Kalamazoo College Professor Emerita Gail Griffin—who taught in the Department of English from 1977 to 2013 and was key to founding what developed into the College’s Women, Gender, and Sexuality program—has recently earned three accolades for her poetry projects.
Among her recent awards:
Griffin earned a Pushcart Prize for the poem “The End of Wildness,” which she published in a recent collection titled Omena Bay Testament. The award is an American literary prize presented by the Pushcart Press to honor the best poetry, short fiction, essays and “literary whatnot” published in the small presses over the previous year.
Headlight Review at Kennesaw State University in Georgia is recognizing Peripheral Visions— Griffin’s chapbook about her diminished eyesight as a result of macular degeneration—with its Poetry Chapbook Prize. The honoree was chosen by another poet, guest judge Valerie A. Smith. Headlight Review provided a cash prize and will publish the chapbook later this year.
Griffin is co-winner of the poetry contest at New Ohio Review, judged by esteemed poet Naomi Shihab Nye. Griffin’s poem titled “Covenant,” for which she will share a cash prize, will be printed in the Review’s issue 35 this fall. Both “Covenant” and a separate poem, “It Comes Down,” are about the author’s brother, who died in December.
At K, Griffin twice was selected by students as the recipient of the Frances Diebold Award for faculty involvement in student life. She received the Florence J. Lucasse Lectureship for Excellence in Teaching, in 1989–90, and the Florence J. Lucasse Fellowship for Excellence in Creative Work, Research or Publication, in 1998–99.
In 1995, Griffin was selected Michigan Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. She received the 2010 Lux Esto Award of Excellence for exemplifying the spirit of Kalamazoo College through excellent leadership, selfless dedication and goodwill. In 2017, she received the Weimer K. Hicks Award for long-term support to the College beyond the call of duty and excellent service in the performance of her job. Her previous books include “The Events of October”: Murder-Suicide on a Small Campus and Grief’s Country: A Memoir in Pieces.
Griffin credits a local poetry group, first started by the late Professor Emeritus Conrad Hilberry, that she participates in for inspiring her to continue writing, leading to her recent success.
“I’m quite surprised to be having this little late career as a poet, since my first four books were nonfiction,” Griffin said. “I’m delighted that writing is at the center of my life now that I’m retired. One of my reasons for retiring at age 62 was to make sure that I could do this. Writing can be a very solitary act, but writing is also about community, and I think this community has really encouraged my poetry.”
The Model United Nations team from Kalamazoo College earned an Honorable Mention Delegation award at the National Model United Nations (NMUN) in New York in April, and several awards at the Midwest Model UN (MMUN) conference in St. Louis, Missouri, in February.
The NMUN honor places the 15 K students who participated—half of whom were rookies—in the top 20% of the largest, most established intercollegiate Model UN conference in the world.
“I was very proud of that, especially with a good half of our students coming into New York completely new to conferences,” said Mason Purdy ’24, president of Model UN at K. “We did as much teaching and training as we could, but they had to learn as they went.”
The K team represented the Kingdom of Morocco at NMUN, with students assigned in pairs to various committees. For example, Purdy and Hannah Willit ’24, vice president of Model UN at K, served on the human rights council. Each council considers two topics. For Purdy and Willit, the topics were human rights and the use of private military and security companies as well as human rights of indigenous peoples. Before the conference, teams research existing laws and standards, their country’s history, and other areas that provide context for the topics.
“For example, Morocco has been embroiled in a controversy for years about territory in the Western Sahara,” Purdy said. “One side says this was always Moroccan land and was taken for colonization; the other side says the people who live there don’t really want to be Moroccan; the first side says they are Moroccan, they just don’t realize it. The issue of indigenous sovereignty is a politically tricky one for Morocco, and sometimes you have to represent views at Model UN that maybe you wouldn’t love as an individual.”
The National Model United Nations team from Kalamazoo College attends the conference’s closing ceremony in the UN General Assembly Hall.
The Model UN team from K received Honorable Mention Delegation at the national conference in New York in April.
Fifteen students from K participated in the National Model United Nations in New York in April.
K’s Model UN team represented the Kingdom of Morocco at a national conference in New York in April.
Maddie Hanulcik ’26 served on the commission on the status of women, which considered the empowerment of rural women and girls along with healthcare accessibility for women.
“It was largely an all-women committee, which made it a safe space for women to talk,” Hanulcik said. “We were all dedicated to the same ideas of furthering women’s rights. All of our committee papers passed. I had never been to a conference where every paper passed. It was cool to see us all working together and how everyone felt empowered to share and speak without fear.”
At each Model UN conference, committees employ both formal (speeches) and informal (networking and developing de facto working groups) sessions to work toward a resolution addressing each topic. Over hours and days, a few resolutions will emerge that the dais (a moderating team of staff members) evaluates as acceptable, the committee will vote, and amendments will be made. The goal is that the committee will eventually adopt one resolution unanimously.
