Join us for this special conversation looking back at the earliest days of Women's and Gender Studies at UGA! WGS Director Dr. Patricia Richards will be joined by Linda Chafin and Anne D. Mather, who were there for the very beginnings of the program. Come and learn about the challenges and triumphs of starting a women's studies program at UGA in the late 1970s, and how these pioneering women shaped the institute we know and love. 

Linda Chafin is the Conservation Botanist with the Plant Conservation Program at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia, University of Georgia. The University of Georgia Press published her book, “The Field Guide to the Rare Plants of Georgia” (2007) and “The Field Guide to the Wildflowers of Georgia and Surrounding States” (June 2016). Chafin received a M.S. in Botany from UGA in 1988, studying the flora and ecology of Southern Appalachian boulderfields. She has conducted rare species surveys and natural community inventories throughout the southeastern United States.

After getting her master’s degree in journalism at UGA on a fellowship, Anne D. Mather spent her career as a medical journalist at CDC. She was managing editor of the MMWR, the official publication of the agency, and, later,  an editor for Emerging Infectious Diseases, the first online medical journal.  She was also a freelance journalist for 14 years, specializing in alcoholism-related issues.  She is the author or co-author of 11 books, including bestsellers The Cat at the Door and Other Stories to Live By (Hazelden), The Art of Rug Hooking and Creative Rug Hooking (Sterling; one of these was Book-of-the-Month-Club selection in U.S. and Australia), and Adventures of a Female Medical Detective with Mary Guinan, CDC’s top woman scientist at one time. She has been married for 52 years to Brian Kelly, a Scotsman. They have two children, Maggie Byrne and Jeannie Kelly, and one grandchild, Henry. Anne lives at Park Springs retirement community in Stone Mountain.