25th Anniversary Symposium Program

Milestones & Momentum:

The Meridians Project at Twenty-Five

Meridians staff

Editors Emeritae

Editorial Office Administrative Manager,

Kum-Kum Bhavnani (2001-2002)

Leanna Oen

Myriam J. A. Chancy (2002-2004)

Symposium Coordinator, Carolina

Paula J. Giddings (2005-2017)

Dellepiane AC ’20 Administrative Assistant and Editorial Coordinator, alex terrell

Editorial Advisory Board

Quigley Fellow, Mollie Doyle ‘27

Carol Bailey, Amherst College

Quigley Fellow, Mia Huang ‘28

Ibtissam Bouachrine, Smith College

Quigley Fellow, Chiamaka Okorom ‘27

Banu Gokariksel, UNC-Chapel Hill

Quigley Fellow, Angelie Pereyra ‘28

Pinky Hota, Smith College

Meridians Fellow, Rinal Dahhan ‘27 Meridians Fellow, Linh Tran ‘27

Founding Advisory Board

Elizabeth Jacob, UMass-Amherst Annette Joseph-Gabriel, Duke University Miliann Kang, UMass-Amherst

Edna Acosta-Belén

Ranjana Khanna, Duke University

Leila Ahmed

Heidi Kim, UNC-Chapel Hill

Ama Ata Aidoo

Lili M. Kim, Hampshire College

Amrita Basu

Kimberly Kono, Smith College

Rey Chow

Adriane Lentz-Smith, Duke University

Maryse Condé

Lucy Mule, Smith College

Angela Davis

Sarah Quesada, Duke University

Cynthia Enloe

Vanessa Rosa, Mount Holyoke College

Paula J. Giddings

Ara Wilson, Duke University

Wilma Mankiller Toni Morrison

Creative Writing Advisory Board

Nell Irvin Painter

Leslie Marie Aguilar, Rice University

Elena Poniatowska

Maryam Ala Amjadi, Black Mountain

Nawal el Saadawi

Institute

Vandana Shiva

Abigail Chabitnoy, UMass-Amherst

Ruth J. Simmons

Floyd Cheung, Smith College

Founding Editors

Anna Maria Hong, Mount Holyoke College Dawn Fulton, Smith College

Ravina Aggarwal

Tsitsi Jaji, Duke University

Elizabeth Alexander

Yalie Saweda Kamara, Xavier University

Ann Arnett Ferguson

Nancy Kang, University of Manitoba

Ann Jones

Adrienne Perry, Villanova University

Gayle Pemberton

Traci-Ann Wint, Smith College

Nancy Saporta Sternbach Susan Van Dyne

Cover Artist Bhavika Yendapalli, Mamata Reddy, and J. Shankariah

Acknowledgements We Couldn’t Have Done It Without…

President Sarah Willie-LeBreton Professor Daphne M. Lamothe, Provost and Dean of the Faculty Professor Denise McKahn, Associate Provost Allison Moore, Senior CRM Administrator and Events Lead Smith College Dining, Events Planning, and Facilities Staff Middle Eastern Studies Program

Allyson Einbinder ‘10, Editorial Office Manager (2023 - 2025) Dr. May Caroline Chan, Editorial Assistant (2024-2025) Virginia Cornett ‘27, Stride Fellow (2024-2025) Isa Grijalva ‘27, Stride Fellow (2023-2025) Kyla Butler ‘25, Quigley Fellow (2023-2025) Xinyang Sun ‘25, Quigley Fellow (2023-2025)

Alumnae Relations and Development

Office of Admissions and Aid

Alumnae Donors to the Meridians Project Endowment

Project on Women and Social Change

Duke University Press

Quigley Fellowship Fund, Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Program

Five Colleges, Inc.

Smith College Museum of Art

Kixie Dennison Fieldman ‘53 Fund

STRIDE Fellowship Program

Office of Student Engagement

Land Acknowledgment Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism is housed at Smith College, in Northampton, Massachusetts which acknowledges and appreciates that the space in which we gather today is built within Nonotuck ancestral homelands. We recognize our present-day neighboring Indigenous nations: the Nipmuc and the Wampanoag to the East; the Mohegan, Pequot, and Narragansett to the South; the Mohican and Mohawk to the West; and the Abenaki to the North. Finally, we acknowledge and celebrate the presence of Indigenous people here among us today.

Meridians 25th Anniversary Program Friday, October 24, 2025 4:30 - 5:30 PM

Symposium Opening Carroll Room, Julia McWilliams Child ‘34 Campus Center Ginetta E.B. Candelario ‘90, Editor

5:30 - 6:30 PM

Welcome Dinner Carroll Room, Julia McWilliams Child ‘34 Campus Center

7:00 - 8:30 PM

Keynote Roundtable Conversation: Carroll Room, Julia McWilliams Child ‘34 Campus Center

Introduced & Moderated by Smith Provost Daphne Lamothe The Significance of the Meridians Project, at Smith and Beyond Smith President Sarah Willie-LeBreton Smith President Emerita Ruth J. Simmons Editor Emerita Paula J. Giddings Editor Ginetta E.B. Candelario ‘90

Saturday, October 25, 2025 9:00 - 9:45 AM

Morning Opening Klingenstein Browsing Room, Neilson Library Coffee and tea with light refreshments

9:45 - 10:00 AM

Welcome and Introduction of the Day’s Schedule Klingenstein Browsing Room, Neilson Library

Ginetta E.B. Candelario ‘90, Editor

10:00 - 11:15 AM

Meridians Author Panel #1. Theme: Transnational Feminist Solidarities Klingenstein Browsing Room, Neilson Library Moderator: Richa Nagar, Gloria Steinem ’56 Endowed Chair in Women & Gender Studies Devaleena Das, “What Transnational Feminisms Has Not Disrupted Yet: Toward a Quilted Epistemology” (22:2, 2023) Stanlie James, “Remarks for a Roundtable on Transnational Feminism, National Women's Studies Association, Baltimore, Maryland, November 16–19, 2017” (18:2, 2019) Ranjoo Herr, “Reclaiming Third World Feminism: or Why Transnational Feminism Needs Third World Feminism” (12:01, 2014) Yafrainy Familia, “Curating Transnational Feminist Solidarities in ‘Born in Flames: Feminist Futures” (24:2, 2025)

11:30 AM - 12:45 PM

Meridians Author Panel #2. Theme: Body Politic(s) Klingenstein Browsing Room, Neilson Library Moderator: Ana del Conde, Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Smith College Catherine S. Ramírez, “Crimes of Fashion: The Pachuca and Chicana Style Politics” (2:2, 2002) L. Ayu Saraswati, “Cosmopolitan Whiteness: The Effects and Affects of Skin-Whitening Advertisements in a Transnational Women's Magazine in Indonesia” (10:2, 2010) Abosede George, “Saving Nigerian Girls” (17:2, 2018) Lucy El-Sherif,“‘Dabke is Better than a Thousand Lectures About Islamophobia’: Palestine, Arab Mothering and the Research Imagination”

1:00 - 2:30 PM Lunch and Performance by Malikat Al Dabke Carroll Room, Julia McWilliams Child ‘34 Campus Center

2:45 - 4:15 PM

Meridians Author Panel #3. Theme: Representation Klingenstein Browsing Room, Neilson Library Moderator: Carol Bailey, Professor of Black Studies, Amherst College Denise Schallenkammer, "The 'Grandmother' of Indigenous Filmmaking in New Zealand: Merata Mita--Film Is Her Patu” (23:1, 2024) Chandra Frank, “Flamboyant: Wildness, Loss, and Possibility in Feminist Organizing in the Netherlands” (22:1, 2023) Selina Makana, “Motherhood as Activism in the Angolan People's War, 1961–1975" (15:2, 2017) Janell Hobson, “The Rape of Harriet Tubman” (12:2, 2014); “Between History and Fantasy: Harriet Tubman in the Artistic and Popular Imaginary” (12:2, 2014)

