University of Kansas

Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Department Upcoming Events: February 6th @ 3:00 pm January 2020 Seminar Room, Hall Center

Gender Seminar, featuring A Message from the Chair: Kyle Velte

th 2019 has been a year of change for the Women, Gender, and February 24 @ 4:00 pm Sexuality Studies Department. Attentive readers will note that Centennial Room, Union we are publishing this newsletter in January instead of May; from now on we will publish two newsletters annually, one February Sisters lecture, after each semester ends. We are also introducing a section featuring Ayu Saraswati where we highlight an alumna or alumnus of the Department. March 30th @ 7:00 pm In much more important news, there have been some Lawrence Public Library retirements and arrivals on the third floor of Blake Hall. In September Jan Emerson, longtime Administrative Associate, Stopping Sexual Violence, a retired after thirty-three years of service at KU. (We profiled Jan Community Approach, feat. in our last newsletter.) Stepping into some big shoes, we are Jennifer Hirsh & Shamus Khan delighted to introduce Emma Piazza as our new Administrative Associate. Emma is a graduate of our department (as well as the KU School of Music), earning her BA and BM in 2019. She also has a number of years of experience working in the Are you a WGSS alum? Spencer Research Library at KU. (For more on Emma, please Let us know what you’re up see page 17.) to! We are reaching out to Ann Schofield has also retired after forty years at the University our WGSS graduates and of Kansas. Ann began teaching here in 1979 as a Visiting would love to hear from you. Assistant Professor of History and the next year began on the If you’d like to be a part of tenure track in American Studies and what was then called our alumnae/i spotlight Women’s Studies. On Thursday, December 12 we had a project, please email our wonderful reception in the Union, honoring Ann and her Administrative Associate, career. Pictures, tributes by myself and Kim Warren, and a Emma Piazza, at response from Ann herself can all be found on pages 7 [email protected]. through 11.

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Message from the Chair (cont).

Our work in teaching and research continued apace, despite all of these changes. We welcomed back Katie Batza, who was conducting research last year under the aegis of an ACLS fellowship. In the fall Hannah Britton was on sabbatical, which involved a long research trip in South Africa, working on her next big projects. Sarah Deer continued her busy travel schedule on research- intensive leave in the fall, including being inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, alongside and . Alesha Doan is currently lending her administrative savvy to the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, chairing that Department for the 2019-2020 school year. And Ayesha Hardison takes up the position of editor of the journal Women, Gender, and Families of Color, now housed within the WGSS Department. This coming calendar year, Akiko Takeyama will be on leave working on her book on the pornography industry in the U.S. and Japan. Under the auspices of an SSRC Abe Fellowship, Akiko will be spending six months in LA and six in Tokyo finishing her research.

The heart of the Department continues to be our students. As of this fall we have more than seventy majors and almost eighty minors. This year we also launched a new undergraduate certificate in Gender, Law, and Policy that students can fulfill by taking four classes, including WGSS 563: Gender, Sexuality, and the Law. We also have a thriving Ph.D. program as well as our longtime Graduate Certificate program. As this newsletter goes to press I have just learned that one of our Ph.D. candidates, Jo Kipgen, who will complete her dissertation this spring, will also begin her first position as Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in the fall of 2020. Congratulations, Jo!

One of the pleasures of Ann’s retirement reception was the announcement of the Schofield Faculty Development Fund, which was established by Ann’s former Ph.D. student, Liz Miller, in Ann’s honor. If anyone would like to make a donation in Ann’s honor to that fund, they may do so here (simply note “Schofield Fund” in the Special Instructions field). We are extremely grateful to Liz and to all the donors over the course of 2019, who continue to allow us to help junior faculty and graduate students in their research, to bring speakers to campus, and to aid in the work that we do. Thank you so much.

Finally, if you are an alum of our department and you have news to share, please email me at [email protected], or Emma Piazza at [email protected]. We have updated our website to include as complete a list as possible of departmental alumnae/i; the goal is to demonstrate to prospective students the great variety of possible careers available to those with a BA in WGSS or Human Sexuality. You can find this page under our Alumnae/i & Friends tab. Please email if you would like to be included!

Nick Syrett.

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What’s Happening with WGSS faculty:

Katie Batza:

Katie Batza spent the summer at Harvard working on a digital reproductive justice walking tour and podcast for Boston to wrap up her 18 months of fellowship. She returned to teaching in Fall 2019 and quickly got to work designing her Making a Pandemic course that she is excited to teach for the first time this Spring. She also was successful in getting the Trinity Episcopal Church in St. Louis listed on the National Register of Historic Sites- the first site in Missouri based upon its importance to LGBTQ history. Batza continues to work on her book project on the early AIDS epidemic in the United States Heartland and will present some of that research at two major conferences this Spring.

Hannah Britton:

This October and November, Hannah Britton started three new research projects in South Africa focusing on gender-based violence, institutions for the advancement of women, and human trafficking. Hannah’s next book will be released in April 2020, entitled Ending Gender-Based Violence: Justice and Community in South Africa, with the University of Illinois Press. Hannah continues to lead the Anti-Slavery and Human Trafficking Initiative at the University of Kansas, and she was recently appointed by Governor Laura Kelly to the Human Trafficking Advisory Board for Kansas. Hannah’s other new research collaborations are focused on improving opportunities for vulnerable populations. She is a member of the research team led by Dr. Hyunjin Seo at KU, focusing on digital literacy and technology education for women in transition and exiting incarceration. Finally, she is a researcher on the team led by Cheryl Holmes at KU, focusing on improving the health access and patient-centered outcomes for migratory and seasonal agricultural workers.

Sarah Deer:

Sarah Deer is Professor of WGSS and Public Affairs and Administration. She recently published “(En)Gendering Indian Law: Feminist Legal Theory in the United States” in the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism. She also co-authored (with Elizabeth Kronk Warner) a new article in the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law entitled “Raping Indian Country.” Professor Deer collaborated with WGSS PhD Candidate Abigail Barefoot to write “The Limits of the State: Feminist Perspectives on Carceral Logic, Restorative Justice, and Sexual Violence” in the Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy. Professor Deer continues her efforts to support reauthorization the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). She published an op-ed in The Hill in June, and spent several days in November working on Capitol Hill to address concerns about the future of VAWA. Among her many speaking engagements in 2019 was a presentation to the 9th Circuit Federal Judiciary conference. She is working on an empirical research project with PhD student Melinda Chen about the ways in which Native survivors of sexual violence conceptualize justice for themselves.

