Conversations about Women event recordings
Abstract
Conversations about Women was an ongoing lecture series held at The New School, focusing on biographical and autobiographical writing about women. Historian and New School women’s studies professor Gina Luria Walker moderated the panels and lectures. The collection is comprised almost entirely of audio recordings, with one set of video recordings documenting Changing Health: Women's History.
Dates
- 1993-1995
Creator
- New School for Social Research (New York, N.Y. : 1919-1997) (Host institution, Organization)
- Walker, Gina Luria, 1942- (Moderator, Person)
Extent
20 1/4 inch Audio Cassette
4 VHS Cassettes
Language of Materials
English
Scope and Contents
The collection includes five semesters of recordings of public conversations moderated by New School professor Gina Luria Walker as a non-credit lecture series, Conversations about Women. All semesters except for Spring 1994 are represented by audio recordings. Spring 1994 includes video recordings, as well as audio. In three semesters, the series was unassociated with a specific New School department or program, but for two semesters, it was listed under the Rose and Erwin Wolfson Center for Public Policy program, as well as other special programs. These shifts in program affiliation are noted for each series below.
Series 1. Spring 1993, the series is listed under “Art and Politics” in the “Special Programs” section of the New School course catalog.
Series 2. Fall 1993, the series appears as part of the Rose and Erwin Wolfson Center for National Affairs programs in the “Public Policy” listings of the course catalog, within the “Fall Highlights” section. The New School Annual Report for 1993-1994 also mentions this lecture series under the heading of the Wolfson Center.
An October 1993 press release (https://digital.archives.newschool.edu/index.php/Detail/objects/NS030103_000012) announcing the formal establishment of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics includes the first lecture of the Conversations about Women series, “Changing Nature of Women's Work, 1968-1993” as being the first event sponsored by the new center. However, the Fall 1993 catalog lists the first lecture of the Vera List Center as being a lecture by author Doris Lessing on October 14. The October 7 recording of "Changing Nature of Women's Work, 1968-1993" is also not present in the Vera List Center event recordings (NS.07.02.03), nor is it listed in the Vera List Center's online event archive.
Series 3. Changing History: Women's Health (Spring 1994), is the only semester of the Conversations about Women series for which The New School Archives has identified video as well as audio recordings. The spring series is listed as part of the Rose and Erwin Wolfson Center for National Affairs programming in the “Public Policy” part of the course catalog, within the “Fall Highlights” section. As of this writing, no other audio or video recording from the Conversations about Women series has been identified in other New School event recordings collections.
After Spring 1994, there is no further mention of Conversations about Women being affiliated with the Wolfson Center or any other program.
Series 4. Writing a Woman's Life, a series of lectures constituting the Conversations about Women series, is listed in “The Cultural Scene” section of the New School's Fall 1994 course catalog, unassociated with another program. The series is, however, identified as part of a set of special programs both in the catalog and in a press release promoting the 75th anniversary celebration of The New School.
Series 5. Money Talks (Spring 1995) is the final appearance of the Conversations about Women series. In this semester, the series is listed under “Public Policy,” unassociated with other programs.
Conditions Governing Access
Collection is open for research use. Please contact archivist@newschool.edu for appointment.
Conditions Governing Use
To publish material from this collection, permission must be obtained in writing from the New School Archives and Special Collections. Please contact: archivist@newschool.edu.
Historical note
Conversations about Women was an ongoing public programming series that ran from 1993 through 1995.
It was moderated by intellectual historian and New School women’s studies professor Gina Luria Walker, and consisted of a series of panels or lectures organized around a specific topic related to women’s issues, which changed each semester.
Sources:
New School Office of Communications (1994). Conversations about Women series. George Calderaro New School Office of Communications records (NS.03.01.03, Box 4, Folder 47), The New School Archives and Special Collections.
