Archive | Announcements

What IFF?: Queering Trauma Recovery

Queering Trauma Recovery

A new episode of What IFF? is out! We are joined by two trauma-informed experts to break down the misconceptions about sexual assault, trauma recovery, and patterns of serial perpetration. Katie Mai, LMSW, is a therapist with the Sexual Assault Services program at MUSC Lyn Maples is an outreach coordinator and victim advocate with Tri-County S.P.E.A.K.S.

Together, we analyze data on victimization to better understand what’s happening in our culture. Then, we use that knowledge to create supportive practices for survivor healing and improve educational tools to change social attitudes about gender-based violence.

To speak with a victim advocate, call the Tri-County S.P.E.A.K.S. 24-hour hotline at 843-745-0144 or the National Sexual Assault hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE.

Music by Clean Mind Sounds
Podcast Producer: WGS student, Bria Ferguson

Statement of Solidarity & Support for Trans Community

Today, March 31, is International Transgender Day of Visibility! This day is observed around the world as a way of celebrating trans and non-binary people by centering their contributions to society, elevating their voices, and drawing attention to the discrimination they face.

The Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Gender and Sexuality Equity Center, Multicultural Student Programs and Services, and the Office of Student Wellness & Well-being join together in solidarity and support for trans members of our community at CofC, and across the Charleston area and the U.S. South.

We are collectively opposed to the harmful attacks against trans people whether those originate in legislation and the carceral system, in reckless media coverage, on college campuses, or in family units. These actions are fundamentally about eradicating trans existence.

We are firmly against efforts to criminalize gender affirming and supportive medical care, the exclusion of trans children from sports, and efforts to outlaw the discussion of LGBTQ+ people and their experiences in our schools.

Trans people have existed for all of human history. Before Europeans colonized the globe, indigenous communities across the world acknowledged and celebrated multiple gender identities. Colonization redefined culture, identities, values, and norms, and imposed the European ideal of gender (man and woman) as a tool for the process of oppression. Despite the visibility that once existed, transgender people have been pushed to the margins and their experiences erased.

Our collective offices are working to change this. We are here to support, affirm, and elevate the voices of our trans community. We are committed to and invested in combating disinformation, drawing attention to the epidemic of violence against trans women of color, and ensuring the inclusion of trans voices in our classrooms, policies, and campus leadership. We are here to provide support through student programming, peer and professional support services, academic courses, and the facilitation of a number of trainings, workshops, and talks that make trans people and trans experiences visible.

Together we want our trans students, faculty, and staff to know that we see you. You matter. You are loved. You belong.

For more information on campus LGBTQ+ resources and information you can visit:

https://libguides.library.cofc.edu/lgbtq

https://libguides.library.cofc.edu/c.php?g=1016721&p=7364508

https://today.cofc.edu/2023/03/31/college-provides-resources-support-on-international-transgender-day-of-visibility/

Inaugural WGS Community Leader in Residence

Mika Gadsden

Women’s and Gender Studies program at the College of Charleston announces its inaugural Community Leader-in-Residence

Charleston, SC – The College of Charleston’s Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) program is proud to announce its first Community Leader-in-Residence, an initiative to bridge the College and the greater Charleston community in partnership to advance equity and justice. The WGS program is honored to host Tamika Gadsden as its inaugural Community Leader-in-Residence (CLR), serving in this capacity from January through August 2023.

The Community Leader-in-Residence will support students in applying keystone concepts of the WGS discipline: intersectionality, power, resistance, equity, justice, and advocacy, in their understandings of and skills in areas such as community organizing, political and policy intervention strategies, needs assessment, effective communication, evidence-based advocacy, inclusive strategizing/planning for community action, and grant writing. Finally, the CLR will help to advance the College’s 2020-2030 Strategic Plan in the area of Academic Distinction through innovations for sustainable solutions, commitments to diversity, equity, inclusion and justice, and impactful, strategic partnerships.

