Events and programs at the Women's Center educate University of Virginia community members to create change in themselves, their community, and the world by advocating gender equity.
Spring 2012 Calendar
All events are free & open to the public unless otherwise noted. To view a pdf of the Women's Center's Spring 2012 Calendar, please click here.
Spring Legal Clinic Sessions
Tuesdays: February 21, March 20, and April 17
7:00 p.m.–9:00 p.m
U.Va. Women's Center
The Legal Clinic is staffed by professional attorneys who offer pro bono legal counseling to Charlottesville community members and University employees. During the 2011–2012 academic year, the clinic will be held on the third Tuesday of every month from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. For more information and/or to schedule a half-hour appointment, please call 434.982.2361, or email Deeva Shah dvs2a@virginia.edu or Megan O’Donnell meo3md@virginia.edu.
Celebrate Every Body Week
Monday, February 20–Friday, February 24
Celebrate Every Body Week aims to promote a positive body image for women and men of all shapes and sizes through fun and informative events. 2012 events will include: A Day without Mirrors Campaign, The Great Jeans Give Away, Beyond the Body Speed Mentoring (see below), and more. Contact: Amy Chestnutt aek4k@virginia.edu.
For a detailed listing of this year's exciting events, please click here. For guidance on how to talk with someone who you are concerned may be struggling with disordered eating, please click here.
Cosponsored with the U.Va. Coalition on Eating Disorders and Exercise Concerns.
Beyond the Body Speed Mentoring
DATE CHANGE! Previously scheduled for February 22.
Please check back for new date.
"Today's female leaders networking with tomorrow's female leaders." In this special networking and mentoring event, U.Va. student participants will have the chance to, in a structured environment, meet with University women leaders to solicit career, leadership, and personal development advice. Mentors will share advice from lived experience. After the speed mentoring sessions, a networking reception will be held for mentors and mentees. Contact: Barbara Burke barbaraeburke@gmail.com.
Pre-conference Symposium on Global Violence against Women
Sunday, March 4
9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
University of Virginia School of Nursing
The 18th Annual Nursing Network on Violence against Women, International Conference brings together an exemplary group of scholars and advocates engaged in anti-violence work around the globe. Prior to the official conference kick-off, NNVAWI's Pre-conference Symposium on Global Violence against Women will be held on March 4, 2012. The pre-conference is intended to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration dedicated to anti-violence scholarship and policy change. This symposium offers an international forum on gender-based violence and women's health, with presentations by Tulia Maria Uribe (Colombia), Natalia V. Lokhmatkina (Russia), Ngaropi Diane Cameron (New Zealand), Mirna Perla (El Salvador), and Roszina Karmaliani (Pakistan). The 18th Annual NNVAWI Conference is dedicated to Anne Cary Bankhead, a granddaughter of President Jefferson who suffered abuse by her husband, Charles. Jefferson wrote letters attempting to ensure his granddaughter's safety and provided her refuge from her husband in his home at Monticello. For more information, please visit nnvawi.org.
Cosponsored with the University of Virginia School of Nursing and the Vice Provost for International Programs.
Iris Magazine Spring Release
Wednesday, March 14
Spring is here, which must mean the latest issue of Iris Magazine is, too! In it, we're revisiting Iris' amazing past, with a selection of essays, articles, fiction, and poetry from the past 30 years of issues. Highlights from the spring 2012 issue include: interviews with Gloria Steinem, bell hooks, and other luminaries, as well as the best fiction, poetry, and personal essays from our archive, not to mention a moving new piece from Carol Wood–Associate Vice President of Public Affairs at U.Va., an inspiring interview with former U.Va. Distinguished Alumna Alexandra Arriaga, and the unveiling of our essay contest winner. Get your copy, and marvel at where we're been, and where we're going!
Spring Self-Defense Classes
Tuesdays: 3/20, 3/27, 4/3, 4/10, 4/17, and 4/24
6:00 p.m.–9:00 p.m.
Pre-registration is required and class size is limited. Please contact Lisa Speidel at las7p@virginia.edu for more information. More details can be found here.
The National Rape Aggression Defense (RAD) Program is an empowerment based course, designed to counter the stereotype that women are defenseless against an attacker. This course teaches women awareness of their physical strengths and abilities to use their bodies as personal weapons. RAD emphasizes a variety of options in practical risk-reduction and basic self-defense, recognizing that every situation is different and that no one choice is right for all women.
The RAD class offered by the Women's Center lasts for 18 hours. The first session includes a discussion about increasing awareness, risk reduction, and assertiveness training. The rest of the class covers learning different physical defense moves, such as getting out of certain holds, learning how to strike, kick and defend yourself from the ground. Much of the class is spent practicing these moves full strength on kick bags and pads, with the goal of making self-defense instinctual. There is also the option of realistic simulation, which entails a fully padded instructor reenacting attacks so students can apply moves learned to a live person. If someone is interested in practicing after a class, they may go to any other RAD class anywhere in the U.S. for free and practice.
2012 U.Va. Distinguished Alumna Award Celebration, Honoring Kimberly Dozier
Thursday, March 22
2:00 p.m.–3:30 p.m.
