Sexuality, Women’s & Gender Studies Fall 2018 Newsletter

Amrita Basu

Amrita Basu enjoyed serving as chair of SWAGS this past year and looks forward to another year of productive engagement with our wonderful students and colleagues. SWAGS organized a number of large, campus-wide events, spanning the arts and contemporary politics. We have also been active in our vibrant five college community, through the Five College Reproductive Health, Rights and Justice program and the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center. Amrita has contributed to the broader field of sexuality, women’s and gender studies by participating in an external review committee of the Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies Program at Middlebury College, the Victoria Shuck Book Award of the American Political Science Association for the best book on women and politics, and reviewing applications in Women’s Studies for the Fulbright Fellowships Committee.

Amrita’s research concerns women’s activism and Hindu nationalism. Her publications this past year include: “Narendra Modi and India’s Populist Democracy,” Indian Politics and Policy, (Volume 1, Number 1), March 2018; “More than Meets the Eye: Sub-Rosa Violence in Hindu Nationalist India,” in Karen Barkey, Sudipto Kaviraj and Vatsal Naresh eds., Negotiating Democracy and Religious Pluralism, (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming, 2018) and “Whither Democracy, Secularism and Minority Rights in India?” The Review of Faith & International Affairs (forthcoming, 2018).

She participated in several workshops and conferences, at the India International Center, New Delhi, Rutgers, Tufts University, the University of Connecticut at Storrs, Simpson College, the Annual Conference on South Asia in Madison, Wisconsin, and the Association of Asian Studies annual meetings in Washington DC. She also served on a panel organized by our wonderful South Asian Students’ Association on South Asian Feminisms.

Aneeka Henderson

The Coolidge Corner Theatre, an independent cinema in Brookline, Massachusetts, invited Professor Henderson to give a public lecture in July 2018 on Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing (1989). She discussed the film’s complex aesthetic, cultural, and sociopolitical landscape, including the film score, costume design, and cinematography.

In March 2018, she gave a talk at Black Portraitures IV: The Color of Silence at Harvard University. In collaboration with Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Black Portraitures brings together artists and scholars from an assortment of disciplines and practices, including literature, art history, fashion, performance, and fine art.

Manuela Picq

Professor Manuela Lavinas Picq started 2018 with launching a new book, Vernacular Sovereignties: Indigenous Women Challenging World Politics (University of Arizona Press, 2018). In Vernacular Sovereignties, Picq shows that Indigenous women have long been dynamic political actors in international politics. Her research on Ecuador shows that although Kichwa women face overlapping oppressions, they are achieving rights unparalleled in the world. They successfully advocated for women’s participation in the administration of Indigenous justice during the 2008 constitutional reform, creating the first constitution in Latin America to explicitly guarantee the rights of Indigenous women, and the first worldwide to require gender parity in the administration of justice. This book weaves feminist perspectives with Indigenous studies as it expands conceptual debates on state sovereignty.

Picq’s book was discussed in a book salon with Amrita Basu (Amherst College), Kiran Asher (UMass), and Ashley Smith (Hampshire College) at the Center for Humanistic Inquiry, then on a podcast of Imagine Otherwise, and acquired by the bookstore of the United Nations in New York.

In the spring, Picq was nominated among the new generation of public intellectuals in the Western Hemisphere by the New York based organization Global Americans. Her public engagement with women and indigenous rights in Ecuador that led her to be detained then expelled in 2015 was taken to the big screen in 2018 with the documentary “La Manuela”. Her ban was finally reversed, and she will be spending the fall 2018 in Ecuador.

Khary Polk

After returning from his sabbatical last fall, Professor Polk was invited to Yale University to present his book chapter, “Negro Heroines: Gender, Race, and Immunity in the Spanish-Cuban-American War” to their Working Group on Race and Slavery in the Atlantic World to 1900. In the spring of 2018, he participated in the #MeToo panel with Masha Gessen and Loretta Ross and SWAGS faculty, and was also a participant in two conferences held at The Graduate Center, City University of New York: “An Intimate Plenary: New Research on HIV/AIDS Studies” and the Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean’s “Cultures of the Contemporary African Diaspora” symposium.

