March 29, 2024

Women’s History Month Events

The following events will take place as part of Women’s History Month:

 

  • Monday, March 16: Film and Discussion: “Finding Kind”- 7 p.m. in, Lee Hall, Room 411

In this award-winning film, filmmakers document a cross-country journey of discovery and education, exploring the myths and realities of mean girls. Interviewing women and girls about their lives and experiences, “Finding Kind” is a quest to find a common ground of kindness and mutual respect. This session will feature the documentary followed by a moderated discussion of interrelationships and the effects of bullying or dysfunctional behavioral and communication patterns among girls and women. Sponsored by Alpha Mu Sigma.

  • Tuesday, March 17: Dismantling Racism in the Feminist Movement – 4 p.m. in Lee Hall, Room 411

Join Feminists United on Campus and Virginia Organizing for a workshop on how to identify racism in the feminist movement. Listen to peoples’ experiences of racism within the movement, and identify ways to combat racism. Co-sponsored by Feminists United and Virginia Organizing.

  • Wednesday, March 18: Women’s History Month Keynote Speaker: Dr. Anita Taylor-  7 p.m. in Lee Hall, Room 411

Dr. Anita Taylor is an expert on such topics as gender and language and communication, women as communicators  and public speaking. She has coached debate and taught at the university level for more than four decades, working since 1979 at George Mason University, where she is professor emerita of communication and a member of the women and gender studies faculty.

  • Monday, March 23: JFMC Human Rights Film Series Presents: “Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock”-  6 p.m. in Lee Hall, Room 412

Sharon La Cruise’s “Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock” details the life of the incredibly influential but largely forgotten civil rights activist, Daisy Bates.

UMW to Host Iraqi Ambassador for Foreign Policy Lecture

The University of Mary Washington will host Iraqi Ambassador Lukman Faily for a presentation on “Challenges of Iraqi Foreign Policy, Status and Prospective” on Wed., January 28.   Iraqi Ambassador Lukman Faily The ambassador’s lecture will outline the new government’s approach to foreign policy. Faily will focus on Iraq-U.S. relations and regional cooperation to confront the threat of ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria). He also will offer an assessment of current developments in the Middle East and Iraq’s recent initiatives to foster security and stability with its neighbors. The lecture will take place at 7 p.m. in Monroe Hall, Room 346. Attendees will have the opportunity to meet and speak with Ambassador Faily during a brief reception immediately following the program. The event is free and open to the public. Faily has held the position of Iraq’s ambassador to the United States since July 2013, and previously served as Iraq’s ambassador to Japan for three years. Prior to joining the diplomatic corps, Faily spent 20 years working in the Information Technology sector for several transnational companies while living in the United Kingdom. Ambassador Faily was an active leader within the large Iraqi exile community in the U.K. and served as a trustee for several non-governmental Iraqi organizations. He also played an active role in opposing Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and advocated for democracy and the rule of law in Iraq. For more information about the lecture, please contact Nabil Al-Tikriti, associate professor of history, at (540) 654-1481 or naltikri@umw.edu. News release prepared by:  Erika Spivey

UMW to Host Lecture in Observation of Constitution Day

The University of Mary Washington will commemorate Constitution Day, Wed., Sept. 17, with a public lecture by Doug Smith, executive director of the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution at James Madison’s Montpelier. Washington DCThe lecture, “Does Our Constitution Still Work?,” will be held on Tues., Sept. 16 at 5 p.m. in the Underground in Lee Hall.  Smith will speak about current support and criticism of the U. S. Constitution among citizens and lead an interactive conversation about citizen engagement. In addition, the University will erect chalkboards on Campus Walk between Lee Hall and Trinkle Hall to elicit student reflection on the contemporary significance of the Constitution.  The chalkboards will have two prompts asking members of the university community to reflect in writing on the ways in which the Constitution impacts their lives and what they think about the Constitution that ought to be amended. Constitution Day, sometimes referred to as Citizenship Day, commemorates the September 17, 1787, signing of the Constitution by the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. The national observance of the adoption of the U.S. Constitution originates from legislation adopted by Congress in 2004 that requires all publicly funded educational institutions to provide educational programming related to the Constitution on that day. UMW’s Constitution Day programming is a joint effort of the Center for Honor, Leadership and Service, the Department of Art and Art History and the Office of the Provost. For more information, please contact the Center for Honor, Leadership, and Service at (540) 654-1364.

College Hunks Founder to Give Honor Celebration Lecture

Nick Friedman, president of College Hunks Hauling Junk, will give the keynote address for the University of Mary Washington’s second annual Honor Celebration on Wednesday, September 10, in George Washington Hall’s Dodd Auditorium. The 7 p.m. event is free and open to the public.   Nick Friedman Honor Celebration is a series of events designed to highlight UMW’s Honor System. The celebration gives students the opportunity to consider their own values in a real-world context and illustrates the university’s commitment to integrity in education. Friedman’s lecture will focus on entrepreneurship and integrity.  Friedman founded College Hunks Hauling Junk, which is the largest and fastest growing U.S.-based junk removal and moving franchise. Friedman was recently named among the “Top 30 Entrepreneurs in America Under 30” by INC Magazine and the “Top 35 Entrepreneurs Under 35” by Bisnow.com. He also is an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award finalist. The event is co-sponsored by UMW’s Center for Honor, Leadership, and Service, the Athletic Department, and the College of Business. For more information, contact the Center for Honor, Leadership, and Service at (540) 654-1364.

