Special Programs Look Back, Forward

Students, faculty, and Rochester residents had the opportunity to learn more about issues relevant to the community with the University’s two specially themed yearlong programs during the 2005–06 academic year: “Susan B. Anthony and the Struggle for Equal Rights” and “Visual Culture and the African Diaspora.”

The Anthony program, coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the suffragist’s death, included a three-day women’s history conference, the exhibition “Celebrating ‘A Heroic Life’: 1820–1906” in the Rush Rhees Library’s Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, and a reenactment of Anthony’s funeral in downtown Rochester that included female University students as pallbearers, just as they were at Anthony’s funeral a century ago.

“Visual Culture and the African Diaspora” offered a series of University and communitywide events exploring political, economic, and social issues of race and identity. Sponsored by the Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies and the Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies, the program featured African- and African-American–themed films and lectures, the exhibition “Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America,” talks, and a symposium on “Reclaiming Negative Imagery.”