Over the past 25 years, our work has evolved, and we proudly include here the work so many students, staff, and faculty have done towards gender equity at Lehigh. Like many things of the past, sometimes they return. If you see a project here you would like to bring back, please contact us at: incge@lehigh.edu. We can set up a time to chat and hear about your ideas of refreshing some of these projects.
Publications:
Origyns - Origyns was a women-centered journal that included creative and scholarly work and visual art. Origyns was published once a year and required an annual editor who worked with a committee of volunteers to assist with layout and calls for contributions.
The F-Word was an occasional publication of the Women’s Center, published three-four times in newsletter form. Often, co-editors worked on this publication to lighten the load and to promote outreach in terms of guest authors from across campus and the local community.
Women's Center Awards:
The Women’s Center has sponsored University-wide awards in a few different ways. Most recently, student staff nominated women from across the University for the 25 Women Who Are Changing Lehigh Awards in honor of 25 Years of the Women’s Center at Lehigh. Importantly, these women are actively making changes and not resting on their laurels.
We also sponsored awards to honor faculty, students, and staff at Lehigh that were making positive contributions toward gender in the classroom and beyond. Those awards were developed by WAVES, a group of women who met weekly to talk about feminism, women, gender, and sexuality. They also selected the recipients and organized the Awards Reception. WAVES soon expanded into its own entity, the Lehigh University Feminist Alliance, a Student Senate-recognized organization. Check them out to join! [link to LINC LUFA site] Below are awards recipients for the WAVES years.
Coordinated by the Feminist Alliance, the Outstanding Women and Men of the Year Awards recognize the work of those individuals who have done great work for those around them.
V-Day:
For over a decade, Lehigh students, staff, and faculty produced, directed, and performed in Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues. Originally housed in the Department of Theatre, the Women’s Center gratefully accepted V-Day as one of its hallmark productions. Nationally, the V-Day movement has shifted to One Billion Rising, and we saw a sharp drop in the number of students interested in producing, directing, acting, and attending. We made the difficult decision to end our production. If you are committed to seeing The Vagina Monologues return to Lehigh, please contact us. It takes about a year to see the production from start to finish and works best if you have a team of people ready to work with you. Further, if you think of other large-scale productions focused on women and gender, please let us know. We were proud to sponsor with the Office of Multicultural Affairs and the Office of International Affairs to bring Of Mothers and Men to campus in spring 2016, as a way to expand the conversation about women of color, their bodies, and the men in their lives.
Be Your Own Artivism:
Be Your Own (BYO) created an opportunity for campus community members to take action on social issues from a personal and cultural level. From 2017-2020, Be Your Own picked a theme each academic year and then invited participants to creation spaces to envision the future they wanted to see. Sculpting, drawing, painting, collages, writing, and other forms of art allowed the envisionment to take form as well as to reclaim and heal themselves. Artists then had the option to submit their art and an artist statement to the Be Your Own Gallery hosted by LTS at the Fairchild Martindale Library. You can view the 2020 Gallery here.
In 2018, BYO won the Student Life Leadership Award for Outstanding Educational Programming. Program Founder Madison Williams and Emily Ryan also presented BYO at the NGO Committee on the Status of Woen at the UN in New York City on March 23, 2018.
Spotlight: Staff and Faculty Explore Their Artistic Side
Brown&White: Lehigh Be You Own Sexuality