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Contact: Julie Navejar
kajam03@tamuk.edu or 361-593-2590

Women's History Month to be celebrated with wide variety of activities

KINGSVILLE (February 27, 2006) — Women’s History Month at Texas A&M University-Kingsville will offer a wide variety of activities ranging from films to a play to speakers.

The month’s events will get underway at noon Wednesday, March 1, with one of a series of four vignettes about famous women in history. All will be held at the university bookstore in the Memorial Student Union Building (MSUB). Students from the theatre arts department will portray the famous women.

The first will be Rosa Parks, American civil rights activist who was arrested in 1955 for violating segregation laws when she refused to give up her bus seat to a white male passenger.

In the second vignette, Margaret Sanger, will be portrayed at noon Wednesday, March 8. Sanger was a nurse who worked among the poor in New York City in the early 1900s. She promoted the widespread need for information concerning contraception and established the first birth control clinic in Brooklyn in 1916.

The third vignette, Poet Emily Dickinson, will be presented at noon Wednesday, March 22. Dickinson was a great American poet who lived from 1830 to 1886.

A fourth vignette on a yet unnamed important woman from history will be held at noon Wednesday, March 29.

The film, Señorita Extraviada (Missing Young Woman), will be shown at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 2, in the MSUB ballroom. There will be discussion after this documentary that focuses on the kidnap, rape and murder of more than 300 young women in Juarez, Mexico. The documentary moves like the unsolved mystery it is, and the filmmaker poetically investigates the circumstances of the murders and the horror, fear and courage of the families whose children have been taken.

The opening of an exhibition for Houston artist Marie Valdez will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. Monday, March 6, in the Ben Bailey Art Gallery. Valdez is a native of South Texas. Her paintings explore the relationship between the body and the mind and how emotion is expressed physically. Her figures show their mental state through gesture and pose. Her exhibit closes Friday, March 17.

Valdez also will conduct a Brown Bag seminar about English artist Gwen John at noon March 6 in the Mesquite Room of the MSUB.

In conjunction with Women’s History Month, the communications and theatre arts department will present three performances of The Vagina Monologues Monday through Wednesday, March 6-8. All performances begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Little Theatre.

This is a poignant and hilarious tour of the last frontier. The play is a celebration of female sexuality in all its complexity and mystery. Eve Ensler’s play gives us real women’s stories of intimacy, vulnerability and sexual self-discovery.

In addition, an art auction will be held from 6 to 7 p.m. Monday, March 6, in the Theatre Arts Building prior to the opening performance.

Artists and performers will be present at the show to discuss their work during the silent pen auction. All proceeds from the auction will go to the university’s Women’s Center and the World V-Day Trust.

The bilingual education department, in collaboration with the Women’s Center, honors the 2006 Exemplary Bilingual Educator at the 32 nd Annual Spring Bilingual Conference at 7:30 p.m. in ballroom A in the MSUB. The award is for unwavering commitment and faith in the principles of educating English language learners through bilingual education.

As part of the Bilingual Conference, there will be an international women’s panel discussion at 9 a.m. Friday, March 10, in room 219A in the MSUB. Women from different parts of the world such as Mexico, China, Taiwan and Korea will discuss experiences and challenges faced throughout their professional lives. As agents of change, the participants will talk about issues related to culture, education, careers and accomplishments.

Mona Lisa Smile: A Dialogue of the Working Woman will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 23, in the MSUB. Using clips from the movie Mona Lisa Smile, those in attendance will examine the changes that have improved the status of women in the workplace. This session is presented in collaboration with the university’s Career Services Center.

The top women leaders at Texas A&M-Kingsville will be honored at the Women’s Leadership Luncheon and Be All You Can Be Awards at noon Tuesday, March 28, in the ballroom of the MSUB.

The keynote speaker will be Jen Chapin, singer-songwriter, social activist, educator and daughter of the late Harry Chapin. Chapin has worked hard to interweave her musical and political passions. She chairs the board of directors of WHY (World Hunger Year), an activist organization co-founded by her father, and helps to support the group’s innovative grassroots efforts to fight hunger and poverty by building self-reliance.

Drawing on her experiences as a middle and high school teacher, Chapin also has developed a number of workshops, including Music and Social Action, WHYs of Hunger and Black Music in America.

In addition to her keynote address, Chapin will perform at 8 p.m. March 28 in the Javelina Café in the MSUB. With an earthy sound that has been called urban-folk, she uses her family’s fertile folk rock legacy and her own to produce songs searching for both solitude and community.

For more information about the Women’s History Month activities, call the Women’s Center at 361-593-2166.

This page last updated 1 March, 2006