Jeanne Howard has dedicated her professional career to understanding how foster and adopted children perceive themselves. “Think of what the identity of a foster child is,” said Howard. “It is a stigmatizing identity.”

The Women’s and Gender Studies Annual Student Research Symposium is an opportunity for our faculty, staff and students to celebrate publicly the accomplishments of our undergraduate minors, certificate holders, scholars and activists.

Illinois State University graduate, and former WGS minor, Erica Thurman was graduated only a few years ago, but she’s back in town and working with the McLean County YWCA! As the new director of Stepping Stones, Thurman has started a new program for young women—Girls Be U, or “Girls Building Empowerment and Uniqueness.”  This empowerment program for teen women is open to High School-aged women. 

On Thursday, March 1^st our WGS correspondent, Jeanette Odle, attended an off-site event featuring outstanding poets from the publishers Penguin Poets, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Seven Corners. Talk about a poetry enthusiast’s dream!

On Wednesday March 7^th, Elizabeth Heineman presented “A Horror as Old as Warfare: Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones” at ISU’s International Studies Seminar Series. Her talk focused on the history of sexual violence in relation to wars.

Call for Papers: 17th Annual WGS Symposium
The keynote speaker is Dr. Tiya Miles, associate professor at the University of Michigan in the Program in American Culture, Center for Afro-American and African Studies, Department of History, and Native American Studies Program. Co-sponsored by the Diveristy Advocacy Unit of the Dean of Students.

Nationally acclaimed author and historian Tiya Miles will be the featured speaker at the Women’s and Gender Studies Symposium at 1 p.m. on Friday, March 30, in Illinois State University’s Old Main Room of the Bone Student Center. The talk, titled Writing Black Women into U.S. History, is free and open to the public.