Gender Studies Symposium 2021 Schedule

40th Annual Gender Studies Symposium
Lack & Absence Illustration by Sarah Farahat

March 10–12, 2021

Some of this year’s events were recorded, and those recordings are posted below.

We’ve assembled this small Zoom Fatigue Kit to offer outlets for relief and rejuvenation during the Gender Studies Symposium and beyond.

Performance
The Museum: Memories of an American Family
Written and directed by Gabrielle Brewer-Wallin, L&C BA ’85 and MAT ’94
Performance by Jane Fellows

“The Museum” is a one-woman play that explores the role of objects in creating identity. The character is an elderly woman known on the page as “The Docent.” The play is ideally set in a gallery or museum setting, and the audience are the museum patrons.
Available for viewing from March 10-26. 

Watzek Library Exhibits:

For Lack of a Better World
Facing a lack of accepting creative, communal, and academic spaces, marginalized communities have come together and created their own. Lack gives rise to liminal spaces that empower collectives that have otherwise faced adversity due to their gender, sexuality, or experience. This exhibit examines some of these spaces and in so doing engages with communities too often overlooked.
* Curated by L&C students Eve March ’22, Ann Niemann ’22, Jacques Parker ’23, and Hannah Stubee ’21.
* This exhibit can be viewed online and on the top floor of Watzek Library.

The Anniversary
This exhibit explores the growth of the Lewis & Clark Gender Studies Symposium from its conception as the Women’s Studies Symposium in 1981 to today. Each year, the symposium has brought together the Lewis & Clark community by celebrating triumphs and discussing issues faced by all genders. The Anniversary strives to capture this spirit as we look back on the last 40 years together.
* Curated by L&C students Gabe Huerta ’22 and Emma Greenberg ’22.
* This exhibit can be seen online and in the atrium of Watzek Library. 

 

Wednesday, March 10

9–10:30 a.m.
Domestic Subversion: Resisting Patriarchal Power
Moderator: Andrea Hibbard, L&C assistant professor with term of English
Ashley O’Leary, L&C ’22, “Rocked the Cradle and Ruled the World: The Transcendent Possibilities of Maternal Feeling in George Egerton’s New Women”
Claire Phegley, L&C ’21, “Raising a Revolution: Free Love and Anarchist Motherhood, 1890-1915”
Kendall Arlasky, L&C ’21 and GSS co-chair, “Captive Domesticity: Gender, the Home, and Escape in Marina Carr’s Portia Coughlan and John Millington Synge’s The Shadow of the Glen”
Charlotte Powers, L&C ’21, “Receive and Resist: British Colonization’s Impact on Maori Women’s Gender, Sexuality, and Reproduction”

11 a.m.–12 p.m.
Conversation with keynote speaker Carmen Maria Machado

12:30–2 p.m. Please click here to view the recording of this panel
Artistic Expression of Gender and Sexuality
Moderator: Rebecca Lingafelter, L&C associate professor of theatre
Dana Levy, University of Puget Sound ’21, “We Are Ever New: ‘Transing’ the Time of Music Through the Life and Works of Beverly Glenn-Copeland”
Cas Urban, University of Puget Sound ’21, “Escaping and Transcending the Construction and Performance of Gender in Irish Dance Shows”
Caitlin Chow-Ise, L&C ’23, “Becoming a Sexually Liberated Me—A Zine”

2:30–4 p.m. Please click here to view the recording of this panel
Differing Depictions: Representations of Gender and Sexuality
Moderator: Rishona Zimring, L&C professor of English
Emma Piorier, University of Puget Sound ’21, “The Girl House Project: Narratives of Girlhood and Building a Site of Analysis”
Ryce Matsumoto, University of Puget Sound ’21, “Capturing the Relationship Between (Human) Hegemonic Expectations of Gender and Nature Photography, Frame by Frame”
Phoenix Bruner, L&C ’21 and GSS co-chair, “The Persistence and Impossibility of Queer Life: Representations of Queerness in Katherine Mansfield’s At the Bay”
Pamela Nassar Altabcharani, L&C ’21, “Who’s Afraid of the French Lesbian?: Comparing Sapphic Characters by Male and Female Writers in 19th- and 20th-century French Literature”

5–6 p.m.
Keynote presentation: Archival Silence as Potential
Carmen Maria Machado, award-winning author of In the Dream House and Her Body and Other Parties, and writer in residence at the University of Pennsylvania (speaker bio)
* Content warning: Professor Machado’s work addresses intimate partner violence and other issues of trauma and harm.
** Current L&C students, faculty, and staff can view the recording of this event here.

