News from the Archives – Page 14 – News from the Iowa Women's Archives

Re-examining the Pelvic

On Tuesday, May 1st, the Iowa Women’s Archives will host a lecture by Wendy Kline, professor of history at the University of Cincinnati. Kline’s talk, “Reexamining the Pelvic: Women’s Health from a Recent Historical Perspective,” concerns the late 20th century controversy regarding pelvic examination instruction in American medical schools.

In the 1970s, medical educators expressed concern over how best to prepare medical students for routine gynecological care. In response, schools experimented with a variety of approaches, including the use of plastic models, anesthetized patients, volunteers, and “simulated” patients (including prostitutes, graduate students, and nurses). By the late 1970s, outsiders entered the debate, as female medical students, consumer rights advocates, and health feminists criticized some of these tactics as demeaning and destructive to women. Approached by female students at Harvard Medical School disappointed by their gynecological training, the Women’s Community Health Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts initiated an innovative “pelvic teaching program.” Laywomen acted as instructors and patient models for Harvard Medical students during a required introductory clinical medicine course. But after two years, the partnership disintegrated, with feminists feeling like no more than “talking pelvises” and medical educators disturbed by feminist politics, personal crusades, and “inappropriate patient model choices.”

Drawing on the unpublished papers of the Women’s Community Health Center, medical journals, memoirs, and oral histories, Kline argues that this initial attempt to overhaul the traditional power relations between doctor and female patient, although unsuccessful, marked a crucial development in the negotiations between feminist health clinics, medical students, and organized medicine. Ultimately, this controversy helped to transform routine gynecological care by challenging many of the assumptions about how to understand and examine the female body.

LECTURE AND RECEPTION

Tuesday, May 1st, 4:00 p.m.

Iowa Women’s Archives

3rd Floor, Main Library

The University of Iowa

Sisters, There’s a Women’s Center in Iowa City!

Iowa City was a hotbed of women’s liberation in the 1970s, boasting women’s restaurants, coffeehouses, presses, bookstores, childcare centers, publications, and health clinics. The Women’s Liberation Front in Iowa City left many lasting legacies, among them the Women’s Resource and Action Center, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this academic year.

In 1971 Iowa City women opened a women’s center in a Quonset hut leased from the University, creating a space where women could socialize, learn skills, get health information, and receive assistance with legal issues, among other things. A few months later the Women’s Center moved into a house on East Market Street. The Center was renamed the Women’s Resource and Action Center in 1974 and settled into its current home at 130 North Madison in 1976.

On Friday, March 23rd at 4:00 p.m. the Iowa Women’s Archives will host a panel of women who were active in the early years of WRAC. The panelists will recall their involvement with childcare, abortion referral, the Iowa City Women’s Press, women’s softball, and other offshoots of the Women’s Center. We invite others who recall WRAC through the years to join in the conversation. Come for a lively discussion and a piece of birthday cake!

Friday, March 23, 2012
4:00-6:00 p.m.
Iowa Women’s Archives
3rd Floor, Main Library, University of Iowa

100 Years of Girl Scouting!

We created a small display of Girl Scout memorabilia from Iowa Women’s Archives collections. Did you attend Girl Scout Camp? What is your favorite memory? Come see our display or type a memory here.

Centennial Celebration of the 1912 Bread and Roses Strike

Please join the Iowa Women’s Archives for a uniquely Iowan perspective celebrating the centennial of the 1912 Lawrence, Massachusetts, textile strike.

The March 6 event, run as part of Women’s History Month, will premiere the play, “Bread, Roses and Buttons: Pearl McGill and the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike,” written by Janet Schlapkohl, an MFA candidate in the University of Iowa Theater Arts Department.

One hundred years ago this month, seventeen-year-old Iowa labor activist Pearl McGill played a leading role in the work stoppage of 25,000 New England textile workers, famously known as the “Bread and Roses” strike. But the seeds of her activism were sown in Iowa’s pearl button industry in Muscatine where McGill advocated for the labor rights of 2,500 men, women, and children who faced poor wages and working conditions in the city’s numerous button factories.

This event will be held from noon to 1:00 p.m. on Tuesday, March 6 in the 2nd-floor conference room (2032) of the UI Main Library (Madison and Burlington street).