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Alesha Doan:

Professor Doan’s research is situated at the intersections between gender, public policy and organizations. She examines the ways in which gender is infused into the social and political structures that shape formal and informal practices. Her research interrogates how these gendered practices create obstacles for people that limit their decisional autonomy, and create inequities in organizations, policies and the lived experiences of people. In 2019, Professor Doan’s co-authored book, Abortion Regret: The New Attack on Reproductive Freedom was published. She also published Organizational Obliviousness: Entrenched Resistance to Gender Integration in the Military (part of the Cambridge Elements Series) and an article in the journal Trauma, Violence, & Abuse. Professor Doan also received a three-year grant (2019-2022) to work with a collaborative research team to investigate gendered eating disorders in the military.

Ayesha Hardison:

Ayesha Hardison is an Associate Professor with a joint appointment in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and English. Her research and teaching focus on African American literature and culture with particular interests in gender, genre, and historical memory. In 2019, she became the editor of Women, Gender, and Families of Color, http://wgfc.ku.edu/, a multidisciplinary journal centering the study of Вlack, Latinx, Indigenous, and Asian American women, genders, and families. She co-guest edited with Randal Jelks the journal’s fall 2019 issue dedicated to exploring “Black Love After E. Franklin Frazier,” which comes out of the week-long conference, “Black Love: A Symposium,” she co-organized with Jelks at KU in 2017. She and Jelks also co-guest edited a forthcoming issue of The Langston Hughes Review on this theme. Hardison published the essay “Stalled in the Movement: The in Night Catches Us” in the collection The Strange Careers of the Jim Crow North: Segregation and Struggle outside the South (NYU Press, 2019) edited by Brian Purnell and Jeanne Theoharis, with Komozi Woodard. This essay is related to her current book project exploring representations of the Civil Rights and Movements in fiction, film, and material culture. In spring 2019, she taught an undergraduate course on black feminist theory, and in the fall, she taught feminist theory, a core class for WGSS doctoral and graduate certificate students.

Charlene Muehlenhard:

Research: My graduate students, several Human Sexuality/WGSS undergraduates and I are working on studies related to sexual ambivalence, consent, and coercion. Topics include: whether individuals feel committed to follow through with the sexual encounters they arrange on Grindr; sexual rejections in relationships; sexual ambivalence and strategies people use to influence their own future sexual behavior; approach, avoidance, and ambivalence when sex is painful; gay and bisexual men’s experience of being sexually coerced, what happened, what were the outcomes, and what were their reasons for telling or not telling anyone. Undergraduates interested in assisting with research on sexuality can find more information at https://sites.google.com/view/muehlenhard-research-lab-at-ku. In November of 2019, I received the Distinguished Service Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS) for my past

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service to the SSSS. My service is not over, however, because I was elected to a new two-year term on the Board of Directors. During the summer and early fall of 2019, I served as a pro-bono expert witness in a #MeToo-type legal case, Coleman v. Grand. I worked with two lawyers, also working pro bono, who represented a young woman who, after speaking out about her experience with a long-time mentor, was sued for defamation by that mentor. The lawyers have submitted a motion for summary judgment; a hearing is scheduled for January 29, 2020.

Ann Schofield:

After 40 years of service to the University of Kansas, Ann Schofield retired this past December. In lieu of a regular blurb about what she’s been up to this past semester, we have included Ann’s remarks from her retirement reception which can be found in the next section of the newsletter.

Nick Syrett:

Nick Syrett is in his third year at KU and his third year as chair. This past fall he taught “Gender, Sexuality, and the Law” for the first time, and had a wonderful group of students investigate the history and contemporary politics of American law related to gender and sex. He recently finished a draft of his third book, tentatively titled Intimate Relations: The Family Story of Robert and John Gregg Allerton, which should be released in early 2021 by the University of Chicago Press. With Jen Manion (Amherst College) he just signed a contract with Cambridge University Press to edit The Cambridge History of Sexuality in the United States. Over the summer of 2019 he was in San Francisco for QHC19, a conference he co-organized with Amy Sueyoshi on queer history at San Francisco State University. He also traveled to Sydney, Australia for the biannual meeting of the Society for the History of Children and Youth, to Boston for the annual meeting of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, and to Lethbridge, Alberta for a workshop for contributors to a Bloomsbury volume called A Cultural History of Youth in the Modern Era.

Akiko Takeyama:

Akiko has been very happy about moving her line to WGSS 100% for the academic year of 2019! Akiko has won an SSRC-Abe fellowship for her second book project on the porn industry in Japan through the lens of labor practice. She will be on research leave in the calendar year of 2020. Her research explores the concept and practice of involuntary consent to rethink the consent-coercion binary in feminist debates on sex work and liberal frame of self-autonomy. She has presented her new project at KU’s gender seminar, Dickinson College, Colby College, Ohio State University, as well as AAS (Asian Studies) and NWSA conferences. She enjoyed teaching both seminar and method courses: “Love, Sex, and Globalization,” “Affect and Queer Theory,” “Doing Ethnography,” and “Feminist Methodologies.” In this past summer, she attended a yoga teacher training in British Columbia and earned a 300-hour certificate.

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Stacey Vanderhurst:

Stacey Vanderhurst is an Assistant Professor of WGSS and Director of Undergraduate Studies for the department. In summer 2019 she was awarded grants from the Kansas Africa Studies Center and KU Office of International Programs to travel to Nigeria and complete fieldwork on her first book, Discipline & Desire: Unmaking Migrants in Nigeria’s Counter-Trafficking Programs, which is now under contract with Cornell University Press. This semester she oversaw significant revisions to our major and minor programs while teaching an undergraduate course on feminist research methods.