This initiative is the culmination of years of critical dreaming by WGS students, faculty, and administrators. In 2018, Women’s and Gender Studies students were central to forming I-CAN, the Intersectional Cougar Action Network, which quickly became a voice for intersectional feminist student activism. Following the 2020 protests against the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and many other Black and Brown individuals as well as sustained national attention to a racial justice movement, the WGS program formed the Student Advisory Committee (SAC) with intentional representation of students with AALANA (African American, Latinx, Asian and Native American) and other underrepresented identities. The SAC provides WGS students with opportunities for shared governance in the program. One of the Committee’s first actions was to detail the Community Leader-in-Residence proposed by I-CAN, as a strategy for developing student leadership capacities.

Embracing the idea, over the last two years the WGS Executive Faculty Committee developed the position description, taking care to ensure that the role is reciprocal and sustainable, and that the initiative honored students’ original vision while advancing WGS program priorities.

Tamika “Mika” Gadsden is a Charleston-based content creator, media entrepreneur and organizer. The daughter of Jim Crow refugees, Mika has built a significant digital presence as an activist and has built Charleston Activist Network Media, LLC. – an outgrowth of her work as the South Carolina leader of the state’s Women’s March organization. Mika also hosts Mic’d Up, a daily livestream show on Twitch.

While the role is continually being defined in collaboration with Gadsden, the WGS program invites student scholar-activist-leaders in WGS and at the College broadly to join faculty leaders in welcoming Gadsden and ensuring her time as the Community Leader-in-Residence is generative and transformative.

The Women’s and Gender Studies program explores the intersections of gender, class, race, ethnicity, age, religion, ability, and sexuality within different cultures, contexts and time periods, offering a Bachelor of Arts major and minor at the College of Charleston, introducing students to relevant social issues while fostering critical thinking, strong verbal, writing and research skills, encouraging social advocacy, emphasizing diversity, and giving invaluable, tangible experience.

For more information, quotes, photos, or to schedule an interview, please email Kris De Welde, Director of WGS at deweldek@cofc.edu.

Tamika Gadsden

Transgender Day of Remembrance

TDOR 2022

Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) is an annual observance on November 20 that honors the memory of the transgender people whose lives were lost in acts of anti-transgender violence. Gwendolyn Ann Smith, TDOR founder, said “TDOR seeks to highlight the losses we face due to anti-transgender bigotry and violence. I am no stranger to the need to fight for our rights, and the right to simply exist is first and foremost. With so many seeking to erase transgender people—sometimes in the most brutal ways possible—it is vitally important that those we lose are remembered, and that we continue to fight for justice.” – From the Human rights campaign website

WGS Community Leader in Residence

WGS Community Leader in Residence

WGS is now accepting applications for our new initiative: The Women’s and Gender Studies Community Leader in Residence. Posting details can be found here: https://jobs.cofc.edu/postings/12982

The Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) Community Leader in Residence (CLR) position serves to bridge the College of Charleston and the greater Charleston community in a knowledge-based partnership. Recommended by the WGS Student Advisory Committee as a strategy to support student leadership development, the CLR will advise student leaders in WGS through workshops and one-on-one mentoring to develop strategies for disrupting and dismantling local systems of oppression. Through rotating one- year appointments, CLRs representing and/or serving marginalized and minoritized populations will help students apply the keystone concepts of the WGS discipline: intersectionality, power, resistance, equity, justice, and advocacy. We aim for this initiative to reflect sustainable, reciprocal partnerships, rippling out into the Charleston and campus communities, strengthening the College’s role as a vital source of ideas and partnerships in Charleston, and across the South.

Goals include:

  • Tangibly support a community leader – emerging or established – in ongoing efforts to advance equity and justice in a way that reflects a reciprocal partnership between the College of Charleston and the Charleston community;
  • Strengthen community engagement for students, faculty and staff within and beyond WGS;
  • Offer role models of inclusive and intersectionally-focused community leadership, activism, advocacy, and organizing on topics relevant to the field of Women’s and Gender Studies;
  • Develop students’ understandings of and skills in areas such as community organizing, political and policy intervention strategies, needs assessment, effective communication, evidence-based advocacy, inclusive strategizing/planning for community action, grant writing, and collaboration;
  • Advance the College’s 2020-2030 Strategic Plan in the area of Academic Distinction through innovations for sustainable solutions, commitments to diversity, equity, inclusion and justice, and impactful, strategic partnerships.

