With the release of the 2024 digital Mary Baldwin Magazine also comes the inaugural season of MBU’s Bluestocking Stories podcast.
That first Bluestocking was a celebration of Mary Baldwin and the experiences its residents had here. While it was hardly as colorful as a modern yearbook and featured far fewer pictures, this Bluestocking still captured the essence of the then all-female seminary with stories, poems, sketches and drawings, and essays of remembrance for their time in school coming to an end.
The Bluestocking Stories podcast aims to do the same as its very first predecessor, 124 years on.
Through conversation with students, faculty, staff, alumni, and other members of the Mary Baldwin community, Bluestocking Stories will (hopefully) create a sketch of the university. By capturing the moments of its history and the character of its people, Bluestocking Stories is a resource for anyone interested in Mary Baldwin to meet, remember, and share the essence of this institution so many have called home.
Of course, podcasts and conversations are always about sharing ideas. Hopefully, in the course of listening to this podcast’s maiden voyage, you will find some inspiration of your own in the stories, advice, and experiences shared by each guest.
Bluestocking Stories: Creativity
This first season of the podcast focuses on creativity. Recognizing the wide spectrum of creativity, the guests range from career-creatives to others who’ve found room (or a need) for creativity in their work to some who are just beginning to foster their creative spark.
Listen to Bluestocking Stories on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or online at marybaldwin.edu/podcast
Season 1 Guests
- Stori Ayers: MBU alumna who recently made her Broadway debut as an actor
- Phoebe West: Associate vice president of brand strategy and creative direction
- Dr. Peter Kirwan: Associate professor of Shakespeare and Performance
- TyRon Simmons: Freshman discovering his interest in performance while studying elementary education
- Kate Simon: MBU alumna and lauded Staunton-area photographer
- Dr. Todd Telemeco: Vice president and dean of the Murphy Deming College of Health Sciences
The Future of Bluestocking Stories
This is an ongoing project. It would be impossible and unfair to claim Mary Baldwin can be represented in just six audio recordings. Instead, Bluestocking Stories will continue to introduce you to members of the Mary Baldwin community; strive to represent all the many individuals who comprise this multifaceted institution; and carry on its namesake’s legacy of sharing proud memories, united by Mary Baldwin.
About the Creator
Keith Taylor helps tell MBU’s most meaningful stories from within the Office of Integrated Communications. Bluestocking Stories was his idea, borne from a (nearly) lifelong passion for audio entertainment and compelling conversations.
During his education at MBU, Taylor was introduced to podcast production and even completed his 2023 Shakespeare and Performance MFA thesis on Shakespeare in podcasts — including a podcast mini-series chronicling his MFA journey.
Taylor has been a member of the MBU community since 2017. He first joined the campus as an undergraduate student in theatre and art history in MBU’s first class of residential male students. After three years in the undergraduate theatre program, Keith continued at MBU with graduate studies, earning a master of letters and MFA from Shakespeare and Performance.
Originally from the Philadelphia area, Keith enjoys living in downtown Staunton and giving back to the community he has grown to call home.
“I can not pen the feeling that seizes upon my soul at such thoughts. Doubtless the majority, if not all, of those who read this little sketch from a school girl’s pen, have experienced such feelings — those of RAPTURE at the thought of home and those of sorrow at the thought of parting, and as they read, these feelings will be re-called more vividly than I can hope to make them. And so, with a hearty God-speed to the class of nineteen hundred, and a long life to our dear old school, I await the changes of time to fulfill my prophecy.”
From the essay titled “Prophecy” in the first-ever Bluestocking yearbook