Marta Vicente:

This has been an exciting year for me at both research and teaching levels. In my research I have been writing chapters of my third monograph Confessions of the Self: Transgender Narratives from the Inquisition to the Internet, a book examining the historical meaning of narratives produced by transgender individuals in Western societies. In Spring 2019 I started the year presenting my work (a version of chapter five) at the Modern Language Association convention in Chicago. This fall, I took a short three-day trip to the Kinsey Institute in Indiana University to consult the large documentation the Kinsey has on Benjamin Franklin, one of the most important physicians in the twentieth century who worked with transgender (then called transsexual) individuals. Throughout this year I have also started working on a graphic novel project (in collaboration with a graphic artist) intended for young readers and tentatively called Transgender Lives across History. I have also been working on creating a new on-line course which is an introduction to the history of women in pre-modern Europe.

Kim Warren:

Kim Warren, Associate Professor of WGSS/History, has been appointed a position as a Faculty Fellow in the Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE), where she co-leads with Jody Brook, Associate Professor of social work, a faculty seminar focused on inclusive teaching. She is delighted to expand conversations about inclusive pedagogical practices in a multi-disciplinary seminar that brings faculty from the sciences, engineering, social work, architecture, and the humanities together. She has also been teaching WGSS 800 with particular attention on the influence of KU faculty members’ research on the national development of the field of WGSS. Her article on Mary McLeod Bethune’s black feminist internationalism has been accepted for publication in Gender and History. She is also looking forward to giving talks in 2020 that celebrate the 100thanniversary of woman suffrage in the United States.

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Ann Schofield’s Retirement Reception:

Professor Ann Schofield retired this past fall after 40 years of service to the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, History and American Studies departments. The WGSS department hosted a retirement reception for Ann this past December, co-sponsored by the aforementioned departments and the Hall Center for the Humanities. All reception photos are courtesy of Ailecia Ruscin of Oh Snap! Photography. Below are remarks that Nick Syrett, Kim Warren, and Ann Schofield gave at the reception: Nick Syrett: Ann began her career at KU as a visiting lecturer in the History Department in 1979, became a tenure-track faculty member in American Studies and what was then called Women’s Studies in 1980, and has long been an active participant in Hall Center programming, including being one of the founding facilitators of the Gender Seminar. Ann has funneled approximately 80 percent of her anxiety about retirement into planning this reception, which has meant I’ve had to do almost nothing. Ann and our wonderful administrative associate, Emma Piazza, have taken care of everything, a planning process which included, I’m told, a wine-tasting. So do enjoy the vino; it was chosen with care. That planning has also included a very specific vision about just how much speech-making there would be. The answer is: very little. It is Ann’s desire that things not get maudlin and that conversation and laughter, food and drink, be the stars of this show. I would be remiss, however, if I did not say at least one or two things about Ann. Trained as a historian of labor and of women, Ann Schofield became increasingly interdisciplinary over the course of her career, especially as a result of her position in two interdisciplinary departments. Ann is the author of books and articles on working-class women at the turn of the century, the labor press during the same period, and cultural representations of class and women and death, including the notorious Lizzie Borden. Ann’s scholarship represents the best of a gendered version of American Studies that both took the past seriously and used methods and sources from both history and literary and cultural studies to understand how people came to think and feel and know what they did about their world and the people in it; to try to pin down how particular figures or ideas have come to have cultural currency and power in American society. Ann was the very first person I met when I came to KU to interview for this job almost three years ago. She was waiting for me just outside the gate area at the airport and drove me to Lawrence, answering all my questions about KU and this Department, explaining most notably that the reason for a search for an outside chair was not because of disarray or animosity within the department, as I had feared. Upon my arrival I came to see how true that was, thanks in large part to Ann Schofield, who is really the heart of our department. In addition to that, she is certainly the institutional memory. She has been an invaluable guide to me over these past years as I have taken on a leadership role that she herself has filled on a number of occasions. As Chair of the Department, technically I am Ann’s boss, though I have to admit that our relationship has never quite felt like that to me. Instead she is the wise

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older sister who has been there, done that, knows where the bodies are buried, and is always available at the end of the hall to answer my questions. (As Ann occasionally mentions, she also spent time “over at the College” as an Associate Dean.) I am very grateful for her wise counsel. And I hope she knows that I do not intend to stop consulting her, even as her office relocates. In addition to her research and administrative work, Ann has also, of course, been teaching for the last forty years. Two days ago, many of her colleagues attended the last half hour of Ann’s last class here at KU, fittingly a graduate seminar on the history of gender. Many, many students at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, in American Studies and WGSS, have memories of their time in Ann’s classes. And Ann has been awarded a number of KU’s top accolades for teaching and for graduate advising. Because of her own experience working with Ann as a dissertation adviser, one Ph.D. alumna, Liz Miller, wanted to honor Ann on the occasion of her retirement. The result is a fund managed by KUEA and named in Ann’s honor. It is my great pleasure to announce the establishment of the Schofield Faculty Development Fund, a fund to which faculty in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies may apply in order to finance research, travel for conferences, or other professional development. We are extremely grateful to Liz and could not think of a more fitting way to honor Ann and the Department which has been her home for the past four decades. Kim Warren: On the occasion of Ann Schofield’s retirement from the University of Kansas after forty years of service, research, and teaching… I want to echo Nick Syrett’s appreciation for your coming today. I also want to take a moment to thank Jan Emerson, who also retired earlier this year, marking a long commitment to feminist work and support at the University. It was Jan, I believe, who many months ago, booked this room in anticipation of Ann’s retirement. Thank you, Jan—without you, the Department in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies would have never grown into its full scope and we appreciate your steadfast dedication. When Ann asked me to speak at tonight’s event, she told me that she wanted someone who could manage to say a few words without going on and on and without getting overly emotional. Perhaps, though, I can do a little more in the next few minutes. We are here tonight to honor the four decades worth of work that Ann Schofield has provided for our university, our professional and international communities. Ann was a pioneer in the early scholarship on American women’s history and women’s labor history, in particular; she has mentored countless students; and she has used her institutional knowledge and leadership to make our experience in the world of higher education more compassionate while still maintaining intellectual rigor and curiosity. As an interdisciplinary historian and feminist scholar, Ann has regaled us with many stories in and out of the classroom. This past month, I heard a new tale that surprised me. She admitted to students and colleagues that in the early 1970s, fresh out of Georgetown University with a master’s degree in Diplomatic History, when asked by a university to teach their first women’s history course, she initially replied, “Oh, I can’t do that. Women’s history—it doesn’t exist.” They asked her to reconsider, which of course, she did, and in that moment, her life—and I would argue ours—would never be the same. A few years later, Ann’s PhD in History from SUNY Binghamton

