Women’s HerStory Month Kicks off with Women and Power Conference on March 2

Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC/CUNY) will present Women’s Herstory Month, March 1 through April 12. On the schedule are panels, films, live performance, workshops and many other events.

The month will kick off with a day-long conference on March 2: Women and Power 2016. The conference will open with welcoming remarks by Antonio Perez, President, BMCC; Marva Craig, Vice President for Student Affairs, BMCC and Deborah Parker, Director, Women’s Resource Center, BMCC.
 
Next will be Panel I in a series of panels addressing women and power and featuring Elizabeth de Leon Bhargava, Deputy Secretary of Labor, NYS Governor Cuomo Office; Wendy Garcia, Deputy Chief Diversity Officer, Office of the Comptroller, Stringer and Yolanda Jimenez, Executive Director, Joe Torre Foundation. Andrea Shapiro Davis, Associate Vice Chancellor, CUNY, will moderate.
 
Panel II, moderated by Patricia Mathews-Salazar, Director, BMCC Center for Ethnic Studies, will feature Aisha Holder Campbell, Postdoctoral Fellow, Columbia University Counseling and Psychological Services; Bobbi Humphrey, Jazz Recording Artist, Flautist and Tanya Torres, Artist and Writer. The panel will be moderated by Patricia Mathews-Salazar, BMCC Director of the Center for Ethnic Studies.
 
The Luncheon Keynote Speaker will be Ana Oliveira, President & CEO, The New York Women’s Foundation. “I am excited to share this opportunity for women to come together at BMCC and expand our power—individually and collectively,” said Oliveira.

Other luncheon speakers will include conference co-chairs Amy Sodaro and Brianne Waychoff, Co-Chairs, Women’s HerStory Month; Karrin Wilks, Provost and Senior Vice President, BMCC, and Conference Chair Deborah Parker, Director, Women’s Resource Center.
 
A student jazz concert will follow, and then a panel featuring Janet Martin, Executive, Verizon; Sally Robles, Associate Professor, Psychology Department, Brooklyn College and Victoria Sell,Education Advisor to NYC City Council Member Brad Lander. The moderator will be Margaret Barrow, Deputy Chair, English Department.
 
After that, a b.Girl Movement Workshop: “Am I My Sister’s Keeper? The Responsibilities and Rewards of Women in Power Supporting Other Women” will be led by Nicci Page and Nicole Junior, Co-founders, b.Girl Movement, and moderated by Brianne Waychoff, Deputy Chair, Speech, Communications and Theatre Arts Department.
 
Panel IV, moderated by Olivia Cousins, Professor, Health Education Department ,will present Maryam Habibian, Filmmaker; Jungah Kim, Professor, English Department, and Asha Samad-Matias, Anthropologist, City College/CUNY.
 
The final event in the March 2 conference will be “I Step On Air: A Dance, Music, Poetry Performance Dedicated to the Memory of May Ayim, Afro-German Poet and Activist,” featuring Oxana Chi and Layla Zami, Performers and Writers, and facilitated by Jill Strauss and Brianne Waychoff, Professors, Speech, Communications and Theatre Arts Department.

Following the conference are events, exhibits, performances, workshops and other events throughout Women’s HerStory Month:

 
March 1 – 9
Exhibit: Humanizing Blackness with a Black Gaze
Theater 1 Breezeway
 
March 2
2nd Annual BMCC Women’s Conference: Women and Power
Various locations
 
March 2
HerStory Through Children’s Literature Table
Richard Harris Terrace promenade
 
March 5
Performance: Monk in Motion, Veronica Swift
TPAC
 
March 9
Discussion: Defining “Woman”
Hudson Room
 
March 9
Film: Codes of Gender
N-468
 
March 10
Panel: Structural Violence and Women in the Dominican Republic and Haiti
Richard Harris Terrace
 
March 11
Mathematical Story-Telling and Ndebele Doll Sculpturing
S-753
 
March 14
Discussion: Unearthing the Hidden in Women’s Lives Through Journals, Letters, Periodicals
Richard Harris Terrace
 
March 14
Film: Matrilineal Muslim Women of Minang
F-211
 
March 16
Staged reading of play: Emotional Creature by Eve Ensler
N-452
 
March 17
Documentary film: Remembering Ana Mendieta: Fuego de Tierra
N-582
 
March 17
Exhibition: HerStory Through Children’s Literature
S-341
 
March 17
Panel: Immigrant Women’s Experience
S-341
 
March 21
Open Mic: Poetry of Empowerment: An Open Reading
Location TBD
 
March 24
Documentary film: Remembering Ana Mendieta: Fuego de Tierra
N-582
 
March 28
Live performance: 100th Anniversary of Susan Glaspell’s Trifles: A Staged Radio Reading
F-1014
 
March 29
Panel: Women and the Spanish Civil War: From Memory to International Citizenship in a Dangerous World
Hudson Room
 
March 30
Faculty presentation
CETLS
 
March 30
Workshop: Reading Silence: Hearing Women’s Voices in the Archives
S-341
 
March 31
Workshop: Microaggressions in Everyday Life
Richard Harris Terrace
 
March 31
Performance: Stage Struck: Women in Theatrical History
F-205
 
March 31
Panel: Immigrant Women’s Experiences and Strategies for Survival
S-341
 
April 12
Faculty presentation
CETLS
 
 
 
The BMCC Women’s HerStory Month Planning Committee includes Amy Sodaro, Co-Chair, Social Sciences, Human Services, & Criminal Justice Department; Brianne Waychoff, Co-Chair Speech, Communications, & Theatre Arts Department; Judith Anderson, Center for Ethnic Studies; Monica Foust, Social Sciences, Human Services, & Criminal Justice Department; Stephanie Laudone-Jones, Social Sciences, Human Services, & Criminal Justice Department and Deborah Parker, Women’s Resource Center.