The New School (1994). New School Bulletin 1994 Fall Vol. 52 No. 1 [course catalog]. New School Course Catalog Collection. New School Archives and Special Collections. https://digital.archives.newschool.edu/index.php/Detail/objects/NS050101_ns1994fa
The New School (1994). 75th Anniversary Celebration of the New School [press release]. George Calderado Records. New School Archives and Special Collections. https://digital.archives.newschool.edu/index.php/Detail/objects/NS030103_000015
Biographical note
Gina M. Luria Walker is a professor of women’s studies at The New School. An intellectual historian, Walker is best known for her work on late-18th-to-early-19th century English feminist intellectual Mary Hays, whose 1803 work Female Biography inspired Walker’s academic interest in the biographies of historical women.
Born Gina Luria in Brooklyn, New York, in 1942, Luria received her B.A. and M.A. from Columbia University before receiving her Ph.D. in 18th century literature from New York University in 1972 for her dissertation on Mary Hays. In 1976, she edited the reprints of 44 volumes of selected writing by 18th-to-19th century English feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and members of her circle for Garland Publishing. After teaching at Northwestern University and Rutgers University, and working as a real estate consultant, she married her second husband, Chauncey Walker, in 1989. In 1993 Walker was hired by The New School’s Adult Division, and ran the Conversations About Women special lecture program, a series of panels and lectures on women’s issues, with a special focus on women’s writing and women writers, until the series’ end in 1995. By 1998, she was made chair of the social sciences department of the university's Adult Division.
Dr. Walker retired in 2025.
In 2009, Walker created the Female Biography Project, a group of scholars attempting to investigate and revise the entries of Mary Hay’s original Female Biography. Once this updated edition was published in 2013, the Female Biography Project became Project Continua, an online archive of biographies of historical women. In 2022, this again changed its name to The New Historia.
Sources:
"Becoming Visible, Staying Visible: 50 Years of Taking a Stand with Dr. Gina Luria Walker."[event listing]. Accessed April 7, 2025, https://event.newschool.edu/becomingvisible
Ellen Moors, “Vindicating Mary Wollstonecraft". The New York Review of Books, February 19. 1976. Accessed July 16, 2024, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1976/02/19/vindicating-mary-wollstonecraft/
“Gina Luria Weds Chauncey Walker”. The New York Times, July 10, 1989. Accessed July 16, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/10/style/gina-luria-weds-chauncey-walker.html
Gina Luria Walker. “Core Convictions: Women, Epistemological Authority, and the Canon”. Lecture. Temple University, Philadelphia. March 17, 2018. Accessed July 16, 2024, /docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTXim2Pk7tm9JgRAmEvwuN14z31iIZmMLB16FI6Jw78y7PmMMiKOx2K8NUMDkaZ_Oop_zIOrpuqMP3i/pub>
New School Office of Communications (1994). Conversations about Women series. George Calderaro New School Office of Communications records (NS.03.01.03, Box 4, Folder 47), The New School Archives and Special Collections.
The New School (1992). New School Bulletin 1993 Spring Vol. 50 No. 4 [course catalog]. New School Course Catalog Collection. New School Archives and Special Collections. https://digital.archives.newschool.edu/index.php/Detail/objects/NS050101_ns1993sp
Arrangement
Arranged chronologically in 5 series: 1. Spring 1993; 2. Fall 1993; 3. Changing History: Women's Health; 4. Writing a Woman's Life; 5. Money Talks.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The staff of The New School Archives and Special Collections assembled this collection from a larger set of legacy audio recordings transferred from The New School's Raymond Fogelman Library following the establishment of The New School Archives, circa 2012. The video recordings in Series 3 were transferred to the Archives from the university's Communications and External Affairs (as of 2025, Marketing and Communications) at an undetermined date.
Processing Information
New School Archives staff based all description in this finding aid on course catalog text and audiocassette container inscriptions. Staff did not listen to the tapes to verify content.
- Audiocassettes (Type of Material) Subject Source: Art & Architecture Thesaurus
- Biographers (Occupation) Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Feminism (Subject) Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Sound recordings (Type of Material) Subject Source: Art & Architecture Thesaurus
- Women -- Finance, Personal (Subject) Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Women's studies (Subject) Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Title
- Guide to the Conversations about Women event recordings
- Status
- Completed
- Author
- Jack Wells, Jason Adamo and Jenny Swadosh
- Date
- April 7, 2025
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin