Graduate Program in Women's History at Sarah Lawrence College

02/01/2022

Today's the birthday of Millie Dunn Veasey, an American veteran who served from 1942 to 1945 in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) and the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC).

When the US joined the war, Mille Dunn Veasey (January 31, 1918 – March 9, 2018) began to see posters encouraging women to join the military. Naturally, all the posters featured white women, but she applied anyway. “My reason I guess to go? If others could sign up and go why not me?”

In December 1942, she enlisted in the army, going through training and serving Stateside for two years before joining the “six-triple-eight” battalion. The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only battalion made up solely of Black women to serve overseas during WWII. They were stationed in Birmingham, England, and Rouen, France, and tasked with managing the US Army mail, some of which had not been delivered in over two years. The battalion's motto was "no mail, no morale." The unit processed an estimated 17 million pieces of mail.

After returning home from World War II, she worked as executive secretary at St. Augustine’s University and was active in the civil rights movement with the Raleigh-Wake Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where she became its first female president in 1965.

You can read more about her life in the NYTimes obituary that was run in 2018, when she died at the age of 100: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/21/obituaries/millie-veasey-part-of-trailblazing-unit-in-wwii-dies-at-100.html



(Many thanks to historian Molly Sampson for her assistance in updating this info.)

05/21/2021

New research suggests a circle of Tudor women saved the "Book of Hours" for the queen's daughter, Elizabeth I

05/19/2021

From Mary Dillard, Director of the Women's History Program.
Dear Women’s History Alumnae/i,

I am writing to you as we approach Reunion and look towards opportunities to reflect on and celebrate the good work of our wonderful students and alumnae/i. Despite the challenges this year has presented for all of us, we believe that we have done our very best to support our students and we are proud of all they have accomplished. What a joy it was to hear them share their final work at our thesis reading two weeks ago and to continue our celebrations with them this past Saturday at commencement. We also look forward to celebrating all of you at our virtual Reunion in June.

As we wrap up the spring semester and celebrations of our students’ work, while simultaneously preparing for Reunion in just a few weeks, I am writing today to let you know that we have made the difficult decision to not enroll a first year cohort for the 2021-2022 academic year for the Graduate Program in Women’s History. This decision was based upon several factors; most significantly, we did not have enough applicants to form a sizable cohort, which would have adversely affected the educational experience of those students. We believe this is largely related to the COVID-19 pandemic and how it has impacted people in so many ways. Despite our deep disappointment, we view this pause as an opportunity to carefully evaluate our existing program and develop a thoughtful plan for moving forward.

Over the coming months, we will continue and expand upon the internal review that we initiated in 2019 with the goal of ultimately emerging stronger in the increasingly competitive higher education landscape. I invite you to be -- really, I need you to be -- part of this process. We will be engaging alumnae/i throughout our ongoing program review, and if called upon to share thoughts, ideas, or participate in focus groups or meetings, I hope you will consider doing so. On a broader scale, please stay connected to the program through college events, social media, and your contacts with faculty, staff, and your fellow alumnae/i. Your insights, candor, and creativity are what have made the Women’s History program what it is, and will help shape what it can and should be in the future.

As we do this work, I look forward to celebrating the 50th anniversary of the program’s founding and Priscilla Murolo’s retirement with you in the coming year.

Thank you for the many ways that you as alums have made us proud over the years. I look forward to seeing -- with you -- the impact this program will continue to have in the next 50 years!

Sincerely,

Mary Dillard, Ph.D.
African History
Director, Graduate M.A. Program in Women’s History

05/15/2021

Congratulations to 2021 Women’s History Graduates!!!
✊🏾

05/05/2021

21 for ’21 will bring together a cross-generational group of visionary leaders—and all of you—to create a blueprint for the future for women, girls, and nonbinary people.

04/26/2021

"Superheroes reflect our shared cultural mythologies: what it means to be good, to be courageous, to face unbeatable odds. In recent years, “representation matters” has become a refrain acknowledging how vital it is that children see possibilities for themselves in media.

But superheroes represent something beyond that. It’s not only that if little Black girls see Ironheart being brave, they will understand that they can do the same because they look like her. It’s that superheroes serve as a shared cultural mirror, paragons of what bravery even is."

We asked Eve L. Ewing and Evan Narcisse to share perspectives on the politics of being a Black comic-book writer and the Black superheroes you may have missed.

04/21/2021

Women's History Lecture Tomorrow!

Dr. Margaret Jessie Chung of the Fair-Haired Bastards: A Q***r Life

This multi-media presentation and discussion explores the life of Margaret Chung (1889-1959), the first American-born Chinese woman physician. She crossed various social boundaries to become a western physician, a woman in a predominantly male profession, and a publicly maternal figure who also adopted masculine clothing and engaged in ho******ic relationships across racial and cultural borders.

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu is a professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Irvine and the director of the Humanities Center. She authored Dr. Mom Chung of the Fair-Haired Bastards: the Life of a Wartime Celebrity (University of California Press, 2005) and Radicals on the Road: Internationalism, Orientalism, and Feminism during the Vietnam Era (Cornell University Press, 2013).

Thursday, April 22
6:30pm Eastern

https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYvdeCvqzssHtVntPciAng7FMbARXTW7SW9

04/14/2021

Have you submitted to our Alison Piepmeier Book Prize yet?

NWSA offers an annual $1,000 award for a groundbreaking monograph in women, gender, & sexuality studies that makes significant contributions to feminist disability studies scholarship!

More here: https://bit.ly/30FavhU

04/14/2021

Today's the birthday of Jane Bolin, the first Black woman to graduate from Yale Law School, the first Black woman to join the NYC Bar Association, and the first Black woman to join the New York City Law Department.

And, as if that wasn't enough, in 1939 she became the first Black woman to serve as a judge in the United States.

“Those gains we have made were never graciously and generously granted. We have had to fight every inch of the way.”

Jane Bolin (April 11, 1908 – January 8, 2007) was one of only two Black women in her 1928 class at Wellesley College. She was the only Black student and one of only three female students at Yale Law School, and in 1931 she became the first African American woman to graduate from the program.

After a short stint in the New York City legal department, Bolin was appointed Judge of the New York City Domestic Relations Court at age 31, making her the first African American woman judge in the country. Judge Bolin remained a judge in Family Court for 40 years.

During her long career she forever changed the system to improve the lives of the children they served, working for racially integrated child services by forcing the assignment of probation officers to cases without regard for race or religion, and a setting a requirement that publicly funded private child-care agencies accept children without regard to ethnic background.

You can read more about her in this excellent Essence article: https://www.essence.com/feature/jane-bolin-first-black-woman-judge-history/