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focused on women, as did Ann’s subsequent books and articles. She arrived at KU as a visiting professor in the History Department in 1979, but quickly anchored herself on the tenure track in American Studies and Women’s Studies, finally to position herself fully in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies—a department that she helped to usher from a small program into a full-fledged department, along with creating one of the earlier WGSS PhD programs in the nation. She did all of this while providing administrative leadership at the Program, Department, and College level for around fifteen out of the past forty years. And, while it was neither her motivation nor her intention, she garnered many awards along the way, including the Louise Byrd Graduate Educator Award, Honorary Phi Beta Kappa membership, the Elizabeth Kolmer Award for Teaching and Mentoring, the especially prestigious Kemper Award for Outstanding Graduate Teaching and Advising, as well as induction into KU’s Women's Hall of Fame. Her academic fellowships include a long list of stints at places like Berkeley, Harvard, and Bellagio, Italy, just to name a few. Internationally, she is known for her work on mourning, labor organizing, and the gendered archive. Most recently, as a fellow at the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford University, she has provided an intellectual bridge for scholars of the United States to continue to expand their inquiry into the ways that feminist ideas have merged back and forth over the Atlantic. What is remarkable about Ann’s achievements is that they are not simply snap shots of her great moments, but rather they reflect a long legacy of the way that she has radiated her influence through educational channels. Students whom Ann has mentored have become academics and activists in their own right. Programs that Ann has led have grown farther and wider than their initial plans. Although we will not benefit from having Professor Ann Schofield on the official academic calendar in the years to come, we know that she will not be able to stay away. With her emerita status, she has already assured us that graduate dissertations will still get advised and given her penchant for ten-minute riffs about feminist stylings ranging from Mary Wollstonecraft to , we know that we will be able to count on Ann for guest appearances in our classes. And, we can hope for sage counsel in our offices and over brunch. On Tuesday afternoon, Ann taught her last class—a graduate colloquium in gender history, which I had the great privilege of co-teaching with her. It has been a long-time tradition to salute a retiring faculty member by having other faculty colleagues file into the retiree’s last class to applaud her efforts and contributions. When we surprised Ann on Tuesday with a flock of people from WGSS, History, and American Studies, she was, of course, touched—and even though this was a moment to shine a light on her own forty-year career, she did what she often does—she reflected her sense of joy and accomplishment back onto the rest of us. In her typical Ann Schofield manner, instead of basking in our appreciation for her work, she told us that she was the one who had appreciated us, the colleagues (both students and faculty) whom she had met along the way. Indeed, Ann Schofield has a hand in making sure that most of us in this room had a legitimate reason for coming to this university—through hiring or admission. As I look around, this is a pretty incredible group—distinguished professors, chairs, funded scholars, award-winning teachers, a MacArthur genius, published authors, and accomplished students. Even more than professional encouragement, Ann has graced us with unyielding support in our personal lives as we have taken on new jobs, traveled to unknown places, lost parents and loved ones, and welcomed children into our lives—and in some cases, ushered those same children off to college or marriage or other adventures.

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When I was a young professor, I remember Ann gave me lots of great advice. Regarding tenure and promotion, she said, “Nothing to be afraid of, just make sure that your file is s slam dunk.” (Easier said than done). Regarding building a career, “Collaborate, collaborate, co-teach, take your earned sabbaticals, go talk to a librarian, and then collaborate some more.” Regarding moving into administration—this was a good one, “You make bigger decisions so you need better shoes!” Regarding classroom management, she said, “You know, Kim, if you start hearing quotes from instead of the readings that you have assigned, you will know that things have gone completely off the rails.” I know that all of you have benefited from similar gems of wisdom and I know that we are stronger at this university and in the profession because of advice like this. Through the years, Ann Schofield has reminded us that higher education is a place to think creatively and critically. It is a place to use ideas to figure out how to be smart and strong in the world and how to effect positive change in our local and global communities. She has shown us how to use how to use interdisciplinary history—the telling of stories—to make sense of a multivalent past in order to understand the complex and sometimes unbelievable present, so that we can create strategies for a more sustainable and just future. I believe it was Oprah Winfrey who once said, “Everybody has a story. And there is something to be learned from every experience.” Ann Schofield’s story is starting a new chapter tonight, but I am not sure that it is really all that new or mysterious. In fact, Ann has been telling us her story for as long as we have known her. The story is one that is anchored in love of family, dedication to friends, and commitment to higher learning and equality. It is also one rooted in Ann’s own experience as a college student at the small, liberal arts school, Marywood College in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The Catholic nuns who established Marywood in 1915 called themselves the Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. And, while any of us who have survived Catholic school know that it takes a lifetime to shake off the patterns of guilt that those nuns can bestow on us, we can never shed their sense of deep faith, courageous spirit, and action for justice. And, thank goodness for that. Deep faith, courageous spirit, and action for justice—are at the core of Ann’s story—then, now, and in the future, so, would you please raise a glass to thank her for letting us be a part of her story these many years? Congratulations on your retirement, Ann. Ann Schofield: I’ve been doing a bit of family history and – no surprise – all my ancestors came from Ireland. But I was left wondering if when my grandparents left Ireland over one hundred years ago and traveled 5000 and some miles across the Atlantic did they imagine they would spend the rest of their adult lives in northeastern Pennsylvania. Many decades later when I headed west from northeastern Pennsylvania and traveled… 2000 and some miles to Kansas I certainly didn’t envision being in Lawrence, Kansas forty years later. And yet, here we are. There is an impossibly long list of people I’d like to thank for enriching those forty years but given the constraints of time can only single out a few. When I came into the History dept. in 1979, before she was a dear friend, Betsy Kuznesof stepped up to be a mentor before the word mentor was invented. A decade or so afterwards, David Katzman, Norm Yetman, and

