Where’s Her Movie? Computer Scientist, Margaret Hamilton – 9 in a series

“Where’s HER Movie” posts will highlight interesting and accomplished women from a variety of professional backgrounds who deserve to have movies written about them as much as all the male scientists, authors, performers, and geniuses have had written about them across the over 100 years of film.  This is our attempt to help write these women back into mainstream history.  — Rosanne

Where's Her Movie? Computer Scientist, Margaret Hamilton - 9 in a series

Margaret Heafield Hamilton (born August 17, 1936) is an American computer scientist, systems engineer, and business owner. She was director of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which developed on-board flight software for NASA’s Apollo program. She later founded two software companies—Higher Order Software in 1976 and Hamilton Technologies in 1986, both in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Hamilton has published more than 130 papers, proceedings and reports about sixty projects and six major programs. She is one of the people credited with coining the term “software engineering”.[1]

On November 22, 2016, Hamilton received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from president Barack Obama for her work leading to the development of on-board flight software for NASA’s Apollo Moon missions. — Wikipedia

“A Man Of Action Saving Liberty: A Novel Based On The Life Of Giuseppe Garibaldi” – 24 in a series

They stopped at the Villa Doria Pamphili in the quarter of Monteverde, just outside the Porta San Pancrazio, one of the ancient walls of Rome where the ancient road of the Via Aurelia begins. “This Rome is a modern city. It is hard to imagine,” he said haltingly, “hard to imagine the time before Innocent X became pope and aspired to a grander and more expansive villa. His changes obliterated what this might have been in ancient times.”“A simpler family farm, perhaps,” suggested Aguyar.

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Dr. Rosanne Welch Joins Panel on Monkees Books with Plastic EP Live [Video] (54 minutes)

Many thanks to Fred Velez for telling me about Daniel Sam and his fun internet Monkees talk show — followed by thanks to Dan for inviting me onto  this discussion of all the great Monkees books out there. I enter the chat at the 15 minute mark in the video. — Rosanne

Plastic ep monkees 20210216

On Tuesday February 16th, 2021, the Plastic EP TV Facebook Live Monkees Discussion Panel  held a literary discussion on Monkees Books.

Participants included:

  • Fred Velez
  • Charles Rosenay
  • Ed Reilly
  • Michael A Ventrella
  • Mark Arnold
  • Natalie A Palumbo 
  • Special Guest, Dr. Rosanne Welch, Author of Why The Monkees Matter

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“Pickering’s Harem”, Henrietta Swan Levitt, Edwin Hubble, and More on Women in Science

Research on Edwin Hubble lead me to learn more about this set of female mathematicians – and in that wonderful way the synergy of the world seems to work they were then discussed on a UK comedy game show starring Sandy Toksvig – and I learned even more!

Henrietta Swan Levitt figured out how to measure the distance from the earth of pulsating stars.  Edwin Hubble then used her calculations to discover the Milky Way.  One of the game show guests asks when she gets credit and the answer is – only anecdotally from Hubble reminding people of her work.  Why you might ask?  For two reasons…  

upper body and face of Henrietta Swan Leavitt
Public Domain, Link

First, Levitt was part of what was nicknamed Pickering’s Harem.  Edward Pickering ran the Harvard Observatory and found his male employees who analyzed data from the skies incompetent and slow so one day he said, “My maid could do it better.”  The male staff said “Go ahead” so Pickering did hire a slew of women and as they worked so well he hired more women.  Annie Jump Cannon manually classified 350,000 stars in her career.  Yet, in that way misogyny takes over, rather than call them fellow mathematicians or astronomers, the women became… Pickering’s Harem. I also learned that this lead to the Harem effect — a phenomenon where male executives hire female assistants as they are cheaper and work harder.  The jokes of these game show celebrities reminded me of the misogyny of naming the women Pickering’s Harem.  We didn’t call the men of the Mercury project “Jackie Kennedy’s consorts”.  I mean what a way to demean a set of highly educated women.  

The Second reason Henrietta Swan Levitt did not receive full credit for her discovery is that Swedish mathematician Gösta Mittag-Leffler DID want to nominate Levitt for the 1926 Nobel Prize for Physics – but she had died 4 years earlier and the Prize can’t be awarded posthumously (I wonder what male thought up that dumb rule – and why?).  Thankfully, Hubble always mentioned Levitt – but textbooks do not necessarily.  At the end of the segment the host then covers the many lies Hubble told in his lifetime as a means of polishing his less than elegant background. 

Amazing what you can learn from a UK game show.

The Civil War On Film – 19 in a series – …so many white Americans have wished to live in a world in which African Americans are not angry over past and present injustices…

The Civil War On Film - 19 in a series - ...so many white Americans have wished to live in a world in which African Americans are not angry over past and present injustices...

This fictional vision of slavery was pervasive many years after the war, up to and including GWTW. In her book Clinging to Mammy (2007), Micki McElya posits the idea that “the myth of the faithful slave lingers because so many white Americans have wished to live in a world in which African Americans are not angry over past and present injustices, a world in which white people were and are not complicit, in which the injustices themselves—of slavery, Jim Crow, and ongoing structural racism—seem not to exist at all.”.

Movies profiled in this book:

49 Appreciating The Voice Of The Writer from Why Researching Screenwriters Has Always Mattered [Video] (1 minute 2 seconds)

Watch this entire presentation

49 Appreciating The Voice Of The Writer from Why Researching Screenwriters Has Always Mattered [Video] (1 minute 2 seconds)

Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!

