Please join the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program and the Bertha Harris Women’s Center in honoring Native American Heritage Month with a lecture titled “Zitkala-Sa and U.S. Women’s History” on Wednesday, Nov. 29 in Building 2n, Room 006 from 4:40pm to 6:05pm.
Professor Catherine Lavender of the CSI History Department will focus on the role that Dakota author and musician Zitkala-Sa (1876-1938) played in U.S. women’s history. Zitkala-Sa’s life as cultural navigator, activist for Indian rights, and for women’s suffrage challenges and informs the consensus narrative of U.S. women’s history. Educated in a Quaker mission school, Zitkala-Sa was a classical violinist, librettist, composer, artist’s model, memoirist, influential advocate for Indian rights, and co-founder of the National Council of American Indians. Many of her published works, including The School Days of an Indian Girl, Old Indian Legends, and American Indian Stories, examine her struggle between assimilation and tradition as she navigated the complicated terrain of her own identity.
In her illustrated lecture, Professor Lavender will examine Zitkala-Sa’s impact on U.S. history, as well as her significant partnership with the American photographer Gertrude Käsebier in producing a series of portraits that uniquely presented Plains Indian portrait subjects in their full personhood in the decade after Wounded Knee.
This is a CC CLUE event. For more information, contact the Bertha Harris Women’s Center, Dr. Catherine Lavender, PhD, Director, in 2N-106; womenscenter@csi.cuny.edu; or 718.982.2871. All are welcome.
By the Bertha Harris Women’s Center