4:30 - 6:15 PM

Meridians Author Panel #4. Literary Studies Klingenstein Browsing Room, Neilson Library Moderator: Heidi Kim, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Deepti Misri, “The Violence of Memory: Renarrating Partition Violence in Shauna Singh Baldwin’s What the Body Remembers” (11:1, 2011) Ayesha K. Hardison, “Where Author and Auteur Meet: Genre, the Erotic, and Black Female Subjectivity” (12:1, 2014) Nancy Kang, “Rubbed Inflections of Litany and Myth: Ciguapismo in Rhina P. Espaillat’s Feminist Poetics of Loss” (21:2, 2022) Min Young Godley, “The Feminization of Translation: Gender Politics in the Translation Controversy over Han Kang's The Vegetarian” (20:1, 2021)

6:30 - 8:30 PM

Dinner and Closing Remarks Carroll Room, Julia McWilliams Child ‘34 Campus Center Ginetta E.B. Candelario ‘90, Editor

Participants Carol Bailey

Ana Del Conde

Carol Bailey is a professor of Black Studies; she teaches courses in African American, African diasporic, and Caribbean literatures, as well as in interdisciplinary Black Studies. She is the author of Writing the Black Diasporic City in the Age of Globalization (Rutgers University Press, 2023), A Poetics of Performance: The OralScribal Aesthetic in Anglophone Caribbean Fiction (UWI Press, 2014), and co-editor (with Stephanie McKenzie) of Pamela Mordecai’s A Fierce Green Place (New Directions, 2022).

Ana Del Conde is a visiting asst. professor in the Dept. of Anthropology.

She is a cultural anthropologist who specializes in feminist theory and engaged-ethnographic research. She is currently working on a book project that is based on over 20-month ethnographic research she conducted in Michoacán, Mexico. Her work focuses on how P’urhépecha women navigate the dynamics of violence experienced in their region—an area that has been impacted by the presence of organized crime, the expansion of agro-business, and the implementation of diverse security policies.

Ginetta E.B. Candelario ‘90 Ginetta E. B. Candelario is a Professor of Sociology, Latin American and Latin Studies, and the Study of Women and Gender at Smith College. Since 2017, she has been the Editor of Meridians. Her research interests include Dominican history and society, with a focus on national identity formation, feminism, and women’s history; Blackness in the Americas; Latin American, Caribbean, and Latina feminisms; Latina/o communities (particularly Cuban, Dominican, and Puerto Rican); U.S. beauty culture; and museum studies.

Devaleena Das Devaleena Das is Associate Professor of Body, Sexuality, and Health at the University of Minnesota Medical School, where she co-directs the Social and Community Health curriculum for medical students pursuing their MD. For more than a decade, she has taught and researched in the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program in the USA. She serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine and Series Editor of Palgrave Studies in Contemporary Women’s Writing. Das is the author and co-editor of five books, and her forthcoming monograph, Anatomophilia: The Liberation of the Body (SUNY Press), offers a transnational introduction to decolonial epistemologies in body studies, centering the lived experiences and agency of marginalized bodies in the Global South. Her awards and honors include the Educational Innovation Award from the UMN Medical School, the Innovation Impact Case Award (the highest research award from the University’s Research and Innovation Office), recognition as an Outstanding Professor and Researcher of International Renown by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and the Australia-India Youth Dialogue Leadership Award (declined).

Lucy El-Sherif Dr. Lucy El-Sherif is Assistant Professor in Global Peace & Social Justice and Gender & Social Justice at McMaster University. Her research focuses on Arab and Muslim youth subjectivity on Turtle Island, with particular attention to embodiment, performativity, and the spatial politics of colonial citizenship. Her book project, Dabke on Turtle Island, examines how Palestinian dabke functions as a site of anticolonial expression, asking what it means to dance a relationship to one stolen land, Palestine, from another, Haudenosaunee territory in Canada. She theorizes dabke as an embodied, relational, and grounded practice of Palestinian thriving that reorients dominant narratives of Arabness in transnational contexts.

