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Past WGS-Sponsored Events:

Pride belongs to the people: a conversation with Dr. Daniel Conway
February 8, 2023 at 5:30pm
C.W. Bill Young Hall, Room 206 (USF Genschaft Drive, Tampa Campus)

Join us for an enlightening conversation regarding Pride from an international perspective. Dr. Daniel Conway, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Westminster, will present his research on Pride in South Africa, reflecting on how a fraught and complex history of LGBTQ+ organizing within the city of Johannesburg has given rise to three separate Pride events in the city. These three Prides mirror broader tensions within South African society, but also reflect divergent beliefs about the meanings of Pride – its purpose, who it should represent, and what issues it should engage with. Dr. Conway will also discuss Pride in the context of other places, including Cuba, Taiwan, India, and the US.

Q&A will follow the talk and will be facilitated by Nathan Bruemmer, former LGBTQ Consumer Advocate for Florida and former interim executive director of St. Pete Pride.

Dr. Daniel Conway is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Westminster. The photographs and quotations of the Pride Belongs to the People exhibition are from a Leverhulme Trust Fellowship researching the Global Politics of LGBTQ+ Pride between 2018 and 2019. Conway is currently writing The Global Politics of LGBTQ+ Pride: Queer Activism and Complicity in Africa, Asia and North America for Bloomsbury Press and is the author of ‘Whose Lifestyle Matters at Johannesburg Pride? The Lifestylisation of LGBTQ+ Identities and the Gentrification of Activism’, Sociology, (2022), vol. 56, no. 1: pp. 148-165 and ‘The politics of truth at LGBTQ+ Pride: contesting corporate Pride and revealing marginalized lives at Hong Kong Migrants Pride’ International Feminist Journal of Politics (2022). Contact: d.conway@westminster.ac.uk.

Funding for this program was provided through a grant from Florida Humanities with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of Florida Humanities or the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Book Launch for Still Woke: The Power and Freedom of Black Feminist and Womanist Pedagogy by Dr. Gary Lemons and Dr. Cheryl Rodriguez
November 16, 2022 from 4pm-6pm in CMC 202

The Department of Women's and Genders Studies will host the launch of Dr. Gary Lemons and Dr. Cheryl Rodriguez new book, Still Woke: The Power and Freedom of Black Feminist and Womanist Pedagogy. The event is co-sponsored by USF Department of English, Institute on Black Life, School for Interdisciplinary Studies and Humanities Institute.

Living Feminisms Conference
October 28, 2022 from 11:00am to 6:00pm in TECO Hall

Reproductive Justice is for Everyone! @WGS Art Exhibition Opening Reception
October 24, 2022 from 12:00pm - 2:00pm in CMC 202

Past, Present, and Future Survival: An Anti-Racist Writing Workshop
October 19, 2022 from 3:30 to 5:00pm
TECO Hall in the Education Building

Join the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies’ Justice Guild as we partner with Kitchen Table Literary Arts for an anti-racist writing workshop. The workshop features poetry by Audre Lorde and Morgan Parker; each selection exploring the intersections of past and present in way that challenge our individual and communal definitions of survival. Close reading and interactive writing exercises encourage all participants to explore their own unique voice while creating opportunities to build bridges across communities. We are living through perilous times, and now more than ever, cultivating our writer’s voice seems of paramount concern. Regardless of where you are on your writing journey, we invite you to join us in community as we practice the craft of writing.

Sheree L. Greer is a writer, artist, teacher, and publisher living in Tampa, Florida. In 2014, she founded The Kitchen Table Literary Arts Center to showcase and support the work of Black women and women of color writers and is the author of two novels, Let the Lover Be and A Return to Arms, a short story collection, Once and Future Lovers, and a student writing guide, Stop Writing Wack Essays. Her work has been published in First Bloom Anthology, LezTalk Anthology, VerySmartBrothas, Autostraddle, The Windy City Times, Bleed Literary Journal, and the Windy City Queer Anthology: Dispatches from the Third Coast. Sheree has received a Union League of Chicago Civic Arts Foundation award, earned her MFA at Columbia College Chicago, and is a VONA/VOICES alum, Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice grantee, Yaddo fellow, and Ragdale Artist House Rubin Fellow. Her essay, "Bars" published in Fourth Genre Magazine, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and notably named in Best American Essays 2019, and her latest essay, "None of this is Bullshit" was published at The Rumpus and featured in "Memoir Mondays.”

Muslim Alums, Living Our Feminist Lives:
A Roundtable Lunchtime Conversation Honoring the WGS 50th Anniversary
September 7, 2022 at 12:00pm
Part of the WGS 50th Anniversary Celebration

WGS Talk & Toast
April 19th from 4:00pm-6:00pm EST

Join WGS for a presentation of research by WGS Master’s students Sabeehah Ravat, Alisha Romano, Beth Gaines, and Sophia "Stella" P. Escalante. Talk & Toast gives soon-to-be graduates an opportunity to share their work with colleagues and celebrate their success.

