Celebrating Women Who Tell Our Stories, the 2023 theme for Women’s History Month, recognizes all women active in storytelling and media through any number of formats such as stage, screen, print, television, 播客等等. Women’s History Month, lobbied for by the National Women’s History Alliance, received national recognition in 1980 under President Jimmy Carter. Originally organized by the school district of Sonoma, California, in 1978, as Women's History Week, it was created to reshape American patriarchal history that largely neglected women's 成就.
Storytelling traditions span time and cultures and have been relied upon for generations to both entertain and educate. For many Indigenous cultures history and traditions were passed through oral storytelling and while it was outlawed in the 1880s by the Code of Indian Offenses, many kept the traditions alive despite the threat of legal 后果. Te Ata was a legendary storyteller of the Chickasaw Nation and continued the tradition in spite of these laws, even performing for the Roosevelt’s prior to becoming President 和第一夫人.
In Toni Morrison’s, 1993年诺贝尔奖演讲, she shares the importance of her writing ‘Word-work is sublime, she thinks, because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference – the way in which we are like no other life. 我们死. That may be the meaning of life. 但是我们有语言. That may be the measure of our lives.’
Other women share their story through other art forms such as 弗里达•卡罗 who shares depictions of her life, family, and experiences through her self-paintings. The Canales Project, 听她的歌 project, honors extraordinary women through songs written by female composers and 词曲作者. These are just a few of the women artists that share their stories through their work, explore other American women artists through the Smithsonian.
Let us continue to be mindful of the importance of our own self-work (educating oneself). Questioning conventional paradigms and disrupting the social norms that define women as inferior; this includes, discrimination, disregard, control, oppression, exploitation, and violence of women. An important aspect of this self-work is making your feminism 变性 and redefining what it means to be female.
加入 Center for Women's and Gender Equity (CWGE) for their Women's History Month events which include the grand opening of the Marcus Garvey’s Lactation Station, a Project M.E. pop-up and podcast, and a CWGE 社交媒体 takeover for 国际 Women’s Day.
采取行动:
- National Women’s History Museum
- 图书馆 of Congress Blogs: Stories of Strong Women
- Celebrating Trans Women During Women’s History Month
- 23 Podcasts that celebrate Women’s History all year long
- 哪些: The Power of Native Women
- 哪些: Art Pioneers: Women of Abstract Expressionism
- 读到 Famous Women in Computer Science
- Attach the Women’s History Month design elements to your 电子邮件 signature and/or use it in your 社交媒体
For additional education and personal development related to diversity, equity and inclusion, the following resources are available: 一些 Education and Resources, 一些 & Antiracism Resources from the UNC Libraries, the Education Equity Toolkit from the Colorado Department of Higher Education, and the 联合研讨会 for faculty, staff, and students.
