Meredith College Symposium to Commemorate 19th Amendment Centennial

Meredith College will hold Snapshot 20/20, a symposium to commemorate the 100th anniversary of ratification of the 19th Amendment, in April 2020. The event will begin with a keynote address on April 2 and offer concurrent panels and a range of activities with community partners through April 5. Snapshot 20/20 will foster international and interdisciplinary scholarship and conversations focused on the social, economic, and political status of women and girls from 1920 to 2020.

Scholars and students will be invited to submit papers and projects on a wide range of topics including global women’s rights and status, gender identification, issues of citizenship and activism, social welfare policy, and democracy broadly.

“Snapshot 20/20 fits with Meredith’s strategic plan and mission in multiple ways: fostering academic excellence, raising Meredith’s profile, and promoting Meredith as a center for the study and discourse on the status of women and girls,” said Associate Professor of History Angela Robbins. “Events like these help bring history to life, demonstrate the connections between our past and present, and engage Meredith students, faculty, and staff with the broader academic community.”

Highlights of the symposium will include student research presentations and performances. Meredith’s theatre program will be creating a devised work on woman suffrage, which will be performed at Meredith and the N.C. Museum of History.

Professor of Theatre Catherine Rodgers will be directing the devised work with assistance from alumna Lormarev Jones, ’05. In the devised model, theatre company begins without a script and follows a five step process of research, creation, development, rehearsal, and performance to produce a new work.

“Our goal in producing this new work, using the devised approach to create theatre, is to support both the celebration of the 19th amendment as well as the School of Arts & Humanities’ theme of Activism, Then & Now,” Rodgers said.  “This will expose our students to a new genre of theatre-making and hopefully bring to life previously unvoiced women’s stories in our nation’s history.”

More information will be added to meredith.edu/symposium as plans develop. The Call for Papers will be released in August. For more information, contact Associate Professor of History Angela Robbins at aprobbins@meredith.edu.