Mildred Delores Jeter and Richard Loving met at the age of 13 in a small town in Virginia. By age 17, Mildred and Richard were expecting their first child, and decided to marry. Unable to do so in Virginia, due to the Racial Integrity Act, the couple traveled to Washington, DC to tie the knot. Continue reading
For my project I focused on Baltimore’s ever growing trash and litter pollution problem. The reasoning behind my choice was that littering is a problem that I have noticed on a firsthand basis daily. Whether it was the simple act of watching somebody throw trash out of the window, or a parent littering in front of their child I realized that there was a need for prevention as well as restoration. I decided to put together a Facebook page titled Clean Up Baltimore that now has 58 group members. So far we have only had 2 cleanups, however I do intend to keep the once a month tradition alive d
uring the Summer. During our first event I noticed that just by having a group clean up, it sparked members of the community to come out and ask what we were doing and sometimes even attempt to get involved. This in itself was informational and influential because it allowed one more person know the effects that littering can have in their own community. There are a few reasons on why people litter, sometimes it is a lack of knowledge, other times it is laziness, and occasionally it is accidental. However, these few reasons are outnumbered by large in the effects that littering has on the environment.
The National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) estimates that one in four adults experience mental illness any given year. And yet most of their struggles go unheard or unrecognized due to the taboo nature of speaking out about mental health disorders. With #EndTheSilence, we set out to change that stigma on the UMBC campus.
Nailah Johnson, Bernard Little, Christian Kuhn
Occupation of Alcatraz was the most pertinent Indian movement in history. The movement began with the Treaty of Fort Laramie being broken by the U.S. The Treaty of Fort Laramie was an agreement guaranteeing Indians the right to their land. Unfortunately, the U.S. federal laws went against this agreement and decided to take the aboriginal land from the American Indians. The U.S. government were aiming to destroy American Indian culture. The American Indians decided to retaliate and take action into getting their land back. A number of Red Power activist protested in regaining Alcatraz Island back from the U.S. government. The group of Indians stayed on the island, occupying and refusing to leave, until they got their rightful property back. The occupation lasted for nineteen months, from November 20, 1969, to June 11, 1971, but was forcibly ended by the U.S.
When I was beginning to figure out what I was going to research for this project, I tried to narrow down my interests. I began to search for ‘activist art’ and found multitudes of propaganda and posters, but eventually I landed on the Guerrilla Girls, a group started by seven women artists in response to “An International Survey of Recent Paintings and Sculpture.” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1984.
Well this semester has flown by! Although this was my final course in completing my minor for Gender Studies I did not really know what to expect. Initially I thought we would be focusing on activist movements covering a variety of gender related issues, however this course (and this assignment in particular) has really allowed me to branch out and work towards things I am passionate about. Before I started this class I had intentions of improving certain structures in the SOCY 101 class I assist with. Learning about activism has given me the framework to develop my ideas and fortunately my initial proposal has taken shape. Continue reading
Before she became a symbol for prison reform and separate institutions for the mentally ill, Dorothea Dix was a child growing up in New England in the early 1800s. Her childhood was difficult; her father was an abusive alcoholic and her mother suffered from mental illness. Because she was the oldest and her parents were often incompetent, Dorothea found herself taking care of her younger brothers. She claims that she “never knew childhood.” Continue reading
Taylor Moore and I were very excited when we came up with the idea for this project. A final project about something we actually cared about? That’s amazing! We couldn’t wait to share our ideas of how to better women’s representation in the comic book and graphic novel formats. As avid comic book readers, we wanted to feel like we were welcome in the community, and we agree that the objectification of women in comic books only turns female readers away and makes them feel unimportant and unwanted.
