Celebrating Women’s History and History-Makers

Graduate Center scholars take a leading role in illuminating the little-known histories of women, explaining the significance of current events on women’s lives, and highlighting the history-making women among us today. Join us in celebrating them and their inspirational work during Women’s History Month. 

Ph.D. candidate  Lilianna Quiroa-Crowell (Anthropology) won a prestigious Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad fellowship to conduct research for a dissertation on how Indigenous women in the neglected Guatemalan city of Puerto Barrios have been rendered essentially invisible.
 

Ph.D. candidate Polina Nazaykinskaya (Music) composed a ballet based on a poem by Emily Dickinson that has a resonant theme: the suppression of women artists. 
 

In A Haunted History of Invisible Women, alumna Andrea Janes (M.A. ’05, Liberal Studies) examines the ways in which ghost stories immortalize and even empower women, who are often marginalized in life. 

A new biography of poet Phillis Wheatley by Distinguished Professor David Waldstreicher (History) has been hailed as a “rich and necessary book” that chronicles her journey from enslavement to national celebrity. Join us on Tuesday, March 7, to hear him talk with Elizabeth McHenry about his book and discoveries. 
 

Last fall, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and memoirist Margo Jefferson spoke about Constructing a Nervous System, her latest, critically acclaimed book, which the Guardian called “a deeply personal account of black female identity.”
 

After the Supreme Court revoked the constitutional right to an abortion, Graduate Center scholars and activists weighed in on what the decision means for women's rights, LGBTQ rights, public health, and more.
 

In a dissertation topic that even she had never imagined for herself, Ph.D. candidate Madeline DeDe-Panken (History) researches 19th-century women mushroom foragers and uses their experience to examine issues about who gets to formulate and legitimize knowledge.
 

Ph.D. candidate Ella Vardeman (Biology) researches medicinal plants used for Caribbean women’s health with support from a prestigious fellowship from the National Institutes of Health.
 

After her historic tenure as speaker of the House, join us to hear Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi in conversation with Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Krugman on Monday, April 3, via Zoom.