黑料网吃瓜爆料

Care & Joy in Precarious Times Conference
February 21, 2025
TECO Hall/Education Building, 黑料网吃瓜爆料Tampa Campus

The 黑料网吃瓜爆料Department of Women鈥檚, Gender, and Sexuality Studies invites the 黑料网吃瓜爆料community to attend the Care and Joy in Precarious Times Conference on February 21, 2025, at the 黑料网吃瓜爆料Tampa campus. This conference is sponsored by 黑料网吃瓜爆料ResearchOne, 黑料网吃瓜爆料College of Arts and Sciences, and the 黑料网吃瓜爆料Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

As Audre Lorde once wrote, 鈥淐aring for myself is not a self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.鈥� Lorde was writing about living with breast and liver cancers and about her life and work as a queer Black woman. Honoring Lorde鈥檚 legacy in the contemporary moment asks us to rethink the possibilities of care and joy that emerge from authenticity, community, accountability, resistance, and resilience.

For conference information, visit the conference page.

Thinking Sex Conference
March 1, 2024 from 9:30am - 6:00pm in TECO Hall (黑料网吃瓜爆料Tampa campus)

The 黑料网吃瓜爆料Department of Women鈥檚, Gender, and Sexuality Studies will host the Thinking Sex Conference on the 黑料网吃瓜爆料Tampa campus on March 1, 2024, commemorating the 40th anniversary of Gayle Rubin鈥檚 foundational Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality. The keynote, Thinking Sex Across Time & Space, will be presented by author and professor JE Sumerau. This conference is funded through USF's ResearchOne.

First published in 1984, Rubin's piece contributed to the nascent and growing fields of LGBTQ+ studies, sexualities studies, and queer theory by arguing that sexuality is not only a worthy but a necessary subject of conversation because sexuality is a key mechanism of political, social, and interpersonal control. In the forty years since, study of sexuality in its myriad forms and manifestations has burgeoned exponentially. This conference aims to explore, share, and debate current work in these fields taking place in the 黑料网吃瓜爆料community.  To view the schedule of presenters for the Thinking Sex Conference, visit the conference page.

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

This conference will gather together 黑料网吃瓜爆料undergraduate and graduate students along with 黑料网吃瓜爆料faculty, and will feature research that engages the histories, politics, and possibilities of living feminist lives. The conference is part of the 50th Anniversary celebrations for the Department of Women's & Gender Studies.

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 黑料网吃瓜爆料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.

Brown Bag Series: "Criminal Medicine: Florida and the State of Trans Medicine" with Dr. Dana Ahern
March 13, 2025, 12:30-2:00pm
CMC 202T
Hybrid Event 

Recently the state of Florida has been at the forefront of debates regrading transgender care in the U.S., with recent bills attacking trans people, such as prohibiting the teaching of information on gender and sexuality for students in eight grade and younger, as well as threats to revoke custody from parents who allow their children to seek gender-affirming medical care.  Analyzing bills coming out of Florida and legislative retaliations to them in places like California which has defined itself as a sanctuary state, alongside the major figures in these debates 鈥� politicians, parents, and medical providers 鈥� this paper critically examines the management of access to medicine as a mode of state violence and control.

Dr. Dana Ahern鈥檚 research primarily utilizes digital archives and oral histories to explore the technological development and utilization of transgender medicine over the past century, particularly between and across the United States and Eastern Europe. Prior to joining USF, Ahern completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Nevada, Reno in the Department of Gender, Race, and Identity where he taught classes in queer and trans studies. Ahern鈥檚 teaching and research interests primarily revolve around intersections of queer and trans studies, disability studies, and feminist science and technology studies. 

Brown Bag Series: Dr. Tatsiana Shchurko: "Queer Intimacies: Audre Lorde's Livable Geographies and Indigenous Survival in the Eurasian Borderlands"
January 23, 2025, 12:30-2:00pm
Hybrid Event

This talk explores Audre Lorde鈥檚 journey to Soviet Eurasia in 1976. Dr. Shchurko focuses on Lorde鈥檚 bond with Soviet Chukchee writer Antonina Kymytval鈥�, highlighting moments of reciprocity and togetherness that transcend the traditional East/West binary. Rather than centering on state-driven diplomacy, Lorde鈥檚 reflections reveal a different realm of political alliance鈥攐ne rooted in the shared struggles of marginalized communities impacted by imperial violence. The encounter between Lorde and Kymytval鈥� sparked transgressive forms of sociality and intimacy, challenging the rigid norms of Soviet and Western political economies and the logics of settler colonialism.