The event is free and open to the public. For further information please contact janet-weaver@uiowa.edu

Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa-sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact the Iowa Women’s Archives by calling (319) 335-5068.

Women’s Equality: Myth or Reality?

Women’s Equality: Myth or Reality?

Speakers:

Professor Linda K. Kerber
May Brodbeck Professor in the Liberal Arts and Sciences, Department of History and Lecturer in the College of Law, University of Iowa

Professor Ann Laquer Estin
Aliber Family Chair in Law, University of Iowa College of Law

Alice Dahle
Co-chair, Amnesty International USA’s Women’s Human Rights Coordination Group

Introduction:
Dayna Ballantyne
Executive Director, Iowa Women’s Foundation, the Event Co-Sponsor.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Old Brick, 26 E. Market Street, 7:00 to 9:00 pm

The series is free and open to the public.

This is the fifth in a seven part series of community conversations sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Johnson County Education Fund Audience members will be encouraged to engage in conversation with the presenters following the approximately one hour formal presentation.
(The views expressed are those of the Speakers and not those of any supporter)

Financial Support

Humanities Iowa and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Hawkeye Chapter of the ACLU of Iowa, Hills Bank and Trust Company, Iowa City Human Rights Commission, Johnson County Bar Association, West Bank , University of Iowa Community Credit Union, Technigraphics and Hotel Vetro.

Supporters

AAUW, ACLU of Iowa, The African American Museum of Iowa, The Hawkeye Chapter of the ACLU, Iowa Citizens Action Network, Iowa City Human Rights Commission, Iowa City Public Library, Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature, Iowa Women’s Foundation, Johnson County Bar Association, Kirkwood Community College, Labor Center, University of Iowa; League of Women Voters of Cedar Rapids/Marion, Iowa Women’s Archives–University of Iowa The Women’s Resource and Action Center, University of Iowa.

Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend. If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact Dawn Suter in advance at (319) 321-2601 or email at jclwvoters@gmail.com

A history major’s thoughts on working in the IWA

Froilan Orozco

I am currently a senior at the University of Iowa and am majoring in history. To get a general idea of the kind of work a historian can do I decided to get a part-time position in the Iowa Women’s Archives (IWA).

The activities that I have been involved in this job so far have consisted of moving boxes of historical records and helping to process material to be put in thearchives. I have worked on two collections. One dealt with the League of Women Voters of Johnson County (LWV-JC). I found it difficult trying to find some kind of order in which to put the material. I benefited from this exercise because I really had no idea what the League of Women Voters was about, but by the end of sorting everything out I was able to get some knowledge on different aspects of the LWV.

The second collection I looked at was of some material donated by Salvador Lopez. It consisted of information on Antonia and Frederico Lopez. I had a better idea of how to work with this collection because it was not as big as the LWV. In working with this collection I learned how to compose a finding aid. While looking through the material I became exposed to the lives of different people who I could relate to. Much of the collection consisted of correspondence between Antonia and Frederico Lopez with their siblings in Mexico. The letters are written in Spanish and being a native Spanish speaker I found this part of the job to be fun because I was able to use my native language and learn the style of writing a letter in Spanish. I have written a few emails to Spanish speaking friends outside of the United States using the beginning style of many of the letters in this collection. There is a certificate of naturalization found in the collection that belonged to Frederico Lopez. This certificate made me wonder how my parents and sibling got their certificate of naturalization. In the collection of Antonia and Frederico getting a certificate is shown as a process that took quite some time. The courses that I have taken at the University of Iowa also helped in understanding some of the material. For example, I was able to see that the Mexican Revolution was a push factor for the Lopez family to leave Mexico and that the jobs offered in Iowa were a pull factor into that state. What I discovered from the letters was that communication by Antonia and Frederico Lopez with family back in Mexico was hard to maintain, which caused some concern from certain individuals in the family. I learned that in several occasions the family in Iowa sent money back to the family in Mexico. Health was also a main concern in many of the letters. Also the discussion of becoming naturalized was presented in one of the letters.

