Author Hanshaw to Discuss America's First Ladies 3/8/2009 10:00:15 AM  E-Mail Author Shirley James Hanshaw will speak on "The Evolving Role of America's First Ladies" at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, March 17 in the Azalea Coast Room B in the Fisher University Union. Hanshaw's speech is derived from her contribution to Go, Tell Michelle: African American Women Write to the New First Lady. The speech will focus on how the role of First Lady has evolved over time and is conditioned by both her personal and professional relationship with her husband, the President. Hanshaw's presentation will evaluate perceptions and scrutiny of the First Lady by the mass media and by society at large. The discussion will focus on a number of First Ladies, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosalyn Carter, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mamie Eisenhower, Patricia Nixon, Nancy Reagan, Lady Bird Johnson and Michelle Obama. As women in society at large have gained momentum in all facets of American life—politics, law, business, academia, religion—the presidential wife has been submitted to greater and more intense scrutiny from social scientists and media alike. Hanshaw will discuss how this scrutiny has reflected the gender issues of the time, and also how it may again intensify due to the historic election of the first African American President. Over the past 30 years, Hanshaw has worked as an English professor in Delaware and Mississippi as well as a technical writer for the Federal government. She has been published in numerous literary and technical journals and is currently working on two books, Conversations with Yusef Komunyakaa, to be released in 2009, and Re-membering and Surviving: Representation of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath in African American Fiction, to be published in 2010. Hanshaw's visit to UNCW is sponsored by The Upperman African American Cultural Center and the Woman's Resource Center as part of Women's History Month.