Since March of 2000, the cross-disciplinary study area of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at St. Mary’s College of Maryland has organized a colloquium each spring that focuses on a topic critical to the lives of women worldwide. This year’s program, “Choices and Lives: Abortion After Roe v. Wade,” to be held March 19 – 21, will consider the ways in which representations of gender and sexuality frame our understanding of reproductive rights, abortion, and the U.S. Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade forty years after the decision.
Schedule of Events:
8:15 p.m., Tuesday, March 19: Artists Eliza Baldi and Diane Davis will present “The Uncertainty Principle,” a series of monologues taken from interviews with people who represent a variety of experiences with political positions on the issue of abortion.
4:45 p.m., Wednesday, March 20: Professor Joanna L. Grossman will present “The Forty Years’ War: Roe v. Wade, Reproductive Rights, and the Battle for Gender Equality,” a discussion of the legal battles leading up to and following the landmark decision.
8:15 p.m. Wednesday, March 20: Professor Alison Jaggar will discuss “With Procreative Liberty and Justice for All: From Prohibition via Choice to Freedom,” a lecture on the philosophical and ethical implications of abortion.
4:15 p.m., Thursday, March 21: Planned Parenthood’s Jenny Black will speak about the role of patients and providers in the recent political battles for women’s reproductive rights in the talk “Groundhog Day for Patients and Providers: Re-living Daily the Debate on Roe’s Promise.”
8:15 p.m., Thursday, March 22: Colloquium Roundtable, Colloquium speakers and moderator, Professor Christine Adams
All events are free and open to the public and will be held in St. Mary’s College of Maryland’s Cole Cinema, Campus Center (18952 E. Fisher Road St. Mary’s City, MD 20686).
Each year, support for and attendance at colloquium events has grown larger. Event organizers have ensured that the programs express local, national, and international viewpoints, and that the participants move beyond the lectern into special receptions and meals, and even, occasionally, onto the St. Mary’s River in a kayak.
For more information, contact Brandi Stanton at bstanton@smcm.edu or Gail Savage at glsavage@smcm.edu.