Followed by a Panel Discussion and Q & A with Elizabeth Debold,
Kristine Barnett, Gabrielle Senza and Maura O’Connor
Lecture Center, Bard College at Simon’s Rock, 7-9:30 p.m.
$5 suggested donation, with admission free to the Bard College at Simon’s Rock community (students, faculty, and staff).
Space is limited, please register in advance at: http://missrepscreening.eventbrite.com/
In our society, the overriding message that we continually receive from media today is that a woman’s value and power lie more in her youth, beauty, and sexuality than in her capacity as a leader. Despite the enormous strides women have made over the past few decades, they are still far behind men as leaders and active agents in creating our culture.
This powerful documentary illuminates the often startling facts about women’s (mis)representation in American culture. Firsthand experiences of young adults, and provocative interviews with politicians, journalists, entertainers, activists, and academics speak to obstacles that must be addressed, as well as to positive actions we can take towards change.
The film will be followed by a panel discussion exploring many of the critical issues raised in the film such as: What more can girls and women do to prepare themselves for leadership? What are the most effective actions we can take for positive change in media, politics, and education? This event is relevant for girls, boys, men, and women of all ages.
Elizabeth Debold, Ed.D., is a bestselling author, pioneering researcher, consultant, and transformative educator who specializes in higher order human development, cultural evolution, and gender. She is a Senior Fellow at EnlightenNext, where she served from 2002-2011 as Senior Editor of EnlightenNext magazine. Dr. Debold received her doctorate in human development and psychology from Harvard University in 1996, where she was a founding member of the Harvard Project on Women’s Psychology and Girls’ Development. She is also co-author of the bestselling book, Mother Daughter Revolution: From Good Girls to Great Women. Dr. Debold directed the Ms. Foundation for Women’s Collaborative Fund for Healthy Girls/Healthy Women and is currently working with a team of adolescent girls to create a film on women’s leadership at Miss Hall’s School in Pittsfield, MA.
Dr. Kristine Barnett is the Assistant Dean for the College of Arts and Sciences and the Director of the Women as Empowered Learners and Leaders (WELL) and Campus Theme Programs at Bay Path College, a small women’s college in Longmeadow, MA. Dr. Barnett has been a professor and administrator in higher education for more than fifteen years, teaching a variety of subjects including writing, literature, communications, public speaking, higher education administration, and women’s topics. She is the co-author of Unlocking the Doors to College and Career Success, as well as articles on assessment and academic support. As a graduate of a women’s college herself, one of her areas of focus is women’s education.
Gabrielle Senza is an internationally recognized, Berkshire-based multi-media artist and activist. Included in the collections of the Whitney Museum, MoMA, Lifetime Entertainment, and others, she has taught art privately and as an adjunct professor at Simon’s Rock, Cooper Union, IS183, and Mass MoCA. Senza is recognized as an important social and environmental activist, whose installation and multimedia work conveys powerful messages that raise awareness and help to inspire change. In 2002 Senza founded The Red Collaborative, a national grassroots organization devoted to empowering survivors of abuse through collaborative public art projects and creative initiatives on tough issues. The Walk Unafraid Project is one of the most popular of these programs and has been installed in several locations throughout the US.
Maura R. O’Connor is a freelance foreign correspondent and magazine journalist. As a contributor to the online international newswire Global Post, she has filed stories from Sri Lanka, South Africa, Tanzania, Haiti, Afghanistan, and New York. Her work has also appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review, Guernica, Slate, NPR, The Daily, Miller-McCune, The New York Post and TIME.com. She holds an MA from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and a BA from Simon’s Rock. In 2010, she received a Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship to research and report on American foreign aid from Haiti and Afghanistan.
Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez teaches comparative literature, media studies, human rights, and gender studies at Bard College at Simon’s Rock and directs the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers. For the past decade she has organized an annual conference in observance of International Women’s Day, and she has combined activism and scholarship with her two edited collections, Women Writing Resistance: Essays on Latin America and the Caribbean (South End Press, 2004), and African Women Writing Resistance: Contemporary Voices (University of Wisconsin Press, 2010). She is the author of many articles exploring the nexus of politics and poetics in world literature by women, including, most recently, “The Politics and Poetics of Global Feminist Alliance; Or, Why I Teach Such Depressing Books” (in Educating Outside the Lines: Bard College at Simon’s Rock on a ‘New Pedagogy’ for the Twenty-First Century, ed. Nancy Yanoshak; Peter Lang, 2011). She blogs at Transition Times (http://bethechange2012.wordpress.com).
