Women and Gender Studies

2024 Sojourner Truth lecturer Rokhaya Diallo explores her life and the experiences of women

Shayla Brown — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 20:21:56 +0000

2024 Sojourner Truth lecturer Rokhaya Diallo explores her life and the experiences of women Shayla Brown Fri, 03/08/2024 - 15:21

Award-winning journalist, broadcast host, and filmmaker Rokhaya Diallo is ��AV’s 2024 Sojourner Truth Lecture speaker and award recipient. Born in France to Senegalese and Indian parents, Diallo said she started to notice that fewer people looked like her as she advanced in her studies and career. This led her to explore her own identity and depict the experiences of other women of color in her work.

Sojourner Truth lecture speaker Rokhaya Diallo. Photo by Brigitte Sombie.

Race wasn’t something Diallo was really aware of while she was growing up, she said. “The U.S. narrative is prevalent all over the world, so whenever we speak about Black [public] figures [in France], we only refer to American figures,” said Diallo. For example, she said, there are landmarks named after figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., but not many named after historic Black figures from France.

Diallo’s lecture discussed Republican Universalism in France, and she shared clips from her documentaries demonstrating the challenges Black women in France faced expressing their multiple identities in a society that prides itself on being “colorblind.”

“It was important to question how France displayed itself on film and TV,” she said in describing her 2020 documentary Acting While Black: Blackness on French Screens.  “[The country] tried to tackle racist sentiments in the public space but also reshape the idea that we had about the French identity,” said Diallo.

“This was my favorite part of the lecture,” said LaNitra Berger, associate professor of history and art history and director of African and African American Studies Program. “It really highlighted the inconsistencies in French policy and culture that make it difficult for people of color to feel accepted in French society.”

Diallo’s February 26 lecture was virtual to an in-person audience.

“We wanted to be cost effective and honor Rokhaya's busy schedule, but we also wanted the feeling of a community gathering in person to discuss an important topic,” said Berger.  

The Sojourner Truth award is given annually to a Black woman whose work embodies the principles of Sojourner Truth through art, scholarship, activism, and contributions to public life. Sojourner Truth was an outspoken advocate for abolition, civil and women's rights in the nineteenth century. Previous speakers have included Marilyn Mobley, Jennifer C. Nash, Kakenya Ntaiya, Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, and Aja Clark.

Also in attendance at the lecture was Stephanie Rambo, an assistant professor with Mason’s English Department. Rambo was presented with the Sojourner Truth Faculty Award by Berger for her research on literary Black girlhood across the diaspora.

In This Story

LaNitra M. Berger, PhD

Topics

Sojourner Truth Lecture

Women and Gender Studies

African and African American Studies

Campus News

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Women's History Month

Supporting underserved graduate students focused on health equity research

Shayla Brown — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 19:24:51 +0000

Supporting underserved graduate students focused on health equity research Shayla Brown Tue, 12/06/2022 - 14:24

Photo by Getty Images

The Communicating Health Equity and Healing Justice Research Lab (CEHJ) came to life on ��AV’s campus in October 2021.

“It started out an all-Black women endeavor, but now it has expanded to Black and Brown men as well as alternative gender identity individuals,” said Akila Ka Ma’at, the director of the lab and core faculty member with Women and Gender Studies Program and the Communication Department.

The lab allows students to engage in the production of research projects and contribute to data collection efforts through an immersive experiential learning and training experience. Its members focus on the mental and reproductive health of Black women as well as identify factors related to internalized racism.

Ashley Dawson, who joined the lab as an undergraduate student, is getting her master’s in public health with a concentration in health promotion. She hopes to become a public health consultant as well as a program developer so she can provide health intervention for underserved communities.

“Currently, we’re working on the impact of the “Strong Black Woman” stigma on the birth outcomes in Black women,” said Dawson. “This allows us to address the intersectionality and social determinants that are either negatively or positively impacting prenatal health.”

Sahana Natarajan, who recently graduated from Rutgers Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, is currently working as Mason affiliate faculty in collaboration with the CEHJ research lab.

“Health communication was something I had never really done before. Despite that, Dr. Ma’at believed in my potential and went to great lengths to mentor me,” said Natarajan. “I’m still in the process of learning how to lead. I’m starting to lead my own projects.”

Natarajan is currently working on a pilot testing a survey to access racial stress and related factors among prenatal Black Women.