Welcoming remarks by GSS co-chairs Kendall Arlasky ’21 and Phoenix Bruner ’21.

 

Thursday, March 11

10–11:30 a.m.
Art Therapy Workshop: Squashing the Box of Gender Normativity
Participants will be invited to collaborate in reflecting on gender in society, with the goal of making visible the absences of queer and trans people throughout history. Participants will also examine their personal relationship with gender and find the edges where gendered expectations constrain their lives, no matter where they fall on the gender spectrum. Together we will work on dismantling these constraints and envision new possibilities for gendered realities.
* Facilitated by Mary Andrus, director of L&C art therapy graduate program and co-chair of L&C Art for Social Change (bio), and Quinn Rivenburgh, adjunct faculty in L&C art therapy graduate program and art therapist at Full Spectrum Therapy (bio)

10–11:30 a.m.  Please click here to view the recording of this panel
Navigating Oppressive Systems
Moderator: Sarah Warren, L&C associate professor of sociology and director of Latin American studies
Samuel Shelton, PhD candidate in women, gender, and sexuality studies, Oregon State University, “Learning to Live Together: Community Building Through Reparative Accountability Mapping” (This presentation has been withdrawn.)
Katelin Ling Cooper, L&C ’21, “Prisons Engender Harm”
Sam Harrell, PhD student in social work, Portland State University, “Care & Coercion: The History of Social Workers as Prison Wardens”
JahAsia Jacobs, L&C ’20, “Collections and Crises: Black Affective Publics and the Suspension of Student Loan Payments during the COVID-19 Pandemic”

12–1:30 p.m. Please click here to view the recording of this workshop
Workshop: The Isolation and Loneliness of Prison
Facilitated by Joshua Edward Wright, co-founder of Liberation Literacy and co-creator of All Rise magazine
Joshua Edward Wright, who was released two years ago from serving over four years in prison, will discuss the struggle to find identity, stay connected, manage emotions of loneliness and isolation, and navigate a heavily gendered and toxic environment of imprisonment in this facilitated workshop.

2–3:30 p.m.  Please click here to view the recording of this panel
(In)Visibility
Moderator: Magalí Rabasa, L&C assistant professor of Hispanic studies
Samuel Shelton, PhD candidate in women, gender, and sexuality studies, Oregon State University, “Barely Hanging On: The Challenges of Care Work and Being a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Time of COVID-19”
Gina Schlesselman-Tarango, associate librarian and coordinator of library instruction, California State University, San Bernardino, “Reproductive Failure: Neoliberal Bodies & Invisible Labor”
Chasia Elzina Jeffries, University of Southern California ’21, “Wretched Women: Frantz Fanon & the Unarchivability of Black Women” (This presenter has withdrawn from the symposium.)
Madisyn Taylor, L&C ’21, “A Not-So-Hot Girl Summer: Addressing Hegemonic Structures within the Megan Thee Stallion and Tory Lanez Incident”

2–3:30 p.m. 
Feminist Haunts
Moderator: Therese Augst, L&C associate professor of German
Alyssa Dewees, PhD candidate in English, University of Florida, “Rise Again: Southern Ghost Heritage and the Ladies of the Night Tour”
Faolan Thompson, L&C ’13 and former GSS co-chair, master’s student in gender studies at Charles University of Prague ’22, “To Archive the Ephemeral: ‘Dead’ Platforms and Studying Identity Formation in the Online Era”
Jenna Tamimi, L&C postdoctoral fellow in theatre, “Flirting with Resurrection: Eulogy for a Dyke Bar”
Kendall Arlasky, L&C ’21 and GSS co-chair, “Summoning Spectres: Considering Ghosts as a Framework Through Which to Address a Lack of Feminist Narratives Within the Historical Archive”
** Current L&C students, faculty, and staff can view the recording of this event here.

