Eating Disorder Awareness Week by LeeAnn Dye (RU Peer Educator)

Since the Fall semester, the Peer Educators have been giving various presentations to their fellow students about everything from STIs to binge drinking to eating disorders. With the mortality rate associated with anorexia nervosa being 12 times higher than the death rate of ALL causes of death for females 15 - 24 years old, and the fact that 95% of those who do have an eating disorder are between the ages of 12 and 26, we thought making the RU students aware of this disease through Eating Disorder Awareness Week would be a great idea. 

The eating disorder presentation that is being given to the students throughout the year is called "No Body is Perfect" and it ends with a challenge from Operation Beautiful (operationbeautiful.com), which asks everyone to leave random sticky-notes of kindness for someone else to find and hopefully make their day a little brighter. Our goal is to make EVERYONE realize they are beautiful, and this is a great way to begin that process.

(click on image to enlarge)

Monday - Thursday of this week from 10am-2pm we will have a table setup in the Bonnie Lobby with information about body image and eating disorders (including new ways of looking more healthily and happily at yourself and your body, signs and symptoms of eating disorders, and how to talk to a friend who has an eating disorder).  At our table we also have Operation Beautiful information and materials to make the notes, as well as free bracelets that promote healthy body image.  We are focusing on encouraging people to have a positive self image because people with negative body images have a greater likelihood of developing an eating disorder and are more likely to suffer from feelings of depression, isolation, low self-esteem and obsessions with weight loss.

In addition to the table, we are also sponsoring a workshop "Body Outlines" to help people see themselves as others see them.  The event is facilitated by Erin Sullivan, Director of Student Counseling, on Tuesday from 12-1pm in Bonnie Room 249 & 250. 

Please join us!

References:

http://www.state.sc.us/dmh/anorexia/statistics.htm

http://www.anad.org

Her-story 2012: YOU are invited!

March 2012 will mark the Ninth Annual Her-Story Project at RU, an online network of writers and readers who gather to share stories about the women or aspects of womanhood that have moved, influenced, or affected us.  Coordinated in conjunction with the Women’s Studies Committee’s programming for National Women’s History Month, the celebration takes place every year from March 1-31st.  

Subscribing to the Her-Story listserv
For each day during the month of March subscribers to the Her-Story List will receive an essay, character sketch, photo journal, or poem submitted by a community member contemplating the women or aspects of womanhood that have had an important impact upon, or been a source of inspiration for, the writer. Our celebration is unique in that we strive to showcase tributes composed by RU students, staff, or faculty members. To subscribe to this unique event, send an email to ewebster2@radford.edu  

Share YOUR story
We welcome essays, character sketches, poems, and photo essays. Because of the email platform we are using, the pieces should not exceed 500 words and image files should be submitted as .jpg files with an overall file size of 1mb. All tributes should take as their subjects the women or aspects of womanhood that have had an important impact upon, or been a source of inspiration for, the writers.

ALL RU community members are invited to participate and to submit their essays; we welcome tributes written by students, staff, administrators, and faculty. We invite faculty to promote participation of your students. 

To subscribe, contribute a memorial, or ask for further information, please contact Erin Webster-Garrett.

Black Women Writers

Many of us read some great African American women writers in high school. Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, Lorraine Hansberry. Maybe you also read Sojourner Truth, Maya Angelou, Terry McMillan.

If you grew up around here, you may also have read Nikki Giovanni since she teaches at VT and Rita Dove since she teaches at UVA.

I fell in love with African American women writers, mostly poets, when I was in college. The list of my favorites goes on and on. Some of them have stayed with me because of their haunting images and subject matter.

Wanda Coleman’s poem, Emmett Till, was my first encounter with the true story of Emmett Till. Alice Walker’s Everyday Use is a short story that touched my heart.

Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Phillis Wheatley, Toni Cade Bambara, Jamaica Kincaid, Angela Davis, Octavia Butler, Paule Marshall, Gloria Naylor, June Jordan.

bell hooks always makes me think. Her book, We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity, harkens to Gwendolyn Brooks’ 1960 poem, We Real Cool. Which, once you hear, will be stuck in your head. Ntozake Shange, wrote the play, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, which Tyler Perry directed a movie version that came out in 2011.

Audre Lorde holds a special place in my heart. She resonated with me long before I knew she was a librarian, a career path I would later take.

Lucille Clifton passed away in 2010. She has many fantastic poems including Homage to My Hips and Wishes for Sons.

Books @ McConnell library:

Afro-American women writers, 1746-1933 : an anthology and critical guide / [edited by] Ann Allen Shockley

Main Collection - Level 3 PS508.N3 A36 1988

The Norton anthology of African American literature / Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Nellie Y. McKay, general editors Main Collection - Level 3 PS508.N3 N67 1997

Words of fire : an anthology of African-American feminist thought / Beverly Guy-Sheftall ; [with an epilogue by Johnnetta B. Cole] Main Collection - Level 5 E185.86 .W927 1995

Great sites:

http://www.poets.org/

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/_generate/AFRICAN%20AMERICAN.html

http://digital.nypl.org/schomburg/writers_aa19/toc.html