2025 Harriet Tubman Day Poster Award

Submissions for the 2025 Harriet Tubman Day Poster Award are now open

Design a Poster Competition:
The University of Maryland Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies invites poster design submissions to publicize our spring 2025 Harriet Tubman Day events. In 2020 the Women’s Studies Department at the University of Maryland, College Park, renamed itself the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Our department draws on Tubman’s legacy to signal our intellectual and political commitments to issues of justice, equity, and liberation. Annually, on March 10, Harriet Tubman Day, our department commemorates Tubman’s life and work, and we remind ourselves of the work still to be done. Our theme for 2025 is “Wild Futures:
Taking Flight.”

For more information about past Harriet Tubman Day programming and to see previous winning submissions, please visit https://wgss.umd.edu/research/harriet-tubman-day . 

Theme

“Wild Futures: Taking Flight”
Each year, on March 10, Harriet Tubman Day, we in The Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies sound the call to gather. This year, our theme, “Wild Futures: Taking Flight,” invites us to reflect on the relationship between the natural world and freedom. How did those fleeing enslavement navigate the terrain that served as a pathway out of slavery, and what kinds of knowledge might they have drawn upon as they took flight? How does navigating the “wild” serve as a metaphor, not for rugged individualism but for collective becoming? What do we learn by considering the relationship between nature and flight – forests, swamps and seasons? Pursuing the relationship between Blackness and the natural environment not only helps us to understand the urgency of moving toward freedom but also to further interrogate the ways that Blackness has been written out of access to and knowledge of the natural world. This year, we ask you to gather with us “into the wild to watch the sky, climb a tree, and dream the future.” (Miles, 2023). We invite eligible students (see below) to draw on these ideas to design the poster that will be used for the Harriet Tubman Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Harriet Tubman Day Commemoration, 2024.

Award: The creator(s) of the winning design will receive $500.00. The chosen poster may be printed for distribution and used on the department’s website and social media channels to publicize our Harriet Tubman Day activities within the university community and more broadly.

Open to:
The design award is open to undergraduate students in

• One of the five areas of concentration in the Department of Art. While not required, preference will be given to submissions coming from a collaboration between a student from the Department of Art and a student from the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (any of the department’s five programs, see below).
• Students enrolled in one of the five WGSS programs – Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies major, LGBTQ Studies certificate, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies certificate, Black Women’s Studies minor, LGBTQ Studies minor are also eligible to apply; eligibility, however, requires that these submissions collaborate with a student from the Department of Art.

Submissions will be accepted from individual students or teams of TWO (2) students working together. Students wishing to collaborate across departments should send their name, medium, and team-mate expectations to Michelle V. Rowley mrowley1@umd.edu (WGSS) or Antwon Key adkey@umd.edu or Jessica V. Gaitlin jvgaitlin@umd.edu (Art). Only one entry per individual or team. Unselected entries are eligible to participate in the future.

Closing date: 5:00 pm EST 31 January 2025. The creator(s) of the winning design will be notified by 01 February 2025.

Judging: Faculty from the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and the Department of Art will assess all entries for their creative reflection of the event’s theme, originality, overall design, and production readiness.

Guidance: Design entries should reflect a conceptual and aesthetic understanding of the theme that guides the year’s commemorations. Submissions are encouraged to go beyond literal representations of Tubman’s likeness. Applicants should also think in terms of scalability and visibility from afar; printed posters will be 18x24. We recommend medium resolution (150 dpi, at final size).

Poster designs must include:

• the name of the department
• the theme
• the date and time of the events (March 10, 2025)

Upon selection, the winning designer(s) will be required to consult with faculty in the Harriet Tubman Department to add schedule details, e.g., timetable of events, speakers, venue, and to finalize any edits. This may extend into the beginning of the Spring semester. Examples of previous posters may be found here.

Submitting entries
Entries should be submitted digitally (PDF, JPG) to umdtubmandesignaward@gmail.com Submissions should be labeled using the following format: last name_program_HTDP. For example, an entry submitted by Jebediah Jones and Martha Freeman from Digital Design will read JonesFreeman_DigitalDesign_HTDP. Submissions will be anonymize before forwarding to the judging panel.

Submissions should be accompanied by the attached coversheet and a brief artist statement (no more than 500 words) introducing your artist philosophy and overview of the submitted work. 

• To claim the award, the winning designer(s) will be required to submit a fully editable raw file and be available to make final edits, including inserting final schedule details.
• Individuals who participate in the planning or judging of the contest may not submit entries. The WGSS Department, UMD, College Park reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to select one or
  more winners, or to cancel the contest without selecting a winner.

Queries should be addressed to Dr. Michelle V. Rowley mrowley1@umd.edu