MOUNT VERNON — Judith Hallett, professor of classics and women’s studies at the University of Maryland, will speak at Cornell College on “Roman Women: Images and Realities” at 11:10 a.m. Monday, March 21, in Shaw Lounge of The Commons.

Hallett, author of “Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society: Women and the Elite Family,” will examine Roman women’s political involvements, familial and sexual roles, and literary education and engagements, plus look briefly at Roman women’s influence on later Western society.

Her presentation will address three well-known images of the ancient Roman women who lived during the classical period, focusing on the women of Rome’s political elite. The first image is furnished by the phrase “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion,” which is attested in two ancient biographies, by the Roman Suetonius and the Greek Plutarch, of Julius Caesar. The second image is from Shakespeare’s “ Antony and Cleopatra,” the characterization of Antony as “the triple pillar of the world transform’d into a strumpet’s fool.” The third image comes from Vergil’s epic poem on Rome’s mythic origins, the “Aeneid,” which claims “woman is always a different and changing thing.”

Hallett’s talk is one of many events during the second half of the academic year to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the women’s studies program at Cornell.

MOUNT VERNON — “Big Love,” a modern comic version of an ancient Greek tragedy where 50 sisters are forced to marry 50 brothers – who happen to be their cousins – opens Wednesday, March 16, at Cornell College featuring Cornell students and professional actors from Riverside Theatre in Iowa City.

Performances in Cornell’s Kimmel Theatre run daily through March 19 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $8 for adults and $5 for youth, students and senior citizens. Admission is free for Cornell students, faculty, staff, emeriti faculty and retired staff. For reservations, call 895-4293.

The play moves to Riverside Theatre, 213 N. Gilbert St., March 24-26, March 31, April 1-3 and April 6-10. Performances are at 7 p.m. Wednesday and Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays. For ticket prices and reservations, call (319) 338-7672.

The play by Charles Mee is a whimsical update of “The Suppliant Women” by Aeschylus. Fifty sisters forced to marry 50 brothers make a pact to kill their grooms. The women flee Greece and seek asylum in Italy, but the men follow them to compel the marriage.

Mee is a well-known contemporary playwright who assembles his plays from various sources much like a theatrical collage. This production of “Big Love” features broad comedy, dance numbers, poetry, pop music and suspense as it examines the relationships between men and women. It explores whether one gender should be allowed to dominate another and implications of seeking and offering refuge.

“Big Love” contains brief nudity.

The co-production is the fifth Cornell-Riverside collaboration since 1996. Riverside Theatre’s artistic directors, Ron Clark and Jody Hovland, are artists-in-residence at Cornell and will appear in the play. “Big Love” director Mark Hunter, chair of Cornell’s theatre and communications studies department, has worked with Riverside for several years, including directing a production at the Riverside The atre Shakespeare Festival each summer since its inception. Assistant professor Scott Olinger, scenic and lighting designer, has showcased his work at previous Riverside productions .

“Cornell can offer a play with a wider variety of believable ages and characters, and Riverside Theatre can offer a work with a larger cast and more design support than might be typical,” Hovland says. “Students have the new perspective of what it takes to discipline yourself for a long run and the experience of playing for two very different audiences and theatrical spaces.”

“Big Love” features costume design by Jenny Nutting-Kelchen and choreography by Matthew Lindstrom, both visiting instructors at Cornell.

MOUNT VERNON — Trudier Harris, a scholar on African-American literature and folklore whose books include her recently published memoir, “Summer Snow: Reflections from a Black Daughter of the South,” will give the keynote address at the second annual Feminist Symposium on Saturday, March 12, at Cornell College.

Harris will speak on “ ‘Cultured Hell,’ Hellish Culture: Black Women Writers and the South” at 3:15 p.m. on the Orange Carpet in The Commons. The symposium is a project of the Women’s Action Group, a student organization at Cornell.