Solidarity is a Verb: SWANA Liberation, Gender Rights, and Refugee Experiences
March 17, 2022 at 6:00pm
This event was held virtually through Microsoft Teams
Part of the WGS Anti-Racism Series

Join us for this moderated panel of gender rights poets, scholars, and Southwest Asia and North Africa refugees who will share insights on the crises in Afghanistan and Palestine, placing each within its historical context of U.S. involvement. As Florida is set to receive thousands of refugees from Afghanistan in the next year, the panel will help attendees begin to understand local implications and experiences of US imperialist complicity as it relates to the West’s hesitance to confront human-rights issues in Southwest Asia and North Africa, more generally. Panelists include Zahra Wakilzada and Dina Awshah; moderator will be Dr. Rahi Dayerizadeh.

Intersex Care with Dr. David Rubin
March 10, 2022 at 6:00pm EST
This event was held virtually through Microsoft Teams
Part of the WGS Visibility & Remembrance Art Exhibit Speaker Series

What resources does Hil Malatino’s short, often sweet, always incisive, and absolutely indispensable pocketbook Trans Care (2020) offer for theorizing not only new trans carewebs, but also intersex care? For Malatino, trans care encompasses a range of mutual aid and counter-hegemonic care practices that collectively challenge the cisheteronormative family form and the structures of violence on which it rests, including racial capitalism, ableism, gender binarism, and settler colonialism. Trans care materializes unique queer temporalities and geographies of being and belonging. It comes in the wake of an event or events—after a significant transformation. Trans care facilitates healing in the wake of transformation and “supports emergence into a radically recalibrated experience of both bodymind and the world it encounters” (3). In this presentation, I seek to distill a kindred theory of intersex care from Malatino’s work. I argue that Malatino’s theorization of trans care emerges through a critical intersex ethos, an ethos grounded in the lived experience of people whose bodyminds do not fit standard definitions of male and female. I use the term ethos rather than ethic to denote practices “of living otherwise” rather than a set of moral principles (5). A critical intersex ethos is a practice of living otherwise that draws its strength, resilience, and “resistance regimes of the normal” (Warner 1993, xxvi) directly from the lived, embodied experiences of intersex people.

Meditations on Blackness and Gender Nonnormativity: A Lecture and Conversation with Professor Marquis Bey
February 24, 2022 at 6:00pm EST
Part of the WGS Visibility & Remembrance Art Exhibit Speaker Series and WGS Anti-Racism Series

Professor Marquis Bey will deliver a public lecture on the convergence of blackness, transness, and black feminism via the Black Radical Tradition. Bey will offer a meditation on blackness and gender nonnormativity in ways that recalibrate traditional understandings of each, ultimately, calling for attendees to recognize and increase their capacity for allyship across racial and gender divides.

Dr. Marquis Bey is Assistant Professor of African American Studies and English, and faculty affiliate in Critical Theory and Gender & Sexuality Studies, at Northwestern University. Their work focuses on black feminist theory, transgender studies, continental philosophy, and abolition. The author of multiple books, Marquis's most recent publications include Black Trans Feminism, to be released in February 2022, and Cistem Failure: Essays on Blackness and Cisgender, to be released in September 2022, both with Duke University Press.

From the Olympics to Personal Fitness: A Conversation on Decolonizing Sports with Dr. Katrina Karkazis and Roc
February 8, 2022 at 6:00pm EST
Part of the WGS Visibility & Remembrance Art Exhibit Speaker Series and WGS Anti-Racism Series

"From the Olympics to Personal Fitness: A Conversation on Decolonizing Sports" invites you to attend a discussion on topics in sport that are not always critically engaged (e.g. the erasure of trans athletes from sport institutions and the unequal scrutiny professional athletes of color face). Insofar as the humanities speak to universal human concerns, this conversation seeks to embrace inclusion as we decenter traditional representations in sport. There will be an opportunity for audience questions.

Dr. Katrina Karkazis is a cultural anthropologist and bioethicist who examines medicoscientific beliefs about gender, sexuality, and the body. Her first book, Fixing Sex: Intersex, Medical Authority, and Lived Experience explored controversies over medical interventions for people with intersex traits. This was followed by research and advocacy on “sex testing” of elite women athletes. Her latest co-authored book, Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography was published by Harvard University Press. A Guggenheim Fellow and member of the Institute for Advanced Study, her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the American Council of Learned Societies, and has been published in Science, BMJ, and The American Journal of Bioethics, among others. She was an expert witness in Dutee Chand’s successful appeal of World Athletics’ testosterone eligibility regulations at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne Switzerland, consulted with Caster Semenya’s team prior to her hearing at CAS, and has worked with the UN, Human Rights Watch, and other NGOs on this issue. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, Wired, the New York Review of Books, among other outlets.

Roc is a cultural worker and founder of Rooted Resistance, a grassroots practiced-based community committed to reimagining movement and physical activity for transgender, gender non-binary, intersex, and queer people in the U.S. South. Movement outdoors is our form of refusal to commercialized notions of the body and an imperative intergenerational space that curators a growing and emancipatory relationship with our bodies, each other, and the land. Roc is currently a doctoral candidate in the Department on Sport Management at Florida State University (traditional and ancestral territory of the Apalachee Nation, the Muscogee Creek Nation, the Miccosukee Tribe of Florida, and the Seminole Tribe of Florida) with a focus on physical cultural studies and Black Trans* bodywork as a site of sport pedagogy. Roc’s studies are concerned with unsettling “sport” through understanding how histories of land, power, sugjugation, and colonialism interact with bodies (human and non-human) in sport and physical cultural spaces. Most importantly, Roc’s interest is in the ways that Black queer and trans* folk construct and produce placemaking spaces that tends to collective Black life through human movement. You can read Roc’s first published co-authored piece in the Journal of Communication & Sport titled, "“That’ is Terrible News!”: Media Framing of Mamba Mentality Within Contemporary U.S. Racial and Gender Politics."