This summer, Prof. Polk returned to the Freie Universität Berlin’s John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies as a Visiting Professor. While finishing his book manuscript, he also advised doctoral students on their dissertation projects and presented the public lecture, “We Don’t Need Another Hero: The Paradox of Black Military Imperialism.” During his stay in Berlin he also participated in the “Entangled Diasporas: Shadow Archives in Black, Queer, and Postcolonial Studies” symposium at the Humboldt University, where he presented archival work on black gay military veteran Perry Watkins.

Sahar Sadjadi

This year, Professor Sadjadi completed her book manuscript Beautiful Children: Medicine and the Future of Gender and submitted it to the publisher. Her article on the accounts of authenticity in pediatric gender transition was accepted by the journal of Cultural Anthropology. She invited several scholars, artists and activists to her classes, and to an event she organized in the spring: Transgender Politics Now. Dr. Norma Moruzzi spoke on gender, space and architecture and Dr. Asli Zengin on intimacy, the state and Muslim transgender funerals in Turkey. Dr. Kai Green discussed a Black transfeminist approach to ethnographic film and performed a stage reading of his memoir. Cecilia Gentili performed a narrative of trans women, immigration, incarceration and sex work. Rosza Daniel Lang/Levitsky presented on the history of trans women in the feminist movements in North America, and performed three pieces on trans dyke lives.    

Professor Sadjadi was invited as the 2018 Visiting Professor in Bioethics and Pediatrics at University of Pittsburgh, presenting the annual Donald Medearis Lecture in pediatric ethics at the university’s Children’s Hospital. This visit also included a lecture at the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program, and a meeting with the hospital’s ethics committee to discuss growth attenuation and gendered bodily alteration of young people, particularly those with disabilities. She contributed to the #MeToo panel at Amherst College in March, and was invited to give a lecture on her research at Bennington College in April. Professor Sadjadi has been awarded a fellowship by the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, where she will be conducting research during the 2018-2019 academic year.

Krupa Shandilya

Prof. Shandilya was on sabbatical this year and she went to India for two months on a research trip for a new project on the Urdu poet, Miraji (1919-1948).

Sanā’ullah Dār, better known by his pen-name Mīrajī, is one of the most innovative modern Urdu poets of the Indian subcontinent. Like many artists, he borrowed freely from whatever poetic traditions inspired him—French symbolism, ancient Greek poetry, English and American modernism, ancient Chinese poetry. Unlike his contemporaries, he absorbed these outside influences and fused them into daring new forms such as a lyric with a metrical structure that drew on both Hindi and Urdu meters, nonsense verse and folk songs.

Perhaps Mīrajī’s greatest (and most notorious) contribution was to bring explicit and graphic descriptions of sexual desire and sexuality to Urdu poetry. Although these themes did exist in “low” or satirical Urdu poetry such as folk songs and women’s poetry, the high or classical tradition of poetry had either shied away from such themes or coded them in complex metaphors. In bringing these more sensual descriptions to haute Urdu poetry, Mīrajī created a new poetic register for exploring varied sexual proclivities such as sadism, masochism and masturbation. His poetry moves fluidly among gendered voices and identities and thus prefigures contemporary debates in transgender studies about the fixity of gender and sexual identities.

 She spent a lot of time in Delhi trying to get access to the All India Radio archives where Miraji worked from 1942-44, but she had no luck getting through all the bureaucracy and red tape. Every time she went they’d tell her something new—we don’t have old records, we’ve recorded over all records, the old records are lost. We’ll never know which poems Miraji put to music and if he wrote any new ones just for radio!

Jessica Vooris

Jessica Ann Vooris spent most of her childhood on the rural Eastern Shore of Maryland running around barefoot and swimming in creeks. She has also lived in England, is a dual-citizen of the US and the UK, and considers both countries home.

While an undergraduate at Bucknell University she fell in love with Women's Studies, and feminist and queer activism. After graduation she worked in Mexico on an anthropology project about indigenous women and finance, and then completed her PhD in Women's Studies at the University of Maryland, with a specific focus on Queer and Trans Studies.

Her current research focuses on children's gender and sexuality, and she is writing a book about transgender, gender-creative, and gay children. This summer she had the honor of being art director at Camp Aranu'tiq, a summer camp for trans kids, and spent three weeks in the New Hampshire woods designing cool art projects.

Jessica is an avid bird-watcher, and loves camping, and kayaking. She is also a poet and writes a blog called "The Spaces In Between" (jvoor.wordpress.com). In her move to Amherst, she is accompanied by her adorable pup, Pippin, a Beagle-Havanese mix who loves everybody he meets.

