A surgeon for the Union during the American Civil War and the only woman to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor, Mary Edwards Walker was born on November 26, 1832, in Oswego Town, New York. Her parents, Vesta Whitcomb and Alvah Walker, held 25 acres of land on which they grew fruits and vegetables for market. The family also kept a library for all five of their daughters to use. As a youth, Walker was interested in Spiritualism and supported abolition, temperance, and women’s rights, including suffrage.
Writer Julia Ward Howe’s poem, set to music, became “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the anthem for the Union cause in the American Civil War. While that piece cemented Howe’s place in American history, her writing career extended well beyond the single work, and with her efforts as an antislavery and women’s rights activist, she became a woman of great historical significance.
In the pilot, the mere act of beginning with the unrehearsed auditions of Jones and Nesmith ushered in the underlying metatextuality almost by accident. It was actually a desperate attempt to raise the ratings of the test audience who complained they could not tell the difference between the four long-haired band members.
Dorothea Lynde Dix was an activist in a variety of social reform movements. Her exposure to the dreadful conditions in U.S. prisons and consequent prison reform efforts led her to seek reforms for the mentally ill, particularly with regard to their treatment in asylums. She trained nurses during the American Civil War (1861–1865) but returned to asylum reform after the war.
Thinking about International Women’s Day and thinking about how whenever I ask female writers which writers they admired in their youth they often go straight to the boys – F. Scott and Ernest.
Sure, we read all of those boys (because that’s what school gave us) – and we’re welcome to have liked them – but really, WHAT were we reading on our own?
You Can Please Some of the People Some of the Time… None of the People All of the Time: A History of the Art of Adaptation in Movies like Dune, The Godfather, Harry Potter and More!
Dr. Rosanne Welch speaks on A History of the Art of Adaptation in Movies like Dune, The Godfather, Harry Potter and More! at the California State University, Fullerton Library
Part of the program series for Dune by Frank Herbert: A 50th Anniversary Celebration.
Of course, I mentioned that we would talk about Harry Potter briefly. We could be here for a whole hours, 2, 3, 6 talking about all the Harry Potter adaptations. What I think is important to notice is, as you know, the book in England was called “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.” When it came to be published in America, they were afraid American children would look at the word philosopher and walk away, because that’s old and boring. That’s for old people. Of course, in America, what did we call it? The Sorcerer’s Stone, because a sorcerer is kind of cool — Mickey with hat — so we like sorcerers. We’re good. I mean that’s and adaptation made our publication people just to sell more books.
About this talk
Dr. Rosanne Welch (RTVF) speaks on the craft of history of film adaptations from the controversy of the silent film Birth of a Nation (protested by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1915) to Breakfast at Tiffany’s (to which author Truman Capote famously said, “The only thing left from the book is the title”) to The Godfather . Naturally, the behemoth in adaptation – Harry Potter (which depended on the relationship created by adapter Steve Kloves and author J.K. Rowling) will be discussed, as will the subject of this month’s celebration: Dune.
Date: Wednesday, October 14, 2015 Time: 1:00pm – 2:00pm
About Dr. Rosanne Welch
Dr. Rosanne Welch is a professor in the Low Residency MFA in Screenwriting Program from Stephens College, California State University, Fullerton, Mount San Antonio Community College and Cal Poly Pomona. In 2007, she graduated with her Ph.D. in 20th Century U.S./Film History from Claremont Graduate University. She graduated with her M.A. in 20th Century United States History from California State University, Northridge in 2004.
Welch is also a television writer/producer with credits for Beverly Hills 90210 , CBS’s Emmy winning Picket Fences and Touched By An Angel . She also writes and hosts her own podcasts on 3rdPass.media, her first one titled “Mindful(I) Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch.”
Maria Mitchell was the first American astronomer to discover a telescopic comet—a comet too far away to see with the naked eye but detectable with a telescope. For her achievement, she was rewarded with a gold medal by the king of Denmark, became the first female member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and later became a professor at Vassar College, one of the first exclusively all-women colleges in America.
Ellen Craft was a fugitive slave made famous by the daring escape she and her husband William Craft (1824–1900) made in December 1848. Ellen, disguised as an infirm and sickly slaveholding gentleman, and her husband William, posing as a slave servant, traveled from the slaveholding state of Georgia to freedom in Philadelphia. So widely publicized was their escape that the Crafts became world- renowned spokespersons for abolitionism.
Martha Moore Ballard played a pivotal role in her community as a midwife and healer. Through her diary she has become a historically important female voice documenting social, economic, and religious change in rural postcolonial America. Few women could write in the 18th century, and fewer still participated in public life, resulting in poor documentation of women’s daily lives. Because women could not own property and seldom participated in legal matters, few details regarding individual women’s lives appear in historical documents.
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