The hardest part of this process was to keep from researching every piece of information. I learned that this collection plays a part with other collections in the Mujeres Latinas Project in the IWA. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) is also a collection that is located in the IWA. The fact that all these collections are tied together helps me develop a better story about Antonia and Frederico Lopez.

I was told that the finding aid is only supposed to give a glimpse of the material that can be found in the collection and is not meant to be a replacement. I have learned that the finding aid is a tool that is used as reference to the material in a collection and that it can be a very long process for an archivist to do. The organizational skills that I have been learning in this job have really helped me outside of this experience. This job has given me more appreciation for archives and archivists because after working on these two collections I have seen and learned how much work is needed in processing material. Another cool part of this job is the fact that I have been able to access parts of the library which in the past had always been a mystery to me.

–Froilan Orozco, Fall 2011

Women’s Suffrage digital collection unveiled

The Iowa Women’s Archives and University of Iowa Libraries marked Women’s Equality Day—August 26^th—by unveiling a new digital collection documenting the decades-long campaign by Iowa women to gain the right to vote. The Women’s Suffrage in Iowa Digital Collection is the culmination of a yearlong project to select and scan photographs, letters, and other primary sources from the University Libraries, the State Historical Society of Iowa, and Iowa State University’s Special Collections Department. This collection is now available through the Iowa Digital Library and can be found here. It offers researchers, teachers, students, historians, and genealogists a centralized starting point for further investigation into this significant period in Iowa’s history.

“This is a great example of the power of digitization. “Women’s Suffrage in Iowa” brings together documents scattered through collections in the Iowa Women’s Archives and at other institutions and makes them available to a wide audience within and beyond the borders of Iowa,” said IWA curator Kären Mason. “We hope the digital collection will entice Iowans to visit the Iowa Women’s Archives, the State Historical Society, or Iowa State. Since we were only able to include a fraction of the rich suffrage collections in Iowa there are many treasures yet to be uncovered.”

In addition, the Iowa Women’s Archives has created an online exhibit that provides a brief introduction to Iowa’s suffrage history and points to local and state suffrage resources including websites, print materials, personal collections, newspaper archives, and contacts in various counties. The exhibit “Iowa’s Suffrage Scrapbook: 1854-1920” is accessible at http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/exhibits/suffrage/. Among the digitized items is sheet music for a song written by Helen Cowles LeCron as Iowa geared up for a statewide referendum on women’s suffrage in 1916:

When suffrage takes the Hawkeye State, Hurrah! Hurrah!
The world will call us wise and great, Hurrah! Hurrah!
So lend your smiles and best applause, Hurrah! Hurrah!
To help the worthy Suffrage Cause, Hurrah! Hurrah!

“When Suffrage Takes the Hawkeye State” by Helen Cowles LeCron

Alas, the optimism of these lyrics was not borne out. The suffragists’ hopes were dashed in what was generally viewed as a corrupt election, heavily influenced by the liquor interests that feared a female electorate would bring about prohibition. Iowa women had to wait another four years to vote, until the 19^th Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified on August 26, 1920. A map showing “irregularities” in the 1916 referendum and hundreds of other documents are now available online, thanks to a grant from the State Historical Society, Inc.

“By presenting the exhibit in the form of a scrapbook, we tried to evoke the feeling of doing historical research, paging through an old volume looking for clues to what people thought and did as they fought for the vote,” said Christine Mastalio, a graduate student in the University of Iowa’s School of Library and Information Science who created the exhibit and digital collection with another SLIS student, Kayla Pollock.

The Iowa Women’s Archives holds manuscript collections that chronicle the lives and work of Iowa women, their families, and their communities. These personal papers and organizational records date from the nineteenth century to the present. Together with oral histories, they document the activities of Iowa women throughout the state and beyond its borders. The Iowa Women’s Archives is open to the public and located on the third floor of the University of Iowa’s Main Library. Questions may be directed to lib-women@uiowa.edu or to staff at 319-335-5068. Or find the Archives on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/#!/IowaWomensArchives

Women’s History Month events, March 21-25

The Iowa Women’s Archives will host events on feminist documentary filmmaking and on the Triangle Factory fire of 1911.

