The Department of History Video Project to Honor Women’s History Month 2021
In celebration of Women’s History Month, the Department of History invited the female faculty of The Catholic University of America to make short videos of themselves discussing women trailblazers in their fields. These are women who have made marks on their disciplines, or served as inspirations, and whom our faculty want to see remembered and honored.
Professors across Catholic University’s schools and academic programs responded enthusiastically to this invitation. The inspirational women they chose to spotlight are equally wide-ranging. They include saints, such as Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Hildegard von Bingen. They also include scientists, like Lise Meitner (the first woman to become a full professor of physics in Germany, who also taught as a visiting professor at Catholic University) and Caroline Herschel, an eighteenth-century astronomer who discovered comets. They include many firsts: the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. in the United States (Georgiana Simpson), and the first female member of the American Railway Engineering Association (Olive Dennis). Also on the list are disruptive innovators, from the medieval Christine de Pizan (the first woman in the West to earn a living by writing, known for her defense of women in The Book of the City of Ladies) to the very modern Loretta Ford, who co-founded the first nurse practitioner program.
Beginning on March 8th – International Women’s Day – the Department will post a new video each day to its social media platforms, so keep checking our Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook feeds. At the end of the month, the videos will be edited together and posted to the Department of History’s website to commemorate this initiative.