The Power of Art in Social Change: Conversation with Kalki Subramaniam

Part of the Visibility & Remembrance Art Exhibit Speaker Series
January 18, 2022 at 6:00pm EST

"The Power of Art in Social Change" is a lecture with a poetic performance and presentation by Kalki Subramaniam, a celebrated transgender artist and activist from India. Kalki will speak about how, as an artivist, she has broken stereotypes and continues to establishing social acceptance in India by encouraging transgender persons to get involved in activism through art and performances.

Kalki Subramaniam is a transgender artist, activist, actor, and writer from India. She founded the Sahodari Foundation for the empowerment of transgender population of India. Sahodari Foundation which has trained more than 200 transgender artists. Through the Red Wall project and the Transhearts project, she supports and livelihood of the transgender community and also trains them as activists. Her recent book, We Are Not the Others, is available through Amazon.

Kalki creates artworks that are vibrant, colorful and creates pop art and surrealist artworks which are mainly portraits of humans. Kalki primarily uses vibrant fluorescent acrylic paints to create large artworks. She mostly paints portraits, faces that inspire and influence her. She also uses different mediums of paints to create vibrant portraits that express the versatility, beauty and emotions of queer and trans figures. She has received numerous awards for her artistic contributions and for her community art projects. She has exhibited her artworks in art shows in India, Canada, USA and the Netherlands. She has participated in solo and group shows.

She founded the following projects:
Sahodari Foundation
Red Wall Project
Transhearts
Wall of Kindness

She founded the following Art and Film Festivals:
India International Spiritual Art Festival
India International Short Film Festival

Kalki Subramaniam's artwork is included in the WGS art exhibit, Visibility & Remembrance: Standing with the Trans* Community, which runs from November 17, 2021 - April 1, 2022.

Workshop: Teaching Inclusive Sex Ed to Marginalized Adolescents
November 19, 2021 from 2:30-5:00pm EST
This event was open to WGS undergraduate and graduate students and was held virtually in Microsoft Teams

Join Dr. McCracken in a WGS workshop that presents attendees with basic knowledge and skills to understand comprehensive and inclusive sexual health education for marginalized and vulnerable communities. In this workshop, we will cover the following:

What it means to develop and teach a curriculum for youth in marginalized communities
What it means to develop and teach an inclusive sexual health curriculum
How comprehensive sex health education can be trauma informed at its foundation
How to integrate adolescent's values and goals into their sex health education
How to discuss gender-based violence, intimate partner violence, and trafficking in the sex industry as it relates to sexual health education to marginalized adolescents and young adults.

Opening Reception & Artists in Conversation: Visibility & Remembrance: Standing with the Trans* Community Art Exhibit
November 17, 2021 from 3:00-4:00pm EST
This event was held virtually through Microsoft Teams

Join us for our opening reception and inaugural Artists in Conversation event. Opening remarks will be by dramaturg Finn Lefevre, followed by the Artists in Conversation event. Joining us for this artist talk will be V&R exhibit artists Mac McCusker (USA), Sukhy Parhar (Scotland), and Lee Pearson (USA).

Film Screening: Cured
October 26, 2021 from 6:00-8:30pm EDT
Marshall Student Center Oval Theater

This film received the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature at Frameline 44 Film Festival, ImageOut: The Rochester LGBT Film Festival, and NewFest: The New York LGBT Film Festival. The film takes viewers inside the campaign that led to a pivotal yet largely unknown moment in the struggle for LGBTQ equality: the American Psychiatric Association’s 1973 decision to remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses. Combining eyewitness testimony with newly unearthed archival footage, the film reveals how a small group of impassioned activists achieved this unexpected victory.

COVID precautions: masks will be required to attend the event, and the Oval Theater will be at half-capacity.

This event is sponsored by the Department of Women's & Gender Studies and the Office of Multicultural Affairs.

Re-imagining Blackness: An Introduction to the Inaugural USF Humanities Institute Faculty Fellows
October 1, 2021 from 1:00pm-2:00pm

Join in a discussion with the USF's first Humanities Institute fellows, Professors McArthur Freeman II, David Ponton III, and WGS's Dr. Tangela Serls. Their theme for the year is "Re-imagining Blackness: Storytelling the End of the (Racialized) World." At this first monthly seminar, the fellows will introduce themselves to the campus community. Then, they will invite all attendees to engage in a discussion of W.E.B. DuBois's short story "The Comet" and the Introduction to Kevin Quashie's Black Aliveness or a Poetics of Being. Attendees are encouraged, though not required, to read the seminar texts in advance and dialogue with the fellows' animating question for the first meeting: "How does storytelling and imagination inform my research?"

