Women's Equality Day is an opportunity to celebrate all women whose wisdom and perspicacity has made an impact on our world and within our culture. To highlight how women have made a fundamental mark across disciplines, here are five names I believe should be emphasized from articles published in recent years.
You can read these articles using CPL's Online Resources.
Music
"Sappho and her Brothers" by David Gribble
History Today, October 2016
Sappho, the lyrical poetess, is a classic figurehead of the Hellenistic Age in Ancient Greece. Despite the fragmentary nature of what we don't know, there are facts we do know, including what she wrote about, what inspired her compositions and how they were performed. Researchers are currently claiming even more evidence to her enduring legacy, providing a new understanding of women as community.
"The Argerich Enigma" by Clive Paget
Limelight, June 1, 2017
In the realm of classical music, Martha Argerich is a celebrity. As a pianist she is known as one of the greats from the past century, continuing to wow listeners with her performances and recordings of Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Liszt and more. But, as with any phenomenal artist, her profound stage presence is not the only side to her story.
Science
"Maria Mitchell" by Ellen Bailey
Great Neck Publishing, August 1, 2017
As an American raised in Quaker household during the 19th century, Maria Mitchell broke the mold by being the first to discover a unique comet, now known as Maria Mitchell's Comet, A.K.A. the Nantucket Comet, after her hometown. Learn a bit about her professorial and scientific life in this brief but fundamental biography.
Philosophy
"Three Elegies for Susan Sontag" by Ellen Willis
New Politics, July 1, 2005
One of the great authors of our time, the late Susan Sontag, of such brilliant essays as Notes on Camp (recently the inspiration for the Met Gala) and the somber Regarding the Pain of Others, which changed the way many of us understand violence, is remembered shortly after her death for her unconventionally illuminating stances on art, politics and illness.
Photography
"Sally Mann's South" by Suzanne Schuweiler
Southeastern College Art Conference Review, December 1, 2013
Sally Mann's controversial artwork, explained and examined beautifully in her autobiography/memoir - Hold Still - may have made her unpopular to some, but her oeuvre makes her a canonical American artist regardless. Her photographic work of the South is here understood as a groundbreaking perspective of a mythic America haunted by history.
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