Forum Series
hosted by the Gordy Honors College
The W's Ina E. Gordy Honors College presents the Forum Series each semester, hosting national, regional, and local speakers and offering films and other special presentations. All university students and faculty are invited, and all events are free and open to the public.
All events begin at 6 p.m. in Nissan Auditorium, Parkinson Hall, on the MUW campus.
Spring 2020
January 30
Black Women and the Suffrage Movement in Mississippi, 1863-1965
Dr. Shennette Garrett-Scott
Associate Professor of History and African American Studies, University of Mississippi
Dr. Garrett-Scott will discuss the ways that Black women in Mississippi actively participated in the suffrage movement after the Civil War. They fought for women’s suffrage even as they supported Black men and passage of the 15th Amendment. With passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, Black women could not claim victory. It would take another forty years before they could exercise the right to vote. This presentation provides an overview of the 100-year-fight by Black women in Mississippi to maintain their place in public political discourse, from the Civil War to passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Dr. Garrett-Scott is author of Banking on Freedom: Black Women in U.S. Finance Before the New Deal (Columbia University Press, 2019), the first full-length history of finance capitalism that centers black women and the banking institutions and networks they built from the eve of the Civil War to the Great Depression.
February 27
Dr. Benjamin Onyeagucha
Assistant Professor of Biology, Mississippi University for Women
Dr. Onyeagucha’s research focuses on identifying and characterizing biomarkers and molecular drivers in cancer for the purpose of developing novel therapeutic strategies for breast cancer patients. Students in Dr. Onyeagucha's lab learn both basic and translational techniques while utilizing interdisciplinary approaches in biomedical sciences.
March 19
Morna Young
2019 Scots Writer o the Year (Scots Language Awards)
Young is a playwright, actress and musician from a wee fishing village in Moray, Scotland. Lost at Sea, her debut full-length play, premiered at Perth Theatre in April before touring Scotland. This epic tale spanning forty years of the fishing industry is a personal tribute to Scotland’s coastal communities. The play won two Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland (CATS) in June 2019 and was a finalist in the Herald’s Culture Awards. Her comedy Aye, Elvis, which commenced its third outing as part of the People’s Choice season in April 2019, explores the life of a female Elvis impersonator from Aberdeen, Scotland.
March 26
Nell Peel Wolfe Lecture Series
Dr. Harriet Pollack
President, Eudora Welty Society
Pollack is author of Eudora Welty’s Fiction and Photography: The Body of the Other Woman; editor of the new book series Critical Perspectives on Eudora Welty (University Press of Mississippi), including the first book in the series, New Essays on Eudora Welty, Class, and Race; and editor or co-editor of four other volumes, including Eudora Welty and Politics: Did the Writer Crusade? and Emmett Till in Literary Memory and Imagination. Barnes & Noble will offer her books for sale in the Hogarth Student Center and at the event.
April 16
Gordy Honors College Undergraduate Research Symposium (Part I)
April 23
Gordy Honors College Undergraduate Research Symposium (Part II)
Previous Events:
Fall 2019
August 29
What's Wrong with Disabilities?
Dr. Josh Dohmen
Assistant Professor of Philosophy, MUW
Dr. Dohmen will discuss how disabilities come to be, interactions between disabled and non-disabled persons, and some ethical and epistemic considerations that arise from these interactions. Dr. Dohmen is author of “‘A Little of Her Language’: Epistemic Injustice and Mental Disability,” which won the 2016 Essay Prize from Res Philosophica, and of “Disability as Abject: Kristeva, Disability, and Resistance," which appeared in Hypatia.
September 12
Is It Really OK to Die?
Debra Rhinewalt, RN, BSN, CHPN
Director, Council on Nursing Practice, Mississippi Nurses' Association
Palliative Care Clinical Coordinator, Baptist Memorial Hospital Golden Triangle
Co-Sponsored by the College of Nursing & Health Sciences
Rhinewalt will discuss palliative care—what it is and isn’t—and the decisions patients and their families must make about goals of care and quality of life when dealing with serious or terminal diagnoses. This event is in conjunction with The W's 2019-20 Common Reading Initiative focus on When Breath Becomes Air, neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi's memoir about living with a terminal illness after being diagnosed with cancer at the age of 36.