WGS Brown Bag Series: "Masculinity as a ‘hard small cage’? A consideration of Chimamanda’s perspective in the light of the experiences of some male COVID-19 survivors in Ghana" with Dr. Grace Diabah
October 7, 2021 from 12:30pm-2:00pm
This event will be held virtually through Microsoft Teams

The presentation examines some masculinity issues raised by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her TEDx talk (‘we should all be feminists') and some interviews following the talk. She sees masculinity as a ‘hard small cage’ for boys/men. For instance, she argues that although masculinity has benefits for boys/men, it is also problematic since it discourages boys/men from freely expressing their emotions like fear and admitting their weaknesses and vulnerabilities. With supporting data from Ghanaian male COVID-19 survivors, I will be examining how Chimamanda’s concern can play out in a situation where expressing such emotions and acknowledging one’s weaknesses or vulnerabilities are key to accessing the needed support. Expanding on the ‘cage’ metaphor used (as well as the adjectives to qualify it), I shall be arguing that while I disagree with Chimamanda’s description of masculinity as though there is no room for contestation, there is evidence to suggest that these masculine norms indeed create barriers which may have dire consequences for men’s health and ego.

Grace Diabah is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Linguistics, University of Ghana, Legon. Her teaching and research focus on language and gender, and language use in specific domains. Her scholarly works cover a range of language and gender issues in African contexts – in domains such as politics, education, media and business. Grace is currently a Visiting Scholar (on the Fulbright African Research Scholar Program) at the USF Department of Women’s and Gender Studies.

WGS Virtual Graduation Party
May 14, 2021 from 6:30pm-7:30pm
This event will be held virtually through Microsoft Teams

The Department of Women's and Gender Studies & the new USF WGS Alumni Group (UWAG) are throwing a virtual graduation party for all former WGS students that graduated from spring 2020 through spring 2021. Join us for games, prizes, and the opportunity to network with other WGS alumni.

WGS Talk & Toast

April 27, 2021 from 5:00pm-7:00pm
This event will be held virtually through Microsoft Teams

Lauren Wright: Dismantling Hegemony through Inclusive Sexual Health Education
Zoe Knowles: Perceptions of the LGBTQ+ Community Among Jamaican Students Studying in the United States
Sophia “Stella” Escalante: Violence Against the Humanity of Black, Brown, & Disabled Bodies

WGS Graduate Feminist Research Colloquium
April 19, 2021 from 5:30pm-8:15pm
This event will be held virtually in Microsoft Teams.

Panel 1: 5:40-6:00pm
Title: Critical Counter Narratives

Sabeehah Ravat, Queering Islam: The Transformative Promise of Queer Muslim Liberation, Women and Gender Studies
Anjuliet Woodruffe, Who Feels it, Knows it: An Autoethnography of Affective Citizenship, Communication
Kristen Vogel, An African Women’s Empowerment: Listening to Ghana’s Matriarchs, Applied Anthropology

Panel 2: 6:00-6:20pm
Title: Politics of Assessment and Development

Amber Peretz, Programming for Transformation: Approach and Impacts of Community-Based Education for Social Justice Youth Development, Educational Leadership and Policy
Jess Griffith, There’s something missing: A look at instructor approaches to feedback, Rhetoric and Composition
Travis Bell, HoopGurlz’s Biased Recruiting: Racial and Positional Stereotyping in Girls’ Basketball Scouting Reports, Women’s and Gender Studies Graduate Certificate

Panel 3: 6:20-6:40pm
Title: The Justice League

Dairíne Hoban, Analysing the Effects of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Communication with Individuals Incarcerated in the Florida Department of Corrections Prison System, Women and Gender Studies Graduate Certificate
Janae Thomas, Stand Your Ground and the effects on women who have been the victim of sexual violence, Politics and International Affairs
Amy Nourie, Are We Really Helping Children? A Feminist Critical Analysis of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) and Mandatory Reporting Laws, Social Work

Panel 4: 7:00-7:20pm
Title: Representation in Social Research

Isabel Seidel, Medical Discussion Surrounding Women’s Sterilization, Women and Gender Studies Graduate Certificate
Sarah Thomas, An Exploratory Meta-Analysis of Demographics in Fad Diet Research and Recommendations, Educational Measurement & Evaluation
Kelly Long, The Intersection of Culture, Gender, and Education Leadership: Women Writing about Women, Educational Leadership and Policy

Panel 5: 7:20-7:40pm
Title: Media, Gender, and Bodies

Beth Gaines, Pink Ribbon Culture: How Cause-Related Marketing Impacts Ideas of Cancer Survivorship, Women’s and Gender Studies
Alisha Romano, #Metoo in Japan and the Media’s Perceptions, Women’s and Gender Studies
Callie Politano, Great Power and Great Responsibility: Nurturant Ethic in Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman Film Series, Women’s and Gender Studies

Panel 6: 7:40-8:00pm
Title: Queer Encounters

Rachel K. Henesy, Counseling and LGTBQ+ Clients: Analyzing 50 Years of Trends in the Journal of Counseling & Development, Women’s and Gender Studies
Hayden J. Fulton, The Limits of Charity in Creating Trans Care: Inequalities in GoFundMe Top Surgery Campaigns, Sociology
Yulia Nekrashevich: Performance and Persuasion: How the Carnivalesque Functions as a Rhetorical Tool for Queer Space. Rhetoric and Composition.

