5 Ways to Celebrate Women’s History Month
Events at Duke and in Durham honor the contributions of women
At the Duke Women’s Center, Stephanie Helms Pickett has daily discussions about gender equity, society’s views on beauty, and ways to support the multidimensional aspects of women’s lives, from academics to work to family.
But every spring for Women’s History Month, Helms Pickett and others at the Women’s Center take a special pause to celebrate women’s achievements.
Read More“We make history every day,” said Helms Pickett, director of the Duke Women’s Center. “During the spring semester, we highlight the contributions of women and celebrate the amazing things that they’re doing.”
Take time in March to celebrate women’s achievements and issues at Duke and in Durham:
Attend a film fest on March 13
The fifth annual Alice Fest, a Durham-based festival that recognizes female filmmakers, will feature 16 short films on March 13.
The festival is named after Alice Guy- Blaché, a filmmaker who directed her first film in 1896 and ultimately created more than 700 films. The event will be at the American Tobacco Campus Full Frame Theater from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on March 13. The event is free and open to the public, but seats must be reserved by emailing infoAliceFest@gmail.com.
The fest will include a short documentary by a 16-year-old Syrian refugee and a piece about a New Orleans costuming shop.
“I’m a feminist, and that colors everything I do,” said festival director Vivian Bowman-Edwards. “One of the missions for me at Alice Fest is to encourage women to show their work.”
Explore the Sallie Bingham Center collections
Find more than 6,000 zines, a book made of corsets and other unique materials created by women in the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture collections at Duke.
The center provides research guides about its print, manuscript and multimedia items, and Duke students and employees can look through the center’s digital collections or request to look at items in person at the Duke Rubenstein Library Reading Room.
Kelly Wooten, research services and collection development librarian for the Sallie Bingham Center, said one of her favorite parts of the collection are the Elizabeth A. McMahan Papers, which detail Duke alumna McMahan’s life as a termite entomologist and her world travels by Pacific cargo ship.
“She had this incredible life and was a lifelong, curious learner,” Wooten said.
Film details modern women’s movement
The Duke Women’s Center presents a film screening on March 22 of “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry,” which resurrects the history of women who founded the modern women’s movement from 1966 to 1971. The film’s director, Mary Dore, will answer questions after the screening.
The free screening is open to the public and starts at 6 p.m. in the Duke Bryan Center’s Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity.
Talk about women, clothing and identity on March 25
Two Duke professors will discuss their research involving women and clothing during a “Duke on Gender” talk on March 25.
Laura Edwards, the Duke Peabody Family Professor of History, will talk about her paper, “Women, Cloth, and the Hidden History of Property and the State in the Nineteenth-Century United States,” and Women’s Studies assistant professor Kimberly Lamm will discuss her paper, “’I Want to Wear It’: The Color of Fashionable Clothing in Mahogany (1975),” about the movie featuring a poor African-American woman who becomes a fashion designer in Rome.
The talk is free, open to the public and will be held from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the East Duke Parlors. Lunch will be served.
Add women’s profiles to Wikipedia
The Duke Wikipedia Edit-a-thon returns March 29 and invites Duke and Durham community members to help edit and add articles about influential women to Wikipedia. This year, the focus is women of science and philosophy.
The event will be held in The Edge Workshop Room on first-floor Bostock Library from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Participants are encouraged to bring a laptop and create a Wikipedia account in advance. Staff from Duke Libraries and Project Vox, which publicizes the historical contributions of women in philosophy, will provide research materials and assistance.