America and the Paradoxes of Palestinian-Israeli Peace, April 9

Khaled Elgindy

Khaled Elgindy

UMW’s Campus Academic Resources Committee and the Department of Political Science and International Affairs invite you to a lecture by Khaled Elgindy. His talk, titled “America and the Paradoxes of Palestinian-Israeli Peace,” will be held Wednesday, April 9 at 7 p.m. in Lee Hall, Room 411.

Khaled Elgindy is a Fellow with the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, where he specializes in Palestinian politics and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He previously served as an advisor to the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah on permanent status negotiations with Israel from 2004 to 2009, and was a key participant in the Annapolis negotiations that began in November 2007. Prior to that Elgindy spent nine years in various political and policy-related positions in Washington, D.C., both inside and outside the federal government, including as a professional staff member on the House International Relations Committee in 2002 and as a policy analyst for the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) from 2000 to 2002. He has also held positions at the Arab American Institute (1998-2000) and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (1995-1997). Elgindy holds an M.A. in Arab Studies from Georgetown University and a B.A. in Political Science from Indiana University.

UMW Commemorates Religious Freedom with Lecture, Jan. 30

The University of Mary Washington will commemorate the enactment of Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom with a lecture titled, “Whose Freedom? Islam, Gender, and the Politics of Representation,” by Amina Wadud, professor emerita of Islamic studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 30 in George Washington Hall’s Dodd Auditorium. Amina Wadud Wadud is an internationally distinguished scholar on Islam and gender, traveling the world as a consultant on Islam, human rights and women’s issues. A visiting scholar at the Starr King School for the Ministry in California, she is the author of “Qur’an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective” and “Inside the Gender Jihad: Reform in Islam.” The UMW Department of Classics, Philosophy, and Religion has sponsored the annual Jefferson Lecture on Religious Freedom since 2002, bringing scholars and public figures to the stage to enlighten students and visitors about religious freedom and the significance of Jefferson’s impact. The Statute for Religious Freedom, enacted by the Virginia General Assembly on Jan. 16, 1786, legally established the right to full freedom of worship in the Commonwealth of Virginia, completing a significant step towards the addition of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution. For more information about the lecture, call (540) 654-1342.

Phi Beta Kappa Scholar to Visit UMW, Nov. 21-22

Philip J. Deloria, a 2013-2014 Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar, will visit the University of Mary Washington to present a public lecture on Thursday, Nov. 21, at 7:30 p.m. in Lee Hall, Room 411. Deloria’s lecture, “American Indians in the American Popular Imagination,” is presented through the Phi Beta Kappa (PBK) Visiting Scholar Program and will be featured as part of UMW’s Native American Cultural Celebration, taking place Nov. 18-22. The lecture is free and open to the public. Philip J. Deloria is the Carroll Smith-Rosenberg Collegiate Professor at the University of Michigan. Photo courtesy of Phi Beta Kappa. During his two-day visit, Deloria also will speak with students and faculty in a range of American studies and history courses and meet with PBK members. Deloria is the Carroll Smith-Rosenberg Collegiate Professor at the University of Michigan and has joint appointment in the departments of history and American culture. He is currently the associate dean for undergraduate education in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts. He is the author of two prize-winning books, “Playing Indian” and “Indians in Unexpected Places,” as well as the co-editor for several others. He also has written for numerous scholarly journals in the fields of American Indian studies, environmental history and cultural studies. Deloria has served as president of the American Studies Association, as a trustee of the Smithsonian’s National History Museum of the American Indian and is an elected member of the Society of American Historians. Founded in 1776, Phi Beta Kappa is the oldest and most widely known academic honor society in the nation, with chapters at 283 institutions and more than half a million members. Its mission is to champion education in the liberal arts and sciences, to recognize academic excellence and to foster freedom of thought and expression. The UMW chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, Kappa of Virginia, selects its members based on rigorous scrutiny of students’ academic achievements as demonstrated through grade point averages. UMW inducted 51 new members into the society last spring. The lecture is sponsored by Kappa of Virginia, the Department of English, Linguistics and Communication, the Department of History and American Studies, the American Studies Program, the Honors Program, and particularly the Wendy Shadwell ’63 Program Endowment in British Literature. Additional information about the PBK Visiting Scholar Program can be found at http://www.pbk.org. For more information about Deloria’s visit, please contact Professor Gary Richards at grichard@umw.edu or (540) 654-2365.