About Dr. Shchurko: My research is rooted in anti-colonial feminist theorizing, focusing on the complexities of multiple imperialisms within and between Europe, Eurasia, and the United States. In 2023, I was honored to receive an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship to work on my book project. My current research project delves into the critical genealogies of transnational feminism, emphasizing the connections between U.S. Black women鈥檚 transnational activism and Eurasian knowledge production. My book project, in particular, explores Black feminist solidarities in Eurasia, examining how these interactions resonate with and contribute to contemporary anti-imperialist feminist movements.

Brown Bag Series: Amaury J. (AJ) Rijo Sanchez: "Juntxs Somos M谩s鈥�: Feminist Mobilization in Puerto Rico and the Power of the Masses
October 28, 12:30-2:00pm
CMC202T
Hybrid Event

The precarious living conditions in Puerto Rico, shaped by austere governance and atmospheric disasters, are met with persistent efforts by Puerto Rican feminists to pursue social justice and community welfare. These feminists critique governmental neglect and engage in collective and coalitional organizing to resist U.S. imperialism, building alliances and centering marginalized voices. The study explores these feminist mobilizations through participant observations of 5 marches in 2023, highlighting the importance of analyzing both collective and coalitional actions in understanding their feminist decolonial praxis.

Amaury (AJ) Rijo Sa虂nchez is an interdisciplinary scholar seeking his doctorate鈥檚 degree in the discipline of Sociology. His research interests look at gender and sexualities, transnational feminisms, Latinx and Puerto Rican studies, and social inequalities. His teaching has been recognized by institutional awards such as the Outstanding TA Award (2023). Similarly, his writing has been supported by internal awards such as the sociology's departmental Summer Writing Scholarship (2023). His modest and growing publication record has shined in both solo and collaborative papers. He is currently in the process of writing his dissertation and hopes to continue working in academia.

Brown Bag Series: Piper Thomson, "Gender Fantasy and Conservative Politics of Annihilation"
September 12, 2024, 12:30-2:00pm
CMC 202T - Hybrid Event

Anti-trans legislation has swept across state legislatures like wildfire. These laws have restricted access to healthcare and increased the stigma the trans community faces in everyday life. This project seeks to both understand the impacts of these laws on trans people鈥檚 day-to-day lives as well as how members of the trans community support each other and resist this repression.

Piper Thomson is a sociologist currently pursuing a Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Virginia. She holds a B.A. and M.A. in sociology from Kenyon College and the University of Virginia, respectively. As a transgender scholar, Piper鈥檚 research interests focus on trans studies, queer theory, cultural sociology, and feminist thought, reflecting her positionality at the crossroads of both immense privilege and painful exclusion. Thus, the agenda that animates her research and writing is in rendering a more complete picture of trans life so that both academic and nonacademic audiences may more accurately think with transnes鈥攁s opposed to about it鈥攁s a valuable way of being-in-the-world. A theorist at heart, her work draws heavily from the tradition of critical phenomenology to center people鈥檚 first person accounts of the world and their experience moving through it as the primary source of data for her intellectual investigations.

WGSS Brown Bag Series: 鈥淲e grow older. We also have lots of sex. I just want a doctor who will at least ask about it.鈥�: Transgender, non-binary, and intersex older adults in sexual and reproductive healthcare with Dr. Nik M. Lampe
March 27, 2024 from 12:30pm-2:00pm in CMC 202.

Utilizing data from 50 semi-structured individual interviews with transgender and intersex older adults in the United States (65 years and over), Dr. Nik M. Lampe (USF Department of Mental Health Law & Policy), in collaboration with co-author Dr. Carla Pfeffer (Michigan State University School of Social Work), will assess how trans and intersex older adults experience and mitigate inequality in sexual and reproductive healthcare. Their findings underscore the importance of maintaining LGBTQIA+ competency and age-friendliness within sexual and reproductive health services, support, and resources while addressing trans and intersex older adults鈥� resourceful strategies for minimizing inequality in healthcare systems.