During the early stages, while Taylor was sketching and I was researching, we began promoting our project to anyone and everyone we could: friends, classmates, convention goers, Tumblr followers. This project is still a work in progress; we’ve finished two redesigns with the hopes of doing one or two more over the summer. While we would have loved to have done an actual book for this project like we have been planning, we made the decision to cut the project down to pamphlets due to costs and time. Although we’re worried that there will be pushback and/or a lack of interest in this project, we hope that those who do enjoy it spread the word about our project.
Taylor and I will be posting the rest of our project here periodically over the summer, but anyone who’s particularly interested in the artwork can follow Taylor’s art blog here. For other information about the project, feel free to contact myself (Lauren Woehrer) at my blog here. In the meantime, the work we have done can be found under the cut. We hope you enjoy them!
The original objective of our project was to do something to educate others about women in STEM and why it’s a problem. Women are extremely underrepresented in the fields of STEM, or science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and Alexis and I wanted to let people know about this issue. Earlier in the semester we made a trip to The Catholic High School of Baltimore to give a demonstration about women involved in STEM fields. Trip was planned by Caitlin, Alexis, and Omar, as well as the UMBC rocketry club, whose members contributed both time and knowledge to our project.
The STEM day included not only a talk about the lack of women in STEM fields, but also three stations: an air cannon for target prediction, cloud in a bottle, liquid N2, demos with NeverWet and an instrumented egg drop using a Wii remote. These activities showed the young women how STEM fields like fluid mechanics, chemistry, and engineering can be used in real life and not just in a textbook. It was a fun way to allow the girls at the high school to interact with college students in these STEM fields and also for them to participate in science experiments. During her talk, Alexis also emphasized the importance in being aware of the discrimination these young women might face in future careers or education, and how to document and report these issues. Many women are not told how to deal with discrimination or harassment, and it goes unreported or is not taken seriously.
This trip was very successful because it was a way for us, as college students, to reach out to people younger than us and show them the importance, and fun, of being in a STEM field in college. We think interacting with people, especially high school students, about the importance of having more women in STEM fields has an impact on their future major decisions. The teacher at Catholic High asked Alexis to come back this summer and lead a rocketry camp for the same STEM students, and to come back next year to give another presentation to the young women in STEM. Clearly, our activities had an impact.
-Caitlin
Alexis, Caitlin, Omar, and Deborah also put together an online survey asking people what they knew about women in STEM or if they knew anything at all. The idea for a survey was originally proposed by Omar, who wanted to make one to take to The Catholic High School but they could not be printed in time. Approximately 85 people participated in the survey and our results were varied. The first questions asked demographic information, including their gender and what the person’s major was, whether it was in a science field or a different one. Other questions were true and false about the facts involving the lack of women in STEM fields, like “There are more women than men in STEM fields: true or false” and questions about how people view the nature of men and women (ex. logical vs emotional). This survey was a good addition to our project because it allowed us to evaluate others’ knowledge about this problem or if they even knew it was an issue. The results of our survey can be viewed at this link.
-Alexis
Similar to Alexis, Omar tried to get his high school STEM club to participate in an event to get motivate and reassure girls to stay interested in science majors. Unfortunately due to a mix of scheduling issues from the high school and actual school work, he was not able to find a fit schedule. This was a big setback on his part, but it is not the end. During the semester, he partook in a school event for middle/high school kids called SPLASH. Where, like Alexis, he demonstrates experiments and asks kids science questions that result with a small survey about the kids. He looks forward to continue this action to better help girls to get into science.
-Omar
Based on our initial hopes and expectations for this project, we would say it was a great success. Allowing others to get involved in science while educating them about the lack of women in STEM was our main objective and it was a success. The trip to Catholic High definitely accomplished this task. Our survey also was a success because it gave us the opportunity to look at other people’s perceptions about this issue. Doing a survey gives us information for if we were to do this project again. If we were to do this again, I think a poster campaign would be a nice touch because it would spread the word by means other than the internet. The survey gave us info on what topics we would address next time if we were to do another high school visit. Overall, our project was fun to work on and it accomplished the tasks we wished to meet.
Studies in Feminist Activism 