Browse Exhibits (16 total)

Strenuous Labor: Agnes Geréb and the Home Birth Movement in Hungary, 1977-2010

Prior to 2010, Hungarian law limited the birth experiences of pregnant people. Pregnant people were not able to give birth in their homes and have their birth attended to by a trained midwife throughout this period in Hungary, due to a refusal to issue licenses to independent midwives. In hospitals, the birthing experience was not empowering for many due to medicalized birthing practices, which additionally endangered the person giving birth and their baby. Childbirth was under bureaucratic control which prevented a pregnant person their full autonomy when giving birth, and midwives such as Agnes Geréb were assisting home births illegally. 

“Je me suis fais avorter”: Placing Abortion in the Public Sphere

CONTENT WARNING: This exhibit discusses issues of abortion and sexual assault.

The "Manifesto of the 343" was a petition signed by 343 French women publicly declaring that they had had an abortion. The manifesto was published in the magazine Le Nouvel Observateur on April 5, 1971. On April 5, 1971, three-hundred and forty-three women signed their names alongside a declaration that made them criminals. "One million women in France have abortions every year...I declare that I am one of them."(1)

At the time that the manifesto was published, abortion was illegal in France, making this petition an act of civil disobedience. The manifesto called for abortion to be legalized and better access to contraceptives. The publishing of the “Manifesto of the 343” is significant because it emphasizes the right to an abortion as a sociopolitical and economic issue as opposed to a private or individual issue. By taking abortion out of the private sphere and into the public political arena, they challenged gender roles by not only rejecting the duty of being a vessel for reproduction during a time when France was increasingly worried about its lack of population growth but by presenting abortion access as an issue of citizenship. By making reproductive freedom the central focus of the struggle for women's equal citizenship rights, these women brought the issue of abortion into the public sphere and ultimately were able to push the government into passing legislation to repeal the restrictions.

1. “The Manifesto of the 343”, Le Nouvel Observateur, no. 334, April 1971, 5.

Women of World War I

An exploration of the roles that women were given and that they took during the Great War.

Love & Rage: The Gendering of Peaceful & Violent Protest in Seattle, 1999

When the Cold War came to an end at the beginning of the last decade of the 20th Century, many thought a new era of peace and prosperity would reign over human history. Instead, a rapidly globalizing world dominated by free markets and interconnectedness shook people as much as the exponential speed at which technology was advancing. In this chaos of never before explored capabilities, both governments and common people attempted to make sense of their positions. While governments organized themselves into international bodies in order to better negotiate trade regulations as a means to streamline the process of globalization, many workers and individuals found themselves feeling marginalized, oppressed, or otherwise swallowed by the ever confusing new order of globalized free market capitalism¹. Trade agreements like NAFTA opened up new opportunities for corporations to expand profits, but left workers feeling threatened as jobs could now flow freely beyond borders. One important organization central to these new policies is the World Trade Organization. Formed in 1995 to replace outdated international commerce organizations, the WTO serves as a body in which trade policies can be discussed, debated, and resolved between delegates sent by most major nation states of the world². After negotiations fell through earlier that year, a ministerial conference was called on November 30th, 1999 that set off a series of protests that forever changed protest in the United States, as well as solidified the Anti-Globalization movement as a whole³. Through a variety of tactics both peaceful and violent, all while utilizing the powers of, and experiencing the drawbacks to anonymity and transparency, anti-globalization protesters achieved particular goals, while causing potentially detrimental consequences to the public opinion of protest in the United States.

¹ - Notes From Nowhere. We are everywhere the irresistible rise of global anticapitalism. Londres: Verso, 2003. pg 16

² - Cockburn, Alexander, and Jeffrey St. Clair. Five days that shook the world: seattle and beyond. London: Verso, 2001. pg 6

³ - Ibid, pg 9

The Rosenstrasse Protest

In February of 1943, the final round-up of Jewish Citizens occured. on February 28th, 5,000 Jewish citizens were rounded up , and of these 5,000, 2,000 were placed into Rosenstrasse 2-4, a local Jewish welfare center. These Jews were the husbands, wives, and children in intermarriages to 'Aryan' Germans. Their husbands up and vanished, the wives of these men soon began to stand outisde of Rosenstrasse in what became a week long protest aimed at their husbands release. This presentation follows the social impact and success of this protest, and the implications that follow these type of stories.

The Square

By Te'ier Langford

The Tahrir Square protest was a monumental movement which began in January 2011. This protest was an important contribution to the Arab Spring because it was one of the biggest protests in history and within that wave of movements. It persisted for eighteen days and was a powerful demonstration to rebel against their former president, Hosni Mubarak. Amongst the thirty to fourty millions of protesters, they demanded political change, economic renewal, and democracy throughout Egypt. These activists occupied the space from Tahrir Square to Cairo, Egypt, which is very extensive when taking a glance at a map. The activists and other protesters fought back by expressing themselves through banners, songs, videos, interviews, and by other uses of the media as well. Many women came to Tahrir Square to call out injustice against women and the press for equality. However, not everyone in Tahrir Square was there for the right reasons. (1) On January 25, 2011, a riot broke out and over eighty women were sexually assault throughout the chaos. In fact, many women have report instances of sexual assault and abuse in Tahrir Square, but nothing was put into effect to stop the increasing number of victims. The call for change turned into tragedy and the protester who came to the Square to fight for equality were set back once again.

