The year 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which removed “sex” as a legal reason to disqualify citizens from voting. Centennial celebrations have revealed how little most Americans know about the history of women’s rights and how contested this history remains. For the past 100 years, suffrage history has … Continued
History has treated the founding of the United States as an exclusively male enterprise. One reason for this is that biographers and historians mostly focus on the political, military, and diplomatic aspects of the era. Scant attention is paid to the social world where women primarily functioned. The story of Abigail and John Adams changes … Continued
I decided to go into academia at a panel about Scandal. It was 2015 and I was a college senior. Like millions of other fans, one weekly joy was Shonda Rhimes’ Thursday night primetime takeover: Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and How to Get Away with Murder. The thrill of these Thursdays was not only the juicy … Continued
My humanities moment connects to a book, titled Damaged Goods: Women Living With Incurable Sexually Transmitted Diseases written by Adina Nack, a sociologist and women’s and gender studies (WGS) scholar writing about health, sexuality, and society. This book is about women’s experiences living with HPV. I read this book in my undergrad in a WGS … Continued
My Humanities Moment involves a connection between two individuals that might not initially seem to have anything in common: Jane Austen and Quentin Tarantino. One of the first places I found inspiration for the tenacity that has always kept me going through numerous personal and professional challenges was in the novels of Jane Austen. The … Continued
A high school math teacher discusses the documentary Top Secret Rosies: The Female “Computers” of WWII. Beyond the awe for these women who took part in American military operations as human computers during World War II, this contributor is inspired by a statement made by one of the women in the movie, crediting her high … Continued
Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye is the 28th Chief Justice of the State of California. She recalls her experiences as a student in a humanities class in college, her upbringing in a Filipino community of hardworking women eager to pass on their traditions, and her realization that the humanities teach us to celebrate and respect the stories … Continued
My moment focuses on the fact that African American women have been using their words as Political Resistance. The humanities contributed to this moment, because my ancestors and myself are using words to make sense of the world and our place in it…. Resisting!