Past Colloquia

Kamilah investigates the consequences of patriarchy and misogyny, at the intersections of race and sex, and illustrates how our culture, norms and institutions are complicit in this abuse. Kamilah has trained a variety of stakeholders, from prison guards to campus officials, on their responsibilities to prevent and address sexual violence among their ranks and within their environments. Through this work, Kamilah invites audiences to explore healing from trauma as a path to resistance and revolution. Through her nuanced and personal perspective Kamilah helps audiences imagine alternative systems for healing and reconciliation outside of our justice system.

Roxane Gay is an author, cultural critic, and University of Nebraska–Lincoln English alumna whose writing is unmatched and widely revered. Her work garners international acclaim for its reflective, no-holds-barred exploration of feminism and social criticism. With a deft eye on modern culture, she brilliantly critiques its ebb and flow with both wit and ferocity. In this informal discussion-style presentation, Gay read passages from her highly anticipated memoir, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, and engaged in lively Q&A with the audience.

Jaclyn Friedman is the creator of Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, What You Really Really Want: The Smart Girl’s Shame-Free Guide to Sex & Safety, and her latest, Unscrewed: Women, Sex, Power and How to Stop Letting the System Screw Us All. Her podcast, also called Unscrewed, is paving new paths to sexual liberation, and was named one of the Best Sex Podcasts by both Marie Claire and Esquire. Friedman’s work has popularized the “yes means yes” standard of sexual consent that is quickly becoming law on many US campuses.

Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens moves between southern plantations and northern urban centers to reveal how nineteenth-century American ideas about race, health, and status influenced doctor-patient relationships in sites of healing like slave cabins, medical colleges, and hospitals. She retells the story of the rise of modern gynecology from the perspectives of black enslaved women and Irish immigrant women.

February 15, 2018
Student panel (Ayat Aribi, Zoe Hatfield, Abby Garden, and Cindi Izaguirre-Perez)
SPRING 2018 WGS COLLOQUIA: TRANSLATING WOMEN, TRANSLATING FEMINISM IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD

A roundtable discussion that featured four Global Studies undergradutes with an interest in women, gender, and feminism. 

March 26, 2018
Community Panel (Shams Al-Badry, Lacey Studnicka, Anna Spethman, and Isdihar Sheik)
SPRING 2018 WGS COLLOQUIA: TRANSLATING WOMEN, TRANSLATING FEMINISM IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD

A roundtable discussion that featured individuals working with immigrant/refugee communities here in Lincoln. 

While a growing body of literature on transgender men’s experiences has come to the forefront, relatively little exists to document the experiences of their partners. Drawing upon interviews with fifty cisgender women partners of transgender men in the U.S. and Canada, Pfeffer examines the experiences of a community that often seems ordinary on its surface. Queering Families details the struggles and strengths of these women as they work to build identities, partnerships, families, and communities.

Dr. Catherine Connell, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Boston University, was the first speaker in the Women's and Gender Studies Fall 2015 Colloquium Series on Teaching and Social Justice. Her book, also the title of her talk, School's Out: Gay and Lesbian Teachers in the Classroom, considers the experiences of gay and lesbian identified teachers in California and Texas. In the book, Connell asks: how do gay and lesbian teachers grapple with their professional and sexual identities at work, given that they are constructed as mutually exclusive, even indeed as mutuall opposed? The book explores the tension between the rhetoric of gay pride and the professional ethic of discretion in the context of other complicating factors, from local law and politics to race and gender privilege.

Professor Wettlaufer is a core faculty member of the Comparative Literature, Women’s and Gender Studies and European Studies departments. She brought to light a rich and nearly forgotten culture of women’s artistic production, allowing us to understand the nineteenth-century in more complex and nuanced ways across the borders of gender, genre, and nation.

March 19, 2015
Brenda Flanagan
"Women and Conflict: The Contributions of American Foundations"
Spring 2015 WGS Colloquia

Flanagan explored interesting women personalities who developed diverse gendered survival and subversive strategies, including Eva Svankmajerova, the godmother of Czech surrealism, painter, and filmmaker, and a self-made feminist. Brenda Flanagan is a writer, poet, performer, scholar and U.S. cultural ambassador. This talk was sponsored by Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, the Czech Program, and the Komensky Club. 

April 20, 2015
Linda Przbyszewski
"The Lost Art of Dress"
Spring 2015 WGS Colloquia
"Women and Conflict: The Contributions of American Foundations"
Spring 2015 WGS Colloquia

Przybyszewski explained how Americans learned—and forgot—how to dress in the modern age. Her talk was sponsored by the Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design.

Dr. Alice Kang, an Assistant Professor in Political Science with a joint appointment with the Institute for Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, was the second speaker in the Women's and Gender Studies Fall 2015 Colloquium on Teaching and Social Justice. Dr. Kang argues that Muslim women are often portrayed in U.S. media in negative terms, as covered up and silent, needing to be saved. Her talk, "Muslim Women's Activism and Legislative Reform in Niger," examined Muslim activists' successes - and failures - at influencing legislative reform to provide a more accurate understanding of whether and how women, including Muslim women, affect political change.

October 3, 2014
Karma R. Chávez
"AIDS Knows No Borders”: Activist Rhetoric Against the U.S. Ban on HIV+ Immigration
Fall 2014 WGS Colloquia

In her talk Chávez examined the AIDS activist rhetoric used to challenge US immigration law during the 1990 and 1992 International AIDS Conferences. Their strategies offer insight into the function of rhetoric in building transnational coalitions, as well as into the unique characteristics of AIDS activist rhetoric during a time when for most, AIDS was a death sentence.