New York Times Bestselling Author to Speak at UMW, Oct. 23

The Christina Kakavá Linguistics Speaker Series presents

 Deborah Tannen
“Conversational Style in Digital Discourse:
Texting, Email, and IM as Cross-Cultural Communication Across Genders and Generations”
Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2013 at 7:30 p.m.
The Great Hall, Woodard Campus Center

Deborah Tannen holds the distinguished rank of university professor at Georgetown University. She is best known as the author of “You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation,” which was on the New York Times best seller list for nearly four years, including eight months as No. 1. She is an expert on conversational style, cross-cultural communication and gender differences. Tannen appears frequently on television and radio programs to speak on language and language use in everyday social interaction.

This event is supported by the departments of English, linguistics, and communication; modern languages and literatures; sociology and anthropology; and classics, philosophy and religion, as well as the women’s and gender studies program, the dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, the James Farmer Multicultural Center, and the campus academic resources committee.

Janusz Konieczny Leads Seminar at VCU

Janusz Konieczny, professor of mathematics, gave an invited talk, “The Commuting Graph of the Symmetric Inverse Semigroup,” at the Analysis, Logic and Physics Seminar at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Nabil Al-Tikriti Presents Great Lives Lecture on T.E. Lawrence

Pro Photo 2012 I On Tuesday, Feb. 12, Nabil Al-Tikriti delivered a lecture entitled “Troubled Man, Troubling Legacy: T.E. Lawrence, 1888-1935” as part of the Chappell Great Lives lecture series at Dodd Auditorium on the UMW campus. The prezi visuals which accompanied the presentation can be accessed here: http://prezi.com/bjyci7hkur_a/te-lawrence-troubled-man-troubling-legacy/.

The Great Lives series official video production can be accessed here: www.umw.edu/greatlives/2013/02/14/video-lawrence-of-arabia/.

In advance of the lecture, The Free-Lance Star published an opinion piece by Prof. Al-Tikriti regarding T.E. Lawrence, which can be accessed here: http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2013/022013/02102013/752750/index_html?page=1.

Here is the entire text of the opinion piece, published by The Free-Lance Star on Sunday, February 10:

“RARE IS THE individual who attracts over 40 biographies within decades of his or her departure from this world. Thomas Edward Lawrence, whose troubled legacy we will examine in Dodd Hall on Tuesday starting at 7:30 p.m. is one of those rare specimens.

Certain facts about his biography are well-known to casual observers, usually informed by David Lean’s 1962 film classic, “Lawrence of Arabia.” As everyone knows, Lawrence organized and led the Great Arab Revolt, which delivered the Arabs from the terrible Turkish yoke and overturned the mighty Ottoman Empire. He was more a sensitive scholar than a classic warrior, and was reluctantly pressed into service to help his country in its hour of need. He shied away from the limelight, and hated the attention he received as a result of his fame.

While each point is defensible, all are interpretations that have reached the public only after several levels of distillation. The real story is far more complicated.

Lawrence was indeed a complex man, a visionary of sorts who as a child craved to be recognized as a hero and then grew arguably insane as an adult due to his success in this realm. He welcomed the publicity offered by the prominent American journalist Lowell Thomas, the individual most responsible for shaping the legend of “Lawrence of Arabia.” He carefully managed his own image and was not above reminding people who he was when they were either unaware or uninterested in his fame. By the end of his life, he had developed a series of personality quirks that suggested borderline psychosis, and the account of his death never fully satisfied all observers.

Real contention about Lawrence springs from his legacy and the overall British legacy in the Middle East following the Great War. The popular narrative suggests that without the “Arab” uprising, the “Turks” would never have been defeated, as well as that, without Lawrence, there would have been no “Great Arab Revolt.” Neither of these propositions passes without intense criticism in the region itself. While those participating in Lawrence’s military endeavor were certainly Arab when they weren’t loyal soldiers of the British crown, they never numbered more than a few thousand, and were never more than an idealistic core of committed activists leading a motley crew of criminals, opportunists, and tribal raiders interested far more in the violent privatization of spoil and plunder than the ideals of national liberation.

As difficult as it has been for subsequent Arab and Turkish nationalists to recognize, the vast majority of Ottoman subjects in what is today the eastern Arab world were loyal to their empire to the end. In many cases, they were loyal beyond the end, as when Iraqi peasants appealed to Mustafa Kemal to rescue them from their new British overlords in the early 1920s.

Lawrence, who repeatedly claimed in his own classic “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” to have been tortured by his irreconcilable loyalties to both the British Empire and Arab independence, was capable of a ruthless pursuit of his often inconsistent agenda. He was aware of allied agreements destined to betray British promises made to the Hashemite family, and he believed that Jewish settlement of Palestine need not conflict with the rights of the indigenous Palestinians. He felt that putting Faisal on the throne in the newly created country of Iraq, and his brother Abdullah in the equally unknown Transjordan, discharged his obligations to the Arab cause. Much like today’s Obama administration, Lawrence found the judicious use of air power to be modern, humane, and more efficient than alternative methods of exerting sovereign control over recalcitrant populations.

Although this individual’s illegitimate birth, proclivity for whippings, misanthropic and chaste approach to sexual relations, and extreme personality tendencies are all psychologically fascinating, our talk on Tuesday evening will focus more on public interpretations of his legacy than his private demons. Those planning to attend should do their utmost to first screen Lean’s film classic, as all good history should begin with a great flick.”