MCC hosts Shear Colbert Symposium “1973” April 6
MARSHALLTOWN – Marshalltown Community College will host the Shear Colbert Symposium on the history and contemporary impact of the year 1973. 
On Thursday, April 6, University of Iowa professor Dr. Lina-Maria Murillo will present her lecture “1973: A History from the Margins” from 10 to 11:30 am via Zoom and in Dejardin Hall (Room 808) on the MCC campus.
Murillo is Assistant Professor in the departments of Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies, History, and Latina/o/x Studies at the University of Iowa. She is completing her first book titled Fighting for Control: Power, Reproductive Care, and Race in the U.S-Mexico Borderlands under contract with University of North Carolina Press. Her research is supported by several grants and fellowships, including from the American Association of University Women (AAUW), American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the Ford Foundation. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Rewire News, Nursing Clio and Notches. Her 2021 article “Birth Control, Border Control: The Movement for Contraception in El Paso, Texas 1936–1940” published in the Pacific Historical Review is the winner of the Jensen-Miller prize for best article in the field of women and gender from the Western History Association. “Espanta Cigüeñas: Race and Abortion in the U.S-Mexico Borderlands,” is forthcoming in Signs: A Journal of Women and Culture in Society. Murillo also co-directors the Maternal Health and Reproductive Politics Obermann collaborative at the University of Iowa with Professor Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz.
Lecture: “1973: A History from the Margins”
What could the year 1973 teach us if we centered the lives and perspectives of the most historically disenfranchised, marginalized, and racialized people in the United States? How might their stories, triumphs, and tribulations explain our current historical moment? Dr. Murillo examines 1973 from the historical margins. Viewing history from the perspective of the Black Power and Chicano Movement, struggles to end the Vietnam War, and the fight for reproductive rights, we’ll ask how these communities and social justice movements organized to bring their concerns and revolutionary visions to the center. Most importantly, how does their legacy live on today?
The Shear Symposium lecture series was organized by history professor Dr. Tom Colbert in 1984 as a memorial to his predecessor, Professor George A. Shear. Murillo’s lecture will be held from 10 to 11:30 am at Dejardin Hall (Room 808) and via Zoom at https://iavalley.zoom.us/j/94078727759. For more information about the Symposium, visit the Shear Colbert Symposium website at https://sites.google.com/view/shearcolbertsymposium/2021-2022.