Tuesday, March 22nd, 4:00 p.m., Iowa Women’s Archives, UI Main Library
Award-winning filmmaker Marlene Booth will present a talk entitled “Tell Me a Story: Making and Learning From Documentary Films” on Tuesday, March 22nd. Born and raised in Des Moines, Booth looks back – with clips from her films – on 35 years of filmmaking as a woman, a feminist, and a dyed-in-the-wool Hawkeye. The event will be held in the Iowa Women’s Archives. Reception at 4:00 p.m., followed by presentation from 4:30-5:30 p.m. The Iowa Women’s Archives is located on the 3rd floor of the University of Iowa’s Main Library, just off Burlington and Madison in Iowa City.

Booth, a lecturer in film at the University of Hawaii, has worked in film since 1975, both as an independent and for public television station WGBH-TV in Boston. She has produced and directed several major documentary films screened on PBS, at national and international film festivals, and in classrooms nationwide. Her most recent film, Pidgin: the voice of Hawaii (2009), examines the language spoken by over half of Hawai’i’s people, and confronts issues of language and identity, and who gets to decide what language we speak. Marlene Booth’s visit is sponsored by the UI’s Chief Diversity Office, Law School, History Department, Libraries, and Hillel.

Wednesday, March 23rd at 7:00 p.m. at Hillel
Marlene Booth’s 1999 film “Yidl in the Middle: Growing Up Jewish in Iowa” (1999) explores her Iowa-Jewish roots and uses home movies, period photos, her high school reunion, and interviews, to examine the process of negotiating identity, as an American, a Jew, and a woman. “Yidl in the Middle” will be screened at Hillel (122 E. Market St.) on Wednesday, March 23rd at 7:00 p.m., followed by a question and answer with the director.

Friday, March 25th noon to 1:00 p.m, Room 2032, UI Main Library
We will close women’s history month on Friday, March 25th with “In Memoriam: The Triangle Factory Fire 100th Anniversary,” an event to commemorate the 146 young, immigrant garment workers who lost their lives in this tragedy. Remarks by Professor of History Linda K. Kerber will begin at noon. Dramatic readings by Carol Macvey and UI theater students will follow, with comments by playwright Janet Schlapkohl. This event will take place from noon to 1:00 p.m. in the 2nd floor conference room (2032) of the UI Main Library (Burlington and Madison streets).

For further information call 319-335-5068. All events are free and open to the public.

March 2nd lecture: Black Sorority Activism

“WE STRIVE AND WE DO:

BLACK SORORITY ACTIVISM AND THE BLACK PUBLIC SPHERE”

The Iowa Women’s Archives kicks off Women’s History Month 2011 with a lecture on Wednesday, March 2nd, by Deborah Elizabeth Whaley, Assistant Professor of American Studies and African American Studies at the University of Iowa.

Whaley is the author of Disciplining Women: Alpha Kappa Alpha, Black Counterpublics, and the Cultural Politics of Black Sororities, which looks at the role of the Black sorority in women’s everyday lives, public life, and politics. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, archival research, oral history, and interpretive readings of popular culture and sorority rituals, the study includes sorority members’ stories of community organizing and of cultural practices and rituals such as step dancing, pledging, and hazing.

Many of the African-American women whose papers are in the Iowa Women’s Archives were members of either Alpha Kappa Alpha or Delta Sigma Theta, so we’ve put up a small exhibit in our reading room of programs and memorabilia of these sororities.

Please join us on Wednesday, March 2, for a reception at 4:00 p.m. and Professor Whaley’s talk at 4:30 p.m.

The Iowa Women’s Archives is located on the 3rd floor of the University of Iowa’s Main Library, just off Burlington and Madison in Iowa City.

The Nutcracker in Cedar Rapids

Program and photographs of productions of The Nutcracker from the records of the Dieman-Bennett Dance Theatre of the Hemispheres.

Dancers Edna Dieman and Julia Bennett opened their dance studio in 1951 at a rented room in the Cedar Rapids YWCA. Ten years later they formed the Dance Theatre of the Hemispheres and built a repertoire in classical ballet, Indian and Spanish dance, tap, jazz, and historical dance.

For more information about the company and its productions, go to

http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/findingaids/IWATitleDetail.aspx?CollectionIdentifier=IWA0265