Visiting Professor (Continued from page 1) Women's Human Rights and UN conventions as well as on local and global social movements. She is currently completing a book on the airline companies' creation of the stewardess image as a sexualized servant, and she is also co-editing a special edition of the Journal of International Women's Studies on Women's Bodies, Gender Analysis, and Feminist Politics at the Fórum Social Mundial. In the spring, in addition to team teaching WGS 221: Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies and WGS 101: Window on Women's and Gender Studies, she will teach WGS 377: Teaching Feminist Activism and Creating Feminist Activists. This course will enable Wake Forest students to participate in the germinal stages of U.S. human rights work. Human rights concepts will be the primary articulation point for the first United States Social Forum in Atlanta (June 2007), and students will be able to learn how these tools fit in with their activism and their daily lives. Among other course material, the syllabus will cover human rights documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security, the Convention Against all Forms of Racial Discrimination, and others. As Dr. Willis brings an important strength to our program, linking theory with practice, academic knowledge with social activism, the local with global communities, we are very pleased to have her here at Wake, where social justice concerns, service learning, and pro humanitate causes are the staple of our university. We thank Dean Debbie Best and Provost Bill Gordon for making this appointment possible.
Phillips Award (Continued from page 1) Professor Phillips’ excellence in teaching and scholarly research, her outstanding career, and her meaningful presence in the life of Wake Forest represent an important example for many students and faculty on our campus as well as for many WFU alumni and alumnae in the US and abroad. With this award in her name WGS intends both to celebrate her significant contributions to the intellectual life of our university and also to encourage and reward the academic study of feminism and gender issues among our students. The Elizabeth Phillips Award for the Best Essay in Women’s and Gender Studies consists of a monetary prize and a certificate that will be presented to the best undergraduate and graduate student essay written in the subject of women’s and gender studies throughout the academic year. The award committee has invited nominations for the current academic year. The first Elizabeth Phillips Award will be presented at the Honors and Awards Ceremony in the Spring of 2007 to mark fifty years since the appointment of Professor Phillips—one of the earliest female faculty members—to Wake Forest University (1957-1989).
Evidence of Red First, night opened out. Bodies took root from rotting salt and seawater into evidence of red life. Relentless waves pumped tidal air into a single heartbeat. In the pulp of shadow and space, water sucked our people from sleep. That’s how it all began. At least that’s all we can remember to tell. It began with water and heartbeat. In minutes we tunneled through corn woman’s navel into tinges of moist red men and women. Yawning, we collected our chins, knees, breasts, and sure-footed determination. A few thousand years before Moses parted the Red Sea, and the God with three heads was born in the Middle East, the Choctaw people danced our homeland infra red. Finally when the stranger’s arms reached to strangle the West, Grandmother eavesdropped on the three-faced deity who said that chaos was coming.
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LeAnne Howe Evidence of Red: Poems and Prose (Salt Publishing, 2005)
Pictured here, from left, are Michele Gillespie (History/WGS), Sally Barbour (Romance Languages/WGS), Roxanne Newton, Nikki Settle (’06), Whitney Marshall (’08), and Shannon Philmon (’07)
Though they have often been silent, North Carolina women who have been on strike have powerful stories to tell. Their voices are rarely heard in a state that has consistently maintained the lowest rate of unionism. On August 30, 2006, Roxanne Newton, Director of Humanities and Fine Arts at Mitchell Community College, spoke to an engaged audience about “The Fabric of Hope and Resistance: North Carolina Women on Strike.” The daughter and granddaughter of mill workers, Newton grew up in a small North Carolina textile town. She earned a Ph.D. in Educational Foundations and Cultural Studies, and a graduate certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies from UNC-Greensboro. Her book, Women Workers on Strike: Narratives of Southern Women Unionists, was published by Routledge in 2006. This event was made possible through a grant from the Humanities Forum of the N.C. Humanities Council.