Women’s History Month activities will kick-off with a presentation by Mary Lee Sargent, a woman’s rights activist, at 11 a.m. Feb. 25 in D-228.
The second program on the schedule will be a presentation on "Gender and Contemporary Religion" by Dr. Polly Radosh at 11 a.m. March 1 in D-228. Radosh is the Director of the Women’s Studies Program at WIU.
Sargent is a professor of history and women’s studies and director of the Office of Women’s Programs and Services at Parkland College in Champaign. A community organizer and activist for peace, anti-racism, women’s and gay and lesbian rights, she was the founder of A Grassroots Group of Second Class Citizens in 1981.
A Grassroots Group campaigned for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. After the defeat of the amendment in 1982, the group continued to organize protests for women’s issues through 1992.
Sargent is currently co-coordinator of the 85% Coalition, which is organizing demonstrations in behalf of legislation to prohibit discrimination against gays and lesbians. The Coalition is named after a study done by the Survey Research Institute at the U of I Springfield which found that 85 percent of those surveyed in Illinois opposed discriminating against gay and lesbian people in housing and employment.
The winner of many awards for her social justice activism, Sargent has lectured in colleges and universities across the nation and written in publications such as the Nation and the Progressive.
Dr. Radosh has a Ph.D. from SIU at Carbondale and was a lecturer in 1990 for the University of London at the American Institute for Foreign Study in England. Among her many honors, she was named the Outstanding Working Woman of Illinois in 1992, the College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Teacher in 1990.
She earned Faculty Excellence Awards for 1988, 1991, 1994 and 1995. She is listed in Who’s Who among America’s Teachers, The World Who’s Who of Women, the International Who’s Who of Professional Business Women and the International Who’s Who Among Women.
Her two most recent published books are "The Past, The Present and the Future of American Criminal Justice" and "Introduction to Criminology," both co-authored with Brendan Maguire. Radosh is widely published in professional journals, has organized many sessions at professional meetings, and has presented numerous papers.
Women’s History Month events are being organized by Pat Cole, Kim Radek, Sue Caley, and Kim Abel, and are being hosted by Amnesty International, POWER, the Cultural Diversity Committee, and the Social Science and the Humanities Divisions.