Read more at the link above, and please share this with folks in our community whom you think would be a good fit for this role. The posting will close on Monday 11/21.

Cristina Dominguez Featured on The College Today!

Cristina Dominguez The College Today

New WGS faculty member, Cristina Dominguez (they/them) is featured on The College Today, CofC’s information platform for campus news. Read more at The College Today – here – or the full Q&A below!

Cristina Maria Dominguez Assistant Professor, Women’s and Gender Studies

Background: While I was born and spent the first 15 years of my life in New Jersey, I came of age, came out, into consciousness and community, in North Carolina. I have my M.A. in women’s and gender studies from San Diego State University and just completed my Ph.D. in educational studies with a concentration in cultural foundations from the University of North Carolina Greensboro. Over the past decade, I have engaged in intersectional, critical, queer social justice education and action work through teaching undergraduate women’s and gender studies and education courses, and engaging in campus and community education and grassroots social justice organizing work.

Expertise: My areas of expertise and research interests include qualitative, auto-ethnographic, CAP ethnographic and post-qualitative research with a focus on liberatory pedagogies, critical community building and everyday, relational social justice work specifically within queer love, friendship, kinship/chosen family relationships.

Outside Interests: I enjoy spending time with my partner, our little one and our pups, especially outside when the weather is nice. I love to talk and connect with my chosen family, friends and given family however I can. I’m a fan of watching and critiquing TV/movies and talking pop culture and politics with loved ones who share my critical/queer analysis. I love to read creative nonfiction, poetry and fiction alongside articles, studies and research texts. I also love dancing and listening to music.

Looking Forward: The most exciting thing about the courses that I’ll teach at CofC is that, in both content and practice, they will be grounded in liberatory, intersectional, feminist, queer education that centers on the embodied, creative and relational. I’m excited to take up teaching and learning in ways that moves us toward interconnectedness and fosters collaboration with each other as well as the communities we are a part of.

Spring 2023 WGS Course List

Spring 2023 Course Brochure Page 1

Spring 2023 Course Brochure Page 2

Need an advising appointment? Reach out to Dr. De Welde (deweldek@cofc.edu) or Dr. Ravalico (ravalicold@cofc.edu).

Yes! I’m a Feminist. is Back

Yes! I'm a Feminist

“Yes! I’m a Feminist.” is celebrating 10 years as an annual event and fundraiser organized by the WGS Community Advisory Board in support of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at The College of Charleston.

Today through Friday, November 4th – we are campaigning for feminist futures and a more just world for all! Donate and/or register to attend the event here: https://bit.ly/3RxqQgK

Why WGS? Info Session

Why WGS Info Session

Learn more about Women’s & Gender Studies!

Join us for an info session on courses, co-curricular opportunities, grad programs, career paths, & ways WGS can enhance a wide variety of career goals!

Wednesday, September 28

Stern Center, Room 205

4:00PM-5:00PM

 

WGS Student Opportunities Fund Recipients 2021-2022

WGS Opportunities Fund

WGS is excited to share the 2021-2022 recipients of the WGS Student Opportunities Fund. See what our amazing students have been up to thanks to this funding initiative!

In Spring of 2019, WGS launched the WGS Student Opportunities Fund so that students may apply for funding to support engagement in study abroad, internships, community-based learning projects, and research/scholarly activities. Funding for these opportunities is made possible because of our generous sponsors in the community and on campus.

2021-2022 Recipients:

Marissa Haynes (she/her)

Attended the 2022 Sociologists for Women in Society winter meetings as the social action committee intern.

Patrick Meyer (they/he)

Presented at the 2022 annual conference of the Society for Personality & Social Psychology, poster title: Breaking Down, Pushing Out: An Organizing Framework for Promoting Authenticity and Mitigating Harm Among Boys & Men.

Ahmira Lucas (she/her), Del Lamere (they/them), Jeronimo Ortega (he/el), & Keke Humphrey (she/her)

Organized body positivity event, Every Body Deserves Lovin’ Yoga Class and self-care discussion with Inner Work Instigator, Kennae Miller in April 2022.

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