About the Cultural Programming Committee
The Cultural Programming Committee supports the academic curriculum by organizing on-campus and off-campus lectures, panel discussions, debates, concerts, readings, workshops, performances, and other culturally enriching events in Danielson and Willimantic. The committee seeks to engage students, staff, faculty, and community members with dynamic programs to educate against all forms of prejudice and injustice, while educating towards mutual respect, genuine inquiry, personal growth, and multicultural affirmation.
Celebrating Arab American History Month
There are over 3.5 million Arab Americans in the United States. They are a pan-ethnic group of people from countries and territories across the Middle East and North Africa (called MENA), from Lebanon on the Mediterranean Sea to Egypt in North Africa. The states with the largest populations are California, Michigan, New York, and Texas (see Arab American demographics). While many Arab American people are religiously Muslim, there is a diversity of religious affiliations, from Christian to Druze. Arab Americans are part of many communities in the US, and there are complicated racial and ethnic dynamics. Listen to Un-HolyLand? An Arab Muslim Reckoning With Racism (NPR’s Code Switch).
Arab American History Month, named in 2022, is an opportunity to learn about the history and diverse cultures of people from the Middle East and North Africa.
Arab Americans (PBS)
“The Arab Americans is the untold story of almost 200 years of contributions, trials, and tribulations of those who immigrated to the United States from the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf have made to the American fabric.”
Arab American National Museum
The nation’s first and only museum dedicated to Arab Americans.
- Oral Histories and Digital Scrapbooks: Listen to the family stories of Arab Americans.
- Virtual Guided Tour: You can sign up for guided virtual tours of exhibitions at the Arab American National Museum.
Library Resources
Programs
Explore
The Cultural Programming Committee provides a variety of opportunities to connect with each month’s topics. Want to revisit resources from a previous month? Select your subject below to explore related books, films, and outside organizations.
Celebrating Women’s History Month
Women’s history is history since women are part of all societies. However, there are unique sets of challenges to women’s rights in the US and the efforts to fight back, and it is important to remember this as part of Women’s History Month.
See a celebration of women’s history through the Smithsonian’s Women’s History Month. Learn about change-makers across the twentieth century.
- Dolores Huerta: Latina Civil Rights Icon
- Kitty Cone: Advocate for Disability Rights
- Four Women Change Makers You May Not Know
- Emma Tenayuca Striking Fair Wages
- Arlene Morris Bringing Books South
- Ruby Duncan Stopping Trafficking in Vegas
Civil and Political Rights
At the founding of the US, women did not have rights to vote or citizenship (e.g., to own or inherit land or enter into contracts).
See a brief history of women’s Civil rights.
Women’s Suffrage Movement (Video, PBS)
Over 4 waves of feminism across the last 100+ years, activists have fought for the right to vote, equality of civil rights, intersectional rights, and rights for all identified women, including trans women.
Second Wave Feminism (Video, PBS)
Learn about the distinctions between sex, gender, and sexual orientation through the Genderbread Person.
Reproductive Rights
Historically, women have had limited control of their bodies and reproduction (e.g., getting pregnant or not, staying pregnant or not, and accessing maternal health care pre- and post-natal). These conditions left them in a precarious position sometimes to have unwanted children or be robbed of the ability to have and care for them safely.
- Women have been forced to be sterilized and to have children.
- Spousal rape was not criminalized until the 1980s state by state until 1993.
- There has been limited access to comprehensive sex education in schools. Since the 1980s, the education in over 44 states that teach sex avoidance often without medically accurate information about reproduction. Only 13% of states, including Connecticut, require medically accurate sex education.
Why Do Schools Teach Sex Ed (Video, PBS) - Contraception only became legal to unmarried women in 1972 in the case Eisenstadt v. Baird.
6 Weird Facts about the History of Birth Control (Video, PBS) - Large parts of the US are becoming maternal healthcare deserts, making birthing more dangerous.
Why the Problem of Maternity Case Deserts is Getting Worse (Video, PBS)
Advocacy
Listen to the Roe vs Wade Podcast Series (Slate)
Celebrate Black History Month: Harlem Renaissance Artistic Influences on Black Culture
Black History Month 2024 theme is African Americans and the Arts, and the Harlem Renaissance (1918-1937) is a key historical moment. Centered in Harlem, New York City, the Harlem Renaissance was a movement of art, music, and literature. Harlem was an urban destination for people from the Great Migration, where more than 6 million African Americans migrated from southern states to urban centers (including New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Detroit) from 1916 to the 1930s. Harlem Renaissance Artist Jacob Lawrence’s 60-panel Great Migration painting series is about the Great Migration. Movement to northern cities meant more waged work with freedom from Jim Crow legal segregation and forced labor (sharecropping & convict leasing).
