Tuesday, Jan. 24 | 11:30am at WMST (MLK Week)
“Evidence: A Black Feminist Archive of the Impossible” - Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a "queer black troublemaker" who has a PhD in English, African and African-American Studies, and Women and Gender Studies from Duke University. She is a published author, organizer, and educator. Alexis is a Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize Honoree and is featured in Best American Experimental Writing 2015. Alexis was the first scholar to research the Audre Lorde Papers at Spelman College, the June Jordan Papers at Harvard University, and the Lucille Clifton Papers at Emory University. Her mobile homecoming project aims to chart and celebrate queer Black elder history. Her work incites us to be "visionaries" and imagine justice is possible.
Co-Sponsored by ALANA, Educational Studies, University Studies, Africana and Latin American Studies, Department of English
Tuesday, Jan. 31 | 11:30am at WMST
“Why I Still Work on White Women: Sabbatical Reflections in a Mean Time” - Prof. Sarah Wider
Tuesday, Feb. 7 | 11:30am at WMST
"Beyond The Vagina Monologues: Towards an Inclusive, Intersectional Feminist Campus Storytelling Tradition" - Sharon Nicol ‘17, Ashleandra Opoku ‘17, Nitika Sachdev ‘17, Tashi Sherpa '19
Members of Collective Breathing will discuss their upcoming creative project, why it was time to leave behind The Vagina Monologues, and how to get involved.
Tuesday, Feb. 14 | 11:30am at WMST
“Careers & Communities Beyond Women’s Studies” - Liza Paudel ‘15, Rachel Greenburg ‘10, Evan Chartier ‘14, Dena Robinson ‘12*
Join WMST alumni as they share what paths their careers have taken and how they have found feminist community beyond WMST.
*confirmation pending
Tuesday, Feb. 21 | 11:30am at WMST (Black History Month: Black Girl Magic)
“The Black Student Union Presents ‘Fat Femme’ Yogi & Activist Jessamyn Stanley” - Jessamyn Stanley
Jessamyn Staley is a yoga teacher, body positive advocate, and writer based in Durham, North Carolina. Jessamyn uses high energy vinyasa flow as a way to move past mental and emotional barriers. Her classes provide a body positive approach to yoga which celebrates students’ bodies and encourages them to ask “How do I feel?” rather than “How do I look?” when practicing yoga.
Presented by the Black Student Union; Pending BAC Funding
Tuesday, Feb. 28 | 11:30am at WMST
“Confessions from a Recovering Academic” - Béalleka, formerly Lynn Maku
“Confessions of a Recovering Academic” charts Béalleka’s professional trajectory from her undergraduate specialization in Gender and Women’s Studies, through a series of jobs and a ten-year, academic career. Reflecting on her recent transition to independent employment, she speaks to the freedoms and challenges of feminist work in a gig-economy and heart-centered vocational practice.
Tuesday, Mar. 7 | 11:30am at WMST (Africana Women’s Week)
“Art as Resistance” - Yunnie Tsao-Snyder & Trinidad Escobar
- Yunnie Tsao-Snyder is a visual artist (grown from a mama artist), writer, educator, feminist scholar, teacher educator, and student of the healing arts based out of Oakland, California. For more than fifteen years, she has worked with underserved youth and adults in community and school-based arts programs throughout the Bay Area and beyond. Yunnie has been a lecturer and guest speaker at the University of California Santa Cruz, University of San Francisco, San Jose State University, UC Womyn of Color Conference, Practical Activism Conference, San Francisco Youth Arts Summit, and Oakland Unified School District among others. She is currently working on a new series of illustrations featuring women healers and sits on the editorial board of the Pinxy Radical Imagination Reader.
- Trinidad Escobar is a poet, illustrator, mother, bruha, and educator from the Bay Area, California. Her writing and visual art have been featured in various publications such as Rust & Moth, The Brooklyn Review, The Womanist, Red Wheelbarrow, Solo Cafe, Mythium, Tayo, the anthologies Walang Hiya, Over the Line, Kuwento, and more. Trinidad has been a guest artist and speaker at the San Jose Museum of Art, Pilipino Komix Expo, LitQuake, and The Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco. Her graphic memoir CRUSHED will be published in 2017 by Rosarium Publishing. Trinidad teaches Comics & Race at California College of the Arts in Oakland, California. Having been born in the Philippines during Super Typhoon Gading in 1986, Trinidad’s work weaves the lush– and often violent– nature of her homeland with class, race, trauma, myth, and magick. Her in-progress graphic memoir, CRUSHED, is a biomythography that explores the interior landscape of her experiences as a magickal transnational adoptee, and the intersecting worlds of Western science and Filipino spirituality.
Presented by the Sisters of the Round Table (SORT); Pending BAC Funding
Tuesday, Mar. 21 | 11:30am at WMST
“Sisterhood: Feminism, Sororities, and Disaffiliation” - Larissa Grijalva ‘17, Sally Langan ‘17, Maya Srivastava ‘17, Renee Xu ‘17
This panel offers perspectives from two women currently active in sororities and two women who have disaffiliated from sororities. The panelists will share their personal narratives and analyze their experiences through a feminist lens. The panel will be moderated by WMST PA Allie Fry.