Yafrainy Familia Yafrainy Familia is Assistant Professor of Spanish and American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research is situated at the nexus of Caribbean and Latinx cultural studies, visual culture, Black and Latinx feminisms, and critical geography. Her current book project examines how contemporary Caribbean women and queer artists use their creative platforms to disrupt the cartographies of colonial modernity and imagine radical forms of geographic freedom.

She is also a Solidarity Fellow in the Diaspora Solidarities Lab, where she works in the Survival of a People microlab.

Chandra Frank

Min Young Godley

Chandra Frank is assistant professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Cincinnati and an independent curator. She is the 2024-2027 Taft Professor of the Public

Min Young Godley is a lecturer at Dartmouth College in the Writing Program and Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS). Her research interests include

Humanities. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on feminist and queer of color movement work, possibilities of dissent, the politics of water, and the ways in which race and the environment work as terrains of power. She is a founding member of the Tidal Studies Group, a collaborative collective exploring the rhythms, currents, spillage, and intimacies of water.

American and transnational literature, critical race theory, and gender studies.

She received her PhD from the University at Buffalo as a Fulbright scholar, and has published “The Feminization of Translation: Gender Politics in the Translation Controversy over Han Kang’s The Vegetarian” in Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism.

Abosede George Abosede George is the interim director of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University and Associate Professor in the departments of History and Africana studies at Barnard College and Columbia.

Her book, Making Modern Girls: A History of Girlhood, Labor, and Social Development, was published by Ohio University Press. It received the Aidoo-Snyder book prize in 2015 from the African Studies Association Women’s Caucus.

Dr. George is the co-convenor of the African Studies Association Women’s Caucus, a past member of the Barnard Center for Research on Women's Executive Committee, where she continues to serve on the Advisory Board.

Paula J. Giddings Paula J. Giddings is Elizabeth A. Woodson 1922 Professor Emerita of Africana Studies. She is the author of three books.

Her book, Ida: A Sword Among Lions was awarded The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography. Giddings is also the editor of Burning All Illusions, an anthology of articles on race published by The Nation magazine from 1867 to 2000. Giddings joined Smith College in 2001 as a professor of Africana studies. She served as the editor of Meridians, feminism, race, transnationalism.

Ayesha K. Hardison Ayesha K. Hardison is the Susan D. Gubar Chair and Associate Professor of English at Indiana University, Bloomington.

She is the author of Writing through Jane Crow and a co-edited book, and she has published several book chapters as well as articles in African American Review and Meridians. She is director of the History of Black Writing (HBW), a literary recovery and preservation project and archive, as well as co-editor of the multidisciplinary journal Women, Gender, and Families of Color.

Ranjoo Seodu Herr Ranjoo Seodu Herr is a professor of philosophy at Bentley University. She has published widely on topics of feminist theory and political philosophy, such as Decolonial Feminism, Third World Feminism, Transnational Feminism, Confucian Feminism, Nationalism, Collective SelfDetermination, Human Rights, and Colonialism in diverse peer-reviewed journals, such as Meridians, Hypatia, Feminist Formations, Frontiers, Political Theory, and International Theory. She is currently working on a monograph entitled, Confucian Feminism and Gender Equality: A Decolonial Feminist Theory.

Janell Hobson

Heidi Kim

Janell Hobson is Professor in the Department of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University at Albany. She is also Director of the Department's Undergraduate Studies and Honors Program, a Collins Fellow and the 2025-2026 Faculty Grand Marshal. She is the author of When God Lost Her Tongue (Routledge, 2021), Venus in the Dark (Routledge, 2005, 2nd ed. 2018), and Body as Evidence (SUNY Press, 2012).

