Calvin College will host a variety of events in March to celebrate Women's History Month. Included will be movies, music and more.
The events will begin March 3 with the first of five movies on four consecutive nights as part of a women's film festival. All five films will be shown in the new Bytwerk Video Theater in the DeVos Communication Center and all five are free and open to all. Show time is 7 p.m. for each.

The five films (in order of appearance) are: 
March 3 ~ Monsoon Wedding (filmmaker Mira Nair's comedic examination of pressures in preparing for marriage in modern day Delhi) March 4 ~ a double feature: Kadosh and Leila (Jewish and Muslim directors consider the plight of the barren wife in conservative religious societies) March 5 ~ War Stories Our Mothers Never Told Us (an award-winning documentary chronicling the lives of seven women during the World War II) March 6 ~ Woman of the Year (a classic comedy, starring Katharine Hepburn and Spenser Tracy)
Calvin also will host A Concert of Women's Music at 8 p.m. on March 5, featuring pianist Nancy Paddleford in a guest recital in the Fine Arts Center Auditorium. A member of the music faculty at St. Olaf College, Paddleford is active as both a solo recitalist and a chamber musician in the United States and in Central America. Her recital at Calvin is one of several performances of "Music By and About Women" that she will give in March to mark Women's History Month. The program features music by women composers and music about women from both the 19th and 20th centuries. Admission is free.

Documentary film-maker James Ault will present a portion of "Born Again," his memorable portrait of a fundamentalist congregation, and lead a discussion about the dynamics of gender roles in conservative religious subcultures on March 6 at 3:30 p.m. in the Meeter Center Lecture Hall. His talk is entitled: "Born Again Female: Women and Conservative Evangelical Culture."

On March 10 Calvin will host a talk by University of Texas professor Denise Schmandt-Besserat on ""Symbols at 'Ain Ghazal." It will be in the Commons Lecture Hall from 12:30-1:30 p.m. Schmandt-Besserat is a professor of art and middle eastern studies who specializes in the archaeology of the Near East. She has worked on the origin of writing and mathematics and her work has been widely reported in magazines and newspapers such as Scientific American, Time, Life, New York Times, and The Washington Post. She will also speak that evening on the "Symbols and the Origins of Writing" on the GVSU Pew Campus.

A professor of American history at Florida State University will speak at Calvin on March 13 on "Dutch Immigrant Women and American Culture." Suzannne Sinke will speak in the Meeter Center at 3:30 p.m. A specialist in immigration and gender studies, she is the author of Dutch Immigrant Women in the United States, 1880-1920. Her current research links marriage and international migration across U.S. history from bride ships, male majorities, and anti-miscegenation policies in the colonial era to web-matchmaking, female majorities, and fiancee visas in the late twentieth century.

Women, religion and civil rights will be the topics for a March 26 talk by Rosetta Ross. She will speak at 3:30 p.m. that day in the Commons Lecture Hall on "Witnessing and Testifying: Black Women, Religion, and Civil Rights." Author of a book by the same name, Ross is a minister and a professor of ethics at United Theological Seminary in Minneapolis/St. Paul.

The month-long celebration will conclude at 7:30 p.m. on March 26 when Calvin hosts Marie Wilson, director of the White House Project whose goals is "to create a climate in America where it is normal for women to be governors, CEOs and president." Wilson, co-founder of the Project, will speak on "Why Women Matter -- The Path to Leadership" in the DeVos Communication Center Forum.