Dr. Nik M. Lampe is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mental Health Law & Policy and a Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the 黑料网吃瓜爆料. Their research program focuses on the behavioral health and healthcare disparities of LGBTQIA+ aging populations and the health of diverse older adults living with dementia and their family care partners. Dr. Lampe earned a Ph.D. in Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Women鈥檚 and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina. Their dissertation research examined the healthcare, advance care planning, and health management experiences of transgender and intersex adults 65+ during the COVID-19 pandemic.

WGSS Brown Bag Series: Black Women-Loving Women's Socio-Sexual Narratives with Dr. Jessany Maldonado
January 17, 2024 from 1:00pm-2:30pm in CMC 202

Dr. Jessany Maldonado will present her research on Black Women-Loving Women's Socio-Sexual Narratives: Following in the tradition of Afrocentricity, this project prioritizes and uplifts the voices of African Diasporic people by foregrounding Black women鈥檚 experiential knowledge. Using qualitative research methodologies situated in ethnography, such as participant observation, interviewing, and narrative storytelling, this project investigates how Black women-loving women (Black WLW) wield transformative power over their intimate lives. Specifically, this project examines how Black WLW 鈥渒weer鈥� or transform identity, space, and sex in ways that are uniquely Black. This study unveils how Black WLW across the Diasporas share unique commonalities as it pertains to the following: identifying as women-loving/kweer long after having heterosexual relationships and kweer childhood experiences; transforming generic place into age-mediated Black kweer space in Atlanta, Georgia; and heteronormalizing same-gender sexual behavior in their autoerotic and dyadic intimacies. How Black WLW 鈥渒weer鈥� or transform identity formation, space, and sex helps us reimagine and reconfigure how we understand ethnicized notions of gender, placemaking, and sexuality. Forming identities, communities, and sexualities are not linear, generalizable processes that are universal to every community. Instead, my findings reveal distinct cross-cultural patterns in Black WLW鈥檚 socio-sexual behavior that are understudied.

Black women鈥檚 transformative power and mutability allow them to share more similarities than differences with one another across Diasporic communities. Although the qualitative findings from this study stem primarily from Black American women living within the United States, participants with non-American nationalities and transnational upbringings offer perspectives that largely support the findings from Black American women located in the States. Since all participants in this study share common African ancestry, their widespread commonalities illuminate their identity formation, community establishment, and socio-sexual performativity. Overall, this study produces new knowledge about Black kweer socio-sexual culture that revolutionizes discourses around ethnicity, gender, and sexuality.

Dr. Jessany Maldonado is an assistant professor in the Department of Women鈥檚, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the 黑料网吃瓜爆料 - Tampa. Having a scholarly background in psychological sciences, gender and sexuality studies, and Afrocentric feminist methodologies, her research interests center Black women鈥檚 鈥渒weer鈥� socio-sexual culture and sexual behavior.

WGS Brown Bag Series: Masculinity as a 鈥榟ard small cage鈥�? A consideration of Chimamanda鈥檚 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

The presentation examines some masculinity issues raised by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her TEDx talk (鈥榳e should all be feminists') and some interviews following the talk. She sees masculinity as a 鈥榟ard small cage鈥� 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鈥檚 concern can play out in a situation where expressing such emotions and acknowledging one鈥檚 weaknesses or vulnerabilities are key to accessing the needed support. Expanding on the 鈥榗age鈥� metaphor used (as well as the adjectives to qualify it), I shall be arguing that while I disagree with Chimamanda鈥檚 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鈥檚 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 鈥� in domains such as politics, education, media and business. Grace was previously a Visiting Scholar (on the Fulbright African Research Scholar Program) at the 黑料网吃瓜爆料Department of Women鈥檚 and Gender Studies.

WGS Brown Bag: A Party for All: Analyzing the New Mediated Quincea帽era, Gendered Nostalgia, and the (In)Visibility of Latinidad with Dr. Diana Leon-Boys
April 8, 2021 from 12:30pm - 2:00pm

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鈥� 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 Brown Bag: Things I Must Still Do with Dr. Keith Berry
April 1, 2021 from 12:30pm - 2:00pm
This event was 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. 鈥淧ost-marriage鈥� life is not necessarily a honeymoon. In this talk, I convey and explore the 鈥渢hings I must still do鈥� as a gay man. In homage to Susan Sontag鈥檚 鈥淣otes on Camp,鈥� 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 Brown Bag: A Discussion on Black Feminist Pedagogies
February 16, 2021 from 12:30pm - 2:00pm

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鈥� 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鈥檚 Liberatory Pedagogies: Resistance, Transformation, and Healing within and beyond the Academy (pp. 245-264). Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave/Macmillan. 

