Associate Professor of English Sara Hillin, an LU faculty member since 2006, will present Flashpoints of Flight: The Enduring Rhetorical Legacy of 20th Century Women Aviators. A decade of research through letters, speeches, news stories and articles sheds light on the rhetorical legacy of early female aviators who promoted their craft and the involvement of other minorities in the field. Hillin will discuss how moments of social revolution are revealed through the press of the 20s, 30s and 40s and in female flyers' own writings and speeches. Hillin's personal flying experience adds another dimension to her research about these extraordinary women and how their discourse blazed a path in a technological field.
"As human beings, we all struggle, and we all want to succeed. With every one of the stories I talk about, there's a struggle, there's perseverance, and there's some measure of success, even if it's not the success the woman had been aiming for."
- Sara Hillin
