2021 Virtual National Women’s Music Festival Keynote Speakers

Friday s July 2 s Noon (CST) Saturday s July 3 s 1:30pm (CST) How Women Won The Vote: lessons from feminist foremothers. Amazon Rise Again Bonnie Morris, Ph.D. Judith Casselberry, Ph.D.

Bonnie J. Morris is a women’s history Judith Casselberry is associate lecturer at the University of California- professor of Africana studies at Berkeley and a nationally recognized Bowdoin College, teaching courses expert on the role of women’s music in on ’ religious lesbian culture. The author of sixteen lives, music and spirituality in books, she has devoted more than thirty popular culture, music and social years to documenting the women’s music movements, and issues in Black movement, first publishing Eden Built By Eves, a finalist intellectual thought—all with particular attention to women. for the Lambda Literary Award, and more recently The She has held visiting appointments at Barnard College, Disappearing L and The Feminist Revolution. Her research Vassar College, New York University, Princeton, and on women’s music, Olivia Records, and American lesbian Harvard. Her ethnography, The Labor of Faith: Gender and culture will one day be housed at the Radcliffe Institute’s Power in Black Apostolic Pentecostalism (Duke University Schlesinger Library. In the past few years Dr. Morris won Press, 2017), employs feminist labor theories in examining a D.C. Arts and Humanities grant and a writing residency the work of church women, and she is co-editor with in Wales; organized the first-ever exhibit on the women’s Elizabeth Pritchard of Spirit on the Move: Black Women music movement at the Library of Congress; arranged for and Pentecostalism in Diaspora (Religious Cultures of Olivia albums to be part of the Smithsonian; received the African and African Diaspora People series with Duke Ruth Rowan Believer Award from the National Women’s University Press, 2019). Music Festival; and accepted the exciting role as Olivia Casselberry is most well-known in our community as Records’ official historian and archivist. Dr. Morris has a vocalist and guitarist—co-founder of reggae duo been a featured speaker at conferences and museums Casselberry-DuPreé; founder of afra-folk trio JUCA; throughout the country and continues to profile women’s member of and BigLovely; and musical and music history for the Smithsonian. As a lesbian author, she co-artistic director of MichFest “Opening Celebration.” She also published the time travel novel Sappho’s Bar and Grill has shared stages with Sweet Honey in the Rock, , for Bywater Books, which was a Finalist for the Foreword Elvis Costello, Stevie Wonder, Etta James, and Mavis national award in LGBT fiction and in 2018 won the Devil’s Staples among others. Casselberry served as consultant Kitchen Award from Southern Illinois University. Bywater for Radical Harmonies (Dee Mosbacher, director, 2002), recently published the sequel, Sappho’s Overhead a documentary on the women’s music movement, and the Projector. Coming soon: a history of women’s sports. award-winning PBS documentary, The New Black (Yoruba bonniejmorris.com/ Richen, director, 2013), which uncovers the complicated relationships between African American and LGBT civil rights movements and the Black church and anti-gay Christian right wing. In process: a spiritual biography of cultural icon Grace Jones. Twitter: @jscasselberry judithcasselberry.com