For Immediate Release: March 17, 2003
Further information: Ann Scanlon 617-514-1662
Boston, MA—On March 17, 2003, Massachusetts teachers and school librarians will celebrate Women’s History Month at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum by studying the lives and contributions of Eleanor Roosevelt, Marian Anderson, Rachel Carson andHelen Taussig. The one-day event, Gifts to the World: Four Remarkable Women and Their Work, is part of the Kennedy Library and Museum’s ongoing series of programs aimed at helping educators use biography to inspire their students and to enliven the teaching of history and other subjects.
Through discussions with historians and biographers of the four women, conference attendees will examine their pioneering work in the fields of human rights, the performing arts, medicine and environmental protection—as well as the individual qualities that made their achievements possible. The program will include film and recordings; documentary resources will be provided for use in the classroom.
Conference speakers include Allida Black, director of the Eleanor Roosevelt and Human Rights Project; Allan Keiler, author of Marian Anderson, A Singer’s Journey; Joyce Baldwin, author of To Heal the Heart of a Child: Helen Taussig, M.D.; Susan Ware, author of Letter to the World: Seven Women Who Shaped the American Century; and Barbara Ward Klein, president of Nature and Environmental Writers–College and University Educators (NEW–CUE), which sponsors a summer writers’ conference in honor of Rachel Carson.
The conference is co-sponsored by the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, administered by the National Archives and Records Administration and supported, in part, by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, a non-profit organization, and the John F. Kennedy National Historic Site in Brookline, Massachusetts, which is the birthplace and boyhood home of the 35th President of the United States and part of the National Park Service. The John F. Kennedy Library and Museum is The John F. Kennedy Library and Museum and the Kennedy Library Foundation seek to promote, through educational and community programs, a greater appreciation and understanding of American politics, history, and culture, the process of governing and the importance of public service.