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 黑料网吃瓜爆料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鈥檈 nalu (鈥渨ave sliding鈥�) 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 鈥� a space where LGBTQ+ masculinities and femininities were explored鈥攁nd 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.

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鈥檛 forget your lunch.

A former advertising and public relations professional, Kim 鈥淒r. G.鈥� Golombisky began teaching mass communications at 黑料网吃瓜爆料1993. She is currently the interim director of the 黑料网吃瓜爆料Zimmerman School of Advertising & Mass Communications. From 2011 to 2018, she served as graduate director in the 黑料网吃瓜爆料Department of Women鈥檚 & 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鈥檚 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. 

Transnational Care Book Club Event
February 6, 2025, 4:00PM EST, MSC 2707
Launch Event: Keynote Address by Dr. Neda Atanasoski: 鈥淭races of Antifascism in the Postsocialist Former Yugoslavia鈥�

Dr. Atanasoski, Chair of the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland, will present a keynote address on 鈥淭races of Antifascism in the Postsocialist Former Yugoslavia.鈥� Drawing on her expertise in the intersections of gender, technology, and global politics, this talk will set the stage for the book club鈥檚 journey into questions of care, solidarity, and resistance. This talk will explore how cultural texts revisiting the 1990s Yugoslav wars challenge dominant narratives, recover erased histories of nonalignment and antifascist worker self-management, and illuminate the contemporary global rise of fascism.

Sponsored by the 黑料网吃瓜爆料Department of Women鈥檚, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; 黑料网吃瓜爆料Department of Humanities & Cultural Studies; 黑料网吃瓜爆料Institute for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies; and the 黑料网吃瓜爆料Humanities Institute.

Troubling our Fieldwork on Love Troubles: Reflecting on Stories about Straight Domestic Violence and Gay Families in Argentina
October 22, 2024, 3:30-5:00pm
TECO Hall (Education Building), Tampa campus

USF's Institute for the Study of Latin America and the Caribbean and the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, acknowledging that the month of October is "Domestic Violence Awareness Month," are organizing a seminar on "Troubling our Fieldwork on Love Troubles: Reflecting on Stories about Straight Domestic Violence and Gay Families in Argentina." 

The seminar features Maximiliano Marentes and Mariana Palumbo, from the National University of San Martin - UNSAM, Argentina, who will be presenting respectively on:  "What is love but a bunch of stories? An analytical approach to study existing love," and "Towards a reinterpretation of the concept of victim IN violence studies against women."

Care & Joy Through Art: A Protection Blueprint
September 23, 2024, 3:30-4:30pm
MSC 3705

Artist Lauren Austin will discuss how her own art making helped her safely navigate a variety of hostile environments, and she will outline low-tech steps to make your own visual art for self-expression, self-care, empowerment, and change. Part of the Quilting Our History exhibit.   

My Journey Through Art Quilting: Public Lecture by Lauren Austin
February 22, 2024 at 6:00PM in CMC 130 (12010 黑料网吃瓜爆料Cherry Dr, Tampa, FL 33620)

Lecture by Lauren Austin. Open to the public. Lauren will show the development of her art over the 30+ years of her career through works in-progress and pieces from early in her practice, talk about what keeps her making art and imporant themes in her work, including womanism, and discuss how you can find the time to tell your own story through art. Part of the Quilting Out History exhibit.

WGSS Class Visits by Lauren Austin
February 21 and 22, 2024

Lauren Austin visited two WGSS classes, Black Feminisms and Black Sexualities, to talk with students about themes in her work. Part of the Quilting Out History exhibit.

The Pagoda: A Lesbian Community by the Sea with author Rose Norman & publisher Julie R. Enszer
February 5, 2024 from 2:00-3:30pm
黑料网吃瓜爆料Tampa Campus Marshall Center - MSC 3711 (Egret room)

In The Pagoda: A Lesbian Community by the Sea, Rose Norman expertly synthesizes interviews and extensive archival research to tell the story of the women who made that community a place for lesbian culture to bloom and grow. During this talk, Rose will discuss The Pagoda and will answer audience questions. 

黑料网吃瓜爆料Tampa Library Special Collections will also be exhibiting local lesbian history objects from the LGBTQ+ Collection before and after the talk.