“Generally, the aim on a Model UN committee is to try to get as much unanimity in agreement as you can on an issue, because in the real international community, that’s how you get change to actually happen,” Purdy said. “Model UN tries to replicate that, and in the process, it teaches conflict resolution, negotiating, compromise, and social and political skills.”
A highlight of the New York conference for Hanulcik came when the resolution she had primarily worked on was one of just a couple chosen to be sent to the actual United Nations.
“It felt incredible that so many people from so many places had come together, even though we had very different backgrounds, to find resolution on this issue and make such a powerful, moving paper that our dais submitted it to the actual United Nations,” Hanulcik said. “It was wonderful to feel like we have power in the future as the next generation.”
“Even though it’s not the real world—it’s a model—it gives the sense of what you can do outside of school with the classes you’re taking and see how they can be applied,” Hanulcik said. “For example, in my women, gender and sexuality classes, we learn theories about how women can be fully liberated. Then I go to Model UN and see how those policies can be put in place to make a difference in women’s lives. There is such optimism, and that goes for the real UN as well. It’s easy to know that our world is a hard place to live in and can be terrible for so many people. But the UN has this optimism about it. We’re going to keep trying. We’re going to pass these resolutions. We’re going to encourage people to implement them. It’s a place to gather and try to make things a little bit better with the power of collaboration.”
Prior to New York, a smaller group of K students attended the Midwest Model United Nations conference, where the team received several awards. There, the more experienced students represented Azerbaijan while the newer participants represented Lebanon.
“During the St. Louis conference, there was a big plenary where everyone comes together in one room and votes up or down the resolutions that each committee has done,” Purdy said. “There’s debates and amendments, so on and so forth. Representing Azerbaijan, I went to our delegates representing Lebanon—our learners—with a resolution. I said, ‘We would really like your support for this; we would like you to sign on to it.’ They read through it, and they were like, ‘No. Lebanon cannot support this.’ And I was so glad that they didn’t just say yes to me because I was their friend and their teacher. I was like, ‘Yes, you guys are getting it.’ That might have made me more proud than some of the awards we won.”
Those awards included Distinguished Delegation as Azerbaijan, placing the team in the top 10 of all countries represented. Team members also won three individual awards, with Nathan Bouvard winning an award for his position paper in General Assembly 2 as Azerbaijan, Martina Marín winning a position paper award in the World Health Organization as Azerbaijan, and Purdy winning the top honors of Outstanding Delegation as Azerbaijan in the UN Environmental Assembly.
A double major in religion and political science with a Jewish studies concentration, Purdy is grateful that the Office of Student Activities and the Department of Political Science fund Model UN at K.
“Model UN has made a world of difference to me, developing my skills, developing as a person, developing as a leader, being in charge of this club,” Purdy said. “I’m a first-generation student, I come from a very working-class background; If I’d had to pay to participate, I would have had to say no. I’m so glad the K Model UN program is free to students. And we get to do that because the school is very generous, and its donors are very generous. I’m very proud that our program is free because in some places, this is an elite activity. It’s cordoned off for people with wealth, with financial privilege, and I’m glad that’s not the case at this school. Here, Model UN is about your willingness, your talent, your commitment, and that makes a world of difference with our team.
“I’m happy to say Model UN has made the recovery post-COVID, and we are larger and more competitive than I ever saw us. I’m very proud of this program and I hope that the people I hand it off to will bring it to new heights.”
Before going to New York, a smaller group of students attended the Midwest Model United Nations conference, where the team received several awards. The more experienced students represented Azerbaijan while newer ones represented Lebanon.
K’s team that represented Azerbaijan in the Midwest competition placed in the top 10 of all countries represented.
You’ve selected a small plastic peg (pink for female, blue for male), popped it in one of the four available station wagons, and placed it on the colorful board. You’ve chosen your starting direction—college or career—and off you’ve driven, spinning the whirring, ticking wheel and faithfully following the path. Collecting paydays, halting for marriage and the requisite spousal peg, adding baby pegs to your car as landing spaces dictate. Buying houses, hoping to make a profit when you sell. Advancing on the pre-determined path toward retirement, always with an eye to amassing as much wealth as possible along the way; that, after all, is how you win at the Game of Life.
Maybe you drive that path without questioning. Or maybe you wonder, every time: Why do I have to get married? Shouldn’t there be more forks in the road? Can I invent my own career path? What if winning wasn’t tied to wealth?
Growing up, Maddie Hurley ’24 loved playing the Game of Life with her two brothers or with a babysitter. A kid with a big imagination, Hurley’s play often centered around stories—narrating Barbie’s life, developing family dramas through playing house and reading books.
“I think I liked this board game specifically because it has that imaginative aspect,” Hurley said. “I could pretend I was a person with this home, or doing this career, and play out this made-up scenario.”
For the most part, she didn’t question the game too much as a child.
