Lecture at WVSU to Explore Role Women Played in Nation’s Healing Following Civil War

10/15/2014

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Contact: Kimberly Osborne
(304) 766-3363
kosborne@wvstateu.edu
 

 
INSTITUTE, W.Va. -- As part of an ongoing partnership between West Virginia State University (WVSU) and the West Virginia Humanities Council, Dr. Katharine Antolini will deliver a lecture titled “Mother of Martyrs: Women and Civil War Commemoration” on Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2014.

The lecture is free and open to the public and will take place from 12:30 – 1:45 p.m. in room 122 of Wallace Hall on the WVSU campus in Institute.

“Mothers of Martyrs” will explore the role that women played in healing the physical and psychological wounds left by the American Civil War through their symbolic acts of commemoration.

Antolini, a West Virginia Wesleyan College history professor, will highlight the origins of Memorial Day and Mother's Day through the work of southern women who strived to rebuild their communities in the wake of war.   

Antolini holds a doctorate and a master’s degree in History from West Virginia University, a master’s degree in Sociology from Rutgers University and a bachelor’s degree in History and Sociology from West Virginia Wesleyan College.

She has published and spoken widely on the topics of motherhood and women’s history and has written a book, “Memorializing Motherhood: Anna Jarvis and the Struggle for Control of Mother’s Day,” that will be published this fall by West Virginia University Press.
She also serves as historian and a trustee for the International Mother’s Day Shrine in Grafton, W.Va.

The lecture is part of an ongoing partnership between the West Virginia Humanities Council and the WVSU History Program to commemorate the Civil War Sesquicentennial. 

It is sponsored by the West Virginia Humanities Council and the WVSU College of Business & Social Sciences, the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, History Program and the Charles T. Jones Historical Society. 

For more information contact Dr. Billy Joe Peyton, WVSU associate professor of History, at (304) 766-3235 or peytonbj@wvstateu.edu. 

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West Virginia State University is a public, land grant, historically black university, which has evolved into a fully accessible, racially integrated, and multi-generational institution, located in Institute, W.Va. As a “living laboratory of human relations,” the university is a community of students, staff, and faculty committed to academic growth, service, and preservation of the racial and cultural diversity of the institution. Its mission is to meet the higher education and economic development needs of the state and region through innovative teaching and applied research.