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

Women's History Month: Call for Papers, Presentations, Performances

Colleagues and students:

This March as part of our Women’s History Month celebration, the Women’s Studies Committee wishes to honor the accomplishments of women activists around the world and throughout history. Recently Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee of Liberia along with Tawakkol Karman of Yemen were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their non-violent work to bring justice and peace to their societies.  Originally chartered as the “State Normal and Industrial School for Women at Radford,” our university is rooted in the same historical movement for women’s full participation in society that has impelled women like Gbowee, Sirleaf, and Karman to transform their worlds.

We would like to invite proposals from all faculty, staff members, and students for activities to be scheduled as part of our March Women’s History Month events.  We encourage proposals dealing with women’s activism in global societies, but we welcome any and all proposals. Our theme this year picks up on the Women’s Studies Program motto:  Know Your History / Know Yourself:  Build the Future.  

We welcome work in any discipline that engages questions involving any aspect of women’s lives, women’s history, women’s accomplishments, women and the arts, women and the sciences, women and business, women and society, women and the transformative work to change society.  If you would like to plan an event, present a paper, organize a panel of several speakers (including other faculty members or students), offer a creative performance, organize a reading or discussion group, or join the Women’s History Month planning committee, please complete the proposal form and send to mpbaker@radford.edu.

DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS:  January 31, 2012

PROPOSAL FORM

1.         NAME OF PRESENTER(S):

2.         PRESENTER’S DEPARTMENT:

3.         TYPE OF PRESENTATION AND TITLE:

4.         TIME REQUIRED FOR PRESENTATION:

5.         LIST OF POSSIBLE DAYS OF WEEK AND TIMES FOR PRESENTATION.  (WE WILL SCHEDULE AND NOTIFY YOU)

6.         TECHNOLOGY NEEDS FOR PRESENTATION

Sincerely,

Moira P. Baker

Professor of English

Director of Women’s Studies Program

mpbaker@radford.edu

Happy 2012!

I’m not incredibly good with dates, but based on some emails I’ve received recently and dates I actually know, some feminist milestones this year include: Ms. Magazine and Title IX turn forty.

Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple turns thirty, Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved is twenty-five, and it’s been twenty years since Rebecca Walker declared herself the third wave.

Know one of the many milestones I’ve missed?  Please, share in the comments below J

Lepore's Birthright

Recently, The New Yorker ran an article by Jill Lepore, Birthright, about Planned Parenthood. The first birth control clinic in the United States opened in 1916 in Brooklyn, not too far from where the Brooklyn Planned Parenthood stands today. There are now almost eight hundred clinics in the U.S. operating under the eighty-two Planned Parenthood affiliates. The clinic in Brooklyn is one of four Planned Parenthood clinics in New York City. In the last year, the Brooklyn clinic saw seventeen thousand patients.

Planned Parenthood stays in the political cross-hairs year after year. Planned Parenthood has faced an argument in the 2012 campaign that abortion constitutes 90% of their work. In actuality, Planned Parenthood reports that less than 3% of their work is performing abortions. Planned Parenthood provides healthcare to women in a wide variety of situations with a wide variety of needs.

It is interesting to note that Margaret Sanger opened the first clinic in 1916 and, in 1920, women were given the right to vote. We have since moved on from human rights to person-hood rights.

Today, college students have access to a wide variety of contraceptive options through health services. Others have Planned Parenthood or their doctor. When Sanger began nursing the women living on the Lower East Side, the women were poor and immigrants. They begged Sanger for information about birth control. Imagine pregnancy after pregnancy, completely out of your control. In 1912, Sanger began writing and distributing information about contraception. Sanger conceived the term “birth control” in 1914. She wrote essays that were censored, she was indicted and forced to flee the country, returned, and, opened a clinic. Sanger was arrested, along with her sister, Ethel Byrne and Fania Mindell, the receptionist. The clinic was shut down. Sanger and Byrne were sentenced to 30 days.

The American Birth Control League was founded by Sanger in 1921. Lepore continues with more of Sanger’s life, her battles and achievements.

Lepore interviewed Cecile Richards, the current Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) president. Her life has been shaped by an incredible number of democratic turns, her life entwined in fighting for justice; she has been involved in a number of important events at the age of fifty-four.

Lepore goes on to talk about Planned Parenthood today and where it is headed. With the multitudes Planned Parenthood serves nationwide, therehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif is no doubt that it is very necessary and there is no doubt that there will continue to be raging debates long into 2012 and beyond.

♀ To read Jill Lepore’s article, Birthright, go to:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/11/14/111114fa_fact_lepore?currentPage=all

♀ To listen to Jill Lepore talk about her article, go here:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/2011/11/14/111114on_audio_lepore

♀ For more about the history of Planned Parenthood, read this:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/11/planned-parenthood.html

♀ To listen to the NPR story, “How Birth Control and Abortion Became Politicized” click here:
http://www.npr.org/2011/11/09/142097521/how-birth-control-and-abortion-became-politicized

♀ For information from PBS about Margaret Sanger read this:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/pill/peopleevents/p_sanger.html

♀ To watch the PBS movie, The Pill, go here:
http://encore.radford.edu/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1767743__Sthe+pill__P0%2C2__Orightresult__X5?lang=eng&suite=cobalt (Streamihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifng, access provided by Radford University’s McConnell Library)

♀ For more information about Cecile Richards, go here:
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/national-leadership/cecile-richards-4676.htm

♀ For more information about women in history, look here:
http://nwhp.org/resourcecenter/biographycenter.php

Women and Occupy Wall Street

The Occupy Wall Street movement in New York began on September 17, 2011 and has spread both nationally and globally. The movement is fighting back against the power that the 1% holds. In 2010, households in America with an annual minimum income of $516,633 represented the top 1% of America.

(http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/who-are-the-1-percenters/2011/10/06/gIQAn4JDQL_blog.html)

The world has been watching the movement, many are in solidarity with the movement but cannot participate because they cannot afford to take time off work, cannot afford to travel or, for some, cannot afford to protest against the same companies they work for without risking their jobs.

It has been great to see women, particularly Black women involved in the movement. There has been an emphasis on ensuring diversity and working together as a whole.

(http://www.thenation.com/article/164197/where-are-women-occupy-wall-street-everywhere-and-theyre-not-going-away)

It has been disheartening, however, to read of the sexual violence, abuse and signs of racism, sexism and homophobia. It reminds us that, the Occupy movement may involve like-minded people in some ways, but the 99% out there protesting is a microcosm of the world we live in. A group that diverse will have many schisms and, someone in support of one form of social justice does not necessarily champion that of their neighbor. It goes deeper than that, too. It may not be that they do not champion it; they may be oblivious to it all together. The heterosexual, Anglo-Saxon patriarchy they have lived in has shaped their world-view to the point that they don’t recognize all of the “-isms” that create schisms, or violence.

(http://infrontandcenter.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/the-value-of-a-safe-space/)

The Safer Spaces OWS groups have made it easier for women to become a part of a subgroup in which they feel safe in to be able to be a part of the collective as a whole. The subgroups represent the diversity and the needs of the masses and, taken together, represent the bigger issues that, as a society, we need to work together toward solving.

(http://womenoccupy.tumblr.com/)