“I remember there were times, though, where I was like, ‘I don’t want to get married,’” Hurley said. “Or times where I would land on a square or draw a card that would tell me I had a boy or a girl, and I would be like, ‘I don’t want any boys. I only want girls,’ or I wouldn’t want to use a pink peg. I didn’t want to be a boy, but I wanted the color blue. I also remember wanting the highest-paid career so I could buy the most stuff and retire to the nicest place at the end; I always wanted to be the lawyer.”
Hurley found herself reflecting on what lessons she might have unknowingly absorbed from the Game of Life’s proscribed path and limited options during a junior-year women, gender and sexuality (WGS) seminar, WGS 390: Feminist and Queer Inquiries, with Assistant Professor of Art History and WGS Anne Marie Butler.
One text from the class that especially resonated with Hurley, Living a Feminist Life, by Sara Ahmed, explores life paths and happiness, and how society shapes our beliefs about those concepts. An article she came across in her independent research, “That Wasn’t Very Free Thinker” by Kim Hackford-Peer, relates a story of the author attending her son’s elementary school assembly. To show how the letter Q is always paired with U, second grade students acted out marriage between the quarterbacks and the queens.
Maddie Hurley ’24 reimagined the Game of Life to be more inclusive and exploratory as part of a junior-year women, gender and sexuality (WGS) seminar, WGS 390: Feminist and Queer Inquiries.
Biochemistry major Maddie Hurley ’24 values the women, gender and sexuality (WGS) courses she has taken at K. “I took WGS 101 my sophomore year and I loved it. It had a big impact on me and changed the way I not only thought about our world and our society, but about myself. It had me questioning my own sexuality, the way I think of gender, the way I think of race. It was so applicable to everything in everyday life.” For WGS 390, Hurley used scholarly literature to deconstruct and reimagine the Game of Life and examine the concepts of heteronormativity and happiness.
“Although it’s an innocent idea and a fun way to help kids learn to spell, it’s so rooted in heteronormativity and gender fatalism,” Hurley said. “Those readings got me thinking about how these life paths have been constructed for me starting at a young age. What did I play? What movies did I watch? That led me to believe I have to get a job, be successful, get married, have kids, and buy a house, or I’m not going to be happy. How did I develop this belief? Where did it come from? Sorting through that reflection and thinking about what I did growing up, I ended up at the Game of Life.”
For her final project for the class, Hurley decided to reconstruct the Game of Life, so it no longer sent the message that there exists one, heteronormative path to happiness. Drawing on scholarly literature, she designed new elements to the game and analyzed the concepts of happiness and heteronormativity as well as the ways systems reinforce the dominant heteronormative narrative.
“Ahmed talks about the Middle English word ‘hap,’ which really means chance,” Hurley said. “You can’t complete certain steps to gain happiness. It’s something that you fall upon—something that just happens.”
So, Hurley included a square on the board that prompts players to draw from an emotion deck that may or may not provide them with a happiness card—the key to winning Hurley’s version—at random. She also introduced more options to many game elements.
“You can choose not to get married or you can choose multiple partners. You could choose to have kids or not have kids. You could get a pet. I included more jobs, like being a janitor or an artist. Instead of buying houses, you could be a traveler. You don’t even have to use a car or a person peg; there could be random player pieces you could choose. I wanted it to be very open-ended.
“I wanted no hierarchy of what is better and what is worse. You can just explore, and no matter which options you choose, you can still win, because everybody has the same opportunity to pull the happiness card.”
Another article the WGS 390 students read, “Punks, Bulldaggers and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics” by Cathy Cohen, brought home to Hurley the importance of avoiding a false dichotomy between queerness and heterosexuality. She made the game as inclusive as possible by adding to rather than replacing the traditional path of career, marriage, children, retirement.
“I wanted to make the board more extravagant,” Hurley said. “More pathways, more options. There is not one path to happiness, and we should all question things in our lives—the choices we’ve made, why we made those choices, the impact our experiences have had on our beliefs of life goals, happiness, what it means to be successful. Sara Ahmed wrote something like, ‘To live a feminist life is to question your way of life.’ I loved that, it really stuck with me, and I hope this project could make people question the games they’ve played, the shows they’ve watched, and how those things have influenced them.”
Hurley continues to question and explore her own choices and path. Even as she applied to Ph.D. programs in chemical biology and biochemistry, she asked herself if this was the future she wanted or simply the one she felt was expected.
“As of now, I am going to defer my enrollment a year to the University of Illinois, take a gap year, gain some work experience, and then circle back and see if this is something I want to do,” Hurley said. “I do like science, and I do like school. We’ll see.”
Hurley grew interested in a possible career in research while completing her Senior Integrated Project (SIP), which involved a research experience in a chemical biology lab at the University of Illinois over summer 2023. She has also participated in research at K, in Assistant Professor of Chemistry Blake Tresca’s lab. Other K experiences include studying abroad in Scotland, playing tennis and serving as president of the Food Recovery Network, as well as exploring the WGS offerings.
