Union Institute & University

The history of all times, and of today especially, teaches that ... women will be forgotten if they forget to think about themselves.
— Louise Otto (1819-1895), German author, advocate for women’s rights and better education for girls

Week One
Week Two
Week Three
Week Four
Week Five

UI&U Celebrates Women’s History Month Week One

Dear friends and colleagues throughout UI&U:

It is hard to fathom, but as recently as the 1970s, despite the tremendous contributions of brave women in all walks of life, the role of American women in history had been consistently overlooked in the literature, teaching, and study of American history.

Activities to address this situation began to emerge in 1978, culminating in the Women's History Institute at Sarah Lawrence College in 1979, where 40 national female leaders — including Union alumna Betsy Brinson, Ph.D. (see below) — decided to push for a "National Women's History Week."

Designated by Congress in 1987, National Women’s History Month is now part of the dialogue each March, ensuring that the history and achievements of American women will be recognized and celebrated in schools, workplaces, and communities throughout the country.

Historically, many Union and Vermont College learners, alumnae, and faculty were instrumental in women’s history and women’s studies. In fact, according to the National Women’s Studies Association in 1998, the University of California at Berkeley ascertained that graduate training in the interdisciplinary field of women's studies was available at 111 U.S. colleges and universities, but Union was one of only six universities that granted Ph.D.s with that area of concentration.

Today’s current generation of Union women are working with the same fervor as longtime faculty and alumnae as they continue to produce scholarship grounded by UI&U’s cornerstone values of social relevance and real-world purpose. With the interdisciplinary nature of our academic programs, the list of individuals who have made outstanding contributions in women’s studies and related areas is substantial, and each Friday in March, we will introduce you to a small sampling of such women. Here’s our first offering:

Betsy Brinson, Ph.D. 1984, executive producer for the award-winning documentary Living the Story: The Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky, former program director of the National Board of the YWCA of the USA, and director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Southern Women's Rights Project during the historic 1979 Summer Institute in Women's History

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D. 1981, social justice activist, psychoanalyst, and best-selling author of Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
Joyce Tenneson, Ph.D. 1978, internationally renowned photographer and author of the bestseller Wise Women, which celebrated the power and beauty of remarkable women elders from all walks of life

Wynona Ward, B.A. 1995 Vermont College, attorney and advocate, recognized by national media for her work with victims of domestic violence as executive director of Have Justice - Will Travel, Inc.

We also encourage you to search UI&U’s Web site for other individuals working in this area of concentration. Click on the blue “hotlinks” in this message or log onto the Web site with your UI&U identification number and password. There, you can peruse the UI&U directory and learn about the many Union women taking leadership roles as faculty, staff, learners, and alumni. Search by name, department, location, or program—or use a combination of search functions to narrow your results. Also take a moment to search through the Gary Library UI&U dissertation database, which contains ground-breaking dissertations on women’s roles in history, family, society, and culture.

It is not insignificant that we chose to portray the contributions made by women with the photo at the top of this page. These “real-life” women are only a sampling of the many UI&U staff women who work every day to support our learners, faculty, and alumni at our academic centers. We hope through this month’s celebration you will find inspiration and take pride in being a part of this remarkable university community. As always, thank you for your involvement in the life of the university.

Warm regards,
Roger H. Sublett, Ph.D.
President

p.s. If you know of other notable alumni/ae, learners, or faculty in any fields we should be aware of, or wish to share your updated news with the Union community, contact us at Network Cross Currents or Open Book.

UI&U Celebrates Women’s History Month, Week Two

Dear friends and colleagues throughout UI&U:

As promised, here is this week’s sampling of links to information about UI&U women who have made outstanding contributions in women’s studies and related areas:

Mary Lindsay Elmendorf, Ph.D. 1972, anthropologist and author of The Mayan Women and Change (1972) and Nine Mayan Women: A Village Faces Change (1976), head of the CARE office in Mexico 1952-1960, former consultant to the Peace Corps and the Overseas Education Fund of the League of Women Voters, and 1982 recipient of the Margaret Mead Award whose research is housed at the National Anthropological Archives of the Smithsonian and the Special Collection at the Smathers Library of the University of Florida. Elmendorf, along with other Quaker volunteers, was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1947 for their work with the British Friends in war-torn Europe during and after World War II: http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/spec/manuscript/guides/Elmendorf.htm.
Lynda Hoskinds, M.Div., B.A. 1993 (Psychology and Religion), senior project topic “Toward a Personal Feminist Theology: A Work in Progress,” first woman to be ordained within the Northern Kentucky Baptist Association, Minister to Family Life at Latonia Baptist Church and Director/Counselor of Latonia Baptist Counseling Center since 1998, and former member of Dioceses of Covington, Kentucky’s Sexual Misconduct Committee.
Debra L. Schultz, Ph.D 1995, feminist historian and acting director of programs for the Open Society Institute’s Network Women's Program, whose dissertation led to Going South: Jewish Women in the Civil Rights Movement (NYU Press, 2001, 2002) with 15 interviews featured on the Jewish Women’s Archives, currently researching and writing on Romani women’s rights in Central and Eastern Europe.

