Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies FIG
Red Washburn

Spring 2021 Minutes

April 5, 2021, 2-3PM, Zoom
April 19, 2021, 2-3PM, Zoom
May 10, 2021, 10-11AM, Zoom

The Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Faculty Interest Group is still using Zoom and teach-in videos instead of meetings. We focused on Black Lives Matter, Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies as well as discussed transdisciplinary studies more generally.

At the first meeting, we continued our focus on Black Lives Matter with a feminist focus. On Thursday, March 25, 12-2PM, Dr. Margo Okazawa-Rey, member of the historic Combahee River Collective, gave a talk “What Time Is It?: A Transnational Black Feminist Moment”: https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/play/EY-bqc6MOeB6zLbIVJp2kmGEVyYxJHNWXx-bRsvW6kDzRcImFqDOfj5dFo2mxtye-TRcmVBNn0oqc_ha.n5niz8Ic3COmcQIV?continueMode=true&_x_zm_rtaid=fxscHUQ9SBWX-A1_8F6_kg.1617127538861.64e160c1e5373816b0510a99f1a6dcd0&_x_zm_rhtaid=508&startTime=1616688669000&fbclid=IwAR3t_HCoQx24nI2d9kWcWfLJtuxKo4LkZdG8r8hq3mdzj06ZTLVHZN6fAv8 We, WGS and SICU, also worked with Women Make Movies to show the film Black Feminist for Women’s History Month.  We used this work for our discussion. We debriefed about the importance of transnational Black feminist work now. We also talked more broadly about how to build coalitions with other organizations going forward. We liked working with the National Women’s Studies Association, WSQ, The Feminist Press, the Center for the Humanities, the Center for LGBTQ Studies, other CUNY WGS and LGBTQ Studies programs during this isolated time. We spent much time talking about intellectual solidarity for transdisciplinary work related to social justice.

At second meeting, we discussed Alicia Garza’s lecture about her book The Purpose of Power and her work creating BLM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys-jSp1SScU. We focused on personal politics and lived experiences with race, gender, and other intersecting identities. In addition, we shared our thoughts on experience and authority, connected to the ways in which intellectual, creative, and activist work coalesces. We also discussed to build WGS and Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies on our campus under a larger academic project devoted to transdisciplinary work. We brainstormed about how to use the WGS FIG to connect us to other faculty and write some grants together to promote the work we would like to see thrive on our campus during this moment of austerity.

The third and last meeting of the semester was a panel, “22nd Century Environmental Education: A Transdisciplinary Constructive Dialogue.” This Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies FIG panel, co-sponsored with the Student Union and Intercultural Center, discussed intersectional aspects of race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and class as it relates to environmental action and education. Panelists included Wendy Hapgood, Director of Wild Tomorrow Fund, Sachigusa Yasuda, a conceptual artist, and Midori Yamamura, Jason Leggett, Kevicha Echols, Helen Nasser, and Red Washburn.  We discussed environmental racism in the Bronx, racial capitalism and reproductive issues, destruction of habitaats in indigenous communities and Native species, women of color in South Africa, Brazil, and Japan under globalization, trandisciplinary work in WGS and environmental studies, and ways to make our campus more environmentally friendly as part of a larger discussion of systematic anti-corporate change in the world.