Professor Anastatia Sims to speak at Great Minds Lecture series Jan. 31

January 5, 2017

Dr. Anastatia Sims

Anastatia Sims, Ph.D., professor of history in Georgia Southern University’s College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS), will open the 2017 Great Minds Lecture series on Jan. 31 in the Russell Union, Room 2047.

Sims’ lecture, “Wanton Wenches and Nasty Women: Vindicating Women’s Rights from 1792-2016,” will relate to and use documents from the Remnant Trust Exhibit. The Exhibit is a world-class collection of manuscripts and first and early edition works in their original forms with the goal of elevating the public’s understanding of individual liberty and human dignity through the precedent setting, hands on availability of the world’s great ideas in original form.  

Sims’ lecture will focus on Mary Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of the Woman” and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s “Address to the Legislature of New-York, Adopted by the State Woman’s Rights Convention.”

“In the late 1700s as cries for liberty, equality, and recognition of the inalienable rights of man swept across America and Europe, Mary Wollstonecraft raised her voice in defense of what seemed to many the most revolutionary idea of all,” Sims said. “When A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was published in 1792, the belief that women were inferior to men was so firmly entrenched in law, religion, and custom that few people dared to imagine a society in which gender equality was the norm. Wollstonecraft ignited a debate over ‘woman’s place’ that still echoes today.”

Other lectures in this series will also relate to and feature documents from the Remnant Trust Exhibit, which will be on display in the Zach S. Henderson Library beginning Jan. 18. Other University faculty presenting in the lecture series include Robert Batchelor, Ph.D., on March 7, Dan Pioske, Ph.D., on March 23, Johnathan O’Neill, Ph.D., on April 5 and Tim Whelan, Ph.D. on April 19.
All lectures in the series are free and open to the public. For more information on the 2017 Great Minds Lecture visit class.georgiasouthern.edu/greatminds. For more information on the documents on display at Georgia Southern University visit http://georgiasouthern.libguides.com/remnanttrust.