Volume 300 | February 7th, 2025

Faculty Spotlight

Ivy Ken recently presented her work at a Research Development Hour at GW's Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration. Her presentation focused on why multinational meatpacking companies are increasingly opening facilities in remote, rural areas of the US where there are few workers. She described how companies in this industry subjugate racialized “outsiders” and use immigration law to keep workers in vulnerable positions, thereby incorporating harm and human degradation into the production of food. Nearly half of front-line workers in this industry, where Black and Latinx people are disproportionately employed, are identified as women. Conceptually, the project integrates socio-legal understandings of corporate personhood within a framework of settler colonialism to understand the harms to sustainable food production that occur when multinational meatpacking companies use rural US land to accomplish their economic goals. This project, for which Professor Ken is collaborating with Professor K. Sebastian León of Rutgers University, is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Way to go, Professor Ken!

Kudos to Professors Kavita Daiya and Rachel Riedner who will be participating in a virtual panel for GW's Divided Communities University Seminar on Friday, February 14th from 10-11:30am. Their panel is entitled: Perspectives on Deep Divisions: Reflections from Research & Teaching. They will explore deep divisions, such as between different cultures or political communities that can be found throughout our contemporary world. Indeed, they have been a constant feature of human history.

Congrats to Professor Akae Wright who will be a panelist for the GW's English Department's Against Confinement Showcase on Tuesday, April 22nd! Professor Wright will be participating in the "Community Activist" panel, which is taking place from 4:45-6pm in the Elliott School, 6th and 7th floors.

The English Department’s 2025 Against Confinement Mellon Student Showcase is the culmination of a two-year Mellon Disability Justice initiative, which promotes authentic, public-facing storytelling that illuminates the nexus between disability and targeted incarceration. The showcase highlights undergraduate and graduate scholarship that identifies and theorizes practices of exclusion, rendering populations—particularly disabled, impoverished, genderqueer, racialized, migrant, Deaf, and colonized communities—vulnerable to disproportionate confinement and the varied injuries that often arise from such confinement. Featured research projects use insights from carceral studies, grassroots activism, and cross-disability justice to unveil unrecognized debilitating carceral practices that exist alongside and beyond imprisonment and institutionalization. Undergraduate students, especially, employ the medium of digital storytelling to orient non-specialist audiences toward trauma-conscious exchanges with complex disabled embodiment preceding or resulting from confinement.

In Case You Missed It!

"International Feminist Solidarity"

Pictured: WGSS MA Student, Yaprak Eris, introducing the topics of the discussion.

On Wednesday, February 5th, WGSS hosted a student-led discussion on International Feminist Solidarity! The discussion was led by WGSS MA student Yaprak Eris who addressed various topics including steps we can take as women in the U.S. who have the privilege of living in a country that grants its citizens the freedom to speak up and voice dissent, the importance of incorporating and normalizing different cultural voices in the contemporary feminist movement, and the different types of organizations and activities U.S. feminists can participate in to express solidarity with women and feminists around the world!

Topics that were raised during the general discussion ranged from a discussion of how we can break away from stereotypes and implicit biases that may interfere with our ability to empathize with marginalized others, to how important education is in combatting these prejudices and in enabling us to have a better understanding of injustices affecting women and children around the world, as well as how feminist scholarship can be an especially effective conduit for networking and helping women internationally.

Student attendees contributed several insightful perspectives and ideas, which resulted in a very productive discussion of how we can help each other and those across the globe!

Stay tuned for more student-led discussions!

Upcoming WGSS Events

“Seeing, Sensing, Feeling: Representing Puta Life”

featuring Juana María Rodríguez

The Textile Museum, Myers Room | 4:00PM EST

Drawing on the publication of her recent book, Puta Life: Seeing Latinas, Working Sex (Duke UP, 2023), this talk will explore how different genres of representation–from graphic narratives and oral histories to documentary films and social-media selfies–shape the life stories we consume. As a rumination on the limits and possibilities of representation, it probes the queer things that words do to images and that images do to words in order to confront the ethical quandaries posed by our role as authors and academics in representing the sexual lives of others.

About the Speaker

Juana María Rodríguez is a cultural critic, public speaker, and award-winning author who writes about sexual cultures, racial politics, and the many tangled expressions of Latina identity. A Professor of Ethnic Studies and Performance Studies at UC Berkeley, she is the author of Puta Life: Seeing Latinas, Working Sex (Duke UP 2023); Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures, and Other Latina Longings (NYU Press 2014); and Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces (NYU Press, 2003).