Ednam Hall, Boar’s Head Inn
Join us as we celebrate the journalistic legacy of Kimberly Dozier (Grad ’93) and present her with the 2012 U.Va. Distinguished Alumna Award. Ms. Dozier currently covers intelligence and counterterrorism as a correspondent for the Associated Press (AP), a job that takes her to the heart of the war on violent extremism in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and beyond. Before her move to AP, Ms. Dozier was a CBS News correspondent covering the White House and the Pentagon for CBS News' Washington bureau from 2007 to 2010. She was stationed in Baghdad from 2003 to 2006 as the chief reporter in Iraq for CBS News. In 2006, while preparing a Memorial Day story about US troops in Iraq, Ms. Dozier was seriously injured in a car bombing. She published her now-sold-out memoir Breathing the Fire: Fighting to Report–and Survive–the War in Iraq, in 2008, detailing her recovery from the bomb that hit her team while covering a 4th Infantry Division patrol in Baghdad. Ms. Dozier re-released the book as a paperback in November 2011; it was updated to reflect her return to the field and re-named, Breathing the Fire: Fighting to Survive, and Get Back to the Fight.
In her fourteen-year-career as a foreign correspondent, Ms. Dozier has covered the Middle East extensively for CBS television and radio broadcasts, as well as for The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Monitor Radio, Voice of America, and the BBC World Service. Ms. Dozier is the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2008 Peabody Award and the 2008 RTNDA/Edward R. Murrow Award for Feature Reporting. She has also received three American Women in Radio and Television Gracie Awards, as well as the organization's 2007 Grand Gracie Award for her work in Iraq. In 2008, Ms. Dozier became the first woman to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation's McCrary Award for Excellence in Journalism. Ms. Dozier graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College with a bachelor’s degree in human rights and Spanish, and from the University of Virginia in 1993 with a master’s degree in foreign affairs and the Middle East.
Please RSVP by emailing Carol Gilbert at ceg6a@eservices.virginia.edu by Thursday, March 8.
Cosponsored with the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Development and the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Recruitment and Retention.
Virginia Festival of the Book: A Reading with Kimberly Dozier
Thursday, March 22
4:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m.
The Solarium of the Colonnade Club–Pavilion VII, West Lawn
Award-winning foreign correspondent Kimberly Dozier (Grad ’93) will read selections from her memoir Breathing the Fire: Fighting to Survive, and Get Back to the Fight. She will also recount her experiences as a journalist reporting from war zones and other places of conflict. The reading will be followed by a question and answer session, book-signing, and reception honoring Ms. Dozier.
Please RSVP by visiting bit.ly/DozierVFB by Thursday, March 15.
Cosponsored with the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.
Ella Baker Day Symposium
Friday, April 6
10:00 a.m.–7:00 p.m.
Dome Room, U.Va. Rotunda
On April 1, 2011 we launched the first Ella Baker Day Symposium to spearhead the movement to create an Ella Baker Day in the Commonwealth of Virginia. We had an amazing set of panelists who provided information on the legacy of civil rights activist Ella Baker and suggested ways in which we can carry her spirit forward. This year, the second annual Ella Baker Day Symposium will address issues of economic uncertainty, labor disputes, matrices of inequality, and more. The keynote speaker will be Margaret Huang, Director of Rights Working Group. Two panels will provide the opportunity to address, respectively, wealth inequality and labor organizing, and intersections of racism, sexism, classism, and other -isms. A reception and film screening of Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker will follow.
Take Back the Night Week
Monday, April 16–Thursday, April 19
Take Back the Night March and Rally
Thursday, April 19
6:30 p.m.–10:00 p.m.
nTelos Wireless Pavilion
Join the U.Va. and Charlottesville communities in reclaiming every woman’s right to a life free of violence. This annual march and rally will start at the nTelos Wireless Pavilion, move down the Charlottesville Mall, to the University of Virginia's Amphitheater for a Survivors' Speak-out. We invite you to take a stand, break the silence, and become part of the solution to ending sexual violence.
Organized by Feminism Is for Everyone (FIFE) and the Sexual Assault Leadership Council
Iris Magazine Spring Release, Featuring Author Virginia Moran
Thursday, April 19
5:00 p.m.–7:00 p.m.
U.Va. Women's Center
To celebrate the spring 2012 release of Iris: A Magazine for Thinking Young Women, the Women’s Center is hosting a literary soiree! Receive your copy of Iris, mingle with other readers, and hear from author and Iris Editor Virginia Moran as she reads from her newly published novel, The Algebra of Snow. Light food and refreshments will be available. Dr. Moran holds a Ph.D. from the University of Houston in Literature and Creative Writing, and Bachelor's and Master's degrees in English from the University of Virginia. She has published in Salon.com, Oxford American, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and Feminist Studies, among other journals and magazines. The Algebra of Snow has been nominated for a Pushcart Editor's Choice Award.
Click here to see the full Calendar for Spring 2012.
Women's Center Homecoming
On October 14, 2011, the Women's Center held a young alumni reunion reception. Past interns, staff, and volunteers returned to the Center to share their post-college experiences and give some insightful advice to current interns. The reception had a great turnout and was a success!
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