Lucy Somerville
Howorth Lecture Series
2023-24 Lucy Somerville Howorth Lecturer
Dr. Alex Kethum will deliver this year’s Lucy Somerville Howorth Lecture. Her lecture will be Thursday, March 21st at 4 PM in the Johnson Commons Banquet Room as part of the Isom Student Gender Conference.
Dr. Alex Ketchum
About Alex Ketchum:
Dr. Alex Ketchum is the Faculty Lecturer of the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies of McGill University. She is the author of two books: Engage in Public Scholarship!: A Guidebook on Feminist and Accessible Communication, and Ingredients for Revolution: A History of American Feminist Restaurants, Cafes, and Coffeehouses. She is currently working on a book about the relationship between feminist ethics and AI. Her lecture will discuss how gender and sexuality research circulates in public forums, with her own work on feminist restaurants as a case study.
Keynote title: Finding The Ingredients for Revolution and How We Share the Histories of Lesbian, Queer, and Feminist Spaces
About the Lecture Series
The Hon. Lucy Somerville Howorth
To honor her long career in public service and her enthusiastic support of women’s rights, the Lucy Somerville Howorth Lecture Series was established at the University of Mississippi. The endowed series brings distinguished speakers to the campus in the area of women’s studies. A native Mississippian born July 1, 1895, Howorth received her undergraduate degree from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College and her law degree from the University of Mississippi School of Law. One of only two women in her law school class, she had the highest average in the 1922 graduating class and delivered the commencement address (click here to read). She practiced law in Cleveland and Greenville and later in Jackson with her husband Joseph. In 1924 she was appointed by the Governor to the State Board of Law Examiners, an extraordinary appointment for a woman at that time. She served as chairwoman from 1924-1928. From 1927-1931, she was US Commissioner for the Southern District of Mississippi. In1932 she became Hinds County’s first female representative in the Mississippi Legislature. In 1935 President Franklin Roosevelt appointed her to the Administrative Court of the National Board of Veterans’ Appeals. She later became the first woman to serve as general counsel for the War Claims Commission. From 1955-1957, she served on the Commission on Government Security.Howorth was one of nine American women selected to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award for her lasting impact on American society on the 40 th anniversary of the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Radcliffe College. Randolph-Macon Woman’ College awarded her the Alumnae Achievement Award, and she was inducted into the UM Alumni Hall of Fame in 1984.Friends further honored her by establishing the Howorth Award at UM’s Sarah Isom Center to annually recognize the best graduate research paper on women’s issues during the annual Howorth Lecture Series. The first award was presented in 1985. Howorth served 10 years on the national board of the Business and Professional Women’s Club and is a former national vice-president of the American Association of University Women, which raised $90,000 to establish the Lucy Somerville Howorth Endowed Fund. The fund assists women in reaching their potential through education. Howorth died August 23, 1997, at the age of 102.
Learn more about the trailblazing life of Lucy Somerville Howorth at Mississippi History Now.
Recent Lecturers
Howorth Lectures have focused on a variety of topics. In 2015, Professor Laura Doan of Manchester University spoke on Inventing Normal Sex: Marie Stopes’ Wonderful Rhythm Charts. In 2014, author and screenwriter David Simon spoke about gender, film, and television in the Lafayette County courthouse. In 2011, Dr. Amy Agigian, founder and Director of the Center for Women’s Health and Human Rights, spoke on Fertility, Infertility and Feminism: Examining Infertility from a Women’s Rights Perspective. Other Howorth Lectures have been Talking Race and Gender: Ending Domination by bell hooks, Women, Islam and Democracy in the Middle East: The Case of Iran by Nayereh Tohidi, Ph.D., A Women’s Agenda: Having Our Say in 2008 and Beyond by Avis Jones-DeWeever, Do That Voodoo You Do So Well: New Interpretations of an Old Spirituality by Martha Ward, Research Professor of Anthropology and Urban Studies, University of New Orleans; Images of the Disabled in Popular Photography by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Associate Professor of Women’s Studies, Emory University; and Our Civil Rights and the Future, by Sarah Weddington, attorney who won the landmark case Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in the U.S. in 1973.