Spring 2013

Meeting Tuesday, April 23, 2013
1:50-2:50pm, M391

Reading: Robyn Wiegman “Doing Justice with Objects: Or, the ‘Progress’ of Gender”

Topic: Naming the field.

Our conversation drew from the reading loosely to contextualize debates about naming the discipline–Feminist Studies, Women’s Studies, Gender Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Feminist and Queer Studies, etc.  We talked about issues in the history of the Women’s Studies program at KCC, its founding, and the potential future naming prospects for the department.  This led to a brainstorm around sexualities courses in the KCC curriculum that could add to future programming in women’s and gender studies and expand (and possibly rename) the department to include sexualities studies.

Meeting Tuesday, May 7, 2013
1:50-2:50pm, M391

Reading: Mel Michelle Lewis “Body of Knowledge: Black Queer Feminist Pedagogy, Praxis, and Embodied Text”

Topic: Pedagogy, embodiment, and inclusion. How are our bodies read in the classroom as racialized, sexualized, gendered, able, aged, etc.

We had a lively discussion about issues raised in the reading and in our own classrooms around gender, power and bodies.  We shared strategies to manage students engaging inappropriately, as in getting too close, or standing over a professor or another student. We discussed the social and power implications of these interactions.

Tuesday, May 21, 2013
1:50-2:50pm, M391

Topic: End of the Semester Celebration

We brought food and drink to share together to celebrate the end of a highly productive year in the Women’s Studies FIG.