Program News
Alumni Speaker Series: Envisioning Change
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Pictured: Audience at Alumni Speaker Series
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Last week's
Alumni Speaker Series: Envisioning Change
was a huge success. Students with declared WGSS majors and minors, MA students, WGSS staff, and everyone in between received some amazing advice from alumni Susan Markham (Partner and Co-founder of Smash Strategies), Trey Johnston (Associate Director of the Cisneros Hispanic Leadership Institute), and Gina Chirillo (Senior Program Officer at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems) about their career paths, how to land a gender-based job, and different paths to make an impact on the world. If you missed this eye opening event, catch it live on our YouTube channel soon! Susan let us in on her personal struggles working in politics and how she navigated the field. Trey shared how race, LGBTQIA issues, and immigration inform the work he is doing right here on GW's campus. Gina gave frank advice about turning any job into a gender-based job and how current WGSS majors can navigate the job search. Thank you to our speakers and attendees for this generative dialogue.
You can check out more photos from the event on our blog
here
.
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Pictured (left to right): Susan Markham, Gina Chirillo, and Trey Johnston
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Pictured (left to right): Anita Ponchione, Cindy Deitch, Kavita Daiya, Trey Johnston, Susan Markham, Gina Chirillo, Niacka Carty
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Upcoming WGSS Brown Bag Seminar
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The WGSS' "Gender and Sexuality Brown Bag Seminar" showcases GW faculty and student research on issues concerning gender, race, and sexuality. In this seminar, Dr. Ivy Ken, Associate Professor of Sociology, will discuss the collaborative scholarship on intersectionality developed by the University of Memphis. This was as an important precursor to Kimberlé Crenshaw's foundational essays on intersectionality theory. Dr. Ken's critical inquiry, informed by the sociology of knowledge, will explore how the humanities and social sciences have been disciplined in ways that have consequences for understanding the dynamics of intersectionality.
Date:
Wednesday, December 4, 2019
Time: 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Venue: The George Washington University, Phillips Hall Room 411, 801 22nd St. NW
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Exciting WGSS Courses in Spring 2020
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Practicum in Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies
CRN: 77089
WGSS 6283 (Graduate) ; WGSS 4183 (Undergraduate)
3 Credits
Professors J. Moussa and Z. Abdul Aziz
Each Spring, the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) program offers a nationally recognized
Practicum
in advocacy, policy, and community organizations working on women's and gender issues for Graduate and select undergraduate students, usually seniors. This 3-credit course is also open to graduate students outside the WGSS program. Placement arrangements in an appropriate organization must be made and approved before the Spring semester starts. This Spring the course will be co-taught by international women’s human rights advocates Janine Moussa and Zarizana Abdul Aziz, co-founders of the
Due Diligence Project
.
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W
GSS 6225: Contemporary Feminist Theory
CRN: 77929
3 Credits
Dr. Kavita Daiya
This course explores key works of feminist theory in an international context, with attention to race and ethnicity, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It focalizes its exploration of feminist theory through three organizing rubrics: The Classics; Citizenship; and Migration and Nationalism. Students will begin by discussing some key essays by feminists across the disciplines that have been foundational in transforming feminist thought internationally since the late 20th century—Professor Daiya calls these the classics, even as she invites students to consider what makes particular essays “classic” within the U.S. institution. Students will then move on to a range of feminist readings that address formations of citizenship and subjectivity, as well as address the impact of modern migration and nationalisms. Included in this archive will be some film and literary works that allow the class to expand their discussion of the issues at hand. Taken together, readings raise questions for understanding identity, subjectivity, and power relations in a historicized way for the contemporary moment we find ourselves in, and with attention to the role of institutions, capital, and ideology in shaping lived experience, activist solidarities, as well as political struggle. The class concludes by considering some feminist reflections on the labor we do as scholars, critics, and thinkers, in the academy and outside, through an engagement with selections from Sara Ahmed’s
Living a Feminist Life
and
On Being Included
.
Meets Tues. 4:10 - 6:00pm!
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ARAB 3105: Gender, Love, and Friendship in the Arab World
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CRN: 78387
3 Credits
Dr. Jennifer Tobkin
This is a course on ideas about love, friendship, social etiquette, virtues, and gender roles as expressed through texts originally written in Arabic.
