| Date |
Topic |
| October 6,
2008 |
Gillian Sutherland, who taught history
at Newnham College, Cambridge, and is author of Faith, Duty and the Power
of Mind: The Cloughs and Their Circle 1820-1960, spoke about her
experiences writing the biography of several generations of a family that
promoted the education of women. Rachel Brownstein moderated. |
| November 3,
2008 |
Seminar member Amy Swerdlow and guest Eva Kollisch
spoke on “Memory, Re-membering, and Form in Memoir.” Amy Swerdlow,
who was a co-founder of Women's Strike for Peace and professor of history at
Sarah Lawrence, is writing about growing up in the workers’ coops in the
Bronx, a Communist community. Eva Kollisch, born in Vienna and taken by the
Kindertransport to England, taught comparative literature at Sarah Lawrence and
is author of two memoirs, Girl in Movement and The Ground
Under My Feet. Bell Gale Chevigny moderated. |
| December 15,
2008 |
Brenda Wineapple, longtime seminar member, discussed
her newest book White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas
Wentworth Higginson. She spoke about the special challenges she faced
writing what she termed “Not Biography.” Sydney Ladensohn Stern
moderated. |
| January 5,
2009 |
“Selling and Promoting Our Books to Publishers
and Prospective Readers” was the subject of this first session of 2009,
organized by Nancy Rubin Stuart. Louise Bernikow moderated and the guest
speaker was Nancy Bachrach, whose mother-daughter memoir The Center of
the Universe was scheduled to appear in May. |
| February 2,
2009 |
Honor Moore, former chair of the seminar, spoke
about her acclaimed and controversial memoir The Bishop's
Daughter. “Finding Ourselves Through Family History” was the
topic. Polly Howells moderated. |
| March 2,
2009 |
Guest presenters were Elizabeth Horan, professor of
English at Arizona State University and biographer of the Latin American poet
and 1945 Nobel laureate Gabriela Mistral, and Gail Malmgreen of the Tamiment
Library, who has spent thirty years working in archives. The topic:
“Biography and the Politics of Archives.” Trudy Balch moderated. |
| March 20,
2009 |
The Women Writing Women's Lives seminar participated
in “Women*Writing*Lives,” a CUNY Grad Center conference co-sponsored
by WWWL, the Center for the Study of Women and Society, the M. A. in Liberal
Studies, the Center for Humanities, the Ph. D. program in English, and the Leon
Levy Center for Biography. Dorothy O. Helly served on the planning committee.
WWWL members who spoke at the event were Blanche Wiesen Cook, Carla L.
Peterson, Alix Kates Shulman, Mary Ann Caws, Gail A. Hornstein, and Brenda
Wineapple. Many more seminar members attended. |
| April 6,
2009 |
Marjorie Lightman, co-author of The A to Z of
Ancient Greek and Roman Women, was our guest presenter on the subject of
“Writing Brief Biographies.” Dorothy O. Helly moderated. |
| May 4, 2009 |
Gail A. Hornstein spoke about her new book
Agnes's Jacket: A Psychologist's Search for the Meaning of
Madness. The cover letter stated a central concern of this session:
“Since WWWL began as a feminist alternative to more traditional biography
seminars, let us confront the complicated questions that arise from
‘wanting to write to change the world.’” Polly Howells
moderated. With the agreement of all, we made an exception to our no taping
policy and recorded this very lively session. |
