Workshop Series

Identity and the Study of Popular Culture in the United States

Friday, January 17, 2014

Prof. Rebecca Wanzo from the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at Washington University in St. Louis, discussed the ways that race, class, gender and sexuality have been foundational to the origins of all media in the United States. In this workshop, participants discussed strategies and challenges to integrating history, theory,various media, and studies of identity into surveys of popular culture so that students gain a thick understanding of the histories of their pleasures. Participants were invited to bring their current course syllabi to the workshop.

Incorporating Transgender Issues into WGSS Course Content and Pedagogy

Friday, February 21, 2014

Prof. Jian Chen from the English Department at The Ohio State University and Cherno Biko from TransOhio will facilitate a workshop on incorporating transgender issues and topics into course content and pedadogy. Prof. Chen’s work focuses on queer, transgender, and gender and sexual non-conforming cultural activism and Cherno is a board member for TransOhio.

Feminist, Queer, Crip Practice

Friday, April 2, 2014

Prof. Allison Kafer, from the Feminist Studies Program at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Tx, (and author of Feminist, Queer, Crip) will explore and discuss three potential sites for coalition politics; trans and genderqueer bathroom access, environmental justice, and reproductive rights and justice in order to develop a crip futurity that finds value in dissent and disagreement, that recognizes loss, that remains open. Using these three sites of possibility, she will further discuss how we might extend and challenge the parameters of disability theory and politics, a theory and politics which too rarely engages in serious coalition work with other movements, communities, and inquiries. Reading narratives and movements as crip, even when they do not explicitly mention disability, might lead all of us to begin thinking disability, and disability futures, otherwise.

Updated Teaching Evaluation

The Department recently edited the discursive evaluation that all students are required to fill out at the end of each WGSS course to include more questions about diversity and student voice.

Diversity Committee 

The Diversity Committee is making it’s way back into the department’s pattern of administration.