N.B. This course is taught in English. There are no prerequisites. For more information, e-mail Dr. Jennifer Tobkin at jtobkins@gwu.edu
Class Schedule: MW 2:20 - 3:35pm
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Cultural Factors in Neuropsychiatric Disease: An Interdisciplinary Analysis
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The GW Department of Philosophy is co-organizing a workshop with the goal of identifying gaps in research and patient care, and raising awareness about the many cultural factors impacting neuropsychiatric disease within America and around the world. The event will be held on
December 13, 2019
from 8:30 AM to 6:00 PM. Find more information & register your visit
here
.
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Upcoming D.C. Events on Gender
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The Chinese American Museum’s mission is to advance the understanding, knowledge, and appreciation of the Chinese American experience by highlighting shared cultural exchanges and stories of the spirit, resilience, and contributions of Chinese Americans throughout their past, present, and future. Head down to view their featured exhibits on Chinese American Women and the Shanghai Jewish Refugees.
The museum is open from
10:00 AM-5:00 PM every Wednesday-Saturday
through the end of the year.
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Call For Essay Submissions
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The George Washington University's English Graduate Student Association (EGSA) is pleased to announce the Call for Papers for their upcoming symposium on
February 28, 2020.
Graduate and undergraduate students are encouraged to submit abstracts for the symposium, and there will be a panel specifically for undergraduate presentations. Faculty are also invited to the event.
All abstracts are due on January 21st 2020.
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Your voice, your experiences, and your insights are critical for a special issue of
Women, Gender, and Families of Color
focused on the experiences of graduate students of color learning, working, navigating, and matriculating in higher education. We seek a diversity of perspectives from marginalized and minoritized populations in the academy, including students currently in MA and PhD programs as well as recent graduates across disciplines.
Women, Gender, and Families of Color
is a multidisciplinary peer-reviewed publication that centers the study of Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and Asian American women, genders, and families. For this special issue, we are interested in reflective essays that explore graduate students of colors’ lives—their struggles and triumphs. Additionally, we invite essays that center the observations and best practices of students of color and articulate authors’ visions for the future of departments, graduate schools, and campus communities.
In soliciting these essays, the journal aims to provide a space for emerging scholars to contemplate the formal structure and informal customs of graduate school as well as the aforementioned factors’ import and impact for graduate students of color as they make their way in the academy. The special issue is an effort to create a dialogue among graduate students of color for sharing ideas, affirmation, and guidance. It is also an endeavor to build a forum for graduate students of color to provide feedback to the journal’s other readers, which include college and university faculty, administrators, and staff persons.
Due to the sensitive nature of these issues, authors may request that their work be published anonymously. Submissions are due
November 30, 2019
to
wgfc@ku.edu.
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The organizers of Bodies of Knowledge 2020 invite proposals for individual conference papers, panels with 3-5 conference papers, informal roundtable panels, creative presentations (e.g., poetry, spoken word, creative nonfiction, photography exhibits, other art installations), and tabling by community organizations. We welcome participation from undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and community organizers. Proposals may address topics raised by the keynoters—trans community organizing, Black transgender feminism, trans childhoods, trans theorizing about gender-markers on legal documents—or may respond more broadly to the theme of re-envisioning transgender lives, cultures, politics, media visibility, and so on.
Bodies of Knowledge is an LGBTQ-themed event founded in 2008 in memory of Sean
Kennedy, a young man who was killed in Greenville in 2007. This biennial event aims to create a safer, more understanding community for everyone by offering high-quality presentations that change the conversation about LGBTQ experience in the Upstate and beyond, thereby improving the climate of the Upstate for its LGBTQ youth and promoting civil and well-informed discussion around sexuality and nonconforming gender identities.
The event will be held in Spartanburg, South Carolina on
April 9 - 10, 2020
and will feature an exciting lineup of keynote speakers will speak to the politics, culture, and health issues surrounding the transgender community.
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The Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of South Florida (USF) is hosting the 2020 Southeastern Women’s Studies Association Annual Conference in Tampa Bay, Florida. The theme—Embodying Disobedience, Crafting Affinities—figures embodiment and diverse lived experiences as the lifeblood of resistant politics and the livelihood of building alliances across our many differences.
