University Library News Release
Date: February 16, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Jeanette Smith, NMSU Library, (575) 646-7492, jcsmith@lib.nmsu.edu
Library Co-sponsors Women's History Month Program
The New Mexico State University Library is a co-sponsor of the first program in the 2009 Women's History Month series celebrating "Women Taking the Lead to Save Our Planet." The event, also sponsored by the Women's Studies Program, will take place on Monday, March 2, from 3 to 5 p.m., on the fourth floor of Branson Library just outside the Caroline E. Stras Research Room. The program is free and open to the public.
The program will highlight Interim President Waded Cruzado's declaration of the Year of Sustainability at NMSU. In addition, it will feature an NMSU student art show of prints of internationally known women environmentalists, as well as a talk by archivists Martha Andrews and Charles Stanford about the Library's archives and special collections on women. The Stras Research and Reading Room, named for El Paso banker Caroline E. Stras, is a fitting site for the show and reception.
Among the women who will be featured in the art show is Constance Falk, a professor in NMSU's College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences. Falk, an outspoken activist on issues of sustainability and the environment, has agreed to speak on the issue at the art show. Art students will be present to discuss their works.
University Archivist Martha Andrews, said, "The Wild West of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Geronimo and the U.S. Cavalry, Pancho Villa and General Pershing are such powerful and entertaining myths in the popular imagination that the stories of our region's women have not always been heard loud and clear. Through its manuscripts, institutional records, oral histories and photographs, the Library's Archives and Special Collections Department seeks to discover, preserve and illuminate the lives of New Mexico women."
Andrews noted that professor emeritus and author Darlis Miller said "the lives of women can be traced in local legislative records, church documents, census schedules, military pension rolls, the minutes of club meetings, town and county histories and the curriculum descriptions printed in a college catalog. Most eloquent of all are the historical photographs that bear witness to the contributions paid by women to farming, ranching, business, cultural interests and education."
This event kicks off NMSU's participation in the nationwide Women's History Month celebration. Other notable events in the
program series include:
March 13: Readings from Korean feminist poets by Don Mee Choi, time and place to be announced.
March 14: A showing of the movie A Single Woman, 1:30 p.m., Fountain Theater in Mesilla.
March 17: Lecture by visiting scholar Dena Goodman, "Freedom and Happiness: Rethinking Love and Marriage in Eighteenth
Century France," 7 p.m., NMSU's Science Hall 107.
March 18: Concluding event, Coffee with the Dean, 8:30 a.m. - 9:45 a.m., NMSU's Science Hall 289.
For more information, visit http://www.nmsu.edu/~wstudies/ or call (575) 646-3448.
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