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MCC hosts Shear Colbert Symposium “1973” Oct. 19

MARSHALLTOWN – Marshalltown Community College will host the Shear Colbert Symposium on the history and contemporary impact of the year 1973.

On Thursday, Oct. 19, University of Iowa professor 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 708 on the MCC campus.

Lina-Maria 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 PostRewire 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 University of Iowa with Professor Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz.

Lecture: 1973: A History from the Margins 

What could the year 1973 teach us if we examined 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. Lina-Maria Murillo explores 1973 from the historical margins:  the Black Power and Chicano Movements, struggles to end the Vietnam War, and the fight for reproductive rights.  She will explain how these communities and movements organized to bring their concerns and visions to the center and reflect on their legacy and impact fifty years later.

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.  Prof. Murillo’s lecture will be held from 10 am to 11:30 am at Dejardin Hall, room 708, and via  Zoom at https://iavalley.zoom.us/j/94078727759.  Attendees should enter through the Conference Center Entrance on the south side of campus.

For more information about the Symposium, visit the Shear Colbert Symposium website at https://sites.google.com/view/shearcolbertsymposium/2021-2022.