Shimer co-sponsors Seneca Falls Dialogues

The biennial Seneca Falls Dialogues are a collaborative effort to reinvigorate Seneca Falls as a site of feminist activism and intellectual exchange. The event is co-sponsored by Shimer (a bit of Shimer trivia: Seneca Falls is about 20 minutes east of where Cinderella Gregory died.)

Allison Savage writes in advance of leaving for conference: "It is difficult to imagine a better locale for a conference like Dialogues. Seneca Falls is home to the historic 1848 Women’s Rights Convention, where the influential speeches of Lucretia Mott, Frederick Douglass, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton exposed the vast inequalities faced by women of the time. Many of the words spoken in the debate on women’s suffrage are familiar to Shimer students, as Stanton, Mott, Douglass, and Susan B. Anthony’s arguments are a part of Shimer’s Social Sciences 2 curriculum. Engaging in critical dialogue on contemporary civil rights issues in what is arguably the birthplace of women’s rights should inspire new perspectives and enlightening insights into an ever-evolving conversation."

This year's conference on “Politics of Leadership and Civil Rights” will feature student and faculty roundtables on such topics as third wave feminism, cultural icons, and silence. Highlights include the premier screening of a new film by Leah Shafer (Media and Society, Hobart and William Smith Colleges), and a keynote address by Nancy Hewitt (Rutgers University), recipient of the Women’s Institute for Leadership and Learning Award. The conference ends with a talk by three civil rights activists, Judy Richardson, Betty Garman Robinson, and Dorothy M. Zellner, (who will also be at Hobart and William Smith Colleges on Friday, October 19).