WGS Brown Bag: "A Party for All: Analyzing the New Mediated Quinceañera, Gendered Nostalgia, and the (In)Visibility of Latinidad" with Dr. Diana Leon-Boys
April 8, 2021 from 12:30pm - 2:00pm
This event will be held virtually in Microsoft Teams.

Dr. Diana Leon-Boys joined the Department of Communication at the University of South Florida in the fall of 2020. She is a critical media and cultural studies scholar. Within that framework, she focuses on the representation of race, age, gender, and sexuality within popular culture. Most recently her research has focused on the production, representation, and consumption of Latina girls in a post-network digital era against the backdrop of contemporary post-feminist and neoliberal frameworks. Dr. Leon-Boys is a leader and developer of the subfield of Latina girls’ media studies. She teaches and researches digital audiences, Latina/o/x media, Latina/o/x studies, race and gender in popular media, and intercultural communication, among other topics.

WGS Symposium: Personal and Professional Perspectives on Disability
April 8, 2021 from 5:00 - 6:30pm
This event will be held virtually in Microsoft Teams.

Our panelists will include a USF graduate student and a USF Student Affairs professional—both of whom identify as having a disability. Other panelists include the Director for the CARD center (Center for Autism and Related Disabilities), a USF professor who specializes in ADA law and accommodations, and the Co-Director for the Grow Group, a non-profit organization that specializes in helping people with disabilities find meaningful careers. We expect to cover a range of topics related to disabilities including how disabilities affect one’s everyday life, legal concerns for those living with disabilities, as well as disabilities and their impact on education and the workplace. Panelists will include: Dr. Beth Boone (USF), Deborah McCarthy (USF), Sashy O'Connor (Grow Group), Bonnie Greenball Silvestri (USF), and Stella Escalante (USF).

WGS Brown Bag: "Things I Must Still Do" with Dr. Keith Berry
April 1, 2021 from 12:30pm - 2:00pm
This event will be held virtually in Microsoft Teams.

The United States of America legalized marriage equality in June 2015, a decision that transformed the lives of queer people and our allies for the better. The right that we should have been able to benefit from all along was suddenly a reality. Yet, while the change was groundbreaking, LGBTQ+ continue to face hardship and struggle, in general, and the violence of discrimination and bigotry, in particular. “Post-marriage” life is not necessarily a honeymoon. In this talk, I convey and explore the “things I must still do” as a gay man. In homage to Susan Sontag’s “Notes on Camp,” the presentation is comprised of a list of descriptive notes that reveal and unpack these necessary ways of performing. A dialogue session will follow the talk.

A version of these notes first appeared in my recently co-authored (with Catherine M. Gillotti and Tony Adams) book Living Sexuality: Stories of LGBTQ Relationships, Identities, and Desires (2020; Brill/Sense).

WGS Alumni Panel Discussion: Navigating a Real-World Career with a WGS Worldview
March 26, 2021 from 12:30pm - 1:30pm
This event will be held virtually in Microsoft Teams.

Join us to get the scoop from WGS alumni how they leveraged their diplomas into jobs they love. Sponsored by the USF Women's & Gender Studies Alumni Group (UWAG) and the spring 2021 students of WST 3006 Careers & Professionalism.

Panelists:
Brandi Lai
(BA WGS, 2018)
Founder & President
Best Laid Pens, Orlando, FL

Yordanos Molla
(BA WGS & International Studies, 2018;
MA Ethics, Peace, & Human Rights, American University, 2020)
Deputy Field Director
Equality Florida, St. Petersburg, FL

Desiree Mora
(BA WGS & BS Computer Science, 2020)
Software Engineer
J.P. Morgan & Chase, Plano, TX

Katie Shrum
(BA WGS, 2017; M.Ed. Educational Technology, 2019)
Instructional Designer, Diversity & Inclusion Initiative Lead
Bloomin’ Brands International, Tampa, FL

Moderator:
Kim Golombisky, Ph.D.
USF Department of Women’s & Gender Studies

WGS Anti-Racism Speaker Series:
Anti-Black Racism in Communities of Color and Other Marginalized Groups
March 16, 2021 from 3:30-4:45pm
This event was held virtually through Microsoft Teams

The purpose of the panel is to introduce USF undergraduates and other attendees to key themes present in anti-black racism discourse (i.e. highlighting and contextualizing past, current, and ongoing social justice work combatting anti-black racism in communities of color and other marginalized groups). The panel will be made up of USF graduate students who have research interests, expertise, or experience related to the theme.

WGS Brown Bag: A Discussion on Black Feminist Pedagogies
February 16, 2021 from 12:30pm - 2:00pm
This event was held virtually in Microsoft Teams.

Join us for a lively discussion on Black feminist pedagogy and how it can be implemented in the classroom. We will be discussing the articles below, which cover introducing healing circles for students’ well being and how to help students come to voice.

Serls, T. (forthcoming 2020). Black girl magic: Beauty, brilliance, and coming to voice in the classroom. In S. Arki, B. Delano-Oriaran, & E. Moore, Jr. (Eds.), Teaching Brilliant and Beautiful Black Girls. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Richardson, J. L. (2018). Healing circles as black feminist pedagogical interventions. In O. N. Perlow, D. I. Wheeler, S. L. Bethea, & B. M. Scott (Eds.), Black Women’s Liberatory Pedagogies: Resistance, Transformation, and Healing within and beyond the Academy (pp. 245-264). Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave/Macmillan.

