It wasn’t long ago—perhaps five years, Angie Hattery said—that the celebration of Women’s History Month at George Mason University was an intimate affair.
“Just a couple of events and a small but committed audience,” said the professor and director of George Mason’s Women and Gender Studies program in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Compare that to this year’s celebration that not only spans the month of March with nine events, but also seeps into April. See the calendar here.
“The response has been great,” Hattery said. “Tons and tons of people at every event we have had.”
The growth is no accident.
The event calendar is clearly a product of its time. Forums included challenging fat shaming, leadership in popular culture, the new wave of feminism, and celebrating activist women who have led the way to stopping sexual violence.
Danica Roem, Virginia’s first openly transgender elected official, will speak about her journey from journalist to politician, at 5 p.m. April 3 at the Verizon Theater on the SciTech Campus.
But event organizers also have been mindful of collaborating with other on-campus groups.
For example, what Hattery called the unofficial kickoff to Women’s History Month came in February with a campus appearance by Sybrina Fulton, whose son, Trayvon Martin, who was killed by gun violence in 2012.
The talk, with an audience of about 600, was as part of the Sojourner Truth Lecture Series and was co-sponsored by Women and Gender Studies and the African and African American Studies Program, and was a bridge between February’s Black History Month and Women’s History Month in March.
Roem’s appearance is a collaboration with LGBTQ Resources. The event celebrating activist women at the forefront of stopping sexual violence was a collaborative with Mason’s Student Support and Advocacy Center.
“It’s been a push to be more interdisciplinary and collaborative,” Hattery said. “We’ve built a really cool collaborative model that allows us to put on a whole variety of events and involve the entire Mason Nation in Women’s History Month.”