“This lab is really about team collaboration. Along with that, addressing health disparities. If that’s something that’s important to you, I think the lab will really benefit you in terms of increasing your abilities and your impact in the world,” she said.

Mason sociology student J Orisha is also a part of CEHJ and working on this project. “I think it’s important that there be more spaces like this for students. [My research interests have] honestly been changing the more involved I get on campus and meet more professors, but it’s centrally around African American/Black studies and anti-racist, decolonized research,” said Orisha.

“It’s an open environment where you mess up, great, you learn and keep moving. I never experienced that in the other schools,” Orisha said. “They’re actually trying to listen to their students. They really do care, and I really, really appreciate it.”

Ma’at hopes to collaborate with more disciplines and more community stakeholders. She wants the lab’s research to extend into the African diaspora and include immigrant communities in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.

The CEHJ Research Lab meets on Tuesdays from 2-3 p.m. and Thursdays from 1:30-2:30 p.m. in Robeson Room 240A in the Johnson Center.

Topics

African and African American Studies

Women and Gender Studies

ARIE

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Research

Communication Department

Meet the Mason Nation: Ric Chollar

Colleen Rich — Wed, 30 Nov 2022 15:33:56 +0000

Meet the Mason Nation: Ric Chollar Colleen Rich Wed, 11/30/2022 - 10:33

Ric Chollar

Job: Adjunct Faculty Member, Women and Gender Studies, School of Integrative Studies, Social Work

Ric Chollar Photo by Cristian Torres/Strategic Communications

Ric Chollar’s relationship with ��AV began in 1987 when he started teaching for the Psychology Department. In the late 1990s, he became the facilitator for an LGBTQ counseling group, and in 2001 he was hired as a consultant on what grew into the Safe Zone program. In the early 2000s, programs like Safe Zone increased LGBTQ visibility at Mason, and the LGBTQ resources staff at the time worked with faculty to institutionalize the first LGBTQ studies courses. From 2002 to 2017, Chollar was a staff member for what became the LGBTQ+ Resources Center, and he continues to teach as an adjunct.

Finding a Home at Mason: Chollar said he felt respected and encouraged by colleagues from the start, but that his time at Mason has required being humble enough to learn from mistakes. In his work, he aspires to achieve healing, compassion, justice, and liberation. “Even though it will look different for each person, how can I best support someone to become more free and more of who they know they are?”

It Takes a Village: Chollar’s involvement with Mason helped give shape to the university’s story of LGBTQ advocacy, one in which he insists there are many unsung heroes. Students initially took the lead on LGBTQ issues, and he credits the activist work of many longtime Mason faculty and staff. He said LGBTQ liaisons and leaders in offices and departments across Mason are key to successful support. Over the years, the LGBTQ+ Resources Center has consistently worked with the Women and Gender Studies Program; the office now known as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; the Center for Culture, Equity, and Empowerment; and Counseling and Psychological Services.

Strength from Diversity: Chollar said the efforts of programs like Safe Zone and events like Ryan Allen’s drag persona Reann Ballslee becoming Homecoming Queen helped increase the visibility of the LGBTQ community at Mason in the 2000s. One example Chollar gives of a cross-university collaboration that embodies the ideals of the LGBTQ+ Resources Center was when students advocated for inviting trans-rights activist Laverne Cox to campus. The resulting event was the one of the most successful Chollar has witnessed, and many students expressed finally feeling represented. “It is always important for us to work with students as whole, complicated people.”

Creating Spaces for All: Chollar encourages a balance between improving existing support and making spaces for a wider range of people. This includes acknowledging the importance of racial identity and that many LGBTQ students of color face specific oppression, as well as supporting trans and nonbinary people in leadership roles. “It’s not for us to think we're the experts. It’s about being open to learning from others, creating space for others to learn and lead, and ultimately, it’s about learning and working together.”

Topics

Faculty and Staff News

Meet the Mason Nation

LGBTQ+ Resources

Women and Gender Studies

Spirit Magazine

Spirit Spring 2023

Staff member Holly Mason Badra receives professional service award for LGBTQ+ work

Colleen Rich — Wed, 25 May 2022 12:12:40 +0000

Staff member Holly Mason Badra receives professional service award for LGBTQ+ work Colleen Rich Wed, 05/25/2022 - 08:12

Mason alum and staff member Holly Mason Badra (center in blue) received the Rose Pascarell and Ric Chollar Professional Service Award for exemplifying collaboration in her work to advance LGBTQIA+ visibility and efforts on campus. Photo provided

��AV staff member Holly Mason Badra received the Rose Pascarell and Ric Chollar Professional Service Award for exemplifying collaboration in her work to advance LGBTQIA+ visibility and efforts on campus. She received the award in April at the Lavender & Women and Gender Studies Graduation.