Tuesday, Mar. 28 | 11:30am at WMST
TBD - Prof. Gina Athena Ulysse
Prof. Gina Athena Ulysse does work on Haiti and her work is based in Black Studies and Feminist Scholarship. An interdisciplinary scholar-artist, Ulysse weaves history, statistics, personal narrative, theory, with Vodou chants to dramatize and address issues of social (in)justice, intersectional identities, spirituality and the dehumanization of Haitians and other marked bodies. With her performance work, she seeks to outline, confront and work through the continuities and discontinuities in the unprocessed horror of colonialism.
Recommended reading: Part II From The Archives Pawol Fanm sou Douz Janvye (Women's Words on January 12th); Why Haiti Needs Narratives by Gina Athena Ulysses (2015); "It All Started with a Black Woman" in Are All the Women Still White?: Rethinking Race and Expanding Feminisms (2016) ed. Janell Hobson
Prof. Gina Athena Ulysse does work on Haiti and her work is based in Black Studies and Feminist Scholarship. An interdisciplinary scholar-artist, Ulysse weaves history, statistics, personal narrative, theory, with Vodou chants to dramatize and address issues of social (in)justice, intersectional identities, spirituality and the dehumanization of Haitians and other marked bodies. With her performance work, she seeks to outline, confront and work through the continuities and discontinuities in the unprocessed horror of colonialism.
Recommended reading: Part II From The Archives Pawol Fanm sou Douz Janvye (Women's Words on January 12th); Why Haiti Needs Narratives by Gina Athena Ulysses (2015); "It All Started with a Black Woman" in Are All the Women Still White?: Rethinking Race and Expanding Feminisms (2016) ed. Janell Hobson
Presented by Prof. April Baptiste, Caribbean Studies
Tuesday, Apr. 4 | 11:30am at WMST
“Resisting Gentrification Through Art, Culture, & Activism” - Betty Yu
Betty Yu is a Chinese-American interdisciplinary, multi-media artist, educator and community activist. Ms. Yu was a 2012 Public Artist-in-Resident with the Laundromat Project and is a 2015 Artist-in-Resident with the Saltonstall Foundation. Currently, Betty is a 2015 Cultural Agent with the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture (USDAC) a people-powered arts network. She recently co-created the "Monument to Anti-Displacement Organizing" which is part of the Agitprop! show at the Brooklyn Museum. Betty is the recipient of the 2016 SOAPBOX Award in Community Arts from the Laundromat Project. She is a co-founder of the Chinatown Art Brigade (CAB), a cultural collective working with CAAAV Organizing Communities to tell the stories of Chinatown tenants fighting displacement.
“My talk/presentation will focus on the anti-gentrification cultural organizing work I've been doing as a co-founder of Chinatown Art Brigade, an Asian women-led collective and our Brigade's close partnership with CAAAV's Chinatown Tenants Union. The "Here to Stay" cultural art project that involves a series of large-scale outdoor mobile projections that will address themes of gentrification, displacement and community resilience in NYC's Chinatown. I will talk about our project as an example of how artists and cultural workers can work in collaboration with communities who are most directly impacted by gentrification and help provide a platform to tell those stories of resilience and resistance of those fighting gentrification and displacement. And as local cultural workers ourselves in the Brigade - we are really trying to put out there a different kind of model where artists can work with activists and tenants in Chinatown to use art and culture to help serve the interests of the working class immigrant communities. And in a concrete way, through art, culture and media, we are advancing CAAAV's campaign to push for a rezoning plan that will truly protect people from being displaced.” - Betty Yu
Sponsored by The Colgate Arts Council, Presented by Prof. Eli Horwatt, Film & Media Studies
Tuesday, Apr. 11 | 11:30am at WMST (Queerfest)
“Queerness and Cartoons: What We Can Learn from Steven Universe” - Queerfest Panel
Steven Universe is a children’s television show on Cartoon Network. The show has been heralded as a feminist and queer-affirming series. Panelists will highlight ways this show has offered children (and adults) ways to talk about consent, queer partnerships and families, and healthy coping skills.
Tuesday, Apr. 18 | 11:30am at WMST
“Queering Sexual Violence & The Politics of Healing” - Jennifer Patterson
Join Queering Sexual Violence: Radical Voices from Within the Anti-Violence Movement editor Jennifer Patterson as she takes a look at anti-violence work, survivorhood & healing. Often pushed to the margins, queer, transgender and gender non-conforming survivors experience high levels of sexual violence yet lack services and supportive spaces in which to begin the lifelong healing process. And what is healing when trauma is frequent or deeply rooted in systems bigger than individuals? What are the barriers, and who are the gatekeepers making sustainable healing difficult? What can healing look and feel like outside the dominant narratives of medicalization and pathologization? How can we reimagine our support and healing spaces in order to hold space for many narratives of harm and healing?
Presented by Haven
Tuesday, Apr. 25 | 11:30am at WMST
“WMST Senior Capstone Projects Part I” - WMST 490
Senior Women’s Studies Concentrators will present their praxis projects.
Tuesday, May 2 | 11:30am at WMST
“WMST Senior Capstone Projects Part II” - WMST 490
Senior Women’s Studies Concentrators will present their praxis projects.