“Before going into this seminar, I didn’t recognize how heteronormativity is always in the background,” Hurley said. “We as a society don’t process it, because it is normalized, institutionally, through media, in board games. For anyone who deviates from that heteronormative path, there is always a fear of unhappiness, judgment, lack of success. This course and the readings helped me realize how those expectations were socially constructed. How many people have followed that path and are unhappy? It helped me reframe that perspective that heteronormativity tells us what will lead to happiness. You can’t achieve happiness, it’s just something that happens. Sometimes happiness is just there.”
Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Collective Undergraduate Research and Activism e-Conference
Five Kalamazoo College students, including Maddie Hurley ’24, presented their work during the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Collective undergraduate research and activism e-conference on March 28–29.
Anne Marie Butler, Kalamazoo College assistant professor of art history and women, gender and sexuality (WGS), is a co-convenor of the collective and a conference organizer. Held annually for four years, each conference has included K students. Participation develops professional skills, including public speaking and creating a presentation for an external audience, and offers experience that serves students well whatever their next step may be. The conference also features two professional development panels, one focused on careers and one on graduate school.
“Many students present their senior research or SIP, so it provides a practice run if they have a departmental presentation, and a chance for them to share their work with a wider audience,” Butler said. “Students who attend the conference but don’t present can see the amazing research their peers are doing and will hopefully be inspired to present in a future year. I encouraged all of my students from my spring 2023 junior seminar, as well as my SIP students and other students from my classes to apply, and I was so happy that Maddie was interested, because her project does a great job of applying some of the theory we read in class to create a fun and innovative project.”
A biochemistry major, Hurley had previously participated in a poster session at an undergraduate science research conference. In addition to a different presentation format and a virtual experience, the WGS conference offered a different atmosphere.
“It was more open and flexible, and discussion based,” Hurley said. “It was nice to have a conversation about my project with other students and learn about the research they did, to see that we were all genuinely interested and learn about somebody else’s experience.”
Butler said the conference is for students of all years and majors.
“As long as the project ties into WGS themes in some way, we welcome those presentations,” Butler said. “We love creative, activist and research projects, and we have had projects from areas as diverse as biology, visual art, psychology, music and languages. Maddie is an awesome student. She’s very thoughtful and committed to understanding and working with course materials and makes great connections and applications beyond the materials as well, as seen in her project.”
K students presented the following projects at the conference:
Ryan Drew ’24, “The Epistemology of Woman: A Poetic Conversation Deconstructing Biology and Language”
Brynna Garden ’24, “The Influence of Natural Disasters on Violence Against Women”
Maddie Hurley ’24, “Remaking the Game of Life and Reframing Happiness”
Dugan Schneider ’24, “Breaking Linguistic Norms: オネエ言葉 (Onē Kotoba) as a Vehicle for Queer Identity Expression in Contemporary Japan”
Frances Trimble ’24, “(Re)imagining Knowledge Production in Higher Education Through Feminist Pedagogy”
A new fellowship established by alumnus Robert Sherbin ’79 and named after his father, Jerry, is giving its first Kalamazoo College graduating senior a chance to go overseas for 10 months while exploring a subject of deep personal interest.
To fulfill her fellowship, Elle Waldron ’23—a women, gender and sexuality (WGS) major—will visit a variety of feminist and gender-equity organizations to witness the tools and strategies they use to execute their work and complete their goals.
“Having this opportunity to travel and continue my education is a special way to be able to see other perspectives,” Waldron said. “It affirms that it’s possible for me to continue to follow my passions of WGS and gender equity work because people are working in those fields in their careers.”
Assuming her plans develop as proposed, she will travel to Australia, South Africa, Costa Rica and Spain beginning in late August or early September. Through that she will regularly update Sherbin, the College and the Center for International Programs (CIP) on her progress. In fall 2024, she will return to K to present her experiences to prospective fellowship applicants.
Waldron said she felt overwhelmed when she first was notified that she was selected for the fellowship.
“It felt unreal and now I’m super excited,” she said. “I think part of the excitement is being able to challenge myself and push my comfort zone. I feel like this will change the trajectory of my post-grad experience.”
Waldron was one of seven applicants and three finalists in the fellowship’s first year. The other finalists were Zoe Reyes ’23, who planned to study eco-poetry on medicinal plants in biodiversity hotspots; and Shannon Brown ’23, who proposed investigating the social status of French-based creoles in the Caribbean.
Waldron “had a lot of attention to detail with her application and showed she’s aware of how she would be perceived in places as an outsider while being amenable to how she could navigate those kinds of situations,” said Lizbeth Mendoza Pineda ’16, the Sherbin Fellowship CIP liaison and a co-chair of the fellowship’s selection committee. “She also recognizes that she’s only going to be abroad for a short amount of time, yet she’s trying to make as much of an impact and learn as much as possible, while making sure that whatever work she accomplishes is sustainable. I think that’s something that impressed the committee.”