Mason Badra is the graduate admissions coordinator and fiscal manager for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences’ English Department. She is also the secretary for the LGBTQ+ Faculty/Staff Alliance, which provides opportunities within the queer community at Mason for advocacy and social activities.

“Receiving this award, getting that level of affirmation that what I do is important, is huge. It feels incredible,” said Mason Badra. “It feels like a million hugs and pats on the back.”

Christopher Carr, associate dean for diversity, outreach and inclusive learning in the College of Engineering and Computing, and David Powers Corwin, associate director of the Women and Gender Studies Program and instructional faculty in the School of Integrative Studies, and Sarah Holland, marketing specialist for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, nominated Mason Badra for the award.

Mason Badra “is the epitome of someone who tends and waters the gardens of so many others while never asking anyone to help sow her seeds,” Holland wrote.

“Her careful listening to multiple perspectives and sincere passion for change make her stand out in the work,” said Corwin. “She does all of this without any desire for recognition, which makes her being the recipient of this award so important.”

Josh Kinchen, director of the LGBTQ+ Resources Center, agreed. “Everyone I know sings Holly’s praises. A constant refrain is ‘She is the kindest person I know.’”

The award, created in 2019, is administered as a collaboration between the LGBTQ+ Resources Center and the Women and Gender Studies Center.

Mason Badra grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina and graduated from University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she fell in love with literature and poetry. She earned her MFA in creative writing from Mason in 2017. Mason Badra returned to Mason in 2019 to her current position because, she said, she missed the creative atmosphere

When Mason Badra was in graduate school at Mason, she came out to her parents. She found support at Mason during that time and hopes to serve as a queer advocate in the community.

“When I came into my job, I very quickly noticed that there were areas in which we are not as welcoming as we could be to the LGBTQIA community,” said Mason Badra. “I felt like it was my job to help us become more gender and queer inclusive. I feel like it’s my duty to speak up.”

Mason Badra said that being highly visible as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community is important to her as a way to connect with students, staff, and faculty.

“I went from struggling to navigate homophobia to now being able to support the LGBTQIA community so receiving this award is so empowering,” Mason Badra said.

Topics

Faculty and Staff News

LGBTQ+ Resources

Women and Gender Studies

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Lavender Graduation

He has a message he wants to carry worldwide

Colleen Rich — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 13:29:18 +0000

He has a message he wants to carry worldwide Colleen Rich Wed, 03/30/2022 - 09:29

Casey Klemmer. Photo provided

Before he took the class Transnational Sexualities at ��AV with Associate Professor Rachel Lewis, Casey Klemmer had not heard anything about transgender people outside of Virginia.

So when Klemmer, then a sophomore from Fairfax, Virginia, learned the extent of that population, “It was amazing to me,” he recalled. “It wasn’t just a Fairfax thing. It wasn’t just a U.S. thing. It was all over the world.”

Klemmer, who is transgender and queer, carries that sensibility into his work as lead center mentor at Mason’s Women and Gender Studies Center and as a graduate student coordinator at Mason’s LGBTQ+ Resources Center.

“Community can be found anywhere,” said Klemmer, BA Integrative Studies ’21, who is pursuing a master’s degree in interdisciplinary studies with a concentration in social justice and human rights. “You don’t need to be limited to the people in your immediate space.”

With his bachelor’s concentration in Women and Gender Studies and his master’s focused on transgender refugees and asylum seekers, Klemmer said he hopes to work overseas, and is traveling to Spain in the summer.

“I really want to go somewhere where I can get immersed in the culture and help trans people to have better places to live and have better lives,” he said.

“He’s developed into one of our strongest student leaders,” said David Corwin, associate director of Women and Gender Studies. “He’s the epitome of someone who takes what he does very seriously. He’s constantly works for ways to develop himself, and he’s a shining example of feminist values and our values at Mason.”

Klemmer was also the first students to sign up for Mason’s minor in LGBTQ Studies.