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Bill Tuttle made American Studies a place worth being part of. And from a group of committed students and faculty like the late Janet Sharistanian and Beth Schultz meeting in alcoves in the Union what was then Women’s Studies, now W G and S studies, has grown into a department 12 faculty strong, with a thriving undergraduate and graduate program. To be part of developing that department and helping grow an interdisciplinary academic field that hardly existed 40 years ago has been an exciting intellectual challenge. I am deeply grateful for Liz Miller’s generosity in initiating a development fund for our department that will strengthen that field. Legacy is a rather grand word – it’s used for everything from inheriting a castle to an online obituary site. For academics, legacy is books, articles, scientific discoveries, but legacy is also measured through our work in classrooms as we try to help students to see the world in more complex and meaningful ways. I appreciate most of the many students I’ve taught since 1979, especially those who I mentored on their journey through graduate school. I’m delighted to see so many of them here today. It was an honor to serve as graduate director in both American Studies and WGSS, sharing with my colleagues the challenge of making interdisciplinary research legible and meaningful. KU is far from a perfect place. But it’s given me a space to earn my daily bread where ideas and debates about ideas are valued and for that I am grateful. So, in closing, a bit of self-plagiarism… A decade or so ago I gave a talk at the opening of an exhibit at the Spencer Museum. The photography exhibit was titled “Bodies at Work: Laboring Americans” and I began with a shout out to my own work: “This is much I like about the work I do – the creative aspects of teaching and research, the control of my time, the smart people I work with. One aspect of a professor’s life that I especially appreciate, though, is that I’m frequently in motion – I move from class to class, from meeting to library, from Lawrence to the Edwards campus. I work at my desk at home and my desk in Blake Hall. I leave Lawrence to work in archives and libraries elsewhere and to attend conferences here and abroad.” When people ask me what I’ll do in retirement I imagine I’ll continue in some way this peripatetic way of being, idea to idea, Merc to Dillon’s, pool to Pilates – I hope to see each and all of you along the way. Alumna Spotlight: The WGSS department has started an alumni/ae spotlight project that features one alumnus or alumna per newsletter. This project will also cross over into our KU website. Later this semester, there will be a dedicated page for prospective and current WGSS students to see which careers our WGSS graduates have gone into since their time at the University of Kansas. This is designed to show our students the many opportunities that are available to them with a WGSS degree. Our premier alumna spotlight is Tessa Gratton. Gratton graduated with a BA in Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies in 2003. Q: Where are you currently working? I’m a full-time author, with 8 novels and dozens of short stories published. My work has been translated into 22 languages around the world. I’m also the Associate Director of Madcap Retreats, where my wife and I run workshops and retreats for published and aspiring writers.

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Q: How has WGSS influenced your work? I use the tools of analysis I learned in WGSS every day as I’m writing, building worlds, creating characters and systems of power to ask the kind of questions of my readers that I myself asked and continue to explore. The wide-lens, diverse array of classes I took showed me where to look for injustice in any arena, and how to pull apart motivation and power that create those intersectional spaces. WGSS was where I first began deconstructing my own privilege, and I couldn’t write books the way I do or work to decolonize and diversify publishing without having begun there. My work with Madcap is directly related to my WGSS degree: I specialize in teaching other writers how to identify dangerous patterns and racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., coding in their stories and the dominant stories of our genre and culture in order to stop perpetuating harmful tropes and stereotypes. We’ve partnered with the organization We Need Diverse Books (https://diversebooks.org/) to run a series of workshops centered on writing cross-culturally, and our goal is to help publishing at every level be more inclusive and representative of the world in which we live. Q: What is a memory you have of your WGSS courses? The dynamic nature of nearly all my WGSS classes has stuck with me for years. Not only was any subject open to a gendered analysis, the discussions and readings were always multi-faceted, smart, and passionate. I remember being so angry all the time, as I realized more and more how massive the problems were—and are. Systemic power, intersectionality, global feminism were the things I keyed into and I focused my later classes on international politics, psychology, and religion, and everyone at WGSS encouraged me to follow my anger, to follow my questions. Nobody in WGSS ever told me to calm down or that I was overreacting, which did happen in other departments, and in graduate school. I felt that my anger had a place at KU, and that it didn’t have to be aimless. I could learn to hone it and direct my passions toward solutions. Q: Is there anything you wish you had known at the start of college about your career path? When I was choosing which degree to focus on, I wish somebody had said that with a WGSS degree you can do absolutely anything, but it can also make you a better person. I love my job and how my degree helps me with it, but more than that I love who I am. Part of that has to do with being able to keep fighting every day to deconstruct my own privilege and colonial mindset. It’s not something that you just fix one day, and ta da! never have to face again, and I know my WGSS degree helped dig the foundations for not only how I can do that, but why it’s necessary to begin with myself and move outwards as I try to make the world better. WGSS Graduate Students:

Abby Barefoot: Abby Barefoot spent Fall semester in San Francisco working on dissertation fieldwork through funding provided by KU’s Research Excellence Initiative Social Justice Award. Abby’s research explores restorative and transformative justice frameworks for sexual violence as they are practiced within activist communities. In particular, Abby is interested in how these practices intersect with survivors’ understandings of justice, accountability and punishment. In November, Abby presented her

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paper “Conflicting Messages: Addressing Carceral Frameworks Within Restorative Justice Responses to Sexual Violence” at the National Women’s Studies Association Conference in November. Also this semester, Abby and WGSS faculty member Sarah Deer published the article “Feminist Perspectives on Carceral Logic and Restorative Justice” in The Kansas Journal of Law & Public Policy. For Spring 2020, Abby will return to KU and teach Feminist Social Movements online and TA for the undergraduate capstone course. She is very excited to return to KU and be reunited with her WGSS family!