WGS Anti-Racism Speaker Series:
Intersex Rage, Biopolitical Protest, and the Movement For Black Lives: A Conversation with Dr. David A Rubin
January 27, 2021 from 1:00pm - 2:30pm
This event was held virtually in Microsoft Teams

In this presentation, David A. Rubin argues that the Movement for Black Lives can help us to rethink and re-evaluate the interconnections between scientific and medical racism and state-sanctioned medical violence against intersex, trans, and gender nonconforming people. Using Audre Lorde (1984) as a guide for theorizing the transformative potential of rage as a form of biopolitical protest, Rubin offers a meditation on the ethico-political lessons that emerge when we foreground the linkages between Black freedom dreams (Kelley 2003) and struggles for intersex, trans, and gender nonconforming sovereignty and justice.

Queer Apocalypse Solutions Online Teach-In with Dr. Helis Sikk
January 21, 2021 from 6:00 PM 7:30 PM
Event held virtually over Zoom.

Queer Apocalypse Solutions is a social practice project by Lindsay Garcia and Helis Sikk, providing queer tools for survival through many apocalypse scenarios. In a response to racism and COVID-19, Garcia and Sikk will host an online teach-in during the Teachable Moment exhibition. Through art, scholarship, activism, and self-reflection, the teach-in will help participants learn and practice anti-racist interruptions in their everyday lives.

Chart Your Path: WGS Faculty Guidance Sessions
December 2, 2020 at 4:00-4:45pm
Decmber 3, 2020 at 4:00-4:45pm
These events were held virtually over Microsoft Teams.

Join WGS faculty for two sessions designed to help you navigate your way through the WGS major and/or WGS and QSS minors. Discussion topics will include how to tailor your degree to your career and academic plans, and how to find courses that tie in well with your interests. You are welcome to attend one or both sessions, which will be held on Wednesday, December 2 and Thursday, December 3, both from 4:00-4:45pm over Microsoft Teams.

WGS Anti-Racism Speaker Series:
The Borders of Race: Patrolling "Multiracial" Identities: Book Talk with Dr. Melinda Mills
November 18, 2020 from 5:30pm - 6:45pm
This event was held virtually in Microsoft Teams

The event is open to WGS affiliate faculty, graduate students, and other faculty and administrators.

Multiracial and More: Understanding the “Two or More Races” Population: In 2000, almost 6 million people reported two or more races on the US Census survey. Prior to that, people with known racial mixture did not have much space to claim their racial multiplicity. By 2010, those numbers grew, with almost 9 million people claiming two or more races. What will the results of the 2020 Census reveal? How do members of what the US Census Bureau calls the “two or more races” population assert their preferred racial identity these days?

Drawing on qualitative research conducted with 60 individuals of various racial combinations, I discuss some of the emergent patterns in data I collected on multiracial people. What are the ways that people with racially mixed parentage choose to identify? Are those preferred racial identities supported and encouraged, or met with caution and contestation?

In this talk, I pull examples from my first book, The Borders of Race, to illustrate how individuals with racially mixed parentage and heritage manage their multiracial identities publicly and privately. This management sometimes involves benevolent social interactions with strangers and familiar others, but at other times, proves to be more tenuous, particularly when met with dubious regard and skepticism. I explore how these choices (and constraints) are shaped by changing constructions and geographies of race.

Biography: Melinda A. Mills is Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, Sociology, and Anthropology, and Coordinator of Women’s and Gender Studies at Castleton University in Castleton, Vermont, and Visiting Instructor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at USF. Her research interests include multiracial identity formation, interracial relationships, diasporic blackness in music and popular culture, and street harassment. Her first book, The Borders of Race, examines the lived experiences of multiracial people of various racial combinations. Dr. Mills has two forthcoming books: Racial Mixture and Musical Mash-Ups in the Life and Art of Bruno Mars (Lexington Press) and Invisible Mixture (with NYU Press).

Triota Honor Society Event: Post-Graduation Plans, a Discussion with Dr. Tangela Serls
November 17, 2020 at 5:30pm
This event was held virtually through Microsoft Teams

WGS Anti-Racism Speaker Series:
Difficult Dialogues about Race: Workshop Featuring Keith Woods
October 23, 2020 from 2:00pm - 3:30pm
This event was held virtually in Microsoft Teams

WGS Anti-Racism Speaker Series invites you to a discussion on race in higher education with Keith Woods, the Chief Diversity Officer at NPR. More on the work of Keith Woods can be found here.

The event is open to WGS affiliate faculty, graduate students, and other faculty and administrators who want to reflect, learn, and grow in their anti-racism work and practice. We aim to provide a communal space to address challenging questions and hard truths.

WGS Anti-Racism Series:
Film Screening & Discussion: Suppressed 2020: The Fight To Vote
October 14, 2020 from 5:30pm - 7:00pm
This event was held virtually in Microsoft Teams

Join WGS for a screening and discussion of the film Suppressed 2020: The Fight To Vote.

