM, Location TBA
Sincerely,
Patricia Boyett
Director, Women’s Resource Center
Associate Professor, Department of History
