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International Women's Day
"The story of women's struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organisation but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights."
-Gloria Steinem, feminist, journalist, and social and political activist
International Women's Day is a day that celebrates the economic, political, social, and cultural accomplishments of women. It also calls for gender equality with regards to status and pay. Each year International Women's Day adopts a specific theme. This year the campaign is #PressforProgress. This day has been celebrated since its creation in the early nineteen hundreds by the Suffragettes in the United States; however, as this year's campaign suggests, there is still work to be done. The theme for this year is meant to motivate women, and men, to continue the fight for gender parity. On March 8th, International Women's Day will spark the beginning of this campaign that will continue throughout the year.
Celebrating Women in LPD
LPD has had the privilege of hosting some amazing women at NYU Florence and, on the occasion of International Women's Day, we celebrate all of the women who have shared their ideas, their experience, and their vision with students at NYU Florence, including....
Catharine Stimpson is a professor at NYU and a pioneer of women's and gender studies and a founder of feminist criticism. She is also known for her role as a public intellectual and her public service, which includes her wide-ranging writing on the
humanities, liberal arts, and the university. From January, 1994, to October, 1997, she served as Director of the Fellows Program at the MacArthur Foundation in Chicago. Once the editor of a book series for the University of Chicago Press, she was also the founding editor of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society from 1974-80. She contributed to the LPD series 'Year in Revolt' this spring with her talk specifically concerning the role of women and feminist activism in the 1960s and today.
Ida Dominijanni is an Italian philosopher, political theorist, essayist and journalist. On February 8th of this year, she gave a talk on the feminist revolution in Italy. This movement most notably began in 1968, but is an ongoing struggle for women here in Italy as it is for women all over the world. Her talk deconstructed Italian feminism and the events and ideas which are essential to one’s understanding of the Italian woman’s struggle for freedom and identity in terms of politics, the social realm, and in her private life.
Deborah Willis is the chair of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts. She teaches photography and imaging, iconicity, and cultural histories visualising the black body, women and gender. Her research examines photography's multifaceted histories, visual culture, the photographic history of slavery and emancipation; contemporary women photographers and beauty.
She gave an artist talk in the spring of 2017 called 'Reframing Beauty: Intimate Visions'. This talk explored the role of the artist in re-staging beauty as a performative act. In examining many pieces, she helped the audience understand how the most nuanced forms of humanity may be recognised in art. These include social and political statements, expressions of gender and desire, and injustices and oppressions that so many individuals face.
Jennifer Clement is a writer and the president of PEN International, the world-wide association of poets, essayists, and novelists. She was born in Greenwich, Connecticut and from age 1 until high school she lived with her family in Mexico City, Mexico. She participated in a dialogue in Fall 2016 that focused on her novels Widow Basquiat, Prayers for the Stolen, which addresses the theme of trafficking in girls in Mexico, and Gun Love, which explores gun culture in the United States. She is also the author of several books of poetry.
Alyse Nelson is President and Chief Executive Officer of Vital Voices Global Partnership. A co-founder of Vital Voices, Ms. Nelson has worked for the organisation for 15 years. She has worked with women leaders to develop training programs and international forums in over 140 countries. On how we can promote gender equality and women empowerment in our everyday lives Nelson says: "I think there's no perfect time to lead change - we're all called to contribute, to do our part. I think leadership begins with recognising that each of us has a voice and has the power to advance equality and empowerment in our own communities, whether through mentorship of the rising generation or in changing mindsets by sharing the stories of women leaders who are having real impact in our world."
Angela Davis is an icon of social justice movements around the world, but perhaps her most notable contribution would be her work during the Civil Rights movement in the United States. She is an educator that strives to install values of racial, social and gender justice. She now works on issues of mass incarceration, institutionalized slavery, and the criminalisation of the poverty stricken and those affected by racial discrimination. She draws upon her own experiences in the early seventies as a person who spent eighteen months in jail and on trial. She was a leader of the American Communist Party as well as worked alongside the Black Panther party during the Civil Rights Movement. She envisions a world free of the prison industrial complex. Her dialogue with Gina Dent in the fall of 2016 was entitled 'The Industry of Social Rejection' in which she discussed many of these causes.
Esraa Abdelfattah is a political activist who played a central role in the mass protests of January 2011 in Tahrir Square in Egypt. She was active on the web and in the field, updating the media with the latest news from the protesters. In 2008 she co-founded the 'April 6 General Strike Egypt', a Facebook group that promoted a day of civil disobedience, asking workers to stay home to protest low wages and rising food prices. After being dubbed the social-networking phenomenon 'Facebook girl' she was arrested by Egyptian security and spent two weeks in jail. She is currently a consultant at the Egyptian Democratic Academy, a journalist and social media consultant for El-Youm7 (the most popular independent Egyptian newspaper) and at the magazine 7Ayam. In the fall of 2016 she gave a talk entitled 'Women for Rights: The Role of Women's Activism in Promoting Human Rights and Civil Liberties in Egypt'.
Eileen Myles is a poet, novelist and performer who gave a talk in the spring of 2017 called Born to Describe. In 1974, Myles moved from their hometown in Massachusetts to New York City to pursue a life as a poet. Their dialogue at NYU Florence explored their experience as a writer and its relationship to art, and more specifically the implications that the media's constant presence has on our writing. They explored with the audience what it means to be a poet today in terms of the political climate and social sphere that we experience through media. Myles also ran for President in 1992!
Emma Bonino is an Italian politician. She recently served as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Previously, she was a member of the European Parliament and a member of the Italian Senate. She has championed several civil and human rights campaigns including against hunger, civil nuclear energy, for the establishment of the International Criminal Court, a universal moratorium against the death penalty and women's rights. She is a founding member of 'No Peace Without Justice'. She participated in the 'Progress and Imperatives: An International Town Hall on the Status of Women" with LPD in 2009.
Cindy Dyer is the Vice President for Human Rights at Vital Voices Global Partnership, an international nonprofit focused on women's leadership and empowerment. Prior to joining Vital Voices in 2008, Dyer served as Director of the Department of Justice's Office on Violence Against Women. As Director, she served as the liaison between the Department of Justice and federal, state and international governments on violent crimes against women. Before that, she worked as a specialised domestic and sexual violence prosecutor for 13 years. Dyer visited us at NYU Florence last year and will return this semester to meet with students and representatives from women's organisations in Italy.
Dialogues on Women
