This biography traces the life of Julia Strudwick Tutwiler (1841-1916) from her childhood in Alabama through her pioneering accomplishments as a teacher, administrator, and humanitarian. Born in Tuscaloosa in 1841, Tutwiler was encouraged by her father - an educational innovator and founder of a private academy in Greene County - to pursue academic subjects typically reserved for men. To that end, Henry Tutwiler financed his daughter's studies at Vassar, in Germany and Paris, and under professors at Washington and Lee University in Virginia. After returning to Alabama in 1876, Tutwiler accepted an appointment as a teacher of modern language and literature at the Tuscaloosa Female College. While in this position, she began her work as one of Alabama's earliest advocates for women's rights and educational reform and also led a campaign with the Women's Christian Temperance Union against alcoholism, worked for the improvement of prison conditions and rehabilitative services for prisoners, and supported the expansion of state teacher training. From Paul Pruitt's new introduction, we learn that ""anyone who reads biographies of Tutwiler and [Booker T.] Washington will notice the similarities of their lives and work. Both were products of the Old South who ran their respective institutions with paternalistic attention to detail. Both promoted vocational education as the means by which marginalized groups could rise, and each displayed talent for promoting change without ruffling the 'Bourbon' oligarchy. Tutwiler and Washington became, respectively, the state's unofficial representatives of women and African Americans.
I told my mum I was going on an R.E. trip and I needed to be at Piccadilly Bus Station for seven o’clock in the morning, in order to get to the clinic by half past eight . . .What do you know about abortion? What do you think about it? Why can we debate it as an idea, but not talk about it as an experience?With one in three women in the UK having had an abortion I Told My Mum I Was Going on an R.E. Trip . . . explores what seems to be one of society’s last taboos. A play written for a young, multi-talented female ensemble, I Told My Mum I Was Going on an R.E. Trip . . . uses verbatim text, live music, beats and rhyme to portray the stories of real women who’ve experienced pregnancy and abortion. This funny, frank, and moving play is about as far from a run-of-the-mill sexual health lecture as is imaginable.I Told My Mum I Was Going on an R.E. Trip . . . premiered at Contact, Manchester on 1 February 2017, in a co-production with 20 Stories High