It was that program, he said, and his work in Women and Gender Studies that helped set his educational path and was personally affirming.

A paper he researched in his Transnational Sexualities class on Hijras, a community of transgender and intersex people who are considered India’s third gender, was particularly enlightening.

“It was a great experience for me to see people who have similar experiences to myself all over the world,” Klemmer said. “It was sort of a way of talking about myself in academia and having it matter.”

It also was part of the process of forming the message he delivers to LGBTQ+ students at Mason.

“For me, it was helpful to widen my view of what community could look like,” Klemmer said. “We have lots of students, first years and people who have been here for a while, who feel like they don’t have communities. And so that class changed my perspective on what community could look like. Your immediate people near you are not the limit.”

Topics

Students

LGBTQ

Women and Gender Studies

Mason professor says that society is moving toward a more fluid and inclusive understanding of gender

Colleen Rich — Wed, 23 Mar 2022 19:35:01 +0000

Mason professor says that society is moving toward a more fluid and inclusive understanding of gender Colleen Rich Wed, 03/23/2022 - 15:35

David Powers Corwin. Photo by Creative Services

��AV faculty member David Powers Corwin answers questions about Women’s History Month, feminism and gender justice.

Corwin holds a joint faculty appointment in the School of Integrative Studies and Women and Gender Studies where they teach courses that focus on feminist and queer theory, gender and sexuality in popular culture, friendship studies and ecofeminism.

Why is March Women’s History Month? What are we supposed to be celebrating and why?

International Women’s Day takes place during Women’s History Month, which is one reason for the choice. We are celebrating how women have contributed to all aspects of history, public dialogues, private spaces, and any profession, but have been left out of how we tell many stories. In reality, we don’t have a world, a month, a week, a day, or a second without women’s contributions.

How did the feminist movement contribute to the changing roles of women in this country?

The women’s movement called out the issues of inequality that women knew about for centuries but couldn’t act on. From access to proper health care to career opportunities to political representation to so many other issues, the women’s movement has made strides for women in virtually every type of public dialogue.

What have been the criticisms and limitations of the feminist movement in this country?

The women’s movement has continued to be critiqued for lack of inclusion of people of color, queer and transwomen, along with women with varying abilities, body types, and national identities. While intersectional activists and scholars continue to bring these issues to light and trailblaze paths forward, we still have to continue to redefine what feminism means in the 2020s in order to ensure we aren’t reinforcing some of the earlier, less inclusive feminisms.

How is the popular understanding of gender changing?

We are continuing to move toward a more fluid and inclusive understanding of gender that doesn’t only focus on cisgender women or men, but people of all genders both in and outside the binary. Women’s History Month programs certainly have something to offer all people regardless of gender.

What does gender justice mean and what does that look like?

Gender justice fights against the systems of oppression that force people of particular genders into subjugated positions by using an intersectional lens that refocuses activist efforts to be inclusive of race, class, sexuality, ability, national identity, etc. It’s on all of us to fight for gender justice and to continue an educational journey that fights against and doesn’t reinforce these systems in our places of influence.

Reach David Powers Corwin at dcorwin@gmu.edu

For more information, reach Anna Stolley Persky at apersky@gmu.edu

About George Mason

��AV is Virginia’s largest public research university. Located near Washington, D.C., Mason enrolls 39,000 students from 130 countries and all 50 states. Mason has grown rapidly over the past half-century and is recognized for its innovation and entrepreneurship, remarkable diversity and commitment to accessibility. In 2022, Mason celebrates 50 years as an independent institution. Learn more at www.gmu.edu.

Topics

Tip Sheet

Women and Gender Studies

Women's History Month

Climate change might be fueling ethnic violence. PhD candidate Emily Sample explores why

Mariam Aburdeineh — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 19:49:37 +0000

Climate change might be fueling ethnic violence. PhD candidate Emily Sample explores why Mariam Aburdeineh Fri, 02/04/2022 - 14:49

In This Story

Douglas Irvin-Erickson

Emily Sample. Photo by Shelby Burgess/Strategic Communications/��AV

As a junior and senior at Annandale High School in Virginia, Emily Sample spent her summers as a docent at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. She was a teenager who had just lost a friend to police violence, she said, and joining the museum’s Young Ambassadors Program resonated with her.

“I was fascinated and continue to be fascinated by this highly illogical idea of genocide,” said Sample, a PhD candidate at ��AV’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution.

