Common Hour: Gertrude Hitz Burton

There has been an event update as part of the College’s response to coronavirus concerns.

The remaining two Common Hour talks have been canceled: “Cussedly Independent: Historic Women of the Wilson College Physics Dept." on March 23 and "Gertrude Hitz Burton: A Wilson College Alumna’s Modern Victorian Life" on March 30.

Gertrude Hitz Burton: A Wilson College Alumna’s Modern Victorian Life

Also part of Women’s History Month Lecture Series Sesquicentennial Edition

Gertrude (1861-1896) was a Gilded Age feminist reformer whose writings and lectures in Washington D.C., Boston, and Maine promoted sex education, marriage equality and "voluntary motherhood”. Gertrude’s interactions with family, friends, and well-known colleagues, including Alexander Graham Bell, Robert E. Peary, and Clara Barton – and her Wilson friend Frances Haldeman Sidwell, co-director of the prestigious Sidwell Friends School in Washington DC -- illuminate her nineteenth-century era and our own twenty-first century Gilded Age.

June Vail
Professor Emerita, Bowdoin College

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.