May 2016 Gender, Sexuality, & Feminist Studies Dear Students, Dear Staff and Faculty Members, Dear Alumnae/i, For this issue of the newsletter we are proud to Finally, we want to thank visiting assistant showcase our alumnae/i. The activities they are professor Anson Koch-Rein for his incredible engaging with display the diverse pathways our contributions to our program over the past two students have adopted in their lives after Mid- years. Anson has deftly taken on the task of dlebury. Law, teaching, graduate school, NGOs: teaching core courses for our major, while Lau- these are but a few sites in which they are trans- rie Essig and Sujata Moorti were on research lating feminist knowledge into action. We plan leave over two consecutive years. Apart from on continuing to highlight our alumnae in future providing continuity to the program Anson has newsletters both to celebrate their achievements been an amazing colleague and teacher; he has and to cultivate an intergenerational sense of brought a new range of topics to our curriculum community among our current students. Alums and some vital energy to Chellis House. In the and graduates please keep us updated on your fall Anson will take on a new position. On behalf accomplishments. of GSFS students, staff, and faculty we wish him Intersectionality continued to be the best of luck in his new endeavors. We will miss theme of all our activities in the Spring semester. him and thank him for all that he has done for The spotlight event was the conversation be- GSFS, Chellis House, QSH and the larger cam- tween renowned writers Edwidge Danticat and pus community. Julia Alvarez, which we describe in the pages that follow. To end the year’s activities, the Gens- Sujata Moorti and Karin Hanta ler Family Symposium too centered on intersec- tionality in media representations. Spotlight on some WAGS/GSFS Alumnae/i Christine Bachman-Sanders Veronica Coates ’14 is pursuing an ’09 is a Ph.D. candidate with a M.A. degree in ethnic studies at San minor in Feminist and Critical Francisco State University where Sexuality Studies at the Univer- her emphasis is Black and/or Afri- sity of Minnesota, Twin Cities. cana Studies. In the fall, Veronica Christine’s dissertation research will be working on her master’s examines the relationship between the “new thesis titled “Gimme the Yam: Black woman,” American imperialism, and the bicycle Women, the Academy and Practices of Self-Care craze of the 1890s. Her work explores the bicycle in Liberal Arts Colleges.” In this thesis, she will as a symbol of progress and a social technology be researching resiliency and trauma, higher that is galvanized to support a specific political education, black women’s student organizing, and moral rhetoric for the “new woman,” and and the comparative study of black women’s ac- to regulate a healthy (sober) civilization primed tivism in the U.S. Veronica was recently accepted for global expansion. She is particularly con- into the Institute for Recruitment of Teachers cerned with how late 19th-century bicycle tour- at Philips Andover, which supports underrep- ism depends upon classed, sexed, and racialized resented students who are applying to graduate associations with leisure. At the 2016 NWSA school and who aim to teach. Through the pro- Conference, she will present two papers titled gram, she will be applying to PhD programs in “Citizen/Cyborg: The ‘New Woman’ as Agent of American/Ethnic Studies with an emphasis on U.S. Empire-Building” and “Time, Space, and gender, sexuality and feminist Studies. Bicycle Travel: The Queer Archive and Mapping Anachronistic Histories” Aifuwa Ehigiator ’09 left Bloomberg LP after six years to start his company Our Street. Our Luke Brown ’13 is working at the fundamentally Street uses community investment via equity feminist organization Compass Working Capital, crowd-funding to create energy efficient afford- whose majority clientele is single mothers. Luke able housing. Aifuwa also works part-time at St. is the NGO’s director of technology and a pro- John’s Bread and Life as a development consul- gram manager for a partnership with the Cam- tant. bridge Housing Authority. In the latter capacity, he serves as a financial coach to clients living in Kolbe Franklin ’08 is a Ph.D. subsidized housing. In September 2016, he will candidate in sociology at the start a feminist MBA program (as contradictory University of Albany-SUNY. as that may sound) at Stanford University. Kolbe’s dissertation project “Queering Sexual Development Frameworks: A Dynamic Sys- tems Approach to Conceptual- izing Other-Sex Sexuality Among Lesbians” was for his immersive style and for creating a playful accepted in late April. She will give a presenta- learning environment, Ryan constantly visits tion about her dissertation research at the Na- classrooms to