About the film: "By Robert Greenwald (Director of Outfoxed, Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price, and Making A Killing: Guns Greed and the NRA), it is a short, powerful documentary about the growing threat of voter suppression to our 2020 election. Deeply personal accounts from voters of color across the state of Georgia reveal deliberate, widespread voter suppression in the 2018 midterm election where Stacey Abrams fought to become the first Black female governor in the U.S. Polling place closures, voter purges, missing absentee ballots, extreme wait times and voter ID issues were in full effect again during the 2020 primaries and are on-going across the country right now, all disproportionately affecting Black Americans and minorities from casting their ballots. Now, amidst a global health crisis, the cruel weaponization of vote-by-mail restrictions has turned the constitutional right to vote into a choice between life and death. Suppressed 2020 is a call to action against the calculated, unconstitutional and racist attacks intended to suppress the right to vote in America."

Southeastern Women's Studies Association (SEWSA) 2020 Conference
March 26 - March 28, 2020 (Cancelled due to COVID-19)
St. Petersburg, Florida

WGS was the host of the 2020 SEWSA Conference, which was to be held at the USF campus in St. Petersburg, Florida. The conference was cancelled due to COVID-19. Keynote speakers were to have been Loretta Ross and Dr. Aisha Durham. View the conference program to learn more.

Art Exhibit: The Founding Mothers: Women in Herstory
March 6, 2020 - September 15, 2020

For more information, visit the exhibit online.

WGS is pleased to present an exhibit of artwork on loan from the Museum of Motherhood.

About the exhibit: This exhibit brings together feminists throughout herstory who have challenged conventional attitudes about gendered performance and motherhood through their writing, activism, and art. This multi-media interactive exhibit encourages us to think critically about evolving family narratives and womyn's place in society. Join us in discovering the dynamic impact mother studies can have on your life, perspective, and the future.

Curator of The Founding Mothers: Martha Joy Rose is a scholar, artist, and activist. She founded the MaMaPaLooZa music festival while touring with her band Housewives On Prozac and began work on the Museum of Motherhood (MOM) in 2003. She has been organizing the international Academic MOM Conference since (2005), editing the Journal of Mother Studies, and in 2009 she was received the Susan B. Anthony Award from NOW-NYC. She holds an advanced degree in Mother Studies from CUNY, teaches Sociology of Family at the university level, curates exhibits including the "Ima Iyla'a: Art of Motherhood" as part of the 2015 Jerusalem Biennale, the AEHK Artist Tour 2017-2019 in St. Petersburg, Florida, and M.A.M.A. Mothers Are Making Art in collaboration with Procreate Project and The Mom Egg, online. The Museum of Motherhood is currently located in the MOM Art Annex in St. Petersburg, Florida. Rose's publications include contributions to New Maternalisms (Demeter Press 2016), co-editing of the Music of Motherhood (Demeter Press, 2018), and contributing to The Routledge Companion to Motherhood Studies (2019).

WGS Brown Bag Series: Dr. Helis Sikk
"Queer Surfers: The Beach, Bodies, and Possibilities for Resistance"
November 21, 2019 from 12:30-1:45pm
CMC 202T

The homophobic world of surfing was recently brought to mainstem attention by the documentary Out in the Line-up (2014), which followed the tribulations of two gay surfers. Yet, unsurprisingly, queer surfers have been around for a long time. The USF Tampa Special Collections houses a collection of images depicting queer surfing culture in the US. First appearing in the mid-1930s in beefcake magazines and later as part of gay lifestyle publications, these images provide a unique perspective on queer culture and sexual liberation since the 1960s.

The art of he’e nalu (“wave sliding”) is a Hawaiian cultural tradition and has served as a form of resistance to US colonialism on the islands. However, it was not until the 1959 movie Gidget and later the popularity of The Beach Boys that surfing was appropriated by white, mainstream US culture. This brown bag discussion looks at the beach as a site of resistance – a space where LGBTQ+ masculinities and femininities were explored—and considers how these images of queer surfers fit into LGBTQ+ activism in the 1960s and today.

Trigger warning: this presentation includes nudity and sexually explicit imagery.

WGS Brown Bag Series: Dr. David Ponton
“On the Study of Black Men: Post-intersectionality Polemics, Afro-pessimism, and (Dis)Locating Race”
November 6, 2019 from 12:30-1:45pm
CMC 202T

In his 2017 monograph, The Man-Not, philosopher Tommy J. Curry calls for a new genre study of black men, the lives of whom he believes are currently inaccessible in existing gender theories, including those, like intersectionality, produced by black feminists. Concurrently, across humanities and social science disciplines, aversion to liberalism and increasing buy-in of Critical Race Theory's tenet of the "permanence of racism," Afro-pessimists argue for the need to theorize blackness, not as a racial category, but as a paradigm of dissociation born of structural violence. Blackness, they propose, is not a product of race, but rather race is a product of blackness. How, then, can we develop a study of black men as subjects who necessarily violate gender theory and popular conceptions of race? By attending to archival records chronicling the conflicts between Texas South University's black male students, white mobs, and white police officers precipitating a 1967 state siege on the college campus in Houston, we may find opportunities to think about the political construction of black manhood, not as a desire for masculine recognition, nor as a state of perpetual dying, but as something(s) more--a "more" that ultimately re-articulates Western, liberal ethics as decidedly immoral and antithetical to anti-racism and anti-sexism.

