Women's Studies Symposium
The Women's Studies Program and the Women's Studies Student Association hosted the first Symposium at Augusta State University in the spring of 2009 to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the Women's Studies minor at ASU. The Symposium offers a wonderful opportunity for academics, undergraduate and graduate students, advocates, activists, and community members to participate in the academic, creative, and social action activities centered on a given theme.
2013 Symposium schedule is available!
The 2013 Women's Studies Symposium will take place March 2, 2013—it will be the first symposium for the consolidated university. Online registration will be available soon. Watch the 2013 Symposium webpage and the Symposium Facebook Page for updates.
If you're interested in supporting the event or submitting a proposal, contact Dr. Seretha Williams (swilliam@aug.edu).
2011 Symposium: Finding Our (Grass)Roots
It is often understood that feminism is not simply a theoretical discourse but an activist path. A mere glance at the early feminist mantra, "The personal is political," can attest to this. Over the past decades, however, as Women's Studies and Gender Studies programs have become institutionalized in colleges and universities across the world, has feminism lost sight of its activist origins? In order to gain academic legitimacy, has feminism sacrificed activism for theory? Are Women's Studies programs doing enough to place theoretical approaches within activist frameworks?
The 2011 Symposium, "Finding Our(Grass)Roots: Activism, Theory, and the Future of Feminism," invited students, faculty, and community organizers to submit proposals that addressed the growing divide between feminist activism and theory and what this divide translated into where feminism's future is concerned.
Providing the key note at the 2011 Symposium was Dr. Ruth McClelland-Nugent, Associate Professor of History at Augusta State University, in a talk entitled, "Theory Meets Practice: Wonder Woman, Popular Culture, and the Feminist Critique."
2009 Symposium: Emerging Narratives
The inaguaral Women's Studies Symposium was held March 28, 2009, and invited presentations that intersected with the theme "Emerging Narratives." In addition to presentations that illustrated the multiple women's narratives communicated through television, literature, and oral history, the Symposium also welcomed the partipation of local Girl Scouts and invited the performance of Alchemy, a belly dance troupe from Augusta (pictured above).
The 2009 key note presentation was given by Dr. Irene Salami-Agunloye, Associate Professor of African Expressive Literature, Women, and Cultural Studies at the University of Jos, Nigeria, who is also an accomplished playwright who lectures extensively on women's and children's issues.