Since then, Sample has built her career around atrocity prevention. In addition to earning a master’s in human rights and genocide studies from Kingston University London, she has worked as a genocide scholar and educator for Holocaust Museum Houston in Texas. She currently works for the Fund for Peace, where she said she supports their portfolio on human rights and international peacebuilding.

“The best way to prevent genocide is to help make violence not an option,” Sample said, explaining that an “us-versus-them” mentality can develop when people believe there is scarcity of resources, and are manipulated into thinking ethnic violence is an answer.

She’s further studying this at Mason, with a case study in West Nile, Uganda, where she lived and conducted research while enrolled at Kingston. Her dissertation examines structural mass atrocity prevention through the lens of climate change adaptation and gender.

Emily Sample (right) and her research partner Lina Zedriga in Uganda in 2013. Photo provided.

“If we make the climate better, if we empower women and have better access to clean water, then [Ugandans] will not be forced into making decisions about whether or not their family lives and the next family dies,” said Sample, who is interviewing Ugandans over Zoom.

Sample is also looking at the effects of environmental racism, where negative environmental impacts disproportionately affect people of color.

“The day-to-day life of someone in Uganda may be much more impacted [by climate change than a Westerner’s] because they’re having to adjust their farming season, and the type of seeds and livestock they’re buying,” she said.

These impacts have gendered implications, Sample said, as women often tend the gardens, cook, and walk to retrieve water.

Increasing education and environmental justice, such as reparations for environmental racism, while reducing scarcity fears, could alleviate many atrocity issues, she said.

Sample said she came to Mason because she wanted to dive deeper into the genocide prevention field.

“My hometown university has one of the best [conflict resolution] programs in the country,” said Sample, who also works with Mason’s Raphaël Lemkin Genocide Prevention Program.

“The Carter School is extremely unique in how many scholar-practitioners we have,” she said. “They integrate students into their work in unique and really pivotal ways that allow students to become practitioners.”

Though the PhD journey is demanding, Sample said her studies have been worthwhile.

“Every single professor is approachable, interesting and has contributed to me seeing the world in a variety of different ways,” she said.

“Emily is a rising star in genocide studies and conflict resolution, and the nexus of these fields with the practice of peacebuilding,” said Douglas Irvin-Erickson, director of Mason’s Genocide Prevention Program. “She’s a brilliant social analyst with many years of ethnographically informed research experience, and her deeply rooted sense of justice endears her to those with whom she works the closest.”

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Sample conducts interviews for her dissertation virtually. Here, two Ugandan men communicate with her from Africa via Zoom using a smartphone (bottom right). Photo provided.

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Two from Mason named Outstanding Faculty Award recipients by SCHEV

Melanie Balog — Thu, 16 Dec 2021 16:08:05 +0000

Two from Mason named Outstanding Faculty Award recipients by SCHEV Melanie Balog Thu, 12/16/2021 - 11:08

In This Story

Amarda Shehu

��AV’s Leah Adams and Amarda Shehu were among 12 Virginia educators honored by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) as 2022 Outstanding Faculty Award recipients, the council announced Thursday.

Established in 1987, the awards recognize faculty at Virginia institutions of higher learning who exemplify the highest standards of teaching, scholarship and service. Institutions select the nominees. A panel of peers reviews the applications, and a committee of leaders from the public and private sectors selects the final recipients. This year, the program received 85 nominations. The 12 recipients were selected from a pool of 25 finalists.

Adams

Leah Adams, assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and in the Women and Gender Studies program in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, was named a Rising Star recipient. The “Rising Star” category was created in 2004 to recognize faculty with more than two complete years of full-time experience, but less than six. Since 2010, two Rising Star recipients have been named each year.

Adams is a recognized leader in health disparities research, with emphases on HIV, mental health, and adaptation to chronic illness and injury. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Richmond, and her master’s and PhD in clinical psychology from ��AV. Prior to returning to Mason to teach, she completed a pre-doctoral residency in rehabilitation psychology and neuropsychology at the University of Washington Medical Center, where she won the Nancy Robinson, Ph.D. Award for Outstanding Overall Achievement.

Amarda Shehu is a professor in the Department of Computer Science in the School of Computing. Her research bridges the fields of artificial intelligence, machine learning, engineering and the life sciences. As one of the founders and co-directors of the Center for Advancing Human-Machine Partnerships, she advances computer science research to promote scientific discoveries in other fields and address real-world problems.

