The WKU history department, gender & women’s studies program and the Mahurin Honors College co-sponsored a women’s history trivia night on March 7 in honor of Women’s History Month.
The event was co-hosted by Katie Lennard, associate professor of history, and professor Jess Folk of the English department. Both Lennard and Folk curated the questions for the event.
“I was really excited to get the opportunity to show the ways that history and women’s studies work together,” Lennard said. “I think that history of gender, history of women and history of sexuality, all of those things are really central to the work that a lot of us are doing in history.”
The room was filled with various people who all joined teams in part of the event. They worked together to find an answer to the proposed question and submitted their answer as a team. Amongst a team of the history department and other adult-aged teams, there were many students in the room eager to learn more about women’s history.
Freshman construction management major Talan Wills was originally brought out to the event for an extra credit opportunity, but when joined by his teammates he was glad to be involved in the event.
“I am happy to be here and play a part of the game,” Wills said. “I just can’t do this without my team, without my team I don’t even think I could get half the answers right, they’re my people at this point and I’m looking forward to us winning.”
Fellow freshman Ariel Wolfe, an agriculture major, was looking forward to testing her knowledge about women’s history.
“I feel like I’m a woman who doesn’t really know enough about women’s history,” Wolfe said. “I thought this would be a good learning opportunity to learn more about women’s history.”
Lennard enjoyed the presence of the students and the dynamic they brought to the event.
“We’re trying to get students to think about history classes in new and fun ways,” Lennard said. “I thought that the students brought a lot of excitement and I thought they had great answers and just had a lot of fun thinking about things that we knew that they wouldn’t know.”
Co-host Folk was pleased by the full room and the opportunity to share what it is like to be a woman.
“It was really fun coming up with the questions and coming up with a wide range of experience of what it means to be a woman and what that has looked like throughout history,” Folk said. “There were so many questions we didn’t even include that we wanted to.”
Freshman Vivian Carlson, political science and public relations double major and gender and women’s studies minor attended the event to build her community within her minor.
“I’ve been working a lot with Professor Zubel (English department) for more of a community within the Gender and Women’s Studies minor,” Carlson said. “The club is already very undervalued on campus so it’s nice to have events that actually attract people outside of it.”
The night was able to highlight accomplishments made by women as well as obstacles they have overcome over the years.
The event finished with Wills’ team, named “The Team,” winning and were each awarded ribbons to recognize their success.
“We’re going to go crazy after this,” Wills said. “We’re gonna load up on some Pepsi, and we’re just gonna go crazy.”
News Reporter Maggie Phelps can be reached at [email protected]
