Living Boldy

This year’s Common Hour, Living Boldly, is inspired by Wilson's sesquicentennial celebration marking 150 years of bold Wilson students. The spring series, which kicks off on February 2, will feature three conversations, four talks and one reading. All Common Hour events are free and open to the public.

Mondays at noon in the Lenfest Learning Commons - John Stewart Memorial Library, Wilson College

“College certainly has been grand this year”: The Letters of Helen Carnell Eden, Wilson Class of 1929

March 10 (Note this is a Tuesday rather than Monday)
Dr. Kay Ackerman

The 1920s was an exciting, nay, bold decade in Wilson’s history and Helen Eden’s letters provide us with one student’s experience of it. With an almost ethnographic awareness, Helen’s letters home to her parents document the College’s festive social life, her academic experience, and her growing attachment to Wilson. This decade also saw young people rejecting older ideals about feminine behavior. This talk will look at ways the tension between old and new is revealed in the observations of this smart (and smart-mouthed) young woman from West Philadelphia.

Dr. Ackerman received her Bachelor of Arts in History from Longwood University, and her Master of Arts and Ph.D. in History from Vanderbilt University. Courses taught include: U.S. History (survey course); Western European History (survey course); The American Revolution; Civil War and Society; American Material Culture; Black Women in Nineteenth-Century America; America in the 50s and 60s; Medieval Women; The European Witch Craze; and Women in Early Modern England. In addition to the Faculty Teaching Award, she has received awards from the NEH Institutes on American Material Culture and World History as well as the NYU Institute on the Civil War in Global Context. Her areas of interest are Social History and Women’s History.

 

Lenfest Learning Commons - John Stewart Memorial Library

Common Hour Info

Spring Semester Events:

Mondays at noon in the Lenfest Learning Commons - John Stewart Memorial Library, Wilson College

February 3
Community Lawyering with Pennsylvania Farmworkers
Caitlin Barry

February 10
Living Boldly as a Muslim and a Marine: A Conversation with Mansoor Shams
Mansoor Shams

February 17
Queering God Towards a Celebratory Theology
Slats Toole

February 24
BOLD WORDS, readings by Michael Cornelius, Matthew McBride and more

March 2 - Special location: Patterson Boardroom
The New Woman in a World of Conservatives: Hannah Patterson, Wilson College and Woman’s Suffrage
Amy Ensley

March 10 (Note this is a Tuesday rather than Monday)
“College certainly has been grand this year”: The Letters of Helen Carnell Eden, Wilson Class of 1929
Dr. Kay Ackerman

March 23
“Cussedly Independent:” Historic Women of the Wilson College Physics Dept. 
Joanna Behrman

March 30
Gertrude Hitz Burton: A Wilson College Alumna’s Modern Victorian Life
June Vail
 

Spring Semester Speakers:

Caitlin Barry
Assistant Professor of Law, Director, Farmworker Legal Aid Clinic, Co-Director, Community Interpreter Internship Program
Caitlin Barry is a community lawyer whose work focuses on migrant justice, gender self-determination and grassroots empowerment. Caitlin directs the Farmworker Legal Aid Clinic at Villanova, where she teaches the clinic seminar and supervises students advocates in immigration and employment matters and collaborates with local community-based organizations on advocacy and outreach projects. She is a graduate of Temple Law.

Mansoor Shams
Mansoor Shams is a U.S. Marine Veteran, business owner, and a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He is also the founder of MuslimMarine.org where he uses his platform of both “Muslim" and “Marine" to counter hate, bigotry, and Islamophobia through education, conversation and dialogue. He arduously endeavors to unify an increasingly divided world. 

Slats Toole
Slats Toole (they/them/theirs) is a writer, musician, theater artist and preacher, whose work has been published in Call to Worship, Sacramental Life, The Presbyterian Outlook, Fidelia Magazine, and in the poetry collection Queering Lent. Slats holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drama from New York University and a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary.

Amy Ensley
Amy Ensley is the Director of the Hankey Center for the History of Women’s Education. Her research interests include women’s history in the United States during the post-Civil War era through the Women’s Rights Movement of the 1970s. 

Dr. Kay Ackerman
Dr. Kay Ackerman is Associate Professor of History at Wilson College. She has received awards from the NEH Institutes on American Material Culture and World History as well as the NYU Institute on The Civil War in Global Context. 

Joanna Behrman
Joanna Behrman specializes in the history of science education and the history of physics. Her dissertation focuses on women in physics higher education in the period 1880-1940. She has done extensive research on Dr. Dorothy Weeks (Ph.D. MIT) professor of physics at Wilson College from 1930 – 1956.

June Vail
June Vail founded the dance program at Bowdoin College and chaired the Department of Theater and Dance for many years. In 2010 Bowdoin honored her with its Distinguished Service Award for Faculty and Staff.

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