September 11, 2001 : UGA Responds

	Dot Paul, Athens Banner-Herald
UGA WTC QUILTS As a graduate teaching assistant, I teach four discussion sections on Fridays for a Women’s Studies course: WMST 1110 course “Multicultural Perspectives on Women in Society.” We meet for lectures on Mondays and Wednesdays. We met the day after the attack and the students wanted to discuss what happened as well as how they felt about it. With over 100 students, though, not all students are able to participate in a 50-minute period. The Friday immediately following the attack I decided that I could use my personal/professional expertise as a quilter/scholar of quilting to help the students process what was happening. Knowing from my dissertation research on quilters in the U.S., spending time at a creative activity, and keeping one’s hands busy is therapeutic, meditative, and often helps one deal with one’s problems. Quilts serve as memorials of women’s lives and I felt that this medium could certainly be used in a college classroom. I raided my personal stash of fabric and brought fabric, markers, glue, paints, etc., to the discussion sections. I had the 25-30 students in each class break up into groups of 2-5. We first discussed the role of quilting and how quilts can serve as memorials of women’s lives, and also of major events. I asked students to consider their feelings and others’ feelings in their small groups, and to together, come up with an idea for a commemorative quilt block. I told them I would put their quilt blocks together to form a memorial quilt about the attack. I gave the students the rest of the class period to talk and to create their quilt block. Students came up with a variety of blocks, and they turned in descriptions of their completed blocks. The “united” block with the yellow background (shown in the photo on the right on the web): In our block we wanted to show the unity of the nation after the terrorist attacks, September 11, 2001. We chose to cut out two people holding hands, similar to the We Are the World pictures. Each person has another arm extended for all the other citizens. Marybeth Stalp November 26, 2001

The paintings by Jo Adang

Please take a few minutes to sit with a Web site entitled "Virtual Memorial."
It was developed by the students from UGA who were in
Sebastian Loh's computer science class.
The site went live a few days after the September 11th bombing.

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SPECIAL REPORT / September 11, 2001 : UGA Responds is produced by the UGA News Service, a unit of UGA Public Affairs.
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