Shehu

She is a 2021 recipient of Mason’s Beck Family Presidential Medal for Faculty Excellence in Research and Scholarship, the 2018 University Teaching Excellence Award and the 2013 OSCAR Undergraduate Mentoring Excellence Award. She is also a recipient of an NSF CAREER Award, as well as various research awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF), state and private funding agencies. She received a bachelor’s degree in computer science and mathematics from Clarkson University, and her master’s and PhD in computer science from Rice University.

Previous Outstanding Faculty Award recipients from Mason include 2021 Rising Star Andrew Peterson and 2020 honoree Cynthia Lum. Adams and Shehu bring the number of Mason recipients of the award to 25.

Each recipient of the 2022 Outstanding Faculty Awards will receive a $7,500 gift from Dominion Energy at an in-person ceremony on March 1.

Topics

SCHEV Outstanding Faculty Award

College of Engineering and Computing

Women and Gender Studies

Faculty and Staff News

Campus News

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Rachel Jones

Wasiq Muhammad Muhammad Ali — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 20:33:20 +0000

Rachel Jones Wasiq Muhammad… Wed, 12/01/2021 - 15:33

Chair
Associate Professor

Contact Information

Email: rjones23@gmu.edu
Phone: 703.993.4328
Mail Stop: Honors College, MSN 1F4
Campus: Fairfax
Office: Horizon Hall 6269

Biography

Professor Jones received her B.A. in Philosophy and German from St. John's College, Oxford University, and her MA and PhD in Philosophy and Literature from the University of Warwick. Her teaching and research interests include key thinkers and themes in continental and feminist philosophy (such as Kant, Nietzsche, Lyotard, and Irigaray; self and body, the sublime, sexual difference). She is interested in working with art and literature to explore philosophical questions and in the intersection of feminist philosophy with perspectives from queer theory, transnational feminisms, critical philosophies of race, and decolonial theory. Her current research takes Kant's essays on the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 as a prompt for re-interrogating human beings' relations to materiality, natality, and difference. Dr. Jones is a member of the Executive Committees for the Luce Irigaray Circle and for philoSOPHIA .She currently serves as a 'Member at Large' for the International Association for Environmental Philosophy (IAEP).

Selected Publications

‘Thinking Otherwise with Irigaray and Maximin,’ in Thinking: A Philosophical History, eds D. Whistler and Y. Vassilopoulou (Routledge, 2021), pp.236-250.

'Dissonance, Resistance, and Perspectival Pedagogies,' in Dissonant Methods: Undoing Discipline in the Humanities Classroom, eds Ada S. Jaarsma and Kit Dobson (University of Alberta Press, 2020), pp.117-134.

'Kant, Hegel and Irigaray: From Chemism to the Elemental,' in Kant and the Continental Tradition: Sensibility, Nature and Religion (in memoriam: Gary Banham), Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Philosophy, eds Sorin Baiasu and Alberto Vanzo (Routledge, 2020), pp. 146-170.

'Philosophical Métissage and the Decolonization of Difference: Luce Irigaray, Daniel Maximin, and the Elemental Sublime,' Special Issue of Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology, 5:2, 2018; 139-156.

'The Anthropocene and Elemental Multiplicity,' co-authored with Emily Parker, English Language Notes, Special Issue: Environmental Trajectories, Vol. 55. 1/2, Fall 2017; 61-69.

‘Active Matter and Vital Materiality: Between Irigaray and Bennett’, Special Issue of Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology on 'Irigaray and Ecofeminism', Vol. 46.2, 2015; 156-172.

‘Re-Reading Diotima: Resources for a Relational Pedagogy’, Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education: ‘Re-imagining Relationships in Education: Ethics, Politics and Practices’, ed. M. Griffiths et al, Vol 48 Issue 2, 2014; 183-201.

‘On the Value of Not Knowing: Wonder, Beginning Again, and Letting Be’, in On Not Knowing: How Artists Think, E. Fischer and R. Fortnum, eds. (London: Black Dog Publishing, September 2013).

‘Lyotard and Irigaray on Eros, Infancy and Birth: the Dissymmetrical Horizons of Being Between’, in Jean-François Lyotard: New Encounters, H. Bickis and R. Shields, eds. (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013).

