MISSOULA – It has been 100 years since the ratification of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which allowed women to vote. To honor this achievement, the 2020 Community Lecture Series, hosted by the University of Montana Alumni Association, will focus on American citizenship.
The 22nd annual CLS, “Honoring the Centennial of the 19th Amendment and What it Means to be an American,” features UM faculty presenting a series of six lectures from the perspectives of law, feminism, minority rights, politics, Native American women and sociology.
Each lecture takes place on a Tuesday and begins at 7 p.m. in UM’s University Center Theater. The lectures are:
Feb. 11: “The Story of Citizenship in the Constitution,” Anthony Johnstone, Helen and David Mason Professor of Law and professor of public administration at the UM Blewett School of Law.
Johnstone teaches and writes about federal and state constitutional law, legislation, election law, jurisprudence and related subjects. Before joining the School of Law, he served as the solicitor for the State of Montana, practiced litigation as an associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York and clerked for the Honorable Sidney R. Thomas, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Yale University and a Juris Doctor with honors from the University of Chicago Law School.
Feb. 18: “Women and Citizenship: Jeannette Rankin and the Fight for the Vote,” Sara Hayden, professor in the UM Department of Communication Studies.
Hayden’s research focuses on rhetorical criticism and theory. In her work, she integrates interests in the social construction of gender, feminist theory and feminist movements. She has published and presented essays exploring both contemporary and historical rhetoric surrounding women's health, reproduction, sexuality education, maternity and the abortion debate in the U.S. Her current work focuses on the rhetorical construction of maternity.
Feb. 25: “Trains, Dolls and Demands on the Devil: The Precarious Position of Minority Rights,” Tobin Shearer, director of UM’s African-American Studies program and professor of history.
Shearer conducts research into the history of race and religion in the U.S. with a particular emphasis on prayer, the civil rights movement and white identity. He recently was named a Montana University System Teaching Scholar by the Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education for developing high-impact teaching practices for student success and serving as an excellent model for others in higher education.
March 3: “Women, Public Policy and Politics,” Sara Rinfret, chair of the UM Department of Public Administration and Policy and director for the Master of Public Administration Program.
Rinfret teaches courses on regulatory and environmental policy, state and local government, and public policy and administration. Her research focuses on environmental regulations, especially the interactions between agencies and interest groups during the stages of environmental rule-making at the federal and state level. She has published five books and contributed to multiple journals, including the Oxford Handbook of U.S. Environmental Policy. In 2018, she earned UM’s Most Inspirational Teacher of the Year award.
March 10: “Native American Women and Citizenship,” Kate Shanley, professor and chair of Native American Studies at UM.
Shanley has published widely in the field of Native American literature, most notably on the work of Blackfeet/Gros Ventre writer James Welch and Ojibwe writer Gerald Vizenor. She co-edited “Mapping Indigenous Presence” in 2014 and currently co-edits the Yale University Press “Henry Roe Cloud American Indians and Modernity” series. Shanley served as president of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association from 2011 to 2013 and as a regional liaison for the Ford Foundation Fellowship Program for 15 years. She is an enrolled Nakoda from the Ft. Peck Reservation in Montana, where she grew up.
March 17: “Who am I? Sorting Out American Identity,” Kathy Kuipers, UM associate professor, director of Graduate Studies and former chair in the Department of Sociology.
Kuipers also is affiliated with the Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program and teaches various courses centered on inequality and social justice, gender and social psychology. Kuipers received recognition for mentoring Native American students in 2015 and earned the 2017 William Reynolds Award from the College of Humanities and Sciences at UM for excellence in teaching across the curriculum. Her scholarly articles have appeared in national sociological journals, and she supervises the Social Psychology Research Group, a faculty and student workshop on grants and research. Kuipers is active in the Pacific Sociological Association and was elected vice president for 2018-19.
CLS series tickets cost $25, $20 for UMAA members, $10 for students or $10 for each individual lecture. They are available online at https://grizalum.org/events/cls/default.php.