They invite proposals that envision and examine diverse ways of embodying disobedience and crafting affinities
across a wide range of theories, practices, and contexts. All disciplines, methodologies, and styles of presentation are welcome, and from students and scholars at all levels.
Proposal submission is due by
December 6, 2019
. Click
here
for more information.
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D
olores Zohrab Liebmann Fellowship
Deadline:
January 10, 2020
This fellowship is looking for three George Washingtongraduate students who have financial need and hold promise for achievement and distinction in their chosen fields of study. The fellowship will cover the cost of tuition for the 2020-21 academic year plus an $18,000 annual stipend to be allocated towards room & board. Students in Law, Medicine or in Ph.D. programs are encouraged to apply.
For more information, click
here.
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Deadline:
February 3, 2020
The U.S. Department of Education Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship Program provides academic year fellowships to institutions of higher education. The grant to GWU, written by the Institute for Middle East Studies and the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, assists graduate (PhD and Master's candidates) and professional students (JD, MPH, DrPH, MBA and MD) at George Washington University to further language study and area/international studies.
Languages:
Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Turkish
For incoming and current graduate students. More information about eligibility, awards, and access to an application can be found
here
.
For current undergraduates and graduate students.
Click
here
for more details.
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Deadline:
February 7, 2020
The Moore Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program (MURAP) invites applications for a 10-week summer research fellowship for undergraduate students (rising juniors or seniors) in the humanities, social sciences, and fine arts. The program will be held from May 20th to July 24th, 2020 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
To apply, students must complete an online application, which will be available starting November 4, 2019. The application deadline is February 7, 2020. For more details about the program, please see the attached announcement and flyer. For more information, click
here
or contact
murap@unc.edu
.
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Scholarly Award Opportunities
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The
GW
Undergraduate Research Award
supports students pursuing well-defined research projects under the guidance of faculty members in their chosen fields of study. All research projects must be undertaken with ongoing input and direction from the faculty mentor. It is expected that students and their mentors will discuss their expectations regarding the time commitments of both parties, scope of research, and anticipated results (e.g., papers, presentations, performances, etc.). Student applicants must be full-time undergraduate students at GW and recipients must be enrolled at GW throughout the tenure of the award. GW undergraduate research fellowships provide an award of $5,000 meant to support the student’s research-related expenditures, which may include living expenses, travel, materials, and equipment.
The deadline to apply is
Thursday, December 5.
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The
Sustainability Scholars Award
supports students pursuing faculty-mentored research projects that address GW’s vision for sustainability to create resource systems that are healthy and thriving for all. This includes: environmental issues; social issues that can be applied to sustainable development such as human welfare, social equity issues or social / organizational/behavioral change; economic issues that can be applied to sustainable development; the interconnection of world resources and the human condition from a long-term perspective; policy and communications issues that can be applied to sustainable development.
The deadline to apply is
Thursday, December 5.
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Woman Warrior is an organization that hosts yoga workshops that create a gentle and powerful healing space for women who have experienced sexual trauma. They are seeking student volunteers who are available one to two hours per week to help manage social media accounts.
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Job and Internship Opportunities
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The Smithsonian Libraries' Education Department is seeking an intern to assist in the creation of an interactive classroom resource funded by the Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative.
Through this internship, a student will have the opportunity to learn about working with historic materials to tell diverse stories. The student will learn how to collaborate within a cohort of peers and work alongside experience professionals. Learn more on their
website
.
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Various Full-Time Positions, Institute For Women's Policy Research
The Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) is the nation’s leading and only think tank squarely focused on achieving economic equity and equality for women and families. They are working to build a dynamic and brilliant team of researchers, advocates, and practitioners who are committed to leveraging our original and groundbreaking research for policy change at the local, state and federal levels.
Open positions include Vice President of Research, Multiple directorships, and Research Assistant positions. Learn more
here
.
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Various Internships, Vital Voices
Vital Voices is an international women’s leadership non-profit that empowers and champions women leaders changing their communities around the world.
