Women in the Arts Featured During Women’s History Month Events

This year’s campus celebration of Women’s History Month will feature two events that showcase women making waves in poetry and the visual arts.

“We are really excited about doing a Women’s History Month focused on the arts because the arts are so essential to Pittsburgh as a city,” said Dr. Laura Engel, associate professor of English and event organizer.

The keynote event will feature award-winning poet Jan Beatty, who will present Undressing in Public: Gender and Poetry on Thursday, March 14, at 7 p.m. in the Africa Room. Author of The Switching Yard and host of NPR’s Prosody, Beatty will read selections of her poetry and talk about her experience being a female poet in Pittsburgh and running the Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops at Carlow University.

“Jan is a big name in poetry—not just here in Pittsburgh, but nationally,” Engel said. “She’s created an amazing sense of community among women in poetry and the arts.”

A second event will feature an artist’s talk by video artist Emily Newman on Tuesday, March 19, at 4:30 p.m. in Room 104 of College Hall. Newman will share clips from her recent work, including Kruzhok Pittsburgh, which explores the relationships between Russian grandparents and their American-Russian grandchildren, especially as it concerns the transmission of information from one generation to another.

“We thought it was important to showcase a visual artist because of Pittsburgh’s thriving visual art scene,” Engel explained. “Emily is a really interesting video artist, and her work explores a lot of feminist themes: questions of motherhood, the body, beauty, questions of identity.”

Both events are free and open to the public with receptions afterward. In addition, Beatty will be signing her books, which will be available for purchase.

For additional information, email wsgs@duq.edu.

The events are sponsored by the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, the McAnulty College NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) Endowment and the English and history departments.