More than a year ago, a few colleagues and I began developing the mission and initial programming for the Rosel Schewel Fund, which will support women-led and women-focused projects at Virginia Humanities (VH). We saw this as an opportunity to challenge the patriarchy in terms of whose stories are deemed significant generally in history and cultural preservation and specifically at VH. We wanted to infuse women’s stories and feminist perspectives into all of VH’s work. To begin that process, we invited all staff identifying as women to brainstorming lunch. It may have been the first official attempt at gathering an affinity group at VH. It was empowering for some women who felt they had suffered or been overlooked as a result of their gender while it made other women uncomfortable to be organized by their gender, because they perceived it as antagonistic to their male colleagues. Drawing on the ideas shared at the lunch and given the context of the 2020 election and 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, we started planning a summit around the theme of women and democracy as a launch event for the fund.
I wanted the summit to avoid the pitfalls of a female empowerment conference, which too often becomes focused on celebrating exceptional women while upholding the current power structure. I wanted to feature prominent women in politics and organizing but I wondered if by doing so we would just be perpetuating this idea that women are responsible for pulling themselves up. I thought we could get around that by making the summit a chance for organizing women across generations to exchange wisdom and strategies for getting more women into decision-making roles. Instead of asking women to change, could the forum foster strategies for changing the system? Could we reveal the collective work needed by asking featured speakers to talk about the networks that made their rise to the top possible?
But then COVID forced us to reimagine the launch event. With everything in chaos, it seemed like we should respond to the moment. When nothing seemed certain, what if we gathered women to discuss their ideas for a feminist future? My colleagues and I organized four conversations that were still centered on how women engage in democracy but with that future orientation woven through. Some of the questions we asked were: how can we contextualize, amplify, strengthen our ability to understand & imagine our collective future? How can we be an embodiment of everything we value? How do we learn to be in principled struggle with others? How do we learn to put something larger than ourselves first? How might we build community across generations together? As the world remakes itself, how can future-visioning advance justice and liberation?
Have a Drink with Nikki & Tressie: A conversation with Nikki Giovanni and Tressie McMillan Cottom
With our launch event complete, it was clear that we needed a mission statement to guide the selection of the public humanities projects the fund would support annually. It seemed clear to me that given the history of white supremacy within feminist projects of the past, we should be intentional about inclusion from the outset. I was able to convince our advisory board to embrace intersectionality and prioritize social history beyond the exceptional woman narratives in the fund’s mission statement. After much discussion, we collaboratively produced the following: The Rosel Schewel Fund champions projects that tell the inclusive story of Virginia women. Specifically, through the lens of intersectional feminism, the fund supports projects that expose and amplify women’s lived experiences, movements, struggles, and achievements across the Commonwealth, honoring Rosel Schewel’s commitment to equality.