Kelsey Carls: Kelsey is a second-year doctoral student in the WGSS program. Last spring, she was awarded an Applied Humanities Summer Fellowship through the Hall Center. She worked the summer of 2019 as a Fellow and researcher for the Digital Branch of the Kansas City Public Library, where she contributed original scholarship to their local history project "The Pendergast Years." You can see a collection of her work here. In addition to teaching in-person and online courses on Feminist Social Movements, Kelsey is currently focused on researching the history of sex work in the United States as well as current campaigns to decriminalize the sex trades. She has also been polishing a paper analyzing the rhetorical strategies of activists in New York who support decriminalization efforts.

Melinda Chen: For fall 2019, Melinda has been working on a variety of projects. She has started data analysis on her pre-dissertation research from summer 2019, funded by the Foreign Languages and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship hosted by the Center for East Asian Studies (CEAS), and has begun preparations for forming her dissertation project. Melinda assists Professor Sarah Deer on the Native Justice Project in transcribing and coding, and has co-presented about the project at the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) Conference held in San Francisco, CA. She also presented a paper entitled, “From Empowerment to Queer: Another Model for Survivors of Sexual Violence” at NWSA this year. Melinda is working alongside Dr. Xiao Hui in the East Asian Languages and Cultures (EALC) Department to translate an essay from Mandarin Chinese to English written by women migrant workers, which will be published in a forthcoming paper. With respect to service, Melinda has completed training for and is volunteering at the Sexual Trauma and Abuse (STA) Care Center as a Volunteer Advocate, and serves as the Graduate Representative for the WGSS Graduate Studies Committee.

Mariah Crystal: Mariah Crystal is currently conducting research in Namibia with the support of a Fulbright grant. Mariah’s dissertation analyzes the gendered aspects of the Namibian independence movement. She also recently co-edited a book entitled Intervening Connections: Mapping the Networks of Support of Women in 21st Century African Communities, which will be published by Lexington Books.

Pere DeRoy: In Fall 2019, I commenced my 2019-2020 academic year FLAS Fellowship in which I pursued elementary studies in Haitian Creole and Haitian Studies through the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies CLACS at the University of Kansas. As a scholar interested in working in the Caribbean, this past semester has been one of exploring, sharing and expanding my ideas on Reproductive Justice and strategies of decoloniality in the Caribbean region through a series of actions. Some of these actions include participating as a panelist at two of the CLACS’ CHARLA de MERIENDA talks on the respective topics: Gender Dynamics in the Americas and Reproductive [In]justice in the Americas. In addition to these intellectual fora, I have been pursuing opportunities to learn about the implementation of feminist praxis in University settings. This has led to me to serve on the Diversity, Equality & Inclusion (DEI) committee in the WGSS Department. Finally, the course content I

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engaged with this semester resulted in the submission of abstracts on the interconnected conversations of: sex, labor, gender and gender violence, and creole activism to the Caribbean Studies Associations for their June 2020 regional conference which will be hosted in Guyana.

Elise Higgins: Elise is a third year PhD student and is wrapping up coursework in her concentration area of Public Affairs and Administration. She is a KU Institute for Policy and Social Research Doctoral Research Fellow and presented in November 2019 on “Subverting State Scripts: Abortion Providers as Insurgent Frontline Workers" at the National Women’s Studies Association conference in San Francisco. During the summer, Elise worked as a research assistant supporting Dr. Sarah Deer and Dr. Alesha Doan's research on the Indian Child Welfare Act and twitter reactions to Georgia's abortion ban, respectively. Elise worked with Dr. Katie Batza over the spring and summer to redesign WGSS 327: Perspectives in LGBT Studies with an international focus. She, Dr. Batza, and Kelsey Carls worked together this fall on a creative project highlighting artists affected by HIV/AIDS at the Hall Center's Haunted Humanities. Elise continues to be, along with many of her colleagues, a proud member and steward in the Graduate Teaching Assistants Coalition (GTAC) union, AFT Local 6403. Outside of KU, Elise serves as the Vice President of the Kansas Abortion Fund.

Sam Kendrick: In 2019, Sam was awarded an REI writing incentive, which financed her summer work on the lingering impacts of hookup culture on millennial adulthood and relationships. Over the summer, she also wrote an entry on “Courtship, 1950-2000” for an encyclopedia set entitled Marriage and Divorce in America: Issues, Trends, and Controversies, forthcoming in 2021. In November, Sam and KU WGSS graduate Dr. Corinne Schwarz presented their paper “Bodies and Students that Matter: The Politics of Critical Embodiment in the WGSS Classroom” at the 2019 NWSA annual conference.

Josephine Kipgen: Jo is an international student and a PhD candidate in the WGSS department. She has M.A. degrees in English and Women’s and Gender Studies. Her research interests include reproductive politics, feminist body politics, multicultural feminism, and postcolonial and transnational feminisms. Her dissertation examines the socio-historical and contemporary contexts for the practice of sex-selective abortion (SSA) in India. By using data from in-depth qualitative interviews with a range of policy researchers, scholars, NGOs, and service providers, her study delineates key stakeholders’ accounts of how they have observed women that choose SSA exercise agency. Her dissertation research has been funded by the Doctoral Student Research Fund (2017) and Summer Research Scholarship (2019) from the Office of Graduate Studies at KU. Jo recently co-authored a paper on gender nonconformity in non-Western contexts, and has revised and resubmitted the paper for publication.

Marcy Quiason: Marcy presented the results of her preliminary dissertation research at this year’s NWSA Conference and at the Emerging Voices in Filipino and Philippine Studies Conference at the University of Hawaii-Manoa’s Center for Philippine Studies. She has been awarded a travel grant from the Hall Center of Humanities at the University of Kansas and will complete her dissertation research during the summer and fall semesters of 2020. Marcy is currently teaching WGSS 583: Love, Sex and Globalization. She will be teaching WGSS 583 and WGSS 101: Introduction into Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies this spring. Marcy is also a MA student in the Department of Political Science.