Prof. Kim’s research and teaching ranges through 19th-21st century American literature, with specializations in the Japanese American incarceration of World War II, law and literature, and the Cold War period. At UNC, she directed the Asian American Center, founded in 2020, and created the AAC Fellows program. She has also published on Walt Whitman and antislavery literature, including the partial translation of Louisiana Francophone novel Le vieux Salomon, and collaborated on interdisciplinary environmental research.

Currently, she is writing Asian American Literature: A Very Short Introduction for Oxford University Press. She can also be seen in the new documentary about William Faulkner, The Past is Never Dead.

Stanlie M. James Stanlie M. James presented “Remarks for a Roundtable on Transnational Feminism” at the NWSA annual meeting in Baltimore Maryland, 2017. It was later published in Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism in October 2019 (vol. 18 #2). James served as Vice Provost for Inclusion and Community Engagement at ASU from 2016–2021. Prior to that assignment, James held a number of administrative positions at both U.W. Madison and ASU including Chair of the Afro American Studies Department, Director of the African and African American Studies Program at ASU and later Director of the Women’s Studies Research Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Nancy Kang Nancy Kang is Canada Research Chair in Transnational Feminisms and Gender-Based Violence, Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, and Acting Director of the University of Manitoba Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture. She co-authored The Once and Future Muse: The Poetry and Poetics of Rhina P. Espaillat (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018). Kang’s most recent peer-reviewed scholarship appears in American Literature, ESC: English Studies in Canada, and Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism.

Daphne Lamothe Daphne Lamothe is Smith’s chief academic officer, responsible for curriculum and for faculty teaching and research support. She plays a pivotal role in achieving Smith’s institutional goals through stewardship of the College’s academic mission. Academic and co-curricular units within the provost’s portfolio include all academic departments as well as the libraries; the museum of art; the botanic garden; Institutional Research; the Office of the Registrar; and the Office for the Arts. Lamothe also chairs the Committee on Academic Priorities and oversees the long-term composition of the faculty. She has been at Smith since 2004 and has served as chair of the Department of Africana Studies, co-chair of the Admission Policy Study Group, and served on the Academic Priorities and Faculty Compensation and Development committees.

In 2023, she received the Honored Professor Award for her achievements in teaching and scholarship and her contributions to the academic community. Lamothe holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Yale University and a doctorate in English from the University of California, Berkeley.

Selina Makana Selina Makana is an Assistant Professor of African history at the University of Memphis.

Her research and teaching focus on African history, gender and militarism, and African diaspora studies.

Her current monograph, Beyond the Battlefield: Women and the Nation in Twentieth Century Angola (forthcoming, Ohio University Press), probes the relationship between women, war, and nationalist politics in Angola. Her articles have been published in Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism; Gender and History; JENdA: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies; The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Women’s History.

Deepti Misri Deepti Misri is an Associate Professor in the Department of Women and Gender Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is the coeditor of the Routledge Handbook of Critical Kashmir Studies (2022) and author of Beyond Partition: Gender, Violence and Representation in Postcolonial India (2014).

She’s also a founding member of the Critical Kashmir Studies Collective, a feminist scholarly collective whose work focuses on Indian militarized occupation in Kashmir.

Richa Nagar Richa Nagar is the inaugural Gloria Steinem ’56 Endowed Chair in Women and Gender Studies at Smith College.

Richa has published nine books and dozens of essays, articles, plays and poems (and their translations) in English and Hindi. Her many awards and honors include the 2021 International Studies Association’s Global Development Studies Book Award for Hungry Translations, the American Association of Geographers’ 2019 James Blaut Award for Socialist and Critical Geography, the Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize Honorable Mention for Muddying the Waters, and the Russell M. and Elizabeth M. Bennett Chair in Excellence and the Beverly and Richard Fink Professorship in Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota.

Catherine S. Ramírez Catherine S. Ramírez, Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is a scholar of Latinx literature, history, visual culture, and performance.

Her expertise includes immigration and assimilation, historical memory and erasure, Mexican American women’s history, zoot suits and style politics, and Latinxfuturism. She is the author of Assimilation: An Alternative History, The Woman in the Zoot Suit: Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory, and more than a dozen essays about Latinx science fiction. She is a co-editor of Precarity and Belonging: Labor, Migration, and Noncitizenship. With A. Naomi Paik, she co-edits the “Borders” section of Public Books.

