News & Events

April 7-8, 2026
Convocation Hall
6:30pm

On April 7, Sewanee is proud to welcome Dr. Katherine Parkin, Professor and Jules Plangere, Jr. Endowed Chair in American Social History at Monmouth University, and Dr. Katherine Turk, Professor and Adjunct Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, to campus as the 2026 Anita S. Goodstein Lecturers in Women's History. 

On April 8, Sewanee welcomes alumni from the university's Women's and Gender Studies Program, Ron Allen, C'03, Jane Johnson, C'08, Summer Martins, C'00, Claire Forbes, C'15, Dr. Carrie Barske Crawford, C'22, and Jessica Osaki, C'22, to join us as part of the Goodstein Lecture events.

Thursday, April 9, 2026
Guerry Auditorium
6:00pm-7:00pm

The Mormon Giant explores the relationship between religion and professional wrestling in the twentieth century. Focusing on wrestlers with Mormon "gimmicks," the film shows how they presented as "heels" (villains) or "faces" (heroes) in auditoriums throughout North America and abroad, and how such representations proved usable (or not) to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints writ large.

This event will feature live narration by David Waler and live soundtracking by Timothy Albro.

Thursday, April 10, 2025
4:00pm
Naylor Auditorium, Gailor Hall

The lecture offers an introduction of Hong Kong art and visual culture from the 2000s to the present with a focus on women artists’ practices. Hong Kong was a British colony from the mid- nineteenth century until 1997 when its sovereignty was returned to the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Past Chair of WGS Andrea Mansker, who also serves as the David E. Underdown Professor of Modern European History, has won the 2025 University Award in Scholarship, Research, or Creative Activity! She was recognized at a ceremony in McGriff Alumni House on March 31, 2025.

Dr. Melody Lehn, Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Chair of Women’s and Gender Studies, has contributed the chapter “First Ladies, Suffrage, and the Equal Rights Amendment” to the new Cambridge Companion to US First Ladies (Cambridge University Press, 2025). 

Professor Melody Lehn is featured in the latest Professor Spotlight of Sewanee's student newspaper, the Sewanee Purple. With the publication of her latest book One Hundred Years of Women Debating the Equal Rights Amendment: An Anthology 1923-2023, Lehn has garnered national attention for her focus on the contributions of women to public speaking, argumentation and the art of oratory.

WMST faculty member Dr. Andrea Mansker, David E. Underdown Professor of Modern European History, has published her latest book, Matchmaking and the Marriage Market in Postrevolutionary France (Cornell University Press, 2024). Her study uncovers the unexplored history of matrimonial agents, their novel marketing tactics, and the rise of personal advertisements to track the commercialization of marriage in nineteenth-century France.

Sewanee Professor Melody Lehn has published a new book entitled One Hundred Years of Women Debating the Equal Rights Amendment: An Anthology, 1923-2023. The culmination of a years-long project in conjunction with co-editor, Professor Camille Lewis of Furman University, this timely edited collection of primary texts comprehensively surveys women’s arguments about the ERA from its inception through the present day. 

Thursday, November 21, 2024
2:30pm
New Orleans, LA

Drs. O’Rourke and Capuzza will present a paper at the National Communication Association convention on the second impeachment of Donald Trump. Specifically, they explore the interrelated rhetorical dynamics at play in the trial: the multiple audiences to which the managers appealed (Republican Senators, the media, the American public, and the future), the lines of argument they advanced (incitement, violation, and abuse), and the manifold fields of judgment these dynamics open to critics.

October 30, 2024
10:00am-11:00am
Online - Register here

Dr. Jamie Capuzza will offer a virtual continuing education lecture through the Cleveland Law Library, the Cleveland Public Library, and the Stark County Law Library entitled, “Legal Challenges in Ohio’s Fight for Women’s Suffrage” on October 30, 2024. 

Thursday October 10th, 2024
McGriff Alumni House
7:00pm-late

Join Professors Molly Brookfield (History & WGS) and Terri Fisher (Psychology & WGS) for an open discussion on the role of gender in organizing society.

Join Dr. Melody Lehn as she explores how Roosevelt's support drew both praise and censure, as the school's integrated activities imagined a nation where people of all races could gather together and collaboratively address regional problems.

Among the 22 new professors joining the College this semester is Sewanee’s first-ever faculty cohort: the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) Scholars. Hired as a cohort, the three new tenure-track professors will be affiliated with the University’s TRHT Center.

August 9, 2024
Online Lecture
Many of us were taught the US women’s rights movement began with a convention in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. While this gathering was an important catalyst, this program will explain how it was a convention held in Salem, Ohio two years later that took the movement to a whole new level, from a local gathering to a statewide effort.

WGS Senior Cuca Ramírez Miranda delivered this year's senior oration at Commencement on May 12, 2024. She also won the Julie Berebitsky Prize in Women's and Gender Studies, the Schauss Award for inquiry, initiative, and engagement in Speanish-speaking culture, and the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award.

Sewanee has honored a trailblazing icon and the founder of the Women's and Gender Studies Program, Professor Julie Berebitsky, with a new oil portrait.

Students Anna Forward (C'22), Pauline Mashburn (C'23), and Anne Dobson Ball (C'23), and Professor Molly Brookfield (WGS) started a movement to offer menstrual products more widely across campus.

Sophomore Makenzie Pentz, a Women’s and Gender Studies and Classics double major from Crossville, Tennessee, recently presented her paper “Monica Lewinsky: From Scandal to Social Activism.” Pentz’s paper argues that Lewinsky “has developed a platform of activism against cyberbullying and has since given speeches that deserve examination for their historical significance in women’s rhetoric,” especially within the context of the #MeToo Movement.

Join Kim Heitzenrater and Sewanee Career Readiness for #LifeAfterSewanee LIVE on Thursday at 10 a.m. (central) on Instagram Live. Each week, graduates from a diverse range of fields and levels of experience share insight into their careers, key decisions or actions that made a difference, how their time at Sewanee developed career-readiness, and advice for those launching their careers. 

This week, our guest will be Armonté Butler, C’17: MPH Candidate and Bloomberg Fellow at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and LGBTQ Health and Rights Senior Program Manager at Advocates for Youth. 

On Tuesday, February 25, Professor Belinda A. Stillion Southard will deliver a lecture entitled "100 Years with Woman Suffrage: Prison, Protests, and Promise." The lecture will begin at 4:30 p.m. in the Torian Room, and light refreshments and a book signing will follow. We hope to see you there, and hope that you will encourage your students to attend!

Sewanee Women's and Gender Studies and Rhetoric Professor Dr. Melody Lehn has received the Southern States Communication Association's Dwight L. Freshley Outstanding New Teacher Award.

Assistant Professor Melody Lehn was recognized on Wednesday, April 10, 2019 with the university’s citation for Excellence in Teaching. She won the award in her second year here, where she holds a joint appointment in Rhetoric and Women’s & Gender Studies, and also serves as Co-Director of the Speaking-across-the-Curriculum initiative and Assistant Director of the Center for Speaking & Listening.

Jessica Osaki and her husband, Houston Howell, both class of 2002, have just made a lead gift to create an endowment for the Julie Berebitsky Prize, which will be established to honor the graduating senior who writes the best senior thesis in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program.