5–6:30 p.m.
Keynote presentation: In The Room: Women of Color Doulas in a State of Emergency
Jennifer C. Nash, Jean Fox O’Barr Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University, and author of Black Feminism Reimagined: After Intersectionality and The Black Body in Ecstasy: Reading Race, Reading Pornography (speaker bio)

Welcoming remarks by GSS co-chairs Kendall Arlasky ’21 and Phoenix Bruner ’21.

Presentation description: “In the Room” explores the work of women of color doulas laboring in Chicago in an era where doulas are increasingly hailed—by the state and by activists—as precisely the innovation that can save black mothers’ lives. Professor Nash’s analysis draws on twenty-three interviews she conducted in 2018 with birth doulas—many of whom describe themselves as “bodyguards”—working in the Chicago metropolitan area. She explores the complicated tensions around professionalization and the medicalization of birth that underpins their practice, and considers the place of their work in the ongoing effort to eradicate black infant and maternal mortality.

 

Friday, March 12

9–10 a.m.
Conversation with keynote speaker Jennifer C. Nash

10:30-11:45 a.m. Please click here to view the recording of this panel
Biomedicine, Identity, and the Body
Moderator: Sepideh Bajracharya, L&C assistant professor of anthropology with term
Luca Sax, L&C ’22, “Illuminating the Intersection of Socioeconomic Status and Transgender Identities in Medical Emergencies”
Audrey Barrett, L&C ’21, “Narrating Eating Disorders: Illness and Healing in the Context of American Culture and Biomedicine”
Zo Norling, L&C ’21, “Questioning Embodiment: A Trans Analysis of the Potentiality of the Felt Sense”

12:15–1:30 p.m.
Queer Resistance, Identity, and Spaces
Moderator: Melanie Kohnen, L&C assistant professor of rhetoric and media studies
Mie Kumin, L&C ’21, “‘It Comes from The West’: Sexuality, Nationalism, and Otherness in Russia”
Ecem Ece, PhD candidate in sociology and criminology & law, University of Florida, “Being Spaceless: A Post-Structuralist Study of Non-Spatiality in LGBTQ+ Movements”
Arunima, L&C ’21, “Hydro-Social Relations in South Asia: Vitality, Women, Work”

2–3:30 p.m.  Please click here to view the recording of this panel
Gendered Work, Gendered Labor
Moderator: Daena Goldsmith, L&C associate dean of faculty development and professor of rhetoric and media studies
Dorrell Thompson, L&C ’21, “A Truck of Her Own: Women, Space, and ‘Gender Tools’ in the Trucking Industry”
Shelby Rockelein, L&C ’19, “The Price of Dying: How Capitalism Stole Women’s Role in the Good Death”
Michelle Kofman, University of Puget Sound ’21, “Food for Gendered Thought: An Examination of the Patriarchal Division in the Domestic and Professional Realms of Cooking”

4–5:30 p.m. Please click here to view the recording of this panel
No More Stolen Sisters: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW)
Presented by Mary Bodine, Corrina Ikakoula, Katie McDonald, and Caroline Rouwalk, members of Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) American Indian Alaska Native Employee Council
The session is co-sponsored by L&C Native Student Union.

7:30 p.m.
Performance: The Secretaries
Directed by Jenna Tamimi, L&C postdoctoral fellow in theatre
Join us for a campy extravaganza of SlimFast-chugging murderess-secretaries! Welcome to the Cooney Lumber Mill in Big Bone, Oregon, where everything is bigger (and bloodier). A new girl joins the steno pool. She’s pretty and good at everything she puts her mind to, but how far will she go? Fitting into this clique (cult?) takes charm and the ability to wield a chainsaw. Once a month a lumberjack mysteriously disappears, and a secretary ends up in his jacket. Cooney Lumber Mill’s secretaries may take their murderous rage out on lumberjacks but the real horror the play reveals is the emotional violence between women. This campy horror-comedy is a feminist contemplation on internalized homophobia and sexism. Wigs, flannel, chainsaws, and a critique of the patriarchy!
Learn more here.