Their interns conduct research, draft proposals and social media content, support office management and budget development, help execute internationally renowned programs and much more. Internships at Vital Voices require a commitment ranging between 20-40 hours per week and are unpaid, but provide academic credit. Learn more
here
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Research Intern, A Wider Circle
In this internship you will develop and hone research skills by collecting and analyzing investigative qualitative and quantitative data, which will inform research team members, staff, volunteers and contributors about issues that relate to poverty. These issues may include federal, state, and local programs and policies that relate to poverty, as well as the state of economic opportunity for low-income Americans.
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Summer Intern, National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities
This is a paid graduate level full-time summer intern position at the NIH. This intern will work on the project entitled Built and Sociocultural Environmental Risk Factors of Cigar Smoking among African American Young Adults. The project involves using online survey and in-depth interview techniques to investigate the pressing environmental risk factors that trigger and escalate cigar smoking among African American young adults. The intern, together with other team members, will assist with recruiting and interviewing participants as well as organizing and analyzing qualitative interview data. Learn more
here
.
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Political Intern, NARAL Pro-Choice America
The Political Intern will support NARAL Pro-Choice America’s Political Department by conducting targeted research including: federal, gubernatorial, statewide, and local candidates and campaigns for the 2018 election cycles.
As the nation’s leading pro-choice advocacy group, NARAL Pro-Choice America is dedicated to protecting and expanding reproductive freedom for all Americans, including abortion access.
Learn more about this opportunity
here
.
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Outreach and Prevention Intern, FAIR Girls
Join the FAIR Girls team and make a difference in the lives of survivors of human trafficking. As a Outreach and Prevention Intern you will be responsible for spreading the word about human trafficking to professionals, community members, and at-risk youth in Washington, DC.
Learn more about the position
here
.
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Gender and Development Intern, Center for Global Development
The Center for Global Development (CGD), an independent, non-partisan, non-profit policy research organization in Washington, DC seeks a paid intern to start in January 2020 for a period of 6 months to support research, writing, and outreach work focused on gender and development.
The intern will spend 6 months from January through June 2019 working closely with CGD staff listed above to support research on women’s economic opportunities and agency, and other gender equality and international development-related topics as needed. For more information, click
here.
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Have you checked out our new
blog
yet?This is your go-to spot for gender related Spring 2020 courses, a database of the most recent news digests, and much more!
Stay constantly updated with WGSS
here!
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Join Our LinkedIn Network!
Our brand new WGSS Alumni page is here! Follow this page to receive the latest updates on alumni news, opportunities, and WGSS events! Connect with our alumni, faculty, and current students. Add us to your network today!
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WGSS "Envisioning Change" Alumni Speakers (Left to Right): Kate Black, Andrea Pagano-Reyes, and Layla Moughari
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Contribute to the WGSS News Digest
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Would you like your event, announcement, or news to be featured in our news digest? There is a process! Please fill out the below form by
Thursdays at 4:00 PM
to have your event featured in our upcoming digests.
Find the form
here
. We look forward to hearing from you!
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The Transgender Day of Remembrance Edition
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Representatives from the George Washington University Multicultural Student Services Center
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WGSS MA student in Public Policy, Gabriele Simon
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The George Washington University's
Multicultural Student Services Center
and the
Trans and Non-binary Students of GW
hosted a day-long vigil in Kogan Plaza on Wednesday, November 20, to remember those we've lost to anti-transgender violence. The MSSC noted that they are honoring not only persons whose lives were lost in the past year, and "not just in the past 20 years, but those who fought for us long before we were born and whose names we will never get to know."
WGSS MA students Gabriele Simon, a transwoman of color, and Sarah-Anne Gresham passed by to pay their respects as the names of those who were lost to
transmisogynoir
were read. It was not only their names but details of luminous lives and personality traits that were shared to the public in Kogan Plaza to remind us of their resilience, and, to echo
The Marsha P. Johnson Institute
, they were more than just a number.
The WGSS program is committed to raising awareness about anti-transgender violence, particularly meted out to transwomen of color. As many people around the world are hosting events for the 16 Days of Activism Campaign to End Violence Against Women and Girls, we'd like to stress the importance of including transwomen in this effort. The Human Rights Campaign has shared this resource, titled,
Violence Against the Transgender Community in 2019
, that we encourage you to read. Also refer to
this helpful resource
by Out Magazine on steps that can be taken toward ending violence against transwomen of color in the United States.
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