Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library

The 2018 UGA Women's History Month keynote address will be presented by Andrea J. Ritchie. Her talk is co-sponsored by the Lucy Hargrett Draper Center and Archives for the Study of the Rights of Women in History and Law.

Andrea Ritchie is a black lesbian immigrant and police misconduct attorney and organizer who has engaged in extensive research, writing, and advocacy around criminalization of women and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people of color over the past two decades. She recently published Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color now available from Beacon Press.

Ritchie is a nationally recognized expert and sought after commentator on policing issues. 

She will speak March 1 beginning at 6:30 p.m. in the auditorium of the Russell Special Collections Libraries. It is open free to the public.

“Open Doors: 100 Years of Family and Consumer Sciences at UGA” an exhibit on the college’s centennial, also focuses on the admission of women to public higher education, UGA’s role as a land-grant institution, and how the field has grown and adapted over the decades.

The exhibit, at the Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries, will be on display through June and includes publications, manuscripts, period clothing from the Historic Clothing and Textile Collection, and photographs of the first women admitted to UGA, food preservation classes, needlework demonstrations, WWII military on the UGA campus and other moments from the past 100 years.

 Five authors comprise the 2018 class of Georgia Writers Hall of Fame inductees:  Michael Bishop, Tayari Jones and Cynthia Shearer will be admitted at the November ceremony; Furman Bisher and Frances Newman will be honored posthumously.

The University of Georgia Libraries began in 2000 the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame to honor Georgia writers and to introduce the public to the library’s rich collections for research into Georgia literature and cultural history.The ceremony will be held in November, part of the UGA Spotlight on the Arts festival. 

The Yazoo land fraud was “one of the most significant events in the post–Revolutionary War history of Georgia,” according to its entry in the New Georgia Encyclopedia written by Chris Dobbs. “The bizarre climax to a decade of frenzied speculation in the state's public lands, the Yazoo sale of 1795 did much to shape Georgia politics and to strain relations with the federal government for a generation.”

Rebecca Latimer Felton (1835-1930), a Georgia native, is best known as the first woman to hold a U.S. Senate seat but it is her speeches and writings on behalf of Progressive Era reforms, especially women’s rights, that cement her legacy.

A scholar of southern culture and two poets will come together Nov.  5 to discuss their craft and more at the Author Discussion Series, a moderated panel discussion and  prelude to the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame induction ceremony Nov. 6.

Moderated by Hugh Ruppersburg, University Professor Emeritus, of the UGA English department, the discussion will take place at 5 p.m.  in the auditorium of the Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries. A reception will follow.

Participating will be honorees James Cobb,  the B. Phinizy Spalding Professor of History Emeritus at UGA;  and poets Alfred Corn and Kevin Young, who also directs of the  Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Also honored at the Monday ceremony will be the late Eugenia Price, an historical novelist many credit with helping to preserve the history of coastal Georgia.

Amateur films and filmmaking will be the stars of the day Oct. 21 when National Home Movie Day 2017 will be observed  in Athens at the UGA Special Collections Libraries.

National Home Movie Day is a worldwide celebration of amateur films and filmmaking, held annually in October.  The event provides an opportunity for attendees to bring in their home movies, learn more about their own family films, how to care for films and videotapes, and how home movies have helped capture personal history.

The event will be 2-4 p.m. at the Richard b. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries, 300 S. Hull Street, on the University of Georgia campus.  Free parking is available in the Hull Street parking deck. This year’s event is being sponsored by the University of Georgia Libraries’ Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection.

  The Odum School of Ecology kicks off a celebration of its tenth anniversary—and the fiftieth of its precursor, the Institute of Ecology—with a lecture, discussion and pair of exhibitions at the Richard B. Russell Special Collections Library on Sept. 14 at 4:30 p.m. Featured speakers include Betty Jean Craige, University Professor of Comparative Literature Emerita and Director Emerita of the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts; David C. Coleman, Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus of Ecology; and James W. Porter, Meigs Professor of Ecology Emeritus. The talks will be followed by a reception and book signing, and two related exhibitions will be on view in the library galleries. The event is free and open to the public. 

 The formative years of UGA’s football program is the focus of a new exhibit, “Covered With Glory: Football at UGA, 1892-1917” this fall at the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Rarely seen artifacts and photographs from UGA’s earliest gridiron heroes are featured. Visitors will learn about: coaching legend Glenn ‘Pop’ Warner, the first UGA football coach to coach for more than one year; ‘War Eagle’ Ketron, who overcame parental objections to become one of Georgia’s greatest players of the 1900s; and Herty Field, the campus site of so many early battles.  The tragic story of Von Gammon, a UGA football player whose death during a game against the University of Virginia in 1897 nearly ended the UGA football program, is highlighted.

The Firebrand and the First Lady, a portrait of the friendship between the human rights activist Pauli Murray and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and Vagrant Nation, an examination of constitutional changes and their effect on the social reform movements of the 1960s, are winners of the 2017 Lillian Smith Book Awards.

Part of the AJC Decatur Book Festival, the Lillian Smith Book Awards will be presented Sept. 3 at 2:30 p.m. in the auditorium of Decatur Public Library.