Emory Report

Feb. 22, 1999

Volume 51, No. 21

Guinier to give Women's History Month keynote address Harvard law professor and one-time Clinton cabinet nominee Lani Guinier will highlight a full slate of events scheduled for Women's History Month in March, themed "Women Creating Freedoms." Guinier, the first black woman to become a tenured professor at Harvard Law School, will deliver her keynote address, "Lift Every Voice," March 2 at 7:45 p.m. in the law school's Tull Auditorium. The speech centers around Guinier's recent book of the same name, which she wrote following her short-lived 1993 nomination to head the civil rights division of the Department of Justice. After coming under political fire for the nomination, President Bill Clinton withdrew Guinier's name from consideration before her confirmation hearing, and she was denied an opportunity to speak to the Senate confirmation committee. "Democracy takes place when the silenced find a voice, and when we begin to listen to what they have to say," Guinier wrote in Lift Every Voice. She also has launched Commonplace, a national nonprofit center to connect citizens, communities and ideas, and Racetalks, a project to create opportunities for multiracial problem solving and collaboration. Guinier published The Tyranny of the Majority in 1994. Another notable event will be the March 21 performance of Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues, directed by theater studies' Brenda Bynum. Performed by a cast of Emory women, some of whom were selected from those who participated in an open reading of Monologues on Valentine's Day, the show itself and its unconventional title is a statement on the kind of freedoms women are creating, said Women's Center Director Ali Crown. "This year's theme is about different ways of creating freedom, breaking or extending our boundaries, doing things that haven't been done before, speaking out," Crown said. "The history of women winning freedoms is, on the one hand, a collective narrative of outrageous acts and great achievements, and on the other hand no more than a series of vital steps toward full human dignity." Other highlights: ·Television documentarian Coline Jenkins-Sahlin, great-great-granddaughter of suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, will speak at the Feb. 28 University Worship service, 11:15 a.m. in Cannon Chapel. She will also participate in a screening and discussion of "An American Revolution: Women Take Their Place," which she produced, March 1 at 8 a.m. in Cox Hall. A continental breakfast will be served. ·Scholar Naomi Graetz, a professor at Ben Gurion University of the Negev and author of Silence is Deadly: Judaism Confronts Wife Beating, will give a lecture, reading and booskigning March 3 at 4:30 p.m. in the Jones Room of Woodruff Library. Poet Jorie Graham, whose Dream of a Unified Field won the Pulitzer Prize in 1996, will give a reading/booksigning March 17 in 8:15 p.m. in a location to be determined. Irish feminist poet Rita Ann Higgins, author of Sunny Side Plucked, will read March 1 at 8 p.m. in the Jones Room. Novelist A.S. Byatt, author of Angels and Insects and Possession, will deliver two Richard Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature, March 29 and 30, both at 8:15 p.m. in the business school auditorium. Byatt will also give a public reading March 31 at 8:15 p.m. in Glenn Auditorium. There will be a panel discussion and reception celebrating the 50th anniversary of Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex at 4 p.m., March 31, in the Jones Room. The Woodruff Library's Schatten Gallery will be showing "Our Life: A View of Maasai Women," from Feb. 25 through March 31. For more information or a full listing of all Women's History Month events, contact the Women's Center at 404-727-2000. --Michael Terrazas Return to Feb. 22, 1999, contents page