Elle Waldron ’23 will spend 10 months abroad as the first recipient of the Jerry Sherbin Fellowship, funded by Bob Sherbin ’79.
Sherbin participated in study abroad at K by traveling to the University of Nairobi, where he was one of just six undergrads from the U.S. and the only K student.
Later, as a senior, he received a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, an external grant through the Watson Foundation, that allowed him to create and follow through with a one-year project overseas. With that he spent a year in Central and West Africa as a Watson Fellow, conducting a sociological study of long-distance truck drivers. Sherbin said the experience was transformative and guided him toward graduate school at Northwestern University, years spent as an international journalist, and eventually, working as the vice president of corporate communications at NVIDIA, a Silicon Valley-based technology company.
Waldron had her own study abroad experience in Chiang Mai, Thailand, for six months last year.
“I was lucky to have a study abroad experience that allowed me to be comfortable in a space that I wasn’t familiar with because I was supported and had friends in the program,” Waldron said. “Because of that, I recognized my own skills and ability to adapt. With K providing that foundation, I feel I have a fantastic ability to investigate things abroad.”
Now, she hopes those investigations will yield long-term relationships with people from around the world and allow her to consult those people regularly in the future. She would also like it to help her become a better critical thinker and define feminism from a global perspective as it’s influenced by a variety of historical and cultural contexts.
“I think as a WGS major and as an individual, I’m interested in how gender and sexuality structures the world around me,” Waldron said. “But for me, getting out of academia is a bit of a leap, because I’m not sure how to apply all these things that I have learned. I want to work on projects that pursue gender equity and find out how to be the most effective. That’s why I’m interested in this project. I want to see what other new worlds women and people are creating, because I want to see them in my own career.”
Kalamazoo College is known for providing academic experiences that can lead to real-world jobs. Take the example of Steph Guyor ’22.
Guyor’s senior seminar, led by Associate Professor of English Ryan Fong, tackled the concept of restorative or transformative justice, a newer community-based practice that helps society do more than hold law breakers accountable in a criminal justice system. Instead, restorative justice also addresses the dehumanization an offender typically experiences with their punishment, offering basic services along with pathways for making amends to victims and the community, reducing the likelihood for recidivism.
“Within the U.S., justice is traditionally focused on the offender and the crime they committed,” Guyor said. “The punishments are seen as deserved. Yet by focusing on the punishment, the factors that led to the harm being committed often go unexamined, and the needs of the person who’s harmed remain unmet. Viewing punishment as the only appropriate response around accountability ends up taking the form of shame and isolation, which furthers the relational divide and deters people from changing their harmful behaviors. Restorative and transformative justice work to reorient accountability away from punishments and toward meaningful consequences that allow connections to be restored and relational dynamics to be restored.”
Guyor, who double majored in psychology and women and gender studies (WGS), was intrigued by these concepts and said Fong’s class was enjoyable because it allowed her to see justice in a different way. Then came an opportunity to connect those studies to a job, when she heard Ministry with Community in Kalamazoo was hiring a restorative justice coordinator. The nonprofit organization is a secular, daytime shelter and resource center open 365 days a year that helps local residents address homelessness, poverty, substance abuse and other crises.
“I saw the posting and thought it could be an opportunity to make change locally in Kalamazoo in a way that’s influenced by getting to know people,” Guyor said. “I knew I wanted to try to find a way to integrate the psychological understanding of why people do what they do with a socially informed understanding of how social circumstances influence it.”
And today, Guyor relishes her job, which involves learning more about the restorative justice practices in place around the country while collecting data to determine what she can do to solve problems in Kalamazoo. Hopefully, that will lead to a new yet well-rounded restorative justice program at Ministry with Community that reduces the likelihood of repeat offenses.
“It comes with a lot of responsibility that a big part of me was afraid to take on given the idea that I did just graduate,” she said. “But it’s also a unique opportunity that I’m excited to have. I think the goal will be a culture shift within the organization so there will be fewer incidents with fewer people breaking community expectations, and more trust between the members, and between members and staff.”
Guyor said a common misconception about restorative or transformative justice is that it’s soft on offenders—that it lets people off the hook and fails to follow through on a punishment. She cautions against that idea.
“In reality, facing the people who you hurt and holding the space for them to explain their hurt is a lot harder,” Guyor said. “Restorative justice is about having high expectations for people along with a lot of support. It makes sure we’re holding people accountable to the changes they work toward, but not in a way that revolves around shame. In punitive settings, you’re doing things to people. In permissive settings, you’re doing things for people. But restorative justice is more about working with people to make change.”
Fong said he’s likely to continue teaching about restorative and transformative justice at K.
“So many students, especially WGS students, are interested in social justice and activism, but don’t always know what it looks like in practice beyond demonstrations and non-profit work,” he said. “In the wake of the 2020 protests and calls to defund the police, I saw many students wondering what that demand meant. Doing a deep dive into restorative and transformative justice was one way to understand how abolitionist organizers were working in concrete ways to build new systems and structures that address and eliminate violence.”