If you missed a previous week’s group, or if you want to share this ongoing celebration with friends and colleagues, you will find these listings archived at http://www.tui.edu/communique/celebrates.asp. As always, thank you for your involvement in the life of the university.

Warm regards,

Roger H. Sublett, Ph.D.
President

UI&U Celebrates Women’s History Month, Week Three

Dear friends and colleagues throughout UI&U:

As promised, here is this week’s sampling of links to information about UI&U women who have made outstanding contributions in women’s studies and related areas:

Jennifer Abod, Ph.D. 1994, producer of the video The Edge of Each Other’s Battles: The Vision of Audre Lorde (2002) and the first extensive radio interview with the activist poet in 1985; producer of Look Us in the Eye: The Old Women’s Project (2006), which examines ageism and activism from a feminist perspective; lead singer of the 1970s New Haven Women’s Liberation Rock Band; host/producer of feminist radio programs; and panel moderator for “Fighting Racism: White Feminist Stories” at the National Women's Studies Association Conference
Elizabeth Ann Sackler, Ph.D. 1997 (Public History), president and CEO of the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, sponsor of museum exhibitions of the Sackler Collections and Chinese antiquities; creator of a scholarship for student artists to study in Florence, Italy through the Elizabeth A. Sackler Museum Educational Trust; donor of Judy Chicago’s feminist mega-sculpture “The Dinner Party” to be permanently installed in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, opening March 23, 2007 at the Brooklyn Museum, both gifts of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation; and founding president of the American Indian Ritual Object Repatriation Foundation
Laura Knott-Twine, M.A. 1999, B.A. 1998, Vermont College, executive director of the Hartford Preservation Alliance; former director from 1999-2004 of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) Office of Women’s Business Ownership at The Entrepreneurial Center, University of Hartford; recipient of the U.S. Small Business Administration’s 2002 Connecticut Women in Business Advocate of the Year; founder/former executive director of the Windham Textile and History Museum in Willimantic, CT; and lecturer on topics such as Working-Class Women in New England and Women’s Role in the Modern Workplace

Warm regards,

Roger H. Sublett, Ph.D.
President

UI&U Celebrates Women’s History Month, Week Four

Dear friends and colleagues throughout UI&U:

As promised, here is this week’s sampling of links to information about UI&U women who have made outstanding contributions in women’s studies and related areas:

Karin A. Cadwell, Ph.D. 1994, leader in the field of breastfeeding and human lactation for more than 30 years, executive director of the Healthy Children Project at The Center for Breastfeeding, which partners with UI&U to offer degrees that focus in lactation and counseling at the bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral levels; convener of Baby-Friendly USA, which implements the UNICEF/WHO Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative for the United States; member of the U.S. Breastfeeding Committee and fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, working with health professionals, government officials, mothers, and babies in China, Latvia, Kenya, Russia, and Romania; author of dozens of books and research articles; and UI&U adjunct faculty along with family and fellow alumni/ae-adjunct faculty members: daughters Anna Blair, Ph.D. 2001 and M.A. 1998 Vermont College, Kajsa Brimdyr, Ph.D. 1999 and M.A. 1995 Vermont College, and husband Charles Cadwell, Ph.D. 1996

Denise D. Porter, B.A. 2005, made history twice, as Cincinnati’s first female postmaster (2003) since the inception of mail service in the city more than 200 years ago, and previously as New Haven, Connecticut’s first female postmaster (2000); participant in Pulse: A Study of the Status of Women and Girls in Greater Cincinnati; unveiler of the U.S. Postal Service’s 2004 “Test early for sickle cell” commemorative stamp; 2005 recipient of the YWCA of Cincinnati’s Career Women of Achievement Award; currently manager of the U. S. Postal Service’s Processing & Distribution Center in Raleigh, North Carolina

