KXLY’s Peter Choi recently reported on the “Hidden in Plain Sight” exhibit.

A Logic of Care and Grassroots Claims to Home in Detroit

Thursday, May 12th
4 – 5:15 p.m.

This talk explores the ways in which Detroit Eviction Defense (DED) and other activist organizations employ a logic of care to argue for Black Detroiters’ right to home in the city. Quizar examines the ways in which DED successfully resists eviction through direct action and with the argument that legitimate claims to land and home should be based on how one cares for it—in terms of stewardship, relationships, and based on how one uses it. She argues that Detroiters’ land claims through a logic of care has emerged as a response to the particular conditions of racial capitalism in Detroit, rooted in Black feminist practices of care and the collectivism of the Black radical tradition. Ultimately, DED and other Detroiters offer care as framework through which to resist displacement and establish alternate place-claiming logics in the context of urban housing crisis, austerity, and financialization.

Dr. Jessi Quizar (Assistant Professor, UW Tacoma) is a scholar of racial capitalism, grassroots planning, and urban land and resource struggles in the U.S. Her work centers on the organizing and theorizing of Black and Indigenous communities to shape cities.

More info: https://www.tacoma.uw.edu/urban-studies/jessi-quizar-phd

Cosponsors: Africana Studies, Geosciences, Office of Community Engagement, and Urban & Regional Planning

People needing accommodation should contact Lisa at llogan83@ewu.edu seven business days prior to event.

Please refrain from wearing scented products while visiting this space as they can cause serious health issues for those with fragrance allergies and/or chemical sensitivities.

Counseling and Wellness and the Women’s and Gender Education Center are collaborating to bring Sexual Assault Awareness Month activities to EWU this year.

Paint the Town Teal

April 1 – 30

Decorate your door or office to show your support of survivors for the month. Upload photos of your space here to be featured on the Counseling and Wellness and WAGE Center social media accounts.

Consent Video Campaign

April 1 – 30

Please share a video of you saying “I ask for consent” or “Consent is important to me” in your first language. Be sure that the video is public before sharing it with us. Also be sure that your video is tall, not wide. You can either send us a link to your social media content, if it is public, or upload your video to your own Google drive and share it with us here. Videos will be curated and shared on the Counseling and Wellness social media accounts throughout the month.

Let’s Talk – Survivor Care Space

April 12

Martin 209

10 – 11 a.m.

This drop in-person space will allow those who have been impacted by sexual assault to connect with a counseling staff for emotional support. Our counseling staff are a confidential resource for students on campus. Students do not need to be a current client.

Start by Believing Presentation

April 13

Martin 209

1 – 2 pm

Start by Believing provides students with the information and skills they need to help a friend who discloses they have been sexually assaulted. Knowing how to respond is critical and each person’s reaction can be the first step in a long path toward justice and healing. FREE FOOD for participants.

Community Mural Viewing

April 25 – 29

JFK Library

Business Hours

All Works Due by April 22

Join Counseling and Wellness Services (CWS) and the Women’s and
Gender Education (WAGE) Center in the support of Sexual Assault
Awareness Month by creating a work of art centered around the
ideas of support, healing, and action.

Stop by one of our partnered offices to participate in our SAAM Community Mural by creating a work of art surrounding the topics of healing, support, and action. Your work of art will be displayed in the JFK Library from April 25th-29th. Works will be available for pick up in Martin 225 after the display.

Supplies Available for Participation Across Campus

Stop by the JFK Library to view our SAAM Community Mural featuring works by students and community members surrounding the topics of healing, support, and action. We hope this space can serve a multitude of purposes, including allowing survivors to share their story, helping our community understand the impact of sexual assault, specifically on our campus, and as a reflective space for us to turn towards the topic of sexual assault.

Let’s Talk Survivor Care Space

April 26

3 – 4 pm

Via Zoom

This drop in virtual space will allow those who have been impacted by sexual assault to connect with a counseling staff for emotional support. Our counseling staff are a confidential resource for students on campus. Students do not need to be a current client.