L. Ayu Saraswati L. Ayu Saraswati is professor in women, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Hawai`i. She is the author and co-editor of five books, including Seeing Beauty, Sensing Race in which won 2013 National Women's Studies Association Gloria Anzaldúa book award. Her most recent book, Scarred: A Feminist Journey through Pain, won 2024 Association of American Publishers PROSE book award for auto/biography, 2024 Indie book award for women’s non-fiction, and was named Best Books of 2023 by Library Journals.

Denise Schallenkammer Denise Schallenkammer, born 1993, studied English, British and American Transcultural Studies as well as Communication and Media Studies in Germany, Ireland and New Zealand and holds a Master of Arts in the latter two subjects. She is a PhD student at the Institute for Media Research at the University of Rostock and is about to submit her doctoral thesis. She is also a former research associate at the Sorbian Institute in Bautzen (Germany). Her dissertation project deals with the comparison of filmic depictions of the Sorbs, one of four officially recognised ethnic minorities in Germany, and the Māori, the Indigenous people of New Zealand.

Ruth J. Simmons

Ruth Simmons served in various faculty and administrative roles at the University of Southern California, Princeton University, and Spelman College before becoming president of Smith College, the largest women’s college in the United States, from 1995 to 2001. At Smith, she launched a number of important academic initiatives, including an engineering program, the first at an American women’s college, the Poetry Center, and the founding of the journal Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, which published its first issue in the fall of 2000. Dr. Simmons left Smith to become President of Brown University from 2001 to 2012, where she was the first Black woman to lead an Ivy League school.

Sarah Willie-LeBreton

Sarah Willie-LeBreton is the 12th president of Smith College. She earned a bachelor of arts degree from Haverford College in 1986, and an M.A. (1988) and Ph.D. (1995) from Northwestern University, all in sociology.

After having taught at Colby College (1991– 1995) and Bard College (1995–1997) in tenure-track appointments, she was tenured at Swarthmore, where she served as coordinator of the Black Studies Program and chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology for a total of 17 years.

She was appointed as provost and dean of the faculty at Swarthmore in 2018 and served in that role until 2023. She currently serves on the boards of the Grand Canyon Conservancy, the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts, and the Consortium On Financing Higher Education.

Read the work written by the panelists and published by Meridians!

Scan the QR codes below to read their articles:

Devaleena Das

Lucy El-Sherif

Yafrainy Familia

Chandra Frank

Abosede George

Min Young Godley

Ayesha K. Hardison

Ranjoo Herr

Janell Hobson

Stanlie James

Nancy Kang

Selina Makana

Deepti Misri

Catherine S. Ramírez

L. Ayu Sarawasti

Denise Schallenkammer

VOLUME 24 · NUMBER 2 · OCTOBER 2025

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Milestones & Momentum: The Meridians Project at Twenty-Five Campus Map October 24-25, 2025

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Milestones & Momentum: The Meridians Project at Twenty-Five Campus Map October 24-25, 2025

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Alumnae House: ​33 Elm St, Northampton, MA 01060 Alumnae House Conference Hall Alumnae House Living Room Alumnae House Lobby & Gallery

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Julia McWilliams Child ‘34 Campus Center: 100 Elm St, Northampton, MA 01063 Carroll Room, 2nd Floor Nolen Art Lounge, Main Level, Livestreaming/Overflow Space

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Neilson Library: 7 Neilson Drive, Northampton, MA 01063 Klingenstein Browsing Room

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Meridians Editorial Office: 22 Green Street Northampton, MA 01060

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Visitor Parking: 50 West St, Northampton, MA 01063

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Wright Hall: 5 Chapin Way, Northampton, MA 01063 Boutelle-Day Poetry Center, Livestreaming/Overflow Space

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Meridians appreciates your generosity and support to our mission!

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