With March underway, Women’s History Month has come with it, and Georgia Southern University’s Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Program has made plans to celebrate the month and bring recognition to what it stands for.

In years past, the programs on both Armstrong and Statesboro campuses would work together to create a set of events held on both campuses, but with the pandemic still in swing, communication and organization between campuses has made that a bit more difficult. This year, both campuses will be holding their own selection of events aimed to bring awareness to this month.

“I think that Women’s History Month is a great opportunity to talk about women’s issues, and we talk about this a lot, especially in February and March because February is Black History Month, and there are a lot of intersectional issues around race and gender that make Black History Month and Women’s History Month important events that happen next to one another.” Said Dr. Lisa Costello, the Director of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies on the Statesboro Campus. “So we also like to make sure that people remember that the month of March is not the only time to be thinking about gender issues; they’re, of course, important issues that are year-round.”

WGSS’s first event was a workshop held last Thursday; co-sponsored by WGSS and the Department of Literature, the workshop was a presentation by Hip-Hop scholar Dr. Regina Bradley discussing the representations of the Hip-Hop South. In addition, a student research symposium, “Talking Back,” is scheduled for March 25. Intending to celebrate upcoming women scholars in WGSS, the symposium will feature 6 student panelists who will be given the chance to give a presentation on their research papers from their 2000-level courses over Zoom.

“I think it is important to remember, especially in the academic setting, that women’s voices are important to hear and important to add to the general conversations around music, gender, hegemony, and masculinity–whatever it is that they’re talking about–and giving people a base to present those ideas and to argue for those ideas.” Dr. Costello stated. “I think it’s especially important for us to give voice to the younger women on campus and give them practice; as far as I know, there are no other second-year research symposiums for students, and I think it’s a really cool idea to just have students presenting their research in an early stage to understand how important their work can be and have a public venue to share it and have an audience for it.”

The “Talking Back” student research symposium will be held on March 25 at 6 p.m. Registration for the event can be found at the link listed in the above picture.