About The Pagoda
In 1977, two lesbian couples living in St. Augustine, Florida, found a row of small beach houses for sale next to a house they wanted to turn into a feminist theatre. They bought the cottages, leased and later bought the theatre building, and over the next two decades expanded and developed the property as a cultural center, women's retreat center, and residential community. The Pagoda, as it came to be called, offered nude swimming in a private pool, fire circles on the beach, variety shows with bellydancing, poetry readings, comedy sketches, and regular concerts by feminist musicians in a private theatre. Pagoda women produced feminist plays about Cinderella's after-story and sketch comedy by Positively Revolting Hags. They hosted celebrations of the Goddess, Tarot readings, and psychic workshops.

At its height, The Pagoda was a Goddess church running a cultural center and guesthouse surrounded by twelve tiny, custom-built, knotty pine cottages and a duplex, all owned by lesbians. The cultural center and guesthouse lasted twenty-two years as an active operation run by the incorporated, tax-exempt Pagoda-temple of Love in the closing decades of the twentieth century, and another sixteen years after that shepherded by Fairy Godmothers, Inc., four women with a different vision for the space. This is the story of how all that happened.

About Rose Norman
Rose Norman is a retired professor who taught English at the University of Alabama in Huntsville for twenty-seven years. She directed the Business and Technical Writing Program, co-founded and was first Director of Women's Studies, and for her last four years chaired the English Department. She taught graduate and undergraduate classes in women writers, women鈥檚 autobiography, and technical writing, and for four years was regional coordinator of a national high school poetry competition, Poetry Out Loud. Her work as general editor of the Southern Lesbian Feminist Activist Herstory Project led her to over ten years鈥� research on the Pagoda residential community and cultural center. During that time, she has interviewed over a hundred lesbian feminist activists and co-edited six special issues of Sinister Wisdom.

This event is co-sponsored by 黑料网吃瓜爆料Tampa Library Special Collections and Sinister Wisdom.

Crunk Feminism with Dr. Susana Morris
April 14, 2023 at 6:30pm
University Area Community Development Center (14013 North 22nd Street, Tampa)

Dr. Morris will discuss her book, Feminist AF, and how feminism is a movement that can help center young Black folks' experiences. Join us for this free event, which will have prizes for students in grades 7-12, and pizza! The event is open to all ages 13 and older. 

Dr. Susana Morris is an associate professor of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is co-founder and contributing writer for the popular feminist blog, The Crunk Feminist Collective. Her first book, Close Kin and Distant Relatives: The Paradox of Respectability in Black Women鈥檚 Literature, was published from the University of Virginia Press in 2014. Her most recent books are the anthology The Crunk Feminist Collection, which was co-edited with Brittney Cooper and Robin Boylorn (The Feminist Press 2017) and Sycorax鈥檚 Daughters (Cedar Grove 2017), a short story collection of horror written by Black women co-edited with Kinitra D. Brooks and Linda Addison. Morris is also series editor, along with Kinitra D. Brooks, of the book series New Suns: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Speculative, published at The Ohio State University Press. She is currently at work on her latest academic book project, which explores depictions of Black women vampires, Afrofuturism, and feminism.

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.

Pride belongs to the people: a conversation with Dr. Daniel Conway
February 8, 2023 at 5:30pm 
C.W. Bill Young Hall, Room 206 (黑料网吃瓜爆料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 鈥� 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 鈥榃hose Lifestyle Matters at Johannesburg Pride? The Lifestylisation of LGBTQ+ Identities and the Gentrification of Activism鈥�, Sociology, (2022), vol. 56, no. 1: pp. 148-165 and 鈥楾he politics of truth at LGBTQ+ Pride: contesting corporate Pride and revealing marginalized lives at Hong Kong Migrants Pride鈥� 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.

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鈥檚 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鈥攁fter a significant transformation. Trans care facilitates healing in the wake of transformation and 鈥渟upports emergence into a radically recalibrated experience of both bodymind and the world it encounters鈥� (3). In this presentation, I seek to distill a kindred theory of intersex care from Malatino鈥檚 work. I argue that Malatino鈥檚 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 鈥渙f living otherwise鈥� rather than a set of moral principles (5). A critical intersex ethos is a practice of living otherwise that draws its strength, resilience, and 鈥渞esistance regimes of the normal鈥� (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.

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.

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. 

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.

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

Multiracial and More: Understanding the 鈥淭wo or More Races鈥� 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 鈥渢wo or more races鈥� 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