Denim Day

April 29

JFK Library

Wear jeans! Find the Denim Day photo backdrop at the JFK Library  or take your photo or selfie anywhere. Tag @EWUWAGECenter and @ewuwellness. Use the hashtag #DenimDay2022

Denim Day is an annual day of activism on which people wear denim and post photos to their social media to combat victim blaming. Denim Day began in the late 90s and commemorates a legal case in Italy in which the assailant was found not guilty by the supreme court because the survivor he sexually assaulted had been wearing tight jeans. The court claimed that she would have had to assist in removing her jeans and that meant she had consented. Thankfully, the world responded and Italy has since refused to allow a “denim defense.”

EWU Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies presents for winter 2022 Contemporary Issues in Feminist Research, featuring faculty and staff presenting research in their disciplines from a feminist perspective.

Contemporary Issues in Feminist Research

All events will be held virtually via Zoom.

Feminism in the Sciences

Thursday, Feb. 10th

Science is not a static collection of facts. It is an evolving, dynamic process that requires evaluation and critique. In order to make progress toward solving some of the most complex challenges we face today as a society, the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) must be examined. This talk will utilize feminist theory as a framework to show how challenging some common paradigms and incorporating diverse ideas, perspectives, and approaches can open new pathways for progress within the sciences. Current diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives within the College of STEM and pedagogical approaches that utilize this framework within the sciences will also be discussed.

Close Listening with Audio in the English Classroom: a tool for teaching rhetoric, developing empathy, and introducing critical conversations about social power

Tuesday, Feb. 15th

Careful consideration of the sounds and silences around us can lead to critical conversations about social power by introducing concepts such as voice-over, audio manipulation, and questioning why particular voices have been historically silenced or amplified, especially in terms of gender, race, class, age, and ability. In this talk, I will discuss some of the reasons for incorporating close listening and audio recording into my English Composition classes. Like reading and writing, the act of listening requires students to think critically about what is being produced, who is producing it, how it is manipulated, who is listening, whose voices are amplified, and what social and political context exists.

The Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies Program and the Women’s and Gender Education Center are the lead organizers of the Activist in Residence (AiR) program on the EWU campus.

For a ninth year, AiR will bring an activist to campus to work with EWU students, staff, faculty, and community members during winter quarter of 2022.

Meet the 2022 Activist In Residence

Shantell Jackson is a multimedia artist and writer and is the Program Director with Spokane Arts. During her 17 years of service in higher education, Shantell focused on academic and multicultural programming and created programs to help students understand themselves and others. In her work with Spectrum Center, Shantell facilitates training on LGBTQ+ Safe Spaces, Identity 101 and Allyship. Shantell’s installations and performance art pieces explore the human condition both contemporarily and historically. All of her work aims to create dialogues across differences to build bridges and forge acceptance and healing.

All workshops and panels are on Wednesdays from 3:30 -5 p.m. PST

Free and Open to the Public

Virtual Attendance via Zoom

One registration will cover all Activist in Residence events you attend virtually. Those who attend four or more workshops/panels will receive an Activist in Residence certificate.

All workshops are highly participatory and interactive, with an emphasis on active practice and story sharing.

Jan. 26

Setting the Stage for Healing in Activism

What is activism and why should we discuss its overlap with healing? This session will help participants understand the context of this contemporary discussion. Who is healing and what are they healing from? Come learn about “Healing Justice,” and start to think about its application.

Feb. 2

Race and Activism: History & Definitions

Learn more about the history of race and activism. Where do these two ideas converge? What has the work been and where is it going? Why is race an important part of the conversation?

Feb. 9

Centering Healing for Survival & Community

Healing is essential for both the individual and the collective, especially for those impacted by systems of oppression.” In this panel, we ask “What does centering healing and survival look like and how can we foster spaces for healing?”

Feb. 16

Power and Privilege in Activist Communities: For Better or Worse

We can learn to use our power to make a difference and to aid in the healing of historically marginalized communities. Sustained change can result from using our privilege as a tool for activism. However, power can also lead to negative changes when we co-opt movements. Learn to recognize the difference and avoid harm.

