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"Women's Private Writing as a Public Resource" is topic of Mar. 28 ICC lecture series

Dr. Bridget Smith Pieschel will present “Women’s Private Writing as a Public Resource” at 6 p.m., Mar. 28, at the W.O. Benjamin Fine Arts Center Lecture Demonstration Room on the Itawamba Community College Fulton Campus.

            A native of Louisville, she earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from Mississippi University for Women and the doctorate from the University of Alabama.

            Now retired after 39 years, 25 of those in supervisory positions, she is Emerita Professor of English and Women’s Studies. Her career at The W included serving as the director of the Honors Program, as the dean of the Division of Humanities and twice as chair of the Department of Languages, Literature and Philosophy. She became the director of the Center for Women’s Research and Public Policy at The W in 2005.

            Her honors include recipient of the MUW Medal of Excellence in 2005 and the Kossen Distinguished Faculty Award in 2012.

            She gives numerous presentations each year to university, professional, civic and student groups about MUW’s history and 19th-century women’s education. She has published articles also about individual Southern women, including Eudora Welty and the founder of the O Henry prize, MUW alumna Blanche Colton Williams.

            After the Center for Women’s Research and Public Policy opened, she and student interns published a collection of oral histories. She directed the annual MUW Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium for nine years and the annual Tennessee Williams Tribute Scholars’ Panel for 10 years.

            She is a past president of the Board of Directors of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters and is a past state director of the Southern Literary Trail, focusing on Southern writers in Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia. She is a governor’s appointed commissioner and vice chair for the Volunteer Mississippi Commission and a board member of the Lowndes County Community Foundation Board, which is a part of the CREATE Foundation. She is a member of the Lowndes County 100 Women Who Care and serves as a Foundation Board member for the Mississippi Free Press.

            She and her husband, Steve, are long-time parishioners of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and live in Columbus. They have five grown children and five grandchildren.

            The public is invited to the free event.

            The presentation is part of “Reflecting Mississippi: Finding Yourself in Mississippi’s Refection,” made possible by a grant from the Mississippi Humanities Council.



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