BHCC Celebrates Women’s History Month
Thursday, April 11, 2019
BHCC Celebrates Women’s History Month with a series of events
2019 events included:
Call of the Ancestors, Fine Art Quilts by Susan Thompson: See these deeply human and richly textured fiber art quilts by local artist and educator Susan Thompson that celebrate the connections between family, community, spirituality, history and other shared cultural experience.
Women’s Histories, Book Display: Women do not have just one history. This Women’s History Month, the Library and Learning Commons highlights the histories of black women; lesbian, bi and queer women; indigenous and colonized women; gender nonconforming, nonbinary and trans women; women of the Global South; women in sex trades; and disabled and neurodiverse women. BHCC Library and Learning Commons’ physical book display is one part of a broader collection of resources continued on the Women’s History Research Guide, located at http://libguides.bhcc.mass.edu/womens-history-2019.
Leavings/Belonging, Yu-Wen Wu: Join Pao Arts Center Artist-in-Residence Yu-Wen Wu in a project that gathers people together to create art, while also sharing stories of family and personal immigration experience. Inspired by the tradition of storytelling while making, the bundle-making project engages women from various immigrant and refugee communities in the making of symbolic “bundles.” Through the act of making together, participants can share stories. These anomalously shaped cloth-wrapped bundles may represent what is left behind, and what may be carried in migration— survival, hope, dreams. Throughout these sessions, these bundles will be exhibited collectively in public spaces to generate conversation, dialogue and bridges across experiences, generations and ethnicity. The bundles will contribute to the project Leavings/Belongings.
A Girl Could Disappear Like This, Poet Deborah Schwartz: Get inspired by an evening of poetry with BHCC Assistant Professor and award-winning writer Deborah Schwartz as she reads from her first full-length poetry publication that touches on themes of surviving trauma in a gendered female body, lesbian identity and love, and intersectional identities including white privilege and coming of age within a traditional first-generation Jewish working-class family.
Gender Equality: The Tough Instructor, Dr. Robin M. Chandler: Join BHCC’s Distinguished Artist Scholar in Residence Robin Chandler for an engaging discussion exploring the complexities and histories of gender equity and identity.
A Survivor’s Guide to Body Shaming, Katie Boyd: Engage with lifestyle entrepreneur, media celebrity and author Katie Boyd as she navigates her personal challenges in the worlds of beauty pageants, reality television and fitness training to eventually find a healthier and non-negotiable sense of purpose, mission and well-being. Interactive presentation with questions and answers to follow.
Songs of Eastern Woodland Native American Women—Our Music, Our Culture and Our Heritage, with the Nettukkusqk Singers: Experience the power and beauty of music by this intertribal group of southern New England women performing traditional and contemporary songs accompanied by hand drums, rattles and water drum. In the Natick dialect of Algonquin, “nettukkusqk” means “my sister.” Formed by Wampanoag and Nipmuc women from Rhode Island and Massachusetts in 1994 at the Deer Island Memorial, the Nettukkusqk Singers seek to reclaim women’s drumming and singing traditions from their tribal communities. The liver performance will be in English and several dialects of southern New England Algonkian.
An Evening with Author Lynne Byall Benson—Nancy Drew and the Power of the Teenage Girl: Connect with Author and Professor Lynne Byall Benson as she discusses her recent book, Moxie and Good Sense of Balance: Nancy Drew and the Power of the Teenage Girl. Learn how the literary character Nancy Drew has pushed boundaries, solved mysteries and served as role of model for confident, independent young women for over eighty years.
How I Became an Artist, Artist Talk with Susan Thompson: Be part of an intimate evening of reflection and dialogue about the artist’s influences and art making process spanning several generations and cultures.
Ain’t I a Woman: Core Ensemble returns the College with another exciting and thought-provoking performance celebrating the life and times of four powerful African American women: novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, ex-slave and abolitionist Sojourner Truth, folk artist Clementine Hunter and civil rights worker Fannie Lou Hamer. With a musical score drawn from spirituals and blues of the Deep South, songs from the Jazz Age and contemporary concert music by such composers as Diane Monroe.