 

Transcript:

So now, in reading screenplays, people can appreciate the voice of the writer in a way they were never able to before. So we see this movement going on which is very important to me. Again, why does this matter? Because we stand on the shoulders of all the people who came before us in this business. We owe them understanding who they are and what they had to offer. In my mind, we have to honor them the same way he honors his ancestors in this movie. That’s what we’re all about if you ask me. So when i teach in this program, this is why these words mean something to me. WRITE, so you can REACH other people and REPRESENT the cultures and the stories that have not been told before. That, to me, is something that we should be very excited about. That’s why researching screenwriters has always mattered. I’m Rosanne Welch I approve this message. Thank you very much.

Watch this entire presentation

A Note About This Presentation

A clip from my keynote speech at the 10th Screenwriters´(hi)Stories Seminar for the interdisciplinary Graduation Program in “Education, Art, and History of Culture”, in Mackenzie Presbyterian University, at São Paulo, SP, Brazil, focused on the topic “Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered.” I was especially pleased with the passion these young scholars have toward screenwriting and it’s importance in transmitting culture across the man-made borders of our world.

To understand the world we have to understand its stories and to understand the world’s stories we must understand the world’s storytellers. A century ago and longer those people would have been the novelists of any particular country but since the invention of film, the storytellers who reach the most people with their ideas and their lessons have been the screenwriters. My teaching philosophy is that: Words matter, Writers matter, and Women writers matte, r so women writers are my focus because they have been the far less researched and yet they are over half the population. We cannot tell the stories of the people until we know what stories the mothers have passed down to their children. Those are the stories that last. Now is the time to research screenwriters of all cultures and the stories they tell because people are finally recognizing the work of writers and appreciating how their favorite stories took shape on the page long before they were cast, or filmed, or edited. But also because streaming services make the stories of many cultures now available to a much wider world than ever before.

Many thanks to Glaucia Davino for the invitation.


 

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Dr. Rosanne Welch Joins Panel on Monkees Books with Plastic EP Live – Tuesday February 16th, 2021, 8pm EST/5pm PST

Dr. Rosanne Welch Joins Panel on Monkees Books with Plastic LP Live - Tuesday February 16th, 2021, 8pm EST/5pm PST

Tuesday February 16th, 2021, the Plastic EP TV Facebook Live Monkees Discussion Panel will present a literary discussion on Monkees Books.

Tuesday February 16th, 2021, 8pm EST/5pm PST

Watch Live

Join Plastic EP and his distinguished, literary panel for a spirited discussion on Monkees Literature.

Participants:

  • Fred Velez
  • Charles Rosenay
  • Ed Reilly
  • Michael A Ventrella
  • Mark Arnold
  • Natalie A Palumbo 
  • Special Guest, Dr. Rosanne Welch, Author of Why The Monkees Matter

Where’s Her Movie? Labor Activist, Anna LoPizzo – 8 in a series

“Where’s HER Movie” posts will highlight interesting and accomplished women from a variety of professional backgrounds who deserve to have movies written about them as much as all the male scientists, authors, performers, and geniuses have had written about them across the over 100 years of film.  This is our attempt to help write these women back into mainstream history.  — Rosanne

Where's Her Movie? Labor Activist, Anna LoPizzo - 8 in a series

Anna LoPizzo was a striker killed during the Lawrence Textile Strike (also known as the Bread and Roses Strike), considered one of the most significant struggles in U.S. labor history. Eugene Debs said of the strike, “The Victory at Lawrence was the most decisive and far-reaching ever won by organized labor.”[1] Author Peter Carlson saw this strike conducted by the militant Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) as a turning point. He wrote, “Wary of [a war with the anti-capitalist IWW], some mill owners swallowed their hatred of unions and actually invited the AFL to organize their workers.[2]

Anna LoPizzo’s death was significant to both sides in the struggle. Wrote Bruce Watson in his epic Bread and Roses: Mills, Migrants, and the Struggle for the American Dream, “If America had a Tomb of the Unknown Immigrant paying tribute to the millions of immigrants known only to God and distant cousins compiling family trees, Anna LoPizzo would be a prime candidate to lie in it.”[3] — Wikipedia

Dr. Rosanne Welch Speaks On “VISIBLE STARS: Women in Early TV” for the American Women Writers National Museum [Video] (26 minutes)

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV

I enjoyed sharing the names and careers of women like Peg Lynch, Gerturde Berg, Selma Diamond and D.C. Fontana to the members who gathered on Zoom last Wednesday morning. There are so many more I could have talked about whose names don’t appear in mainstream books about the history of television so we have to learn who they are and carry those names forward ourselves.  It’s one of the missions of the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting – and has been one of my missions all my life.

RMW Rosanne Signature for Web

Dr. Rosanne Welch Speaks On

Women pioneers who created, produced or shepherded many of America’s most wildly popular, early television programs will be profiled by Dr. Rosanne Welch.

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“A Man Of Action Saving Liberty: A Novel Based On The Life Of Giuseppe Garibaldi” – 23 in a series

Forced to concede due to the lack of manpower, munitions and other governmental support, Giuseppe dug down deep to keep his morale high. All over the regions of Italy supporters sang his praises in thanks for his bravery and loyalty. Yet, while he still believed even failure taught important lessons, at 41 years-old he worried failure might be the only legacy he left his children.

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