Upcoming GW Events

Annual Lecture in Race and Inequality

Wednesday, February 12th

Teamsters Room on the 7th Floor of Gelman Library

On Wednesday, February 12 (10:00-11:30am), Professor Jessica Marie Johnson of Johns Hopkins University will deliver the History Department Annual Lecture in Race and Inequality in the Teamsters Room on the 7th Floor of Gelman Library. Johnson is a distinguished scholar of gender, Atlantic Slavery, and the Atlantic Africa diaspora and is the author of the award-winning book Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World. Her lecture, "Pleasures in the City: Enslaved Women and the Fight Against Enclosure," asks: What lessons does the history of slavery have for this moment and beyond? The talk will explore Black women's strategies for finding value in themselves that rejects the logic of slavery and the principles of empire.

A lunch will immediately follow the lecture from 11:45am-1:00pm in 328 Phillips in which Johnson will discuss her research and writing processes. All graduate students are welcome to attend. She has shared the following article to serve as a basis for the discussion: Halle-Mackenzie Ashby and Jessica Marie Johnson, “Injury and Value: Black Mothering in Slavery and Its Afterlife,” History of the Present 14, no. 1 (April 1, 2024): 138–55.

The Internal Colony - Black History Month Book Talk Featuring Dr. Sam Klug

February 12, 2025 | 1:00-2:00pm

1957 E Street, NW, Room 602, The Elliott Lindner Family Commons

Please join us for a conversation with author Sam Klug, Assistant Teaching Professor of History at Loyola University Maryland, about his book, The Internal Colony. The conversation will be moderated by Dr. Dwayne Wright, GW Assistant Professor of Higher Education Administration. A light lunch will be served.

Black History Month Program

Thursday, February 20th

USC 309

The Africana Studies BHM Program will take place on Thursday, February 20th, from 4-8PM! Come celebrate Black History Month with a book talk and signing by CUNY Professor and Hip Hop DJ Todd Craig!

CCAS DEI Lunch & Learn

Wednesday, Feb 26, 2025 ⋅ 11:30 am – 1 pm

Phillips Hall Room 411

This exciting book launch is being hosted by CCAS-DEI for Professor Quito J. Swan (Professor of History and Africana Studies and Director of the Africana Studies Program). This event will celebrate his latest monograph, Born a Sufferah: Dancehall Music's Insurgent Soundscapes (Bloomsbury, 2025).

Please RSVP to help with the food order and to capture your dietary restrictions for lunch.

"Off-Duty Laudatory Conduct and Employment."

February 28th at 12:30pm RSVP is required

The Philosophy Department invites you to a talk on February 28th at 12:30pm featuring Professor Vivek Bhargava, "Off-Duty Laudatory Conduct and Employment."

Professor Bhargava's Abstract:

"When an employee's off-duty misconduct generates mass social media outrage, it excites vigorous debate about the ethics of firing the employee. Some have argued that firing the employee would subject them to excessive, undeserved, blame. Others claim that firing the employee is required to show that the employer does not condone the wrongdoing. Whatever one thinks about the ethics of these firings, a parallel issue has largely been overlooked: Should an employee's off-duty laudatory conduct be considered in employment decisions about bonuses, promotions, and hiring? For example, should the fact that an employee volunteers at a soup kitchen or donates their income to charity matter in decisions about whom to award a bonus or to promote? This question has significant implications for our understanding of the nature of employment. Answering it affirmatively would yield a radically revisionary view of employment, while answering it negatively suggests an asymmetry that demands explanation. I defend the view that it is permissible for employers to consider off-duty laudatory conduct in decisions about bonuses, promotions, and hiring."

The lecture location will be determined by the number of RSVPs received.

"Feminist Psychology: One Method of Liberatory and Decolonial Practice."

Tuesday, March 25th • 4-6pm

1957 E St NW, Room 113

Join the Professional Psychology Program to hear from Laura Brown, PhD, ABPP on the topic of "Feminist Psychology: One Method of Liberatory and Decolonial Practice." RSVP is not required. To learn more about this topic, check out Dr. Brown's article on Decolonial, Intersectional Feminist Therapy.

Against Confinement: Spring 2025 Mellon Student Showcase

Featuring Keynote Speakers Marchell Taylor and Dr. Kim Gorgens

Tuesday, April 22 • 3:00-7:15pm

Wednesday, April 23 • 2:00-5:30pm

1957 E Street, NW, Washington, DC 20052

Join the Department of English for its Spring 2025 Mellon Student Showcase featuring keynote speakers Marchell Taylor and Dr. Kim Gorgens. This event is the culmination of a two-year Mellon Disability Justice initiative, which promotes authentic, public-facing storytelling that illuminates the nexus between disability and targeted incarceration. The showcase highlights undergraduate and graduate scholarship related to these issues.