Deborah A. Sieger, Ph.D. 1994, former president (1986-88) of the Pennsylvania chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW); professor of social work, policy/practice, and community organizing since 1979 and chair (1990) of the Department of Criminal Justice and Social Work at Kutztown University; past president of the Women's Consortium of Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education; registered nurse and licensed social worker in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; former co-chair of the Statewide Pennsylvania Rights Coalition, a LGBT civil rights organization; and keynote speaker for the 2006 annual meeting of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Rainbow Alliance

Warm regards,

Roger H. Sublett, Ph.D.
President

UI&U Celebrates Women’s History Month, Week Five

Dear friends and colleagues throughout UI&U:

As promised, here is this week’s brief list of links to information about UI&U women who have made outstanding contributions in women’s studies and related areas. If you missed a previous week’s group, or if you want to share these ongoing celebrations with friends and colleagues, please visit the archives at http://www.tui.edu/communique/celebrates.asp.

All month we have celebrated the significant achievements and expertise of selected alumnae. In keeping with the national theme for Women’s History Month 2007 — “Generations of Women Moving History Forward — we conclude with a glimpse of the past, present, and future of women’s and related studies at UI&U through this small but impressive sampling of faculty and current learners who exemplify our mission and vision:

Faculty Emeritae: Women Who Blazed Trails and Set the Bar High

In Memoriam: Marjorie Bell Chambers, Ph.D. (also here), professor emerita, Graduate College doctoral core faculty and former Midwest dean; historian, lifelong advocate, and activist for human and women’s rights; advisor to U.S. Presidents Ford, Reagan, Bush senior, and Carter, who named her to succeed Bella Abzug as chair of the National Advisory Committee on Women from 1978 to 1980; participant in historic events such as the Libyan Government and Women's Union, at the invitation of Muammar el-Qaddafi, the World Conference of Women Leaders, held in Israel in 1979, and the United Nations Conferences on Women in 1975, 1980, 1985, and 1995; first woman to run for lieutenant governor of New Mexico and the state’s first Republican woman candidate for U.S. House of Representatives; national president of the American Association of University Women, 1974-1979
Rita Arditti, Ph.D. (also here), professor emerita, Graduate College doctoral core faculty; activist for women and human rights in science and health care (especially breast cancer) in Cambridge, MA; author and advocate for the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina; 1994 recipient of the Jessie Bernard Wise Women Award from the Center for Women Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. for her "lifetime commitment to scholarship, service, and advocacy in behalf of the feminist enlightenment”

Rhoda Linton, Ph.D., professor emerita, Graduate College doctoral core faculty; co-developer of the Women and Organizing Documentation Project, an 18-month project in the mid-1990s at UI&U's former Center for Women created by a national coalition of veteran women organizers to record women's unique contributions to many modern social change movements, and provide documentation training for activists, including a video, Women Organize!; recipient of Fulbright Senior Specialist Program awards for participatory action research and community development work with Metta Development Foundation, Shalom Foundation, and other local NGOs in Burma (Myanmar) from 2004-2008

Susan Rennie, Ph.D., professor emerita, M.A. program; founding member of the National Women’s Health Network and longtime chair of its Breast Cancer Research Committee; a founding editor of the journal Chrysalis, which focused on feminist art and history during its influential 10-issue run from 1977-1979, and co-author of The New Woman’s Survival Catalog (1973) and The New Woman’s Survival Sourcebook (1975) [all three with former M.A. core faculty Kirsten Grimstad, Ph.D. 1997]

Present-Day Faculty and Faculty-Alumnae:
Maintaining the Hallmarks of Academic Excellence and Open Inquiry

Susan Amussen, Ph.D., Graduate College doctoral core faculty; member of programming and planning committees for several Attending to Early Modern Women conferences; author of An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England, one of the first scholarly works to examine women and gender in English history in the 17th century, and “‘Being Stirred to Much Unquietness:’ Violence and Domestic Violence in Early Modern England,” Journal of Women's History, 6:2 (1994); program chair for the Fourteenth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women: Continuities and Changes in June 2008

