Date/Time
Date(s) - March 12, 2025 - April 18, 2025
9:00 am - 4:00 pm
Location
Directions Gallery
Categories
Opening Reception: March 26, 2025, 5-6:30pm
Knowing Her: Women’s Work & Leadership at CSU, 1925 – 2025 is a community-driven project and interactive exhibition produced and organized by Professor Suzanne Faris (Art & Art History) and Professor Tobi Jacobi (English) that amplifies the narratives of women faculty and staff at CSU by exploring themes of leadership, mentorship, and workplace experience.
In late 2023, we wondered how increasing the visibility of women’s historical work might inspire discussions about contemporary campus climates for women and non-binary faculty and staff. Across 2024, we explored how creative engagement could answer our own questions about gender and labor and encourage wider dialogue on future pathways for equity and well-being.
Knowing Her presents a visual and textual dialogue drawn from archival research, faculty and staff surveys and interviews, and collaborative writing and art-making sessions. These, alongside written reflections and narrative snapshots of just a few of the many women who contribute to Colorado State University, reveal a force to be reckoned with. Showcasing the experiences of women faculty and staff encourages reflection on institutional history, present-day realities, and future opportunities for meaningful change.
An adjacent exhibit with additional “Knowing Her” artwork and writing is on view at the Morgan Grind Gallery in the Morgan Library from March 3 to August 15, 2025.
The Knowing Her project was made possible through a College of Liberal Arts “Ann Gill Faculty Development Award for Collaborative Projects,” along with support from CSU Libraries, the Department of English, the Department of Art and Art History, and the Blake Center for Engaged Humanities. This project was also made possible, in part, through a grant from the Lilla B. Morgan Memorial Endowment, which works to enhance the cultural development and atmosphere for the arts at Colorado State University. This fund benefits from the generous support of all those who love the arts. The Knowing Her exhibition features a collaboration with Professor Sarah Cooper’s E206 Language for Activist Rhetoric and Writing students. Special thanks to the EnCircle Mentoring leadership team, Knowing Her conversation circle participants, and graduate students, Mia Kinshasa and David Martinez.
*This project recognizes the limitations of linguistic gender binaries; here we use the term “women” to include all people who are woman-identifying.