WGSS-related Events in the DMV

"The Orgasm Gap"

featuring Brittany N. Dernberger

Monday, February 10th | Doors open at 6 pm

Profs and Pints DC presents: “The Orgasm Gap,” a beyond-the-bedroom look at why women have fewer orgasms than men, with Brittany Dernberger, a sociologist and consultant on gender issues who taught a popular course on The Sociology of Sex as a former lecturer in Sociology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at George Washington University, the University of Maryland, and other higher-education institutions.

Call for Submissions

Black Women in Africa and the Diaspora at Work

Department of English and Language Arts at Morgan State University

Submissions due February 28, 2025

The Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Morgan State University invites paper submissions for its Graduate Symposium “Big Wheel Keep on Turnin’” Black Women in Africa and the Diaspora at Work. The Symposium will take place on April 3, 2025 from 8am-6pm at The National Treasure, Morgan State University.

This symposium aims to explore the profound intersections of African Americans and labor from historical perspectives to the challenges and triumphs of the 21st century. Submissions should offer social, political, cultural, postcolonial, and other literary and theoretical views, with a specific focus on issues related to women, gender, race, and activism in labor. The 2025 WGSS-GS theme “Black Women in Africa and the Diaspora at Work” intends to encourage broad reflections on intersections between black people’s work and their workplaces.

Submit abstracts via email and for inquiries, email the organizing committee.

Student Job Opportunities

The University of Michigan-Rackham Graduate School’s Michigan Humanities Emerging Research Scholars 2025 (MICHHERS) application officially opened on Monday, December 2, 2024. Rising seniors, recent B.A.s, and terminal master’s students who are interested in pursuing a doctoral degree at the University of Michigan are eligible to apply.

View the MICHHERS website for more information. For questions, email the MICHHERS team. The application deadline is February 10, 2025.

The Honey W Nashman Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service

The Honey W Nashman Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service at GW is hiring FWS students and volunteers. Apply for Math Matters, Jumpstart, engageDC, and SMARTDC tutoring and leadership open positions at the Nashman Center. Work directly with DC Public Schools and community organizations, making a real impact in the community.

Read full job descriptions and apply online. Contact the Nashman Center via email with any questions.

Jobs in Academia

The History program at the University of Houston-Downtown (UHD) invites applications for a tenure-track position in History at the rank of Assistant Professor, beginning Fall 2025. They are seeking a dynamic and innovative teacher/scholar focused on undergraduate student success in general and the needs of UHD learners in particular. The candidate selected for the position will demonstrate a commitment to excellence in teaching general education courses as well as upper-level courses, a robust research agenda, and active engagement in service to the department, college, university, and community.

Job description:

Candidates must have received a Ph.D. in History from a regionally accredited institution at the time of appointment. They must also have a record of, and/or a compelling commitment to engaging and dynamic undergraduate teaching geared towards first-generation and Pell-eligible students at a metropolitan regional comprehensive university. The area of specialization is open, with preference given to candidates with experience and/or preparation to teach the history of U.S. women, gender, and sexuality.

A letter of interest and curriculum vitae must be attached to the online application.

The search committee plans to stop reviewing applications by February 14, 2025.

Support for GW LGBTQ+ Students

QT Club (@qtclub.dc) is a community-based free school that explores the understanding that radical, liberatory knowledge is lived, and not just learned. Every meeting, guided readings of queer & feminist texts will help explore the importance of theory for our current movements. Through written and creative exercises, attendees will collectively do the work of raising consciousness about our lives. Discussions are grounded in the belief that conversations from and across different experiences enables us to better understand how to organize in vulnerable, intimate, and powerful ways.

Workshop Guidelines

UniQue Voices: Mental Health for the GW LGBTQ+ Community

This supportive therapy group is tailored specifically for LGBTQIA+ students, providing a safe and inclusive space to share experiences, explore identities, and enhance mental well-being.

Sexual Assault Survivors Group

A support and healing space for femme/female-identifying individuals who have experienced sexual assault. This group offers a collaborative space to learn about trauma, process complex emotions, and integrate the experience into a healthier self.

Healthy Relationships Group

A processing space to help students gain insight and tools to improve all types of relationships.

Save Foreign Assistance from Cuts

CARE is a humanitarian organization that fights global poverty empowers women and girls around the world. This organization is asking individuals to call elected officials and share support for foreign assistance, knowing just how much these critical investments save lives and promote U.S. and global stability, peace, and prosperity.

Individuals can make a phone call and connect to members of Congress. This organization has included four main points below to make this as quick and easy as possible:

I am a constituent, and I strongly support U.S investments in foreign assistance.
U.S. foreign assistance saves lives and promotes U.S. and global stability, peace, and prosperity.
The consequences of cutting foreign assistance will be devastating – and in some cases deadly – for millions of people worldwide while also jeopardizing American progress.
Supporting foreign assistance does not come at the expense of domestic priorities. U.S. leadership can do both, it’s not an either or.

If interested, call using this form.