Art Exhibit: Reproductive Justice is for Everyone!
November 5, 2019 - March 5, 2020
Opening Reception: November 5, 2019 from 12:30-3:00pm
CMC202

For more information, visit the exhibit online.

USF Oracle coverage of the Reproductive Justice is for Everyone!

Join WGS for the opening of our Reproductive Justice is for Everyone! art exhibit. Curated by nicole gugliotti of the Socially Engaged Craft Collective, the exhibit includes works by artists responding to the question: What does reproductive justice mean to you?

Artists featured in the exhibit include:

Gerald A. Brown
Habiba El-Sayed
Jillian Marie Browning
nicole gugliotti
Mac Star McCusker
Mariana Baquero
M.C. Baumstark
Dani Sigler

Intersex and Trans: Beyond 101s
October 21, 2019 from 5:00-6:00pm
MSC 2702, USF Tampa - Marshall Center

Brief lecture by Dr. David A. Rubin on the history and challenges facing intersex, transgender, and gender-noncomforming people, followed by a Q&A with the audience.

The Feminist on Cellblock Y Film Screening
October 17, 2019 from 5-6:45pm
MSC 3705, USF Tampa - Marshall Center

This documentary examines a feminist movement started in a California men's prison by an incarcerated man.

Latinx Feminists You Should Know!
October 15, 2019 from 6:30-8:00pm
CMC202T

Join Drs. Diane Price-Herndl and Tangela Serls as they highlight notable Latinx feminists and activists. Attendees are not expected to have prior knowledge of feminisms; however, those who do are encouraged to attend and contribute to the discussion.

WGS Careers & Alumni Panel
October 1, 2019 from 4:30-6:30pm
Teco Hall (DAC 103) - Education Building II (Anchin Center)

Join WGS alumni for a discussion of what you can do with a degree in WGS, and how to land the job you want. A reception with light refreshments will follow the event, and a representative from Career Services will be present to answer questions.

Panelists will include:

Vanessa Charles: Real Estate Agent
Katie Turner: Director of Operations at Family Healthcare Foundation
Kiah Bowers: Research Specialist-Proteomics Core at Moffitt Cancer Center
Pierce Dignam: PhD Student (Sociology) at FSU
Coral Nardandrea: Video Game Writer at Pixelberry Studios
Samantha Heuwagen: Sex Therapist
Aubrey Hall: Green Dot Coordinator at Sunrise of Pasco County

WGS Brown Bag Series: Dr. Kim Golombisky
“A Conversation about the Mechanics of the Gaze in the Age of Selfies”
September 11, 2019 from 12:30-1:45pm
CMC 202T

Join us for an interactive discussion as we doodle on the schematics of looking relations. Don’t forget your lunch.

A former advertising and public relations professional, Kim “Dr. G.” Golombisky began teaching mass communications at USF 1993. She is currently the interim director of the USF Zimmerman School of Advertising & Mass Communications. From 2011 to 2018, she served as graduate director in the USF Department of Women’s & Gender Studies, where she makes her tenure home teaching and writing about feminist issues in the media. She has consulted on media writing for Walt Disney World Resorts, Progressive Insurance, ASNE High School Journalism Program, and Publix Supermarkets. In addition to coauthoring White Space Is Not Your Enemy: A Beginner’s Guide to Communicating Visually through Graphic, Web & Multimedia Design, she has edited two anthologies on advertising and feminism. She also has been visiting faculty for diversity at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies.

WGS Talk & Toast
April 26, 2019
CMC 202T

Join WGS for a presentation of research by graduating WGS Master’s students Sunahtah Jones, Cera Shain, and Leah Turner. Talk & Toast gives soon-to-be graduates an opportunity to share their work with colleagues and celebrate their success.

WGS Feminist Research Colloquium
April 22, 2019
CMC 202T

Join WGS for the 8th annual Feminist Research Colloquium. This two-hour event gives graduate students in the WGS Feminist Research Methods seminar an opportunity to present their research to the USF community.

Triota Honor Society: Self-Care Event
April 11, 2019
CMC 202

Join Triota for a discussion of self-care based on Sara Ahmed's Living a Feminist Life, and pizza.

I Am Evidence Film Screening & Panel
April 9, 2019
Marshall Center Oval Theater

WGS will host a film screening on April 9th of the award-winning documentary, I Am Evidence, followed by a panel discussion moderated by WGS Associate Professor Michelle Hughes Miller.

I Am Evidence tells the story of the untested rape-kit backlog in the U.S., including how the backlog was dis- covered and how activists and mem- bers of law enforcement are fighting to end it.

Panelists will include:

Dr. Ráchael Powers, Associate Professor in the USF Department of Criminology
Jessica Pinto, Advocate Manager at the Crisis Center of Tampa Bay
Melissa Suddeth, Crime Laboratory Analyst Supervisor with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement

WGS Open House & Art Exhibit
April 3, 2019
CMT 202

Join WGS for an open house event on April 3rd. During the Open House, WGS we will be hosting an art exhibit featuring “MYAFRIKA-ART,” a series of paintings by Dr. Gary Lemons. Dr. Lemons is a Professor in the USF Department of English, and an affiliate faculty member of WGS.