He’s also incredibly proud of Guyor and honored that he played a role in helping her find her career path.
“I hope she keeps drawing on the skills and knowledge she gained at K and as a WGS student to continue on it for the rest of her life,” Fong said. “That’s really my hope for all our WGS students: that they find meaningful ways to put their education into action.”
Donations Fund Restorative Justice Programs
Ministry with Community, a nonprofit organization, accepts donations for the restorative justice programs being built by K alumna Stephanie Guyor ’22. To donate directly to restorative justice efforts, visit the organization’s website.
Steph Guyor ’22 took classroom experiences with restorative justice and transformed them into a career at Ministry with Community in Kalamazoo.
Guyor, who double majored in psychology and women and gender studies at K, now works as the restorative justice coordinator at Ministry with Community in Kalamazoo.
Professor of History Charlene Boyer Lewis is a co-editor of “Women in George Washington’s World.”
Although women’s historians have written about women in the American Revolution since the 1970s, many people still think of the war as a men’s event.
Women in George Washington’s World (University of Virginia Press, 2022) aims to be part of a new wave of efforts to reframe the American Revolution as a war that heavily involved women. Published this month, the book is co-edited by Charlene Boyer Lewis ’87, Kalamazoo College professor of history and director of the American Studies and the Women, Gender and Sexuality programs. The book includes an essay written by Boyer Lewis on Peggy Arnold, the wife of infamous traitor Benedict Arnold.
“For too long when people think of the American Revolution, they think of men, they think of soldiers and they think of the guys in Philadelphia who signed the Declaration of Independence,” Boyer Lewis said. “This is part of the project to rethink and re-present the American Revolution as a war that included women, a war that affected women, a war that women affected.”
A 2018 symposium at George Washington’s Mount Vernon in Virginia about women and George Washington, where Boyer Lewis and her co-editor, George Boudreau, were both presenters, served as the inspiration for the book.
“It’s a collection of essays written by academic historians as well as public historians,” Boyer Lewis said. “We have people who are out in the museum world and historical societies contributing to this as well as academics, so it’s a broad range of kinds of historians. They were all wonderful and the book turned out to be exactly what we wanted it to be.”
Including public historians was part of an intentional effort to create a history book that was accessible to a general audience. Also key to that effort was a focus on story telling.
Kalamazoo College Professor of History Charlene Boyer Lewis ’87
“Historians have to tell a good story along with a good argument or interpretation of the past,” Boyer Lewis said. “This was put out by an academic press and peer reviewed by scholars. Every essay meets scholarly academic standards, and at the same time, every single one of those chapters tell really good stories that I think people are going to enjoy reading.”
The essays feature famous women such as Martha Washington, Abigail Adams and Phyllis Wheatley, lesser-known women such as Elizabeth Willing Powel, and unknown women, including women enslaved by the Washington family. Boyer Lewis recounted a story of one such woman who ran away while Washington was president and was never caught despite his efforts to track her down.
“It was important to us to look at a wide variety of women in George Washington’s world,” Boyer Lewis said. “Women who loved him, women who cared for him and also women who challenged him and frustrated him.”
This is the first editing endeavor for Boyer Lewis, who is the author of two books, Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte: An American Aristocrat in the Early Republic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) and Ladies and Gentlemen on Display: Planter Society at the Virginia Springs, 1790-1860 (University of Virginia Press, 2001). She found the collaboration with Boudreau to be fruitful as they brought different strengths to the project, and the overall process to be surprisingly smooth.
“Everybody said, ‘No, you don’t want to edit a book, it’s like herding cats,’” Boyer Lewis said. “My contributors were wonderful so it went a lot more smoothly than I had thought. There was a lot of passion and commitment to this work that made it easier.”
That passion and commitment proved key when the COVID-19 pandemic hit mid-project.
“George and I had all these plans of being together in person and working on the book, and that didn’t happen,” Boyer Lewis said. “There were lots of phone calls, lots of zoom calls. There were archives that people needed to go and do research in that were closed.”
Even without COVID restrictions, research for the book was a complicated affair.
“The archives of the time were meant to preserve the records of men,” Boyer Lewis said. “We’re dealing with small amounts or almost non-existent records of women. Even somebody like Martha Washington, whom you would think there must be copious amounts of sources—she burned everything. So even piecing together her life can be a challenge, let alone the enslaved women who worked for the Washingtons. That is real detective work.”
National Archives Museum online book talk
Tuesday, July 26 from 1 to 2 p.m. Women in George Washington’s World
Co-edited by Charlene Boyer Lewis, Kalamazoo College professor of history and director of the American Studies and the Women, Gender and Sexuality programs, and George W. Boudreau, historian of early Anglo-America and public history.
Co-editors Boyer Lewis and Boudreau will discuss their book, a collection of essays examining women at the time of the American Revolution who had complex relationships with George Washington and the roles those women played in shaping the nation, with Lorri M. Glover, professor of history, Saint Louis University. View on YouTube
Women in George Washington’s World is widely available for purchase.