check on 160 children. Within tional Women’s Studies Conference in Montreal two years after his start as principal in 2013, 95 in November 2016. In the fall, Kolbe will also be percent of Ryan’s students hit their language and teaching at Skidmore College. literacy goals, and 91 percent their math goal. The Washington Post credited his success to Ryan Caroline Kahlenberg ’14 published a paper en- taking care of his teachers. Mr. T., as he is affec- titled “’The Gospel of Health’: American Mis- tionately called at his school, has also written sionaries and the Transformation of Ottoman/ five children’s books that incorporate math and Turkish Women’s Bodies, 1890-1932” in the science concepts. Ryan was honored at a ceremo- peer-reviewed journal Gender and History. This ny at the White House, where he met President work is based on her senior thesis for the history Obama and Secretary of Education John King department, and was also shaped by her course- (pictured on the left). In the fall, he will be mov- work in GSFS. Starting in the fall, Caroline will ing on to the position of Director of Early Child- be pursuing a doctorate in history and Middle hood Strategy for charter schools in Washington, Eastern Studies at Harvard University. D.C. Jamie Mittelman ’10 is a Senior Marketing Man- Zohra Safi ’09 graduated from ager on the Citizen AOL team, a the University of Ottawa’s En- foundation championing women. Jamie heads glish Common Law Program AOL’s cause marketing work, managing a media this month. She will be working portfolio of $30 million of in kind advertising with Legal Aid Ontario (LAO) media supporting nonprofit work. as a duty counsel in Ottawa. LAO provides legal services to Kate Silbert ’08 is a Ph.D. candidate in American low-income people in a number of areas, includ- history at the University of Michigan. She will ing immigration and refugee hearings, family most likely defend her dissertation titled “Com- and criminal matters. Zohra has always been mitted to Memory: Gender, Literary Engage- passionate about social justice and is looking ment, and Commemorative Practice, 1780-1830” forward to applying the skills and knowledge she in spring of 2017. acquired at law school. Ryan Tauriainen ’08, co-founder Katie Willis ’12 has moved to her native Ala- of the Queer Studies Academic bama, where she works for a bakery, a farm, and Interest House (QSH), garnered the Alabama Sustainable Agriculture Network. the Washington Post’s Principal She is also involved in queer organizing with the of the Year Award. Ryan has Atlanta-based organization Southerners on New been working at the Apple Tree Ground (SONG) and the #ShutdownEtowah Institute Early Learning Public campaign to end the human rights abuses at the Charter School in Columbia Heights. Praised Etowah County Detention Center. Scheherazade’s Sisters: Julia Alvarez & Edwidge Danticat in Conversation On March 16, writer-in-residence Julia Al- of the henchmen at the service of the Duva- varez ‘71 and Haitian-American novelist Edwidge lier dictatorship in The Dew Breaker, Edwidge Danticat engaged in a conversation for women’s Danticat followed the dictum of ancient writer history month. This event was also designed to Terence: “Nothing human is alien to me.” By honor Julia Alvarez, who will be retiring from exploring the humanity of a character wedded her position by the end of this school year. Julia to the ideals of toxic patriarchy, she was able to Alvarez, renowned for her novels How the García portray him in all his human facets. Edwidge Girls Lost Their Accents and In The Time of The has also come to realize that many of her novels Butterflies, has been linked center on the effects of to the college for 47 years collective trauma and ever since she started her describe the creative undergraduate education ways survivors of a at Middlebury. dictatorship have come Edwidge Danti- to deal with it. “It is si- cat rose to fame with her lences that draws me to 1994 novel Breath, Eyes, stories,” she said. “This Memory, which explores silence [the fact that the centrality of the moth- these stories initially er-daughter relationship to are not told] makes self-identity and self-ex- Julia Alvarez and Edwidge Danticat at Dana Auditorium them exceptional.” She pression. In her 1998 conducted her research novel The Farming of Bones, she documented the for The Dew Breaker in the Haitian-American 1937 massacre of Haitians living in the Domini- community, which has included both survivors can Republic at the Dajabón River by the Trujillo and perpetrators. Unearthing the stories was a dictatorship. delicate process. In their conversation, both writers, who Julia Alvarez revealed that she did not like also consider themselves human (w)righters, to read as a child growing up in the Dominican pondered on the power of story-telling.