On November 17, 2001, then first lady Laura Bush addressed the nation via the president’s weekly radio speech, becoming the first presidential wife to do so. Emphasizing, “The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women," she reminded other nations of their global responsibility, by virtue of a “common humanity,” to ally with the US War on Terror. She appealed to the world to kick off a global endeavor against the violence on Muslim women and children in Afghanistan upheld by the al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

In Basuli Deb's talk transnational feminism confronts imperialist feminism as she traced what “Saving the Muslim Woman” came to mean as the war unfolded in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Dr. Andrea discussed early modern discourses of empire and cross cultural exchange between women of the West and the Islamic world. Her talk is the keynote address of the 2014 James A. Rawley Graduate Conference in the Humanities. This event is the keynote address of the 9th Annual James A. Rawley Graduate Conference in the Humanities.

This event showcased graduate student research from across the university. Panelists discussed their common interest in LGBT health and well-being from a range of disciplinary perspectives.

“Gender-Inclusive Language Best Practices,” Amy Vanderpool (Counseling Psychology)

“Disclosure, Concealment, and Well-being in Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Individuals,” Peter Meidlinger (Clinical Psychology)

“‘No Matter What:’ A Dialogic Analysis of Turning Points and Interaction in Parent/LGBT Child Relationships,” Amy Arellano, Allison Bonander, and Christina Ivey (Communication Studies)

Drawing upon her recent book on the history of Planned Parenthood, historian Rose Holz described the birth control clinic movement in the 1930s, which witnessed the emergence not just of the more commonly described charity clinics but also commercial ones. What Holz reveals is an unexpected story ― about the breadth of the clinic movement and the charity movement’s efforts to contain it.

Surgical sterilization is a relatively permanent form of contraception that has been overused on Black, Latina, and Native American women in the United States in the past. McQuillian and Shreffler explored if sterilization is still more common and more consequential among Black, Latina, and Native American women compared to White women in the United States, and if the patterns are the same for all marginalized groups. McQuillan and Shreffler argue that their findings suggest that stratified reproduction has not ended in the United States and that the patterns and consequence of sterilization continue to vary by race.

American Black women’s pregnant bodies have historically been used and abused for profit, experimentation, and population control. Linking this history to African American women’s literature, Kathleen Lacey explored the ways Black women authors reveal the complicated and nuanced experiences of being Black while pregnant. The Daily Nebraska featured an article about "'This Giving Birth':The Politics of Pregnancy and Childbirth in African American Women's History and Literature."

March 1, 2012
Michael Kimmel
"“Guyland”: The Perilous World When Boys Become Men"
Spring 2012 WGS Colloquia: Masculinities

Kimmel's talk came from his book, Guyland, which is an investigation of young peoples' lives today, based on interviews with more than 400 young men, age 16-26.

*Additional information regarding Michael Kimmel here.

September 28, 2011
Wangari Maathai
"Environment, Democracy, & Peace – A Critical Link"
Fall 2011 WGS Colloquia

Maathai provided a talk regarding efforts to promote democracy, human rights, and environmental concervation. She is the first woman in east and central Africa to earn a doctorate degree. She launched a tree planting initiative called the Green Belt Movement that emphasizes community empowerment and concervation. Through this organization more than 30 million trees on their farms, schools, and church compounds, have been planted across Kenya.

Fassler spoke about Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179). Hildegard was a German abbess, visual and musical artist. She is known as "Sybil of the Rhine" and produced major works of theology and visonary writings.

January 24, 2011
Lise Eliot
"Brain Sex: Truth, Tall Tales, and Time for a Developmental Perspective"
Spring 2011 WGS Colloquia: Science & Gender Matters

Elliot debunked several popular myths about sex differences in the human brain and their hormonal basis. Elliot discussed how such notions can be dangerous, as they validate stereotypes, bias clinical judgment, and dictate sex-selective eduactional policies.

March 15, 2011
Emily Monosson
"Motherhood, the Elephant in the Laboratory: Reconsidering the Leaky Pipeline?"
Spring 2011 WGS Colloquia: Science & Gender Matters

Monosson explored what some describe as "the leaky pipeline," the trickle of women scientists out of traditional scientific domains. While addressing why women in particular are pushed/pulled out of scientific communities, Monosson simultaneously calls for new understandings of what it mieans to be a scientist and do scientific work, highlighting the many ways scientist-parents still contribute to the scientific community. 

Schiebinger explored three distinct levels for analyzing issues concering women and gender in science: 1) efforts to increase the number of women in science, 2) programs to remove bias and barriers from the institutions of science, and 3) analyses of sex and gender in research results. 

Dosh and Hedin are the founders of and discussed Building Dignity, a non-profit development organizatino that advances an anti-poverty agenda grounded in scholarship and grassroots action.

March 5, 2010
Obioma Nnaemeka
"Captured in Translation: Feminisms in a World in Motion"
2010 NO LIMITS CONFERENCE / Spring 2010 WGS Colloquia

This presentation sought to answer the question: Is feminism translatable? In other words, can feminism cross borders and survive, and in what form(s) does it survive? In answering this question, Nnaemeka examined what became of feminism in its travels in and out of Africa by focusing on the following issues: ownership and appropriation, borders and border-crossing, disaggregation, domestication and "doing gender."