September 26
How to Develop Leadership Skills through Volunteerism
Dr. Sarah Petschonek
Founder and CEO, Volunteer Odyssey
Dr. Petschonek founded Volunteer Odyssey after completing her project Mission Memphis: 30 Consecutive Days Volunteering with 30 Non-Profits, chronicled on her blog, Confessions of a Volunteer, and conducting a cross-country volunteer tour researching volunteerism in nine U.S. cities from Portland, Oregon, to Jacksonville, Florida. Volunteer Odyssey now links volunteers to opportunities with 60+ nonprofits throughout Memphis. Petschonek was named as one of Memphis Flyer’s 20 Under 30 and American Express’ 50 Under 40 Social Entrepreneurs.
October 10
Kiese Laymon
Keynote, Welty Writers' Symposium (7:30 p.m., Poindexter Hall)
The Forum Series supports the Welty Writers' Symposium as Kiese Laymon reads from Heavy: An American Memoir, winner of the Carnegie Medal for Nonfiction, the LA Times Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, and a Barnes and Noble Discover Award and named one of the Best Books of 2018 by the The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, NPR, Library Journal, The Washington Post, Southern Living, Entertainment Weekly, San Francisco Chronicle, and The New York Times Critics.
October 24
Study Abroad and Away: MUW's Passport to the World
The Forum Series' annual focus on study abroad and away will focus on the question: In the high-impact educational combination of travel and study, what are the greatest lessons to be learned? Students who studied in Spain and Scotland and faculty will give their answers. The event will also include a preview of upcoming study abroad and away programs.
November 7
No Exit
The Forum Series joins The W's Department of Theatre for their production of Jean-Paul Sartre's 1944 existentialist play No Exit, in which three deceased characters are punished by being locked into a room together for eternity, becoming mirrors for each other's darkest secrets.
November 21
Gordy Honors College Undergraduate Research Symposium (Part I)
December 5
Gordy Honors College Undergraduate Research Symposium (Part II)
Spring 2019
February 14
Film Screening: Death by Design: The Dirty Secret of Our Digital Addiction
Consumers love their smartphones, tablets, and laptops. By 2020, five billion people will own a mobile phone and four billion will have a personal computer. But this revolution has a dark side most consumers don’t see. In an investigation that takes her around the world, filmmaker Sue Williams investigates the underbelly of the electronics industry and tells a story of environmental degradation, health tragedies, and the unsustainability of consumerism.
February 28
Dr. Travis Hagey
Assistant Professor of Biology, MUW
Dr. Hagey will discuss his work on the biomechanics, evolution, and ecology of gecko lizards, with special attention to their adhesive toes, and more generally how animal performance works and why animals are built the way they are. He will also discuss his science education outreach to K-12 students, museums, and the general public. He has published numerous studies of gecko species and animal performance and was a Science Communication Postdoctoral Fellow at the BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action at Michigan State University before coming to MUW in 2018.
March 21
Dr. Rachel Allison
Assistant Professor of Sociology, Mississippi State University
author, Kicking Center: Gender and the Selling of Women's Professional Soccer
a Women’s History Month event
In spite of recent progress for women’s soccer, gender disparities in opportunity, compensation, training resources, and media airtime continue, and since 2000, two professional leagues for women have started up and folded. In Kicking Center, Dr. Allison analyzes the complexities of striving to break into male-dominated U.S. professional sport and the challenges and opportunities in selling and marketing women’s soccer.
March 28
Nell Peel Wolfe Lecture
Tracy Crow
editor, It's My Country Too: Women's Military Stories from the American Revolution to Afghanistan
author, Eyes Right: Confessions from a Woman Marine and three other books
Crow is a former Marine Corps officer and President/CEO of the community arts foundation Milspeak, which supports the creative endeavors of military servicemembers, veterans, and their families. She will discuss her own and American women’s experience in the military and what it means to tell one’s own story. Barnes & Noble will offer her books for sale in the Hogarth Student Center and at the event.
April 11
Poetry Reading and Conversation
Kris Lee
Assistant Professor of English, MUW
author, To Square a Circle
C.T. Salazar
Graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing Program, MUW
author, This Might Have Meant Fire
in celebration of National Poetry Month
April 25
Gordy Honors College Undergraduate Research Symposium (Part I)
May 2