As African Americans moved to urban industrial centers (e.g., New York City, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit), urban life opened access to education, higher-paying work, and closeness to the community (challenging in the rural south). In NYC, many Black families moved to Harlem in upper Manhattan, including artists and intellectuals. In the 20th century, Harlem became the hub for Black Culture.
View the CT State QV Library celebrating Black Culture, starting with the Harlem Renaissance artists, musicians, and authors that includes videos and relevant books including a graphic novel of Octavia Bulter’s Kindred. | |
Harlem in the 1920s | Take a “Walking” Tour of Harlem from your computer (just press play). |
Listen to Jazz Collections from Harlem Renaissance legends like Billy Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald from the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. | |
Learn about the expansive creativity of Afrofuturist artists and icons and tour digital resources from the National Museum of African American History & Culture. | |
Image from Mystic Country CT | In CT, you can visit the Prudence Crandall Museum in Canterbury. The site of a boarding school for Black and Brown girls opened in 1833. |
Heard Museum Online Exhibit Away from Home
The Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona’s exhibit Away from Home captures the stories of Native children & their families subjected to over 100 years of off-reservation Boarding Schools. See images and listen to stories.
- Introduction
- Journey & Arrival
- Health & Running Away
- Student Experiences
- Reforms & Changes
- Choices & Legacies
The National Museum of the American Indian Online Exhibits
The museum is part of the Smithsonian Institution and hosts Native artifacts, including objects, photographs, and media. Enjoy its extensive online exhibits:
- Ancestors Who We Are
- Developing Stories: Native Photographers in the Field
- A Song for the Horse National: Horses in Native American Cultures
- Additional online exhibits
Featured Library Resources
Indian Voices: Listening to Native Americans
Native American Almanac: More Than 50,000 Years of the Cultures of Indigenous Peoples
Blood Will Tell: Native Americans and Assimilation Policy
For more on blood quantum as a measure of ancestry and eligibility for tribal membership (and rights) that disenfranchised many, listen to NPR’s Code Switch podcast episode So What Exactly is ‘Blood Quantum’? https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2018/02/09/583987261/so-what-exactly-is-blood-quantum
Podcasts with Native Voices
“The Red Nation Podcast features discussions on Indigenous history, politics, and culture… Hosted by Nick Estes and Jen Marley…”
“ALM – as referred to in court documents – is a Navajo and Cherokee toddler. When he was a baby, a white couple from the suburbs of Dallas wanted to adopt him, but a federal law said they couldn’t. The Brackeens case would have been a normal adoption dispute, but then one of the most powerful corporate law firms in the United States took it on and helped the couple launch a federal lawsuit. Today, the lawsuit doesn’t just impact the future of one child, or even the future of one law. It threatens the entire legal structure defending Native American rights. The second season of This Land is a timely exposé about how the far right is using Native children to quietly dismantle American Indian tribes and advance a conservative agenda.”
Local Event
Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center in Mashantucket, CT Trail & Guided Hike
Explore the history of the New England National Scenic Trail through Indigenous eyes.
- November 18: Presentation
- December 2: Guided Hike
Event Details:
Friday, February 10, 2023 10:30 AM
QVCC Auditorium, Danielson, CT
Students, faculty, staff, and community members welcome
Presentation: An Afro-Caribbean in the Nazi Era: Oral History and Black History
How did an Afro-Caribbean civilian become a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II? How did he survive to tell about it? The QVCC Foundation, in partnership with QVCC Cultural Programming, is proud to welcome author Mary Romney-Schaab to present on her book, An Afro-Caribbean in the Nazi Era: From Papiamentu to German on Friday, February 10th in the Quinebaug Valley Community College auditorium. This presentation will discuss the importance of oral history within the context of Black history and shine light on an area of Black history that might otherwise remain obscured: that of Black victims of the Nazis during World War II.
Event Details:
Friday, February 10, 2023 10:30 AM
QVCC Auditorium, Danielson, CT
Students, faculty, staff, and community members welcome
Celebrate Native American Heritage Month!
Peabody Essex Museum houses among the oldest ongoing collections of Native American art in the Western hemisphere, commencing with the museum’s founding in 1799 and continuing through today. Spanning 10,000 years of Indigenous visual expression in the Americas, these works cross boundaries of region, period, and medium, and emphasize the continuum of creativity and character of change that undergirds Native American art. This distinguished collection is a vital testament to thousands of individual artists from hundreds of distinct Native nations, each with its own history, language, and artistic expressions. Visit the museum in Salem, Massachusetts.
On Being Podcast: Few books have been more eagerly passed from hand to hand with delight in these last years than Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. Krista interviewed her in 2015, and it quickly became a much-loved show as her voice was just rising in common life. Robin is a botanist and also a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She’s written, “Science polishes the gift of seeing, Indigenous traditions work with gifts of listening and language.” An expert in moss — a bryologist — she describes mosses as the “coral reefs of the forest.” Robin Wall Kimmerer opens a sense of wonder and humility for the intelligence in all kinds of life we are used to naming and imagining as inanimate.
