Honor, Celebrate, Recognize: Women's History Month at UMass Amherst

A trailblazing art historian specializing in Black diasporic art and visual culture, Charmaine A. Nelson strives to increase scholarship and awareness of the histories of slavery in Canada and the American North. She was recently awarded a $2.65 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to expand the Slavery North Initiative, of which she is founding director.

UMass Amherst Professor Kathleen Arcaro studies breast milk to understand both how breast cancer develops and how to prevent it.

Torrey Trust’s research on teaching, learning, and technology is shared with educators around the world to improve student learning and encourage the design of more accessible and inclusive learning environments.

As a professor of social justice education, Jamila Lyiscott has devoted her career to challenging the accepted notions of a pedagogy rooted in colonialism, with its emphasis on “civilizing” those from outside the traditional framework.

Sonya Atalay explores ways that repatriation and reclaiming of tangible and intangible heritage are teachers that provide essential lessons for decolonizing and Indigenizing institutions. She is founder and a principal investigator for the Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledge and Science (CBIKS), an international research collaborative that examines how to effectively and ethically braid Western and Indigenous science research, education, and practice related to the urgent and interconnected challenges of climate change, cultural places, and food security.

Heather MacLean is the first Olympian in the history of women's track & field at UMass. She was one of only three women to qualify to run the 1,500 meters for Team USA in the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics.

Varshini Prakash is a climate activist and executive director of the Sunrise Movement, a 501(c)(4) organization which she co-founded in 2017. She was named on the 2019 Time 100 Next list, and was a co-recipient of the Sierra Club John Muir Award in 2019.

Audie Cornish is a journalist and a former co-host of NPR's All Things Considered and panelist on Pop Culture Happy Hour. She was previously the host of NPR Presents, a long-form conversation series with creatives about their projects and shaping culture in America. She is an anchor and correspondent for CNN and the host of The Assignment, a CNN Audio podcast

Betty Shabazz (1934-1977) was an educator and civil rights activist. The wife of Malcolm X, Shabazz became an important political activist after her husband's assassination in 1965. In the 1970s, Shabazz began giving public lectures on the African American condition, fighting for education and human rights causes.

Natalie Cole (1950-2015) was a singer, songwriter, and actress. Daughter of singer and jazz pianist Nat King Cole, she rose to success in the mid-1970s as an R&B singer. In the 1990s, she sang traditional pop by her father, resulting in her biggest success, Unforgettable... with Love, which sold over seven million copies and won her seven Grammy Awards. She sold over 30 million records worldwide.

Best known as the author of Human Anatomy & Physiology, Elaine Marieb’s (1936-2018) textbooks are taught in more than 2,400 classrooms around the world. Time magazine ranked her the seventh most-read female writer in the college classroom, behind such literary luminaries as Mary Shelley and Virginia Woolf. Her legacy, impact, and influence continue to grow, thanks to her generous philanthropy. After the Elaine Nicpon Marieb Charitable Foundation made a gift to UMass Amherst of $21.5 million, UMass officially named the Elaine Marieb College of Nursing in her honor.

The Office of Equity and Inclusion invites the campus community to explore their list of events, suggested readings, and podcasts in celebration of Women's History Month.

Established in 1972, the Center for Women and Community offers many services to meet the needs of the diverse populations of UMass Amherst, the Five Colleges, and Hampshire County.

To raise awareness of the issues and increase visibility of the unique contributions of Black women, women of color, and transfem people, Distinguished Alumna Irma McClaurin ’76MFA, ’89MA, ’93PhD, founded the Irma McClaurin Black Feminist Archive (BFA). It is a collaboration with UMass Amherst Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives and the W.E.B. Du Bois Center. 

The Valley Women's History Collaborative is an active group of students, scholars, archivists, and community volunteers dedicated to researching, collecting, preserving, and publicizing the history of women in Hampshire, Franklin, and Hampden counties from the mid-1960s to the present.

Explore the Five College's course catalogue to find faculty that specialize in: African American women's history; feminist history; 20th-century U.S. women's history; histories of women and gender in Latin America; and much more.

The Stonewall Center has been a cornerstone of support for the campus LGBTQ+ community for more than 35 years. The center provides support, resources, programming, and advocacy for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex, asexual, and allied students, staff, and faculty at UMass Amherst and for Western Massachusetts.