Margaret Blanchard, Ph.D. 1990, professor and co-director of the M.A. program; woman’s movement veteran who helped edit its first journal, Women: A Journal of Liberation; co-founder of the Baltimore Women’s Union and staff member of the Women’s Growth Center; faculty member on Transforming the Curriculum project at Towson University to integrate the scholarship on women, and a featured educator in The Feminist Classroom; contributor to Unlacing: Ten Irish-American Women Poets and author of four novels focusing on women’s issues
Dorothy Firman, Ed.D., professor in the Department of Graduate Psychology & Counseling M.A. program; co-presenter, along with her retired psychotherapist mother, of mother/daughter relationship workshops nationwide and co-author of Daughters and Mothers: Making It Work, and Chicken Soup for the Mother/Daughter Soul and Chicken Soup for the Soul: Celebrating Mothers and Daughters
Rochelle Ruthchild, Ph.D., professor and co-director of the M.A. program; participant in the 1971 takeover of a Harvard building that became The Women's Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts, which Ruthchild served as president and recently as producer of the documentary Left On Pearl: Women Take Over 888 Memorial Drive, Cambridge; former head of feminist studies at the Goddard-Cambridge Graduate Program in Social Change; contributing author to Aspasia, an international peer-reviewed yearbook devoted to scholarship on women's history in Eastern Europe and Russia, and research associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University

Current Learners: Creating New Traditions in 21st Century Disciplines

Nicole Hoff, learner in the College of Undergraduate Studies Maternal Child Health/Lactation Counseling Program; certified breastfeeding peer counselor and breast pump rental station, birth partner doula and labor photographer, childbirth teacher, and baby sign language instructor; intern at Valley Baptist Medical Center and at an obstetrics office, pediatrics clinic, and family health clinic in Harlingen, Texas; member of the Rio Grande Valley and the Texas Breastfeeding Coalition; work-at-home mother and CEO of her parent resource center called Bright Babies Company; working toward her B.S. in the area of maternal and child health with a specialization in lactation; Senior Project: developing her home-based business to provide South Texas families with a variety of education and support services
Susan Skinner, learner in the Department of Graduate Psychology & Counseling M.A. program; former director during the 1980s of the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York, home of Women's Rights National Historic Park, and site of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s home and the first U.S. Women's Rights Convention in 1848; now working toward master’s with focus in clinical mental health counseling, specializing in obesity and weight management issues, specifically, women who seek weight loss surgery; Action Project: a 12-week program that helps women examine their hunger issues, their attitudes toward themselves, and their desire to regain their personal power
Elizabeth Anne Hohl, learner in the Graduate College doctoral program; recipient of the very first Adjunct Professor of the Year award from Fairfield University in 2005, in recognition of her efforts to establish the Women's Studies Program at Fairfield in the early 1990s as well as more than 20 years of excellence in teaching courses in the History Department and the Graduate School for Education and Allied Professions; currently working toward her Ph.D. with concentration in history and women’s studies; Dissertation: focused on exploring the New Negro Woman (1890-1925) in the United States

One other important part of our university’s history that has a unique place in any discussion of women’s studies is the former Center for Women in Washington, D.C. From 1990-2000, the Center set new standards for collaboration between scholars and community activist women. Among its many activities the Center for Women organized academic/activist coalitions in D.C. and nationally, including documentation of the history of women's leadership in social change movements, a scholar-affiliate program that created action projects for the benefit of women worldwide, and the Audre Lorde Legacy Awards Program and Fellowship (1994-2000). We are confident that the women and men who represent UI&U in the 21st century will continue this great tradition of bridging the gap between scholarship and activism by creating lasting, effective alliances between scholars and activists who develop collaborative projects that benefit their communities and our world.

As we conclude our celebration of Women’s History Month, I’m happy to assure you that our recognitions of excellence and achievement will continue throughout the year in various ways. If you are near our Vermont Academic Center in Montpelier, on Thursday, April 26, I invite you to attend the M.A. Program’s panel discussion at 7 p.m. in Noble Hall Lounge in honor of faculty members Rochelle Ruthchild and Margaret Blanchard, who are included among the Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975 (University of Illinois Press, 2006), as is professor emerita Rita Arditti. Dr. Ruthchild will show a preview of her film about the women’s occupation of a Harvard building for a women’s center, Dr. Blanchard will read from her novels about the women’s movement, and they invite other feminists from that period to join them in a discussion of “What changed? What still needs to change?”

We trust that such projects such as this lead to a deeper appreciation of the remarkable history, the exciting present, and the unlimited future for all adult learners who want to make a difference, and who choose Union Institute & University to follow their dreams. Thanks to your many suggestions and ideas, you can look forward to more communications that place the accomplishments of members of our university community within the context of national monthly celebrations or in academic specialty areas. We appreciate your patience and input as we continue to build these highly personalized and informative databases. As a historian, I truly believe it’s important that we create these living archives that allow us to share our collective legacy with one another and the world. As always, thank you for your involvement in the life of the university.

Warm regards,

Roger H. Sublett, Ph.D.
President