News by Topic: Women

An art installation depicting Anna Murray Douglass, the first wife of famed social reformer and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, will be unveiled today at the site of where the couple lived at 297 Alexander St. in Rochester from 1848 to 1851. The piece was funded by RIT.

RIT will celebrate graduate research during the 13th annual Graduate Education Week and Showcase: A Vision into the Future. The virtual event—Nov. 16 to 20—creates a platform for sharing and exchanging ideas during the COVID-19 pandemic, with pre-recorded and live presentations, demonstrations, visual exhibitions, and an alumni panel discussion.

RIT alumni contributed to a major exhibition at the Rochester Museum & Science Center highlighting Rochester and Haudenosaunee women who pushed for social change. “The Changemakers: Rochester Women Who Changed the World” opens Nov. 20.

Intersections: The RIT Podcast, Ep. 38: In 1920, women in the U.S. won the right to vote. But the 19th Amendment did not flip the switch for women equally, and the struggle against voter suppression continues. RIT Associate Professor Tamar Carroll and fourth-year student Anika Griffiths speak with Johns Hopkins University professor Martha S. Jones about the past, present, and future of voting rights and social justice in America.

Women in the United States and in the United Kingdom fought for voting rights on either side of the Atlantic Ocean in the early 20th century, protesting for suffrage by picketing, going on hunger strikes, and using a savvy poster campaign. RIT students this semester dug into the suffrage movement’s use of graphic arts to design and create a digital exhibit of historical posters from Harvard University’s Schlesinger Library.

Disparities of race, gender, and ethnicity in scholarly publishing will be the focus of a conference hosted by RIT Libraries this Friday. “Scholarship in the 21st century: Race and Gender in Scholarship” will take place from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Oct. 30. Registration is required.

An HBO film about Alice Paul and the suffrage movement, Iron Jawed Angels, will be the focus of a campus discussion and part of RIT's centennial celebration of the 19th amendment and women’s voting rights, Moving Forward: Suffrage Past, Present and Future on Oct. 30.

David Borkholder, Linwei Wang, Caroline Easton, and Adam Smith, part of RIT's Personalized Healthcare Technology signature research initiative, recently won a Catalyst Award from the National Academy of Medicine for their project, “Improving Health for the Aging through Daily Vital Signs Monitoring.”

RIT’s College of Science is being recognized for its success diversifying the university’s faculty ranks and helping to advance RIT’s overall commitment to diversity. The college earned RIT’s 2020 Changing Hearts and Minds Award, sponsored annually by RIT’s Office of the Provost and the Office of Faculty Diversity and Recruitment. It marks the third time the college has received the award.

Mona Harrington ’08 MS (professional studies) was appointed executive director of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) in June 2020. As leader of the EAC, Harrington has revamped the agency and spearheaded a series of initiatives to ensure COVID-19 and cybersecurity challenges don’t harm the election process.

Political cartoons from Rochester, N.Y., newspapers from the early 20th century are the focus of a virtual exhibit hosted by RIT Libraries’ Archives Collections and explores three timely topics—voting rights to epidemics and economic uncertainty. The virtual exhibit opening takes place Oct. 7.

RIT’s Office of Faculty Recruitment is launching a series of videos to highlight diverse outstanding faculty from across the university. The series, titled #IamRITfaculty, kicked off Monday with an interview featuring Thomastine Sarchet, research faculty in the NTID Center for International Outreach.