Sonaali Pandiri '18

Sonaali is a recent graduate from Los Angeles, California who majored in SWAGS and completed the pre-med requirements. Originally a Psychology major, Sonaali became passionate about SWAGS after taking Professor Shandilya’s class, Global Women’s Literature, her junior Fall. She officially declared her senior year, and quickly realized that SWAGS was a necessary lens in examining all aspects of her life. After graduating, she plans to combine her interests in healthcare and SWAGS, as there is a growing need for inclusive, compassionate, and culturally competent medical care.

She recently got back from a medical mission in Kenya where she assisted a team of doctors and nurses in providing care to underserved populations in different rural towns. There, she also partnered with AFRIPads, a Ugandan-based company that makes reusable menstrual pads, and introduced them to women at a local clinic in Ngong, Kenya, educating them on usage and care and empowering them to spread their knowledge to other women in the community. She hopes to continue this project and find more ways to help people in the US gain access to affordable and reusable menstrual products. In the long term, she hopes to attend medical school and use her degree and her knowledge in SWAGS to serve people with inadequate access to healthcare and contribute to larger public health initiatives.

Marah Brubaker '19

Marah Brubaker is a double major in Sexuality, Women’s, & Gender Studies and Anthropology and is expected to graduate in the Spring of 2019. In her three years thus far at Amherst, she has taken courses in 14 different departments and has been deeply interested in the ways that the topics highlighted in the SWAGS department pervade almost all disciplines. Both Anthropology and SWAGS seem to transcend the classroom and permeate the world around us, which makes them unsurpassingly valuable. This played a huge role in leading her to declare them as her majors. Outside of the classroom, Marah works as a Teaching Assistant and Academic Intern in the Department of Anthropology and as a student worker in the Office of Admission. She does not yet have plans made for after graduation, but cannot wait to see the ways that her studies at Amherst will educate and guide her life post-Amherst.

Kennedy Reed '19

 Kennedy Reed is a SWAGS and Mathematics double major from the Bay Area, California. She chose to become a SWAGS major because she enjoys intellectual and creative studies relating to her identities. Kennedy integrates her education in experiences outside of the college. This spring, she studied abroad in Spain, applying her SWAGS perspective to Spanish social studies courses and returning with a more global understanding. In her summer internship at McMaster-Carr Supply Company, Kennedy engages both her quantitative and qualitative academic backgrounds to analyze potential for the company's success. She looks forward to continuing to explore the intersections of sexuality, women’s and gender studies and math through personal research.

Kathleen Isenegger '20

Kathleen Isenegger is a major in both SWAGS and Computer Science, and she will graduate in the spring of 2020. She is from the small town of Howell, Michigan. Kathleen has known she wanted to study gender and sexuality for quite some time, but could not have imagine the expanse of academic inquiry that the SWAGS department has gifted her. Although she does plan on pursuing future education and a career in the field of computer science, her SWAGS courses have done much to enhance her views of herself and the world around her. On campus, Kathleen works multiple jobs with both Access Services and the Office of Admissions.

Sahara Ndiaye '20

Sahara is a rising junior and SWAGS and Art History double major. She knew she wanted to major in SWAGS when the most interesting readings in her first year seminar (Representing Equality) and film and media studies class were the feminist theory readings. She knows that studying SWAG is useful because it changes the way she thinks about not only gender but how culture functions and how each individual complies. She hopes to combine her interest in social construction with her love of visual culture in her post‐grad career.

Feriel Ouerghi '20

Feriel grew up in a period of political turmoil as she witnessed the rise of the Arab Spring in Tunisia during her teenage years. The 2011 Tunisian Revolution brought up many new topics she was unfamiliar with such as the superficial political representation of women, the demonization of the LGBTQ+ community and their invisibility/hypervisibility in Tunisia, and the politics of anti-blackness that became normalized and internalized. Trying to navigate these issues and learn more about them became harder by the day due to the limited availability of resources, as well as a general negative sentiment towards those who bring up questions about race, gender and sexuality. Attending Amherst College and taking SWAGS courses have enabled her to learn more than she had ever thought she would. She enjoys being in classrooms where everyone is curious and open to learn more about how others experience certain events. Her favorite part of SWAGS classes is having access to academic writings that address the politics surrounding Muslim and Arab women.