Welcome to the YaleWomen Writers Group online event featuring Rev Thomasina Yuille! Join us for an insightful session on the work behind her essay "Getting Under My Skin: Reckoning with My White Confederate Ancestor" (published in Carolina Currents - Studies in South Carolina Culture: Volume 1 - New Directions, edited by Christopher D. Johnson).
From Rev Thomasina Yuille:
"Our nation continues to struggle with its various histories of enslavement and racial injustice. In the first decades of the twenty-first century, many voices have called for recognition and reconciliation as we see in the Universities Studying Slavery initiatives across the country. Other voices have sought to limit dialog.
"My narrative "Getting Under My Skin: Reckoning with My White Confederate Ancestor" examines my journey to verify my maternal family's oral tradition that asserts that the eighth Superintendent of The Citadel Col. Asbury Coward is my great-great grandfather.
"My essay seeks to move discussions of race, both past and present, away from partisan and ideological frameworks and toward the living dynamics of a particular family. Tracing my own efforts to discover and understand my ancestors’ complicated past, I hope to show not only that history is never a simple narrative but also that it remains both vibrant and deeply personal."
Thomasina will share her experiences researching and writing on this personal essay. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from a talented writer and connect with fellow YaleWomen writers. Grab your spot now!
OUR SPEAKER - REV THOMASINA YUILLE
The Reverend Thomasina Yuille is a lifelong learner and educator. She graduated Cum Laude from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1977. She taught for two years at the secondary school level in the New Haven Public Schools in Connecticut. She joined the Dixwell Avenue United Church of Christ and in the fall of 1979, she entered Yale Divinity School and earned her Master of Divinity Degree. Her efforts culminated with her ordination into the Christian Ministry of the United Church of Christ, New Haven Association, Connecticut Conference in 1982. Immediately following her ordination, Rev. Yuille earned a certificate in Ecumenical Studies from the Bosséy Ecumenical Institute in Switzerland under the auspices of the World Council of Churches. She went on to lead two congregations, one church located on the east and the other on the west coast.
In 1988, she joined the active-duty service Navy where she served on multiple platforms and stations across the country and around the globe. In 1996, Chaplain Yuille earned a Master of Sacred Theology from Yale Divinity School and a Master in National Security and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island in 2004.
Upon retirement in 2008 from the Navy, she accepted the call to serve as the University Chaplain for Bucknell University in Lewisburg PA. She returned to serve military personnel as a life skills trainer for Naval District Washington where she concluded her career.
During her retirement she earned her master’s in fine arts in creative writing from Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island. She currently resides in our nation’s capital.
YALEWOMEN WRITERS GROUP
YaleWomen Writers Group is open to anyone who identifies as a woman, either while at Yale or now, and who attended Yale for at least one semester. All levels of writing experience are welcome! We meet the second and fourth Mondays of the month, from 7:30pm to 9:00pm, Eastern Time. Feel free to drop in to any meeting, our doors are open!