News/Events

GWS major wins coveted Bunche Institute summer slot

Yalidy Matos '09, a double major in government and gender and women's studies, secured one of 20 coveted spots at the Ralph Bunche Summer Institute, a five-week academically intense summer program for underrepresented students interested in political science. Matos first visited the United Nations during a field trip with one of her gender and women´s studies courses last spring and expressed her interest in government after "witnessing government in action." Her adviser, gender and women's studies professor Mab Segrest, encouraged Yalidy, a native of the Dominican Republic, to apply for the Institute. Read the April 15, 2008 news release.

Gender and Women's Studies in action

Over the past four years, students in Gender & Women's Studies classes have also taken an active role on and off-campus. They have: 

• joined in deliberations on Sustainable Development at the United Nations, expertly guided by noted Salvadorian human rights activist Marta Benavides;
• taken a six-day road trip with Professors Segrest and Walker-Canton from New London to New Orleans to study the effects of Hurricane Katrina close-up and to join in the rebuilding efforts;
• put in a garden on campus as part of Earth Day 2007;
• organized a conference applying human rights principles to campus sexual assault in a way that opened up spaces for dialogue and action (2008) 
• organized performances of The Vagina Monologues for consecutive years, raising thousands of dollars for women's causes and raising consciousness about sexual assault.
• used CONNSharp grant money to work with Professor and Chair Mab Segrest on her research on the state mental hospital/asylum in Milledgeville, Georgia as it manifests the relationship between race/class/gender/sexuality, definitions of insanity, and practices of commitment of those genuinely mentally ill, and those merely socially deviant.

Please consult the Online Calendar of Events for GWS-sponsored and other campus events.

CONNworks and Gender Grubs faculty forums

The department of Gender and Women's Studies and the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) are teaming up this 2008-09 academic year to alternate offering "CONNWorks" and "Gender Grubs."

CONNWorks is a forum to present faculty research-in-progress and receive insightful feedback from colleagues throughout the College. Gender Grubs is a forum to discuss pedagogy; faculty present syllabi for review and sharing as a way to encourage transnational feminist content and pedagogy (or, on occasion, to discuss issues pressing to the GWS associated faculty).

In this endeavor, the GWS department and CCSRE are keeping their "brand names" but combining efforts to share research and teaching on race and gender. We hope that this effort will encourage us to think in a more complex manner about how race and gender work together, even as some of us might focus more on one or the other analytic. Projects will likely include class, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality and/or other factors.

Last Modified: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 16:21