Research Study

Researchers invite you to participate in a research study in Washington, D.C. in February 2025. These researchers are from Christopher Newport University, Georgetown University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison and this study is part of a broader research project on public opinion in the United States.

Participating in this study will require up to three hours of your time, spread out over six months, most of which is done through online surveys. You will also be asked to visit one museum on the National Mall. You can receive up to $50 in Amazon gift cards and a chance to win one of ten (10) iPads in a raffle throughout the course of the study.

If interested in participating, please fill out this form to provide some information about yourself. More details on the study will follow.

Conferences

2025 National Young Feminist Leadership Conference

March 29–31, 2025 | Doubletree Hotel, Arlington, VA (right outside D.C.)

Early Bird registration is open

NYFLC is a weekend full of learning from truly extraordinary feminists, some who have committed their lives to this work and others who are emerging leaders. NYFLC is a chance to recognize that we are a part of something big, a community of activists working for justice all around the country.

March 29-30th: Saturday and Sunday will be jam-packed with general assemblies featuring national speakers and panels diving deep into feminist issues. You'll learn about current issues and gain new organizing tactics and strategies to mobilize on your campus and in your community. Panels will cover topics ranging from protecting reproductive rights and publishing the Equal Rights Amendment to ending gender apartheid in Afghanistan.

March 31st: Congressional Advocacy Day! After learning about a range of feminist issues facing our country and communities, students take their knowledge, power, and voices to Capitol Hill for a Congressional Advocacy Day where they meet with lawmakers and legislative aides from their home states and districts.

Call for Submissions

Ethics Press is inviting proposals for scholarly books and edited collections in Humanities and Social Sciences, and broader related fields including Life Sciences and Health Sciences. Read the Notes of Guidance and review the Book Proposal Form.

Suitable proposals will be independently reviewed. A completed proposal form, a sample of the proposed book, if available, a CV, is required. You are also welcome to send a summary or abstract first.

Books are published in English, initially in academic hardback and eBook format, with a paperback version released later. The books we select range from 50,000 words to around 150,000 words. There are no charges to publish.

Subject coverage includes:

Philosophy, religion and faith, ethics and morality
Human rights and equality, including indigenous studies and land rights, and race and gender issues
Arts, humanities and social science topics including history, sociology, society and culture, community, anthropology, and language and literature.
Global challenges, including war and conflict, sustainability and climate change, food security, poverty, and technology/AI. Our portfolio on issues and challenges associated with Artificial Intelligence is particularly popular
Applied fields, including all areas of business, management, economics and finance, and decision making, plus bioethics, education, the built environment, and data ethics
Politics and government, both national and regional, from US election politics, to international banking, to global policy issues
Legal and medical issues, covering healthcare, medicine and medical ethics, psychology, counselling, childhood studies, and law
Health sciences and life sciences

An adapted Doctoral Theses, and Edited Collections, including adaptations from conferences and symposia will be considered.

Dear Asian Youth at GW is an on-campus organization for Asian youth and non-Asian allies to work together to enact social change and bring awareness to the Asian narrative through our Bi-Annual Literary Arts ZINE.

This organization is seeking submissions and editors for the Spring 2025 edition. The deadline to submit is Friday, February 21 at 11:59 PM. They welcome people of all backgrounds and ethnicities to submit! Submissions can be artwork, poetry, prose, recipes, stories, photography, or any other form of creative or analytical work.

If interested in submitting work for consideration or becoming an editor, apply today!

Resources

GW Mutual Aid Spreadsheet

Created by GW students for GW students, this resource serves as a connecting point for those who are providing or seeking aid. Areas of support include housing, health care, food, transportation, storage, pet/child/plant care, and more.

Online Therapy Resources for the LGBTQ+ Community

Online therapy is a resource that offers a plethora of different types of virtual therapy for the LGBTQ+ community. Online therapy makes it easier to access mental health care and to engage in therapy on your own terms. Find more resources that can be helpful for navigating the coming-out process, strengthening your relationships, and learning how to be true to yourself as an LGBTQ+ individual.

The Carol Downer Edition

Image Caption: Carol Downer of the Feminist Women’s Health Center in 1992.

(Image Credit: The New York Times)

Carol Downer, a prominent leader in the feminist women’s health movement from the Great Yogurt Conspiracy, died on January 13 in Glendale, California. She was a well known contributor to the National Organization for Women, where she was a part of the abortion committee. She was charged with practicing medicine without a license by performing abortions in a much safer, quicker, and easier way, as well as treating yeast infections with yogurt. Her innovative methods for treating women's health helped her gain national attention, which she employed to popularize women's clinics, as well as to help others fight for the elimination of gender bias in medicine. Downer, along with others, founded the Federation of Feminist Women’s Health Centers.