WOMEN'S, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY STUDIES AT WILLIAMS COLLEGE SPRING 2018 WGSS NEWSLETTER The Bi-Annual Report on the Goings-on of the WGSS Department LETTER FROM THE CHAIR It's an exciting time to be taking over as Please check out their profiles in this chair of WGSS at Williams. We have newsletter, and take a look at the our two wonderful new faculty, Profs. exciting courses they are offering Kai M. Green and Vivian Huang to join next year. Contents Profs. Greg Mitchell and Kiaran 01| Letter from the Chair Honderich, who more than double our Outside of Williams (and sometimes teaching staff and bring in exciting in it!), these days can feel like dark 02 | WGSS Updates new areas of expertise for our students times for women, LGBTQ people, and 03 | WGSS Spring Events to explore. Prof. Mitchell just received their allies-- especially those who are tenure this fall, majors are rising, and immigrants, people of color, or poor. 04| WGSS Thesis Students 2017-18 our long-term future looks bright. Every day's headlines seem to bring This spring, Program faculty have news of more hard-won gains 05| An Interview with Katrina Martinez '18 been working on a redesign of WGSS threatened, eroded, or reversed 07 | Media Recommendations 101 for next fall. For next year, we have, outright, new levels and vectors of in addition to our regular faculty, no hostility normalized. But this has also 08 | Where are our alumni now? less than three wonderful visitors led to new organizing, new 09 | What can you do with a WGSS major? coming our way: Maria Uden, who commitments to political activism, teaches Gender and Technology at new alliances. WGSS has an 13 | An Interview with Loretta Ross Luleå University of Technology, important part to play in this. In our 16 | An Interview with Maria Uden Sweden; Mel Y. Chen, from the program, the quest for knowledge has Department of Gender and Women's always been closely tied to the quest 17 | CLPP Conference at Hampshire Studies at Berkeley; and Greta Snyder, for justice-- we seek to know better so 18 | Fall 2018 Courses who comes to us from the Political that we can do better. It's never been a Science and International Relations better time to be a student of WGSS. Programme at Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand. Alison Case, Chair of WGSS 1 W H A T H A V E W E B E E N U P T O ? 32 25 16 276 258 2 WGSS Spring Events February 1st: Janet Mock in Conversation 20th: Staying In: Mitski and Ocean Vuong's Unaccommodating Forms 21st: Winckelmann: Classical Art, Sexual Freedom, and the Prehistory of Gay Identity March 6th: Sentimental Activism as Queer-Feminist Documentary Practice 9th: Dance/Performance: Walking 12th: Ain't I A Woman: My Journey to Womanhood with Laverne Cox April 2nd: Race, Gender, and Political Dissent: Latin American and Caribbean Film Today 3rd: Meet Me at the Intersection of Trans and Jewish Identity 3rd: Reproductive Justice as Human Rights with Loretta Ross 10th: "How Do You Say Blackface in French?": Translating and Anchoring the Black Experience in the Hexagon 12th: Urooj Arshad: "Invisibility and Visibility: Queer Muslim Identity in the United States" 12th: Delilah and Black Enuf*: Film Screening and Discussion with Filmmaker Carrie Hawks 13th-15th: Civil Liberties and Public Policy Conference 16th: Tolstoy, Incest, and the Russian Novel 23rd: PrEP, Institutionalized Racism, and How We End the HIV Epidemic 26th: Graphic Reportage: A History and Particularities of the Genre in Russia 26th: Sex Workers Take Back the Night: Identity, Diversity, and Sex Worker Feminism with Carol Leigh 3 WGSS HONORS 2017- THESIS STUDENTS 2018 RACHEL JONES AYAMI HATANAKA 4 Katrina Martinez W G S S M a j o r a n d L A T S H o n o r s T h e s i s S t u d e n t ' 1 8 The WGSS Office Assistants had the pleasure of interviewing Katrina Martinez '18 on her LATS thesis, "Up, Up, and A- Wepa: Performing Puerto Rican Identities in La Borinqueña" What was your thesis on? The process of translating comic books into films tends to be very My thesis was on the comic book La complex. How do you see La Borinqueña, written by Edgardo Borenqueña working within that Miranda-Rodriguez, and it’s about shifting process of representation this Afro-Puerto Rican girl from between the comic world and the Brooklyn, a college student at film world? Columbia, and how she becomes the superhero La Borinqueña. In the When I first heard about this I never But when other artists have drawn thesis, I go through a little about the assumed