Mary Louisa Spangler: Mary Louisa Spangler taught WGSS 333: Politics of Physical Appearance this semester and assisted Dr. Vanderhurst with WGSS 301: Feminist Research Methods. Her research centers

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the experience of women and girls implicated in cases of incest between 1861 and 1940 and looks at the importance of respectability as they were forced into or navigated the legal system. She is looking forward to completing her dissertation soon.

Rachel Trusty: Rachel Trusty is a second year PhD student. This summer she published an exhibition review: "Queer Abstraction at the Des Moines Arts Center" in ARTMargins online. This semester she continues her research on queer abstraction by looking into citation tactics used by queer artists. Her current research project is on artist Prem Sahib. Trusty is refining her research paper on Felix Gonzalez- Torres to present at the 2020 College Art Association Conference in Chicago in early spring. Trusty had a solo exhibition "Summer Crush" at the Lawrence Arts Center this summer. She has also participated in several group exhibitions this semester including SOOTHsay at the Historic Arkansas Museum in Little Rock, AR, Biennial 600: Textile + Fiber at the Amarillo Museum of Art in Amarillo, TX, and Shifts Happen at the Melanie Carr Gallery in Essex, CT. Her artwork has been published in the Bible Belt Queers Anthology, The Idle Class magazine, Gertrude journal, and the Lavender Review. New Graduate Cohort 2019-2020:

Grace Branham: Grace is a first-year PhD student and University Graduate Fellow. She has spent the semester researching feminist bioethics of transgender medicine and processing manuscripts in the Wilcox Collection at the Spencer Research Library. At the 2019 National Women's Studies Association Conference, she participated in the Lesbian Caucus roundtable: "He/She: Heredities of Passing, Politics of Insistence, and Complex Solidarities Between Butch and Trans Women."

Amber Brown: Amber came into the PhD program with a joint MA in Anthropology and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Brandeis University (2018), and is currently in conversation with faculty about choosing her concentration as well as her plans for research throughout her time in the program. Amber is one of the GTAs for Introduction to Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies with Dr. Katie Batza, and she looks forward to continuing to teach throughout her time as a graduate student at KU.

Shawna Shipley-Gates: Shawna is concluding her first semester as a Chancellor's Doctoral Fellow in the PhD WGSS program. As a Graduate Research Assistant, she is conducting an extensive annotated bibliography on pleasure politics and black female sexuality with the guidance of her advisor, Dr. Ayesha Hardison. Through much consideration, Shawna is leaning towards a concentration in Psychology, specifically health psychology. Prior to enrolling in this program, Shawna received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Spelman College and her Master of Public Health degree from New York University. WGSS Graduates, Awards & Activities:

Class of 2019 Graduating Seniors: Kathryn Ammon (WGSS BA), Kayleigh Anderson (WGSS BGS), Ella Brown Richards (WGSS BGS), Cienna Cashman (WGSS BGS), Connor Dougan (WGSS BA), Max Fowler (WGSS BA), Deva Freeman (WGSS BA), Mel Saldana Fuentes (WGSS BA), Nikita Imafidon (WGSS BA), Anna Jones (WGSS BA), Kira Karry (WGSS BA), Kathryn Lipka (WGSS BA), Susannah Mitchell (WGSS BA), Hayley Nugent (WGSS BA), Emma Piazza, (WGSS BA) Heddy Pierce (WGSS BGS), Catherine Prestoy (WGSS BA), Skylar Pryor (WGSS BA), Grace

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Stewart-Johnson (WGSS BA), Lauren Stone (WGSS BA), Madeline Rierney (WGSS BGS), & Alicia Whitson (WGSS BA).

Departmental Honors: Professor Charlene Muehlenhard recognized Kayleigh Anderson with Departmental Honors in WGSS.

Younger-Wendland LGBTQ Paper Prize winners: funded by John Younger and Milton Wendland. Anna Clark was recognized for the paper, “Advocates for Informed Choice: The Fight for Basic Civil Rights for Intersex Children.” Sarah Shorter was recognized for the paper, “Poor Unfortunate Souls: A Transgender Reading of The Little Mermaid.”

A Mile in These Shoes Award: created by Dr. Omofolabo-Ajayi, Professor Emerita, this award is given to one minority student who submits an outstanding essay, creative work, or poem that relates to “walking a mile in these shoes.” Mel Saldana-Fuentes was the award recipient this spring.

Virginia’s Purse Award: Award for outstanding WGSS or Human Sexuality Major who excels through their activism, scholarship, and/or leadership in WGSS. Stacey Vanderhurst presented the award to Kathryn Ammon.

Senior Seminar Presentation & Paper Prize: Award presented for outstanding student work in the WGSS 601 Senior Seminar. 601 visiting professor Ivery Goldstein presented the award to Madeline Tierney, "Framing the Candidate or Framing the Gender?" and Kira Karry, "Sex Positive Feminism: Intersectionality and Women of Color."

National Women’s Studies Association Conference: This past November, a group of our WGSS faculty and graduate students represented KU at the annual NWSA conference, held in San Francisco. Below are the faculty and students who presented at the conference:

Abigail Barefoot: “Conflicting Messages: Addressing Carceral Frameworks Within Restorative Justice Responses to Sexual Violence.”

Grace Branham: "He/She: Heredities of Passing, Politics of Insistence, and Complex Solidarities Between Butch and Trans Women."

Melinda Chen: “From Empowerment to Queer: An Alternative Recovery Model for Survivors of Sexual Violence.”

Melinda Chen & Sarah Deer: “Justice Quandaries: How Native Women and Two-Spirit (LGBTQ+) Survivors of Violence Conceptualize Justice.”

Elise Higgins: “Subverting State Scripts: Abortion Providers as Insurgent Frontline Workers.”

Sam Kendrick & Corinne Schwarz: "Bodies and Students that Matter: The Politics of Critical Embodiment in the WGSS Classroom.”