Each subject presented her own challenges. Poet Phyllis Wheatley left many poems but few letters or other records. Although Abigail Adams left copious correspondence with her husband, John Adams, using those letters to analyze her relationship with and thoughts about George Washington is convoluted. Contributors writing about enslaved women went through the most “mental gymnastics,” Boyer Lewis said, to “sift through and find two sentences in a letter where a white slave owner is talking about the enslaved woman and get as much out of those sentences as they can.
“This book highlights how difficult women’s history is to do, yet how successfully it can be done.”
As a women’s historian, Boyer Lewis found the completed work reaffirms what she has known and taught for years—that women are an important part of history.
“When you use George Washington as the connection, and then you start looking at the women all around George Washington, it seems simple to say, but women are everywhere,” Boyer Lewis said. “They’re everywhere. Washington lived his life surrounded by women, and surrounded by women he listened to, who he was willing to be advised by. If we can show how much women mattered in George Washington’s life, then it will be a lot easier to make it clear how much women mattered everywhere else. If George Washington is having his life affected by women constantly, for better and for worse, women who worked with him and women who thwarted him, so did everybody else. It was just wonderful to have that reaffirmed for me that women are everywhere and they’re mattering everywhere.”
“Pro Voice: The Abortion Monologues,” will take place at 6 p.m. Thursday, March 3, in Dewing 103.
A theatrical performance at Kalamazoo College that shares student interviews with members of the Southwest Michigan community will explore the deeper meaning of reproductive justice and its impact.
Pro Voice: The Abortion Monologues, directed by Ynika Yuag ’21, will take place at 6 p.m. Thursday, March 3, in Dewing 103. The event is organized by K’s Feminist Psychology of Women class in partnership with Planned Parenthood Affiliates of Michigan, K’s Office of Student Involvement and the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement.
Student actors, through monologues about abortion, will dramatize experiences that were shared in interviews. A talk-back panel discussion on reproductive justice will follow the event. Snacks will be provided. Attendees must wear masks, be fully vaccinated and show proof of vaccination with ID.
Former visiting student Nelly Rupande co-authored a children’s book alongside five Kalamazoo College students. Let’s Talk About it, Period, is designed to help general audiences understand period poverty and stigma.
A group of Kalamazoo College students has a story to tell this International Women’s Day. It’s a story Shukurani A. Nsengiyumva ’20, Anne Kearney Patton ’22, Juanita Ledesma ’21, Kushi Matharu ’22 and Catherine Dennis ’22 created in the form of a children’s book with former visiting student Nelly Rupande through Associate Professor of Psychology Karyn Boatwright and her Feminist Psychology of Women class.
The book, titled Let’s Talk About It, Period, depicts period poverty, referring to a woman’s inadequate access to menstrual-hygiene products, along with period stigma directed toward the main character, a fourth-grade girl in Kenya experiencing her first period.
The story is important because “we want to fight the stigma that exists around periods and menstruation, and share what happens when you shame someone for having something so natural,” said Nsengiyumva, who supervised the project as a teacher’s assistant. She experienced period poverty herself during the early years of her period, only receiving pads when she went to boarding school. Otherwise, her mom couldn’t afford them. She resettled in the U.S. as a Rwandan refugee in 2013 at age 15.
“It’s a topic not just for those who experience menstruation, but those who might enforce the stigma related to it,” she added.
Period poverty and stigma are issues in countries around the world. The group from Boatwright’s class studied their effects this term through an eight-week syllabus developed by Rupande, who created the Binti Initiative.
Catherine Dennis
Juanita Ledesma
Shukurani Nsengiyumva
Rupande emerged as the top female student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Nairobi in Kenya and subsequently was chosen to attend K. Her nonprofit organization seeks to provide dignity to girls and women through access to feminine-hygiene products, educating girls about menstruation, and dispelling myths and negative perceptions of menstrual cycles.
Other topics in the syllabus included female circumcision and genital mutilation, sex education in Kenya, femicide, endometriosis and other period-related complications, and gender equality.
Kushi Matharu
Anne Kearney Patton
The group, with all serving as co-authors, concluded its work by presenting the film Period, a documentary on the stigma that surrounds menstruation in India.
“When Dr. Boatwright reached out to me with the opportunity to collaborate with the Feminist Psychology of women Class, I was thrilled,” Rupande said. “She was my professor while I was at K and the very first person to show me around Kalamazoo. She is definitely someone who believes in me and I look up to her as a mentor.”
The book’s resolution involves educating the characters, each with a role to play in recognizing period stigma and poverty, so readers can learn about their own responsibilities in dispelling myths, avoiding shaming and reversing negative perceptions. Characters include a father, a sister, a young boy and a teacher to reflect just a few of the book’s target audiences.