Mar. 2

Intersections of Identity: Individual & Collective Healing

Participants will take all the knowledge and themes discussed during this program and think about long-term applications as activists, allies, and community leaders. This will be an opportunity to learn from experienced community leaders and to be introduced to strategies and practices that have been successful in fostering both individual and collective healing.

Here is our collection of Annual Reports from 2018 to 2021.

EWU Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies presents for fall 2021 Contemporary Issues in Feminist Research, featuring faculty and staff presenting research in their disciplines from a feminist perspective.

Contemporary Issues in Feminist Research

All events will be held virtually via Zoom.

“Where life is precious…” Intersectional Feminism in the Time of COVID-19

Thursday, November 4th

In a pandemic webinar, Ruth Wilson Gilmore offered this simple declaration: “where life is precious, life is precious.” In the liminal time-space of COVID-19, breath and life have come into high relief. We are challenged with how to scale macro and micro questions about how we live with ourselves, our communities, our institutions, other living beings, and the environment. What sort of life truly matters? Whose lives matter? In this short paper, I use the breath and life to weave some thinking from Black and Indigenous feminist scholar-activists on the pandemic, the collapsing capitalist economy, the uprising for racial justice, and how all of this is coalescing in an historic moment.

Facts and Farce: The Art and Activism of the Guerrilla Girls

Tuesday, November 23rd

For nearly 40 years, the Guerrilla Girls have used their unique blend of wry humor, startling facts, and a bold graphic style to take on the inequities of the art world. From the early days when their work was anonymously pasted on the streets of Manhattan, to the present when their oeuvre commands retrospectives within prestigious institutions, the Guerrilla Girls have been tireless advocates for the equitable inclusion of women and artists of color in the art world. By embracing a populist approach to art and a wide array of approaches they continue to address sexism, racism and oppression. This talk will outline the history, prominent works, strategies, and impact of this groundbreaking group of activist artists.

Creating More Inclusive Classrooms by Targeting Student Employees

Tuesday, November 30th

Low degree completion and persistence rates plague our university, and students of color persist at a much lower rate than their white peers. Research has shown that a sense of belonging in college can increases persistence to graduation. The College of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (CSTEM) is working to create a sense of belonging in classrooms by targeting student employees, these include teaching assistants, tutors, and graders in Biology, Mathematics, and Chemistry. The techniques and preliminary results will be discussed.

For access accommodations, please contact Lisa Logan at llogan83@ewu.edu five business days in advance.

In the recent article, published in the Journal of Gender Studies, Dr. Rohrer exposes the ways in which the bankrupt Boy Scouts of American “has been broadly bankrupt from the beginning.”

In this piece, our director, Dr. Judy Rohrer, reminds us “we would do well now to slow down, take stock of the luggage we are carrying and the carcasses we are still dragging.”

Cover image by: NurseTogether, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

We are always proud of all of our faculty, students and staff. This year, we are thrilled that so many of them have been recognized for their incredible work.

Dr. Jessi Willis won the College of Social Sciences Teaching Excellence Award for their enthusiasm and innovation in the teaching and/or learning process, their ability to engage students both within and outside the classroom, the way they inspire independent and original thinking in students and stimulate them to do social, political, and professional work, and their innovations in course and curriculum design.

Dr. Judy Rohrer won the College of Social Sciences Scholarship & Creative Activities Excellence Award for her superlative professional, scholarly, and/or creative activity engagement with her discipline or field, a major or significant publication, scholarship of engagement, or formal presentation in the her field, and external funding recognizing her current or potential contribution to her field as well as her contributions to conversations within and across disciplines.

Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies major, Sam Lee, was selected to receive the Jeffers Chertok Memorial Scholarship from the College of Social Sciences in the amount of $1,250.

Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies graduating senior, Danica Jenck, won the Frances B. Huston Medallion Award for the College of Social Sciences.

Graduating senior, Shilo Stuart, won the Dean Jeffers W. Chertok Honored Student Award for the College of Social Sciences, Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies.

Frances Grace Mortel won two Student Leadership Excellence Awards. Frances was selected as the Social Justice Advocate of the Year and was part of the EWU Film Society team that won the Event of the Year for the Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month Cinema Screenings of Minari & Kapaemahu. Frances is a Women’s and Gender Education Center work study student.