it would become a movie in chapters of her, he’ll sometimes get a history of Puerto Rico, connecting it my lifetime. The creator used to work sketch or a mock-up of what the page histories of the island, the U.S. for Marvel, and part of the reason he will look like and people have tried to annexation of the island, putting that left is because he wasn’t allowed to lighten her, or make her much thinner, into conversation with the diaspora, write stories or characters the way and basically like Wonder Woman, especially given that the diaspora is he wanted to. He really wanted to which is an appearance he’s really often excluded from the national have his own character that centered trying to work against. So I think if it narrative. I wanted to make sure to his experience, but also tried to uplift were to ever enter mainstream cinema include that diasporic element, the voices of Afro-Puerto Ricans, it would raise a lot of questions about especially with her being an Afro- which is such a complicated thing Afro-Latinidad, which is so Puerto Rican woman and from New because he is a non-Black Puerto complicated, because of anti- York City, and thus someone who Rican man, and he acknowledges Blackness in the Latinx identity and would traditionally be very much that that’s not his experience, but he communities, along with reluctance to excluded from the national narrative. tries to work from the stories and acknowledge colorism and other forms I also talk about the broader history experiences of women and mentors of oppression in Latin America, the of comic books and how her being in his life, so it’s never going to fully Hispanophone Caribbean, and the US an Afro-Latina superhero is put into capture their lives, but it’s that disenfranchise Afro-Latinx people. conversation with other comic books something. It’s also such a different But it’s interesting because the first that have Afro-Latinx characters, type of comic book in the sense that time I met him he wasn’t sure if it and how it’s often the narrative that it’s independently published through would take off, because people at their Blackness and Latinidad are his own company that hires primarily Marvel told him this book was too represented as mutually exclusive of other Puerto Ricans. I do worry that niche, that it was too small of an each other Then, the conclusion if it were ever to be transferred to a audience, that it wouldn’t reach pulls from what this means given the big screen that they would try to outside of this specific audience. But, present and the future of the island. have someone like J Lo play her. I’ve met him three times, and he She’s supposed to be a symbol of And that’s actually one of his always draws such a big crowd. It’s a Puerto Rican futurism, of history and concerns more generally. He is the story, it’s not perfect, no story ever is, remembrance, and I want to artistic director, so he designed her but it’s something for Puerto Ricans. question what that means if there’s physical attributes, and was very no one left on the island because of purposeful about her being a Black the U.S. Puerto Rican. 5 Katrina Martinez W G S S M a j o r a n d L A T S H o n o r s T h e s i s S t u d e n t ' 1 8 Has there been any appearance Then there’s a beam of light, and And then there’s a line of other of sexuality or romance within she’s transported to this alternative characters, white, brown, and black her narrative? dimension where she meets a bodies crying, and in the back you see Taíno mother-goddess who is one the Pulse sign and you see the pride So in terms of her, the main of the main deities in terms of those flag and the Puerto Rican flag. And in character, not so much. He’s kind of spiritual practices, she’s the the dialogue that’s happening on reluctant to put her with someone at goddess of fertility, and water, and those panels, the spirit is saying, “I’m the moment, because he’s worried life. So she says, “I need you to be showing you these images because about the backlash that will come if a protector of the Puerto Rican Puerto Ricans have had a difficult he does. He hinted at the fact that in people,” and then this spirit shows history that is full of violence the anthology that’s coming out that her different images of Puerto perpetrated by the US, and I want there may be instances of Aquaman Rican history, both from the island people to know this history, and I want or someone who tries to flirt with her and the diaspora, and images but my Puerto Rican children to be and she swerves them.