“Some people are approaching us saying they’d love to buy it for their niece or their daughter, Nsengiyumva said. “We made it to look like a children’s book so it’s appealing to them, but adults can use it as well. We want to inform anyone who’s responsible for fighting the stigma.”
The Binti Initiative hires women around the world to produce and sell feminine-hygiene products in their communities while making the sellers economically independent. That allows people such as Rupande and her associates to continue menstruation-education efforts by training women and girls to run them. The goal is to change perceptions, address health issues, and provide a forum for women and men.
Nsengiyumva is hoping Let’s Talk About It, Period can eventually be a part of those education efforts and forums starting in Kenya with that country being just the beginning.
“There’s not yet a set plan, but I think it would be nice to distribute not only in Kenya, but here,” Nsengiyumva said.
Rupande adds the Binti Initiative is working with primary and elementary schools in Kenya to have the book available in libraries and community-resource centers by June. For more information on the book and its availability, email Nsengiyumva at Shukurani.Nsengiyumva16@kzoo.edu.
Lezlie Lull ’20 participates in the Bags to Benches plastics drive that is uniting the Kalamazoo College community in an effort organized by the Council of Student Representatives and the Eco Club. If the campus can collect 500 pounds of plastic or 40,500 pieces of film during the six-month drive, it will receive a bench made of recycled plastic from the Trex Recycling Co. in Winchester, Virginia.
The Kalamazoo College Council of Student Representatives (KCCSR) and the Eco Club are offering a creative way for you to deal with your plastic waste—including that supply of plastic bags that seems to grow every time you shop.
From now until July, the organizations are collecting clean, dry and residue-free produce bags, closeable food-storage bags, cereal bags and more in receptacles around campus through their self-titled Bags to Benches program.
Council of Student Representatives President Karina Pantoja encourages the K community to think big when dropping off plastic. Don’t just settle for plastic grocery bags; think about bread bags, bubble wrap, dry-cleaning bags, newspaper sleeves, plastic overwrap, closeable food-storage bags and more.
She said the Bags to Benches program began as representatives were looking for a way to unite the campus and build community around a common cause. The sustainability aspect of the project is a bonus and it shows prospective students they can come to K and seek ways of acting to benefit the greater community.
“We avoided making this a competition between student groups or departments because we think it’s important for everyone to come together and work toward one goal,” said Pantoja, of Paw Paw, Michigan, who majors in English with a concentration in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies. “An effort like this can tell students that someone on campus cares about sustainability, that student contributions are valued, and that student representatives exemplify their values. It’s nice to have something that sustains an optimistic and exciting energy throughout campus as all of us can come together to accomplish a goal like this.”
For questions and more ideas about how you can support the Bags to Benches program, email KCCSR at StudentRepresentatives@kzoo.edu.
Class agents (and their majors) for the class of 2017 are (l-r) front row–Kamal Kamalaldin (computer science), Bianca Delgado (political science), Kriti Singh (economics), Emma Franzel (theatre arts), Brooke Travis (anthropology and sociology); middle row–Emerson Brown (economics), Emily Levy (anthropology and sociology), Emily Finch (English and history), Chris Francis (economics); back row–Alivia DuQuet (political science and women, gender and sexuality studies) and Eric DeWitt (economics). Not pictured is Amanda Johnson (economics).
The class of 2017 has its agents, a dozen as distinguished as they are diverse. Alivia DuQuet, Amanda Johnson, Bianca Delgado, Brooke Travis, Chris Francis, Emerson Brown, Emily Finch, Emily Levy, Emma Franzel, Eric DeWitt, Kamal Kamalaldin and Kriti Singh come from four states and three countries and represent eight different majors, five different study abroad programs on four continents, one study away program and a K-Trek (K to the Big Apple). Seven will enter the work force after graduation (several with jobs already lined up), two will go to graduate school, two will take a gap year then proceed with their graduate educations, and one will do Teach for America before beginning grad school. Senior Individualized Projects ranged widely, and topics included, among others, state sexual education policies, climate adaption strategies, cultural institutions in Palestine, corporate venture capital investments, the Dodd-Frank Act, parental attitudes regarding corporal punishment, feminism performance theory and the U.S. primary care industry.
All of the class agents were asked why they wanted to take on this lifetime role. Their answers, understandably, varied and yet shared some common themes: an appreciation of the K learning experience, a desire to remain connected to classmates and the College and to pay forward the benefits of a K education. “Throughout my time at K,” said Singh, “I have realized the importance of financial support and support from alumni. I would love to be actively involved because a lot of students (unknowingly) benefit from the support from the people who have been giving back.” Kamalaldin agrees: “I want to be able to improve Kalamazoo College and stay connected to its mission. I want to give back the tremendous support and educational opportunity that Kalamazoo College gave me.”
“Some people are approaching us saying they’d love to buy it for their niece or their daughter, Nsengiyumva said. “We made it to look like a children’s book so it’s appealing to them, but adults can use it as well. We want to inform anyone who’s responsible for fighting the stigma.”