Overview

Speces occupied:

  • Tahrir Square, Tunisia, Egypt, Cairo

Expression:

  • Graffiti, art, songs, social media, self- immolation, videos, interviews

Participants: 30 to 40 million

Politics: On January 25th, nineteen women were raped during the riot of the Tahrir Square protest; One of the vicims were brutally stabbed in the vagina. Every year that there is a protest in Tahrir Square, there is a sexual assault reported. However, there are not systems put in place to protect them or defend them in a court of law. 

(1) Morgan, Marwa. "Public Sexual Assault: Why Don’t People Intervene?" Daily News Egypt. June 17, 2014. Accessed December 5, 2017. https://dailynewsegypt.com/2014/06/17/public-sexual-assault-dont-people-intervene/.

, , ,

Platforms in Sports

Sports have been a way for people to have some type of release from their everyday lives. Most people around the world watch some tyoe of sport whether that be football, American football, basketball, etc. With some sports viewer ratings going above 1 million the athletes have many eyes watching them in their given game. This viewership creates a platform for them to express themselves however they deem fit. In my case I am focusing on the atheletes and fans who have chosen to use that platform to advance a certain social narrative. 

Social injustice is a topic that sparks a lot of discourse between many different types of people. Throughout history professional athletes have used their platform to push forward these social topics with which they believe. An example that is highlighted in my exhibit is the protest of racial injustices by Tommie Smith and John Carlos during the 1968 Summer Olympics. This shows how different protests can morph throughout time. Colin Kaepernick and his anthem protest is just one of the athletes that took the grounwork previously laid by Smith and Carlos.Kaepernick took a knee to raise awareness for police brutality toward African Americans. His example shows how an athlete taking a stand for what he/she seems fit to protest can change depending on the way someone else defines the original reason for the protest. 

Set in Stone?: Controversial Monuments and Protest

On August 12th, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia two groups of protestors faced off over the removal of a Confederate statue. During these protests, a woman was killed when one of the Confederate supporters hit her with a vehicle. The United States is facing a dilemma of what to do with Confederate statues across the country.[1] Some see saving Confederate monuments as an opportunity to honor the past and buttress white supremacy. Another group sees the statues as memorials that glorify a racist social order in the past and the present. Finally, a third, less active, group that ideologically agrees to some extent with the previous group, but believes that the statues should stay in their place as an important marker of history. These groups disagree with each other and they have taken to the streets in conflict over their differences. The conflict and arguments between these sides are long running and unlikely to be resolved easily. However, the United States is not the only place to face issues over controversial monuments. All over the world, legacies of oppression and colonialism have left their mark that the current citizens of nations must address. In nations ranging from Estonia to Korea and South Africa to Russia, people have dealt with these memories in a variety of ways. In this work, I examine other nations and monuments not associated with the Confederates and their approaches to controversial monuments. Those approaches and debates are compared to the current methods being taken in the United States. The goal is that something is learned from other examples. Every nation and people are different and their histories are different. This means that other approaches cannot be wholly duplicated in another context, but the situations are similar enough that lessons can be taken from other experiences.


[1] Unknown. “Confederate Monuments Are Coming Down Across the United States. Here’s a List.” New York Times, August 28th, 2017.

Sit-In's: Let Freedom Ring

On February 1, 1960, four students from North Carolina A&T walked into Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina and did what was at that time, unthinkable; they sat down at a "whites only" lunch counter as an act of peacefully protest. This act sparked a nation wide copy cat protests which eventually led to the desegregation of spaces throughout the South. These succesful protests led to copy cat sit-in's and marches all accross America. One of the most notable sit-in's happened in CLeveland, Ohio where parents, educators, and local leaders staged a sit-in protest at the headquarters of the Cleveland School district building in downtown Cleveland.

, , , , , , , ,

Musical Dissent: Soviet Bards and the All-Russia Bard Festival of 1968

Music became a big part of dissent in the Soviet Union.  Soviet Bards were at the center of musical dissent and at the forefront of a movement of self-published and self-distributed music.  This method known as samizdat, or magnitizdat for recordings, became the central tool for bards to distribute their music.  Many Bards found it difficult to distribute their music through the big state-run record company Melodia and were often times spread through hand written song books and bootleg cassette tapes.  Large Bard festivals and concerts did occur, but were uncommon.  Many were helf outside of the large cities in a type of nowhere space, but being able to perform the songs in public was a victory in itself.