‘Adventures in the Abyss: Kant, Irigaray and Earthquakes’, Symposium: Canadian Journal for Continental Philosophy, Volume 17.1, Spring 2013.

‘Irigaray and Lyotard: Birth, Infancy, and Metaphysics’, Hypatia, Vol. 27 Issue 1, Winter 2012.

Luce Irigaray: Towards a Sexuate Philosophy, Key Contemporary Thinkers series (Cambridge: Polity, 2011).

Courses Taught

PHIL 156 - What is Art?

PHIL 329 - Philosophy After Auschwitz

PHIL 336 - Twentieth-Century Continental Thought - Existentialism

PHIL 338 - Philosophy, Race and Gender

PHIL 421 - Philosophy Seminar (Nietzsche)

PHIL 721 - Graduate Seminar: Kant's third Critique; Lyotard and Nancy; Birth, Death, and the Human.

PHIL 730 - Nietzsche and his Readers

WMST 630/PHIL 694 - Feminist Theory Across the Disciplines

HNRS 110 - Research Methods

HNRS 130 - Conceptions of Self

HNRS 240 - Reading the Past: Body Politics – Women and the Political

Sojourner Truth lecture to examine the power of politics and protest

Colleen Rich — Fri, 12 Feb 2021 17:38:42 +0000

Sojourner Truth lecture to examine the power of politics and protest Colleen Rich Fri, 02/12/2021 - 12:38

Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, Aja Clark, and Yevette Richards Jordan

��AV’s annual Sojourner Truth Lecture features a conversation about the collaborative power of politics and protest in the pursuit of justice.

The event features Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, PhD, former chair of the Maryland Democratic Party, and Mason alumna Aja Clark, activist and reproductive justice educator. The discussion will be moderated by Yevette Richards Jordan, faculty member in Mason’s Department of History and Art History, the Women and Gender Studies Program, and African and African American Studies. The event takes place at 3 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 25. Individuals interested in attending the forum can register here.

Cummings is president and CEO of Global Policy Solutions, a Washington, D.C.-based policy firm. Clark, who graduated from Mason with a BA in 2017, is creative director and founder of the Black Feminist Freshman Orientation, which prepares women for college. As a reproductive justice educator, she also creates culturally appropriate workshops and videos on reproductive issues, such as self-advocacy at the doctor’s office.

“The purpose of the panel is to engage our students as the next generation of scholars and activists by having them hear from and interact with people engaged in politics and activism on the ground right now,” said David Powers Corwin, associate director of the Women and Gender Studies Program and one of the organizers of this year’s Sojourner Truth Event. “We want them to see women of color on the forefront of activism and politics.”

Jordan said that presenting activists at both the start of a career and further along will “hopefully be an inspiration by showing the possibilities for long-term political and activist engagement.”

In addition, the Prince William County Community Foundation will be honored at the event for its work on social justice, hunger and coronavirus-related issues.

“By presenting a local organization with this honor, we hope that students will see that activism is happening right in our backyard,” said Corwin.

While the discussion is open to the public, there will also be invitation-only events with students, faculty and staff.

Last year marked the 20^th anniversary of the lecture, as well as the 30^th anniversary of the creation of Mason’s Women and Gender Studies Program. The lecture was started as a celebration of both Black History Month and Women’s History Month. As such, it is held either in late February or early March.

Over the years, the even has featured Black female scholars and activists, such as Sybrina Fulton, Dorothy Roberts, and Anita Hill. This year marks the first time that the event will be held virtually, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The event is sponsored by the Women and Gender Studies Program, the African and African American Studies Program, University Life, and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences Interdisciplinary Programs Fund.

Topics

Campus News

Women and Gender Studies

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

African and African American Studies

Women and Gender Studies

2024 Sojourner Truth lecturer Rokhaya Diallo explores her life and the experiences of women

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He has a message he wants to carry worldwide

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Mason professor says that society is moving toward a more fluid and inclusive understanding of gender

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Climate change might be fueling ethnic violence. PhD candidate Emily Sample explores why

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Sample is also looking at the effects of environmental racism, where negative environmental impacts disproportionately affect people of color.

Though the PhD journey is demanding, Sample said her studies have been worthwhile.

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Two from Mason named Outstanding Faculty Award recipients by SCHEV

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Rachel Jones

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Sojourner Truth lecture to examine the power of politics and protest

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