Welcome to the conversation!


Welcome to the conversation!

Harriet Beecher Stowe's (1811-1896) best-selling anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), made her the most famous American woman of the 19th century and galvanized the abolition movement before the Civil War.

The Stowe Center is a 21st-century museum and program center using Stowe's story to inspire social justice and positive change.

The Salons at Stowe programs are a forum to connect the challenging issues (race, gender and class) that impelled Stowe to write and act with the contemporary face of those same issues. The Salon format is based on a robust level of audience participation, with the explicit goal of promoting civic engagement. Recent topics included: Teaching Acceptance; Is Prison the New Slavery; Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North; Creativity and Change; Race, Gender and Politics Today; How to be an Advocate

This blog will expand the reach of these community conversations to the online audience. Add your posts and comments to keep the conversation going! Commit to action by clicking HERE to stay up to date on Salon and social justice news.

For updates on Stowe Center programs and events, sign up for our enews at http://harrietbeecherstowe.org/email.

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

#SalonsAtStowe: Meet the Featured Guests

On Thursday, May 21st the Stowe Center will present "What Makes a Family?" a Salon on the ways in which the definition of family has shifted over time and place and is influenced by prevailing laws, policies, and religious concepts. Leading the discussion will be Anne Stanback, Director of State and National Partnerships at the Equality Federation and Dr. Elizabeth Rose, historian and Library Director at the Faifield Museum and History Center.

Meet the featured guests below!


Anne Stanback 





Anne Stanback is the Director of State and National Partnerships for the Equality Federation, the strategic partner to state-based organizations winning equality in the communities we call home. Anne’s primary focus is working with states to develop plans, strategies and resources to pass laws to protect LGBT people from discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations.

Anne spent nearly 30 years working for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, including her work as the founding Executive Director of Love Makes A Family, the lead organization that successfully fought for the freedom to marry in Connecticut. She is a graduate of Davidson College and Yale Divinity School.Anne is originally from North Carolina and though she will always be a Southerner at heart, she has lived in Connecticut for 32 years, 30 of those with her wife, Charlotte Kinlock, and pets too numerous to list. She serves as the Moderator at Immanuel Congregational Church (UCC) in Hartford.



 Dr. Elizabeth Rose is a historian with interests in women, children, and social policy, past and present. She is the author of The Promise of Preschool: From Head Start to Universal Pre-K (Oxford University Press, 2010) and A Mother’s Job: The History of Day Care, 1890-1960 (Oxford University Press, 1999), as well as many articles on preschool, child care, and motherhood in several different books and journals. She has taught classes on the history of motherhood at CCSU, Wesleyan, and Vanderbilt and is currently the Library Director at the Fairfield Museum and History Center in Fairfield, Connecticut.


Who decides what constitutes a family? How has the definition of family changed over time?
Has your definition of family changed over time? What do you plan to ask at the Salon? Let us know! 

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