Women's Studies hosts a lecture series each semester to bring notable women to our campus.
APRIL 25, 2007 EVE ENSLER CAME TO BC
Eve Ensler author of The Vagina Monologues, The Good Body, and founder of V-day is the recipient of many awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship Award in Playwriting, the Berilla-Kerr Award for Playwriting, and the Jury Award for Theater at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival, as well as the 2002 Amnesty International Media Spotlight Award for Leadership. Eve Ensler’s books/plays The Good Body and The Vagina Monologues have been world renowned. The Good Body take an inside look at the outside, exploring the cultures of beauty, food and desire through the eyes of women around the world. The Vagina Monologues is a celebration of female sexuality in all its complexity and mystery. It has been translated into over 45 languages and runs in theaters around the world. Celebrities who have starred in The Vagina Monologues include Jane Fonda, Glenn Close, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Oprah, Melanie Griffith, and Whoopi Goldberg. Finally, Eve Ensler's V-day is a movement organized against violence towards women. The V-Day organization states that “We believe women 
should spend their lives creating and thriving rather than surviving or recovering from terrible atrocities.” The V-Day movement is growing around the world, in 81 countries. It is a non-profit that distributes funds to grassroots, national and international organizations and programs that work to stop violence against women and girls. In its first year of incorporation (2001), V-Day was named one of Worth Magazine’s “100 Best Charities.” In eight years, the V-Day movement has raised over 30 million dollars. The Boston College Women’s Studies Program is honored to have Eve Ensler speak here on April 25, 2007.
Co-Sponsored by: Sociology department, Professor Judith Wilt and the Newton College Research Fund, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Dean Boynton and CSOM, Jesuit Institute, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Theater Department, Department of African and African Diaspora Studies, Center for Human Rights and International Justice, English Department, the GLC, UGBC Women's Issues, the Women's Resource Center, the Office of the Dean for Student Development, the Office of Student Affairs, and the Economics Department.
April 3, 5:00pm Dr. Sima Samar came to BC
Sima Simar is a "profile in courage." Here is an excerpt from her bio: " In 2002, Sima Samar became the first women's affairs minister in Afghanistan's post-Taliban interim government. Prior
to her appointment, Samar had dedicated her life to the preservation of basic rights for women and girls in Afghanistan.
She fled her country in 1984 during the Soviet ocupation and moved to the border town of Quetta, Pakistan, where she founded the Shuhada Organization to support the education and health needs of Afghan women and girls. With dogged persistence and at great personal risk, she kept her schools and clinics open in Afghanistan even during the most repressive days of the Taliban regime, whose laws prohibited the education of girls past the age of eight. When the Taliban fell, Samar returned to Kabul and accepted the post of Minister for Women's Affairs, even as she continued to run her clinics and schools. But her persistent calls for equality and justice attracted the attention of Afghanistan's powerful religious leaders, who still saw no place for women in Afghan public life. She was taunted by male colleagues, and she began to receive thinly veiled death threats from Islamic conservatives hoping to silence her. She was ultimately forced to step down from her cabinet post, which was left unfilled. She subsequently was offered a non-cabinet position chairing the Independent Afghanistan Human Rights commission, a position she still holds."
This event is sponsored by the Women's Studies Program, Program in International Studies and Globalization and Inequality Series, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Office of the Dean for Student Development, UGBC Women's Issues, Women's Resource Center, Amnesty International, Women of Color Caucus, and Center for Human Rights and International Justice.
Past speakers for Women's Studies have included:
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Barbara Ehrenreich, journalist
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Lucy Lippard, feminist art historian
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Rosemary Radford Ruether, feminist theologian
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Silvia Carrazco, Nicaraguan feminist activist
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Robin Morgan, Editor of Ms. Magazine
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Hazel Carby, professor of English
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Blanche Cook, historian
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Donna Lopiano, Director of the Women's Sports Foundation
Women's studies also co-sponsors the Annual Concert of Music by Women Composers.