National Museum of the American Indian – Native American Cinema Showcase Nov. 18-25th
The online program includes a total of 35 cost free films representing 30 native nations from 8 countries.
Livestream – Native Veteran’s Procession and Dedication Ceremony
Nov. 11 at 2 p.m.
Weekend Celebrations – Music and Cultural Performances
Nov. 12 & 13
Visit Nowashe Village, an outdoor museum of indigenous life in South Windsor, CT.
CPC Film Series: Thunderheart scheduled (in auditorium) for 11/16 (Wednesday) @ 5:30 pm.
Introduction by Instructor Cory McClellan
Resources
Local/State
Windham NAACP
QVCC Anti-Racism Research Guide
Prudence Crandall Museum (Canterbury CT)
Black History Month 2022 Events (Journal Inquirer)
10 Events to Celebrate Black History Month in CT (CT Post)
Black History Month at CT Stages, Museums, and Libraries
National
Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH)
African American Wellness Project
National Black Women’s Justice Institute (NBWJI)
Black History Month 2022 | National Museum of African American History and Culture (si.edu)
Media
The Color of Medicine (Documentary)
Basic Black: Mental Health and Loneliness (Discussion)
Therapy for Black Girls (Podcast)
From the Library
All eyes are upon us : race and politics from Boston to Brooklyn
Sokol, Jason author.
New York : Basic Books [2014]
Reserve a copy
Prudence Crandall’s Legacy: The Fight for Equality in the 1830s, Dred Scott, and Brown v. Board of Education
Williams, Donald E., Jr., 1957-
Middletown, Conn. : Wesleyan University Press [2014]
Reserve a copy
Making Freedom: The Extraordinary Life of Venture Smith
Saint, Chandler B. ; Krimsky, George A.
Middletown, Conn. : Wesleyan University Press [2009]
Reserve a copy
African American Connecticut Explored
Normen, Elizabeth J.
Middletown, Connecticut : Wesleyan University Press [2013]
Reserve a copy
Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities
Wilder, Craig Steven author.
New York : Bloomsbury Press 2013
Reserve a copy
A Whole-Souled Woman : Prudence Crandall and the Education of Black Women
Strane, Susan.
New York : W.W. Norton c1990
Reserve a copy
More Than Petticoats: Remarkable Connecticut Women
Petrash, Antonia.
Guilford, Conn. : Twodot ©2004
Reserve a copy
Fortune’s Bones: The Manumission Requiem
Nelson, Marilyn, 1946- ; Espeland, Pamela, 1951-
Asheville, N.C. : Front Street c2004
Reserve a copy
Resources
Local/State
Women’s Suffrage in Connecticut
Connecticut Council on Women and Girls
Connecticut Archives of the National Women’s Law Center
Community Foundation of Eastern Connecticut Report on the Status of Women and Girls in Eastern CT
National
The Toni Morrison Society
National Women’s History Project
National Women’s History Museum
The Library of Congress – Women’s History Month
International
About Berta Cáceres
International Women’s Day 2022 #Breakthebias
Stream for Free
NOTE: You must login using your NetID and password to access free streaming for the films below.
THE WILLMAR 8 (1980)
Rating: NR
Runtime: 50min
THE STORY OF ELIZABETH CADY STANTON AND SUSAN B. ANTHONY (2005)
Rating: NR
Runtime: 1hr35min
A MIDWIFE’S TALE (2011)
Rating: NR
Runtime: 90min
SILVER WINGS, FLYING DREAMS: THE COMPLETE STORY OF THE WOMEN AIRFORCE SERVICE PILOTS (2015)
Rating: NR
Runtime: 55min
THE VOTE (2020)
Rating: NR
Runtime: 1hr55min
Overview
On the 24th of February, 2022, Russia began a military invasion of Ukraine. Keeping up with the conflict, figuring out how and why it happened, and understanding how it affects you can be difficult. This guide is designed to provide basic information and links for those who want to explore in more depth.
Important Dates
4/2 – World Autism Day
A day that seeks to raise awareness of the lives and contributions of people with autism.
LEARN MORE
4/21-4/23 – Gathering of Nations
More than 500 Native tribes meet and celebrate various traditions and cultures.
LEARN MORE
4/22 – Earth Day
A celebration of the planet we live on, observed internationally in more than 192 countries.
LEARN MORE
Religious Dates
4/2 – First Day of Ramadan (Islamic)
The first day of Islam’s sacred month in which Muslims abstain from eating and drinking from dusk until dawn.
LEARN MORE
4/15 – Passover (Jewish)
Start of Jewish holiday honoring the freeing of Israeli slaves.
LEARN MORE
4/17 – Easter (Christian)
Most important holy day in the Christian faith, celebrates the resurrection of Jesus following his death.
LEARN MORE