Mirroring the national Women’s History Month theme of “Providing Healing, Promoting Hope,” events will feature a speaker series and performances by poets, authors, scholars and community leaders.

“This year’s theme honors the important role women have played in the current public health crisis, such as helping manage some of the shifts in labor and by serving as caregivers,” said Sonya Alemán is an associate professor in the UTSA College of Education and Human Development’s Department of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (REGSS) and director of the UTSA Women’s Studies Institute. “It’s a nod to recognizing the current moment, as well as all the ways women have provided healing and inspired hope through that work.”

REGSS and the UTSA Women’s Studies Institute are working with the university’s Multicultural Student Center for Equity and Justice to host this year’s events.

Alemán hopes that attendees will leave each event with a curiosity to learn more.

“I really hope that they walk away with the desire to continue learning about the issues and topics addressed at each event,” she said. “By celebrating Women’s History Month at UTSA, we hope to increase the community’s awareness of all the contributions women have made and the continued inequities women face, so more people can be agents of change to better our society.”

This year’s Women’s History Month events will include:

Body Positivity, Fatphobia and The Politics of Desire: An Author Talk
Monday, March 7 | 11:30 a.m. | Virtual

In this talk and Q&A, author Caleb Luna will reflect on their essay, “On Being Fat, Brown, Femme, and Ugly," eight years after it was written.

Book Talk with Co-editors of the Revolutionary Women of Texas and Mexico
Tuesday, March 8 | 11:30 a.m. | Virtual

Co-editors Kathy Sosa, Ellen Riojas Clark and Jennifer Speed will discuss their groundbreaking book, “Revolutionary Women of Texas and Mexico,” which celebrates the women of early Texas and Mexico who refused to walk a traditional path.

International Women’s Day
Tuesday, March 8

In honor of this year’s campaign theme, #BreakTheBias, UTSA is asking the Roadrunner community to:

• Take a photo striking the #BreakTheBias pose—crossing arms to show solidarity
• Include a commitment to create a world that is diverse, equitable and inclusive.
• Tag @UTSA_MSCEJ, @UTSAStudents and @UTSACOEHD

Recovering Indigenous Foods for Healing and Wellness
Wednesday, March 9 | 10:30 a.m. | Virtual

Led by Lilliana Saldaña, this event is a presentation-plática on indigenous foods of present-day Mexico and the Tejas-Mexico borderlands and their culinary and medicinal uses for indigenizing and decolonizing diets for personal healing and collective wellness.

Style Files: Ancestral Aesthetics of South Texas — Ayer, Hoy y Siempre
Wednesday, March 9 | 10 a.m. to 11:15 a.m. | Virtual
Sunday, March 13 | 2 p.m. | Jamie’s Place, 1514 W. Commerce St., 78207

Braiding together research and Anzaldúan autohistoria, this workshop will discuss the ways women dress themselves to express cultural identity, adorn themselves as a form of self-care, follow and forecast fashion trends and how women express joy in a lineage of South Texas ancestral aesthetics. The workshop will also explore the remix of vintage and thrifted textiles and the rasquache style. Participants may contribute to a final ’zine that features portraits recreating a fashionable look from a family ancestor.  

Featured Event: Keynote Address — Love in a Time of Troubles
Tuesday, March 22 | 2:30 p.m. | Virtual

Gaye Theresa Johnson, associate professor of Chicana/o and Central American Studies and associate director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, will discuss living intentionally, building hope and maintaining persistence in troubling times.

Feminist Organizing in COVID Times: Experiences and Alternatives in Latin America
Thursday, March 24 | 3 p.m. | Virtual

This conversation will reflect on how diverse women and LGBTQ+ communities in Latin America have recently organized to face several long-term crises exacerbated by the COVID 19 pandemic. Drawing from experiences as feminist anthropologists working in Mexico and Guatemala, panelists will share examples of feminist grassroots organizing rooted in a long history of collective resistance and the construction of alternative futures expressed in concrete actions of solidarity. 

Featured Event: In Search of Reproductive Justice, A Conversation Between Dána-Ain Davis and Deirdre Cooper Owens
Monday, March 28 | 11:30 a.m. | Virtual

Scholars and reproductive justice activists Cooper Owens and Dána-Ain Davis discuss the historical legacies of medical racism and the contemporary challenges facing Black women and birthing individuals during their quests for reproductive justice.

Featured Event: When Coatlicue Comes For You, Transformation is Inevitable
Tuesday, March 29 | 2:30 p.m. | Virtual 

Feminist scholar, writer, teacher, mentor and spiritual activist Irene Lara will discuss a myriad of ways in which women are cultivating critical and compassionate consciousness thus making the hard, intimate labor of healing and transformation inevitable—and even irresistible.

Fifty Years of Title IX: The Past, Present and Future of Women’s College Sports
Tuesday, March 29 | 6 p.m. | Student Union Retama Auditorium (SU 2.02.02) and livestreamed

This presentation will highlight the progress made and the challenges that remain for women’s athletics in the 50-year anniversary of Title IX.

Dominicana Soy
Thursday, March 31 | 2:30 p.m. | Virtual

This poetry reading and performance by award-winning author Jasminne Mendez tackles the intersections of race, identity, culture, disability and gender.