Harris is J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of English at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Her books include “From Mammies to Militants: Domestics in Black American Literature,” “Exorcising Blackness: Historical and Literary Lynching and Burning Rituals,” “Black Women in the Fiction of James Baldwin,” “Fiction and Folklore: The Novels of Toni Morrison,” “The Power of the Porch: The Storyteller’s Craft in Zora Neale Hurston, Gloria Naylor, and Randall Kenan,” “Saints, Sinners, Saviors: Strong Black Women in African American Literature” and “South of Tradition: Essays on African American Literature.”

This year Harris won the UNC Board of Governors’ Award for Excellence in Teaching. She is working on a book on African-American writers and the South.

The Feminist Symposium will feature art, music, research, presentations, poetry and other material that is related to women and women’s issues in academia. Presentations and displays will take place in Hedges Conference Room and Shaw Lounge from 10 a.m. to noon and 1 to 3 p.m. The symposium is open to the public and admission is free.

In addition to Women’s Action Group, symposium sponsors are the Office of Intercultural Life, Black Awareness Cultural Organization, Lecture, Artists and Cultural Events (LACE) consortium, the English department, ethnic studies program, Cultural Understanding and Exploration and the women’s studies program.

MOUNT VERNON — Grinnell College history professor Victoria Brown will speak at Cornell College on Thursday, March 17, on “The Education of Jane Addams,” the title of her 2004 book on the founder of Chicago’s Hull-House social settlement in 1889.

Brown’s lecture is at 11:10 a.m. in Hedges Conference Room of The Commons. Admission is free.

Brown’s areas of expertise include America after 1865, women’s history and immigration. Also the author of “Going to the Source: The Bedford Reader in American History,” published last year, Brown has appeared on the PBS series “American Experience” in documentaries on Woodrow Wilson and on the history of Chicago.

“The Education of Jane Addams” details a privileged prairie childhood, years as the competent spinster daughter in a demanding fatherless family and her early seasoning on the Chicago reform scene. Like other social settlements in the late 1800s, Hull-House attracted educated men and women to live in poor urban areas. The residents became a powerful lobbying tool for protective measures for women and children, and Addams’ settlement work, writing and peace efforts made her the country’s most prominent woman. She founded the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.

Brown’s talk is one of many events during the second half of the academic year to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the women’s studies program at Cornell.

MOUNT VERNON — Area farmers are featured in a film, “Voices of Iowa Farm Women,” that will be screened in Iowa City and Mount Vernon and followed by panel discussions with the filmmaker and women farmers.

The Iowa City screening is Wednesday, March 9, at 7 p.m. in 106 Gilmore Hall on the University of Iowa campus. The Mount Vernon screening is Thursday, March 10, at 7 p.m. in Hedges Conference Room of The Commons on the Cornell College campus. Admission is free to both screenings.

The 20-minute video examines Iowa’s heritage and legacy told through interviews with contemporary farm women who practice small-farm, value-added and direct-marketing agriculture.

The film focuses on seven Iowans, including area farmers Laura Krouse of Mount Vernon, an instructor in the Cornell biology department who also grows vegetables for about 130 area families, maintains an heirloom variety of field corn and raises corn, soybeans and oats organically; Janette Ryan-Busch of Iowa City, who for over 20 years has run Fae Ridge Farm, a small organic herb and produce farm where she also raises angora goats and supplies hand spinners in the Midwest; and Susan Jutz of Solon, who grows vegetables for about 150 area families, plus dairy goats, hogs and lambs for direct marketing locally.

Following each screening will be a discussion with women farmers in the film, filmmaker Cynthia Vagnetti of Madison, Wis., and Atlantic farmer Denise O’Brien, executive director of the Women, Food and Agriculture Network and a member of the Iowa Women’s Hall of Fame. The Mount Vernon panel will be moderated by Margaret Kim Peterson, a Mount Vernon native who is an associate professor of theology at Eastern University in Pennsylvania.

Sponsors of the screenings and panel discussions are the Women, Food and Agriculture Network, the Iowa Women’s Foundation, the University of Iowa Women’s Resource and Action Center, and Cornell’s Lecture, Artists and Cultural Events (LACE) consortium, with additional support from the Iowa Women’s Archives.