Marcy Quiason: “Isang Pamilya Tayo: The Discourse of Family in Philippine Anti-Trafficking NGOs.”

Akiko Takeyama: “The Issue of ‘Forced Performance in Adult Videos’ in Japan.”

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Spring & Fall 2019 Graduate Certificate Recipients: Erin Adamson (Sociology), Max Birdnow (Educational Psychology), Oksana Husieva (Slavic Languages & Literatures), Courtney McDaniel (Communication Studies), Andrew Patty (Education), Snehal Sharma, Jenn Thomas (Music), Valeza Zogjani, Shola Aromona (Journalism), Jonathan Huffman (Bureau of Child Research), Lindsey Kraus (Communication Studies), Lara Mann (Special Education), Mary Beth Sheehy (Music), Adam Smith (Educational Leadership and Policy Studies)

New WGSS Employment: At the beginning of the Fall 2019 semester, Jan Emerson retired from her position as the WGSS Administrative Associate after 32 years. Taking over for her is Emma Piazza. Piazza graduated in Spring 2019 with a B.A. in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and a B.M. in Music Composition. During her time at KU, Emma received an Undergraduate Research Award for her WGSS capstone project, and gave an ACE talk at the 2018 Undergraduate Research Symposium. Within the school of music, Piazza composed works for multiple ensembles, such as the KU Chamber Singers and Vanderbilt University’s Eschaton New Music Ensemble. She also wrote and recorded a full-length album which was released last fall. Outside of school, Emma worked at the Spencer Research Library as a Public Services Assistant. Piazza worked on various projects while at the Spencer, with her largest project focused on sorting and preparing multiple decades worth of donated fanzines for public use. She is very excited to be back in Blake Hall this year working for the WGSS department that she got to know during her undergrad. Campus Events Sponsored & Co-Sponsored by WGSS:

Annual February Sisters Lecture February 24th, 4:00 pm, Centennial Room, Kansas Union

The annual February Sisters Lecture honors the thirty women from faculty and staff, and four children who occupied the East Asian Languages Building on February 4th, 1972 and issued demands for changes in KU policies affecting the lives of women on campus. Calling themselves "The February Sisters," their demands galvanized action already in motion at the university regarding the need for an affirmative action office, a women's studies program, a free day-care center, a health care program sensitive to women's needs, more women in administrative positions, and greater equity in women's salaries.

This year’s lecture will feature Dr. L. Ayu Saraswati, a former KU faculty member and current professor at the University of Hawaiʻi. The lecture is titled “Feminist Activism, Social Media, and the Neoliberal Self(ie),” and is sponsored by the Verne Wagner Speaker Series.

32nd Annual Seaver Lecture March 4th, 4:30 pm, Hall Center Conference Hall

David Slusky (KU, Associate Chair and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Economics Department) will present his lecture, titled “What to Expect When You’re Unexpectedly Expecting: Reproductive Rights Restrictions in Trump’s America.” Slusky is an applied microeconomist whose research focuses on health economics and public policy.

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Stopping Sexual Violence: A Community Approach March 30th, 7:00 pm, Lawrence Public Library

Jennifer Hirsch and Shamus Khan (Columbia University) will present insights from their book SEXUAL CITIZENS: A Landmark Study of Sex, Power, and Assault on Campus. Grounded in the intimate, often painful accounts of the human beings at its center, they show how we can address this endemic problem in college life and across our community by empowering teachers, policy makers, parents, and students.

Co-sponsored by the WGSS Department, the Center for the Study of Injustice, and the Sexual Assault Prevention and Education Center (SAPEC).

Humanities Lecture Series:

Founded in 1947, the Humanities Lecture Series has consistently been a hallmark for quality, providing a forum for interdisciplinary dialogue between renowned speakers, the university and the surrounding communities.

Fall 2019:

• Brittney Cooper, "Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower." Cooper is a writer, teacher, public speaker, and the author of Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower (2018). An Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University, Dr. Cooper has published several book chapters and articles on representations of Black women in popular culture. Cooper spoke for the Lecture Series at Liberty Hall this past September. WGSS professor Ayesha Hardison introduced her speech. • Sarah Deer, "Sovereignty of the Soul: Centering the Voices of Native Women.” Deer holds a joint appointment with the School of Public Affairs and Administration and the Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies. A member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma and a long-time activist for the rights of indigenous women, Deer was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2014 and is a 2019 inductee to the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Deer spoke this past October for the Lecture Series.

The Gender Seminar at the Hall Center for the Humanities:

The Gender Seminar for Fall 2019 and Spring 2020 is co-directed by Brian Donovan (Sociology), Akiko Takeyama (WGSS), and Stacey Vanderhurst (WGSS). The Gender Seminar studies gender as a basic concept in humanistic scholarship and/or as a fundamental organizing principle in social life. The seminar promotes the study and application of gender as a viable analytical tool that not only provokes new scholarship in its primary base of women, feminist, and sexualities studies, but also explores possible research dimensions in fields such as race, ethnicity, nationality, class, and (dis)ability. The Gender Seminar is open to faculty, graduate students, and staff.

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Gender Seminar Speakers:

Fall 2019:

• Ani Kokobobo (KU), “Pacifism, Abstinence, and the Late Tolstoy as Gender Theorist” • Kianna Middleton (KU), "Conceptions of Gender Without Ownership: A Return to Black Feminism Reimagined" • Mara Kiere (Rothermere American Institute), “Finding the Unfounded: Rape and Feminism from Brownmiller to Burke” • Faye Xiao (KU), " The Fourth Wave: Grassroots Feminism with Chinese Characteristics”

Spring 2020:

• February 6th, 3 pm: Kyle Velte (KU), “Errant Exceptionalism” • March 5th, 3 pm: Mike Wuthrich (KU), “The Changing Profiles of Women Candidates in Turkey's National Elections” • April 2nd, 3 pm: Hannah Bailey (KU), “Industrial Girlhood: Race and Labor in a Kansas Carceral Institution” • May 7th, 3 pm: La Shonda Mims (Kennesaw State University), “Race-ing Queer: Balancing Race and Labeling in Queer Histories”

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