Congratulations to the class of 2021! We were so happy to celebrate WGST Majors and Minors, Sexuality Studies Minors, and students who earned a Graduate Certificate in WGST. You can watch the recording of our celebration here.

The faculty of the Department of WGST join Gender Studies Departments around the world in standing in solidarity with Palestine. We proudly add our names to the signatories of this document.

Statement by the WGST Department regarding the recent shooting in Atlanta

The Department of Women’s and Gender Studies acknowledges that the recent murders of eight people outside Atlanta, including six women of Asian descent, was a horrible tragedy as well as part of the longer and continuing history of sexist and white supremacist violence directed at communities of color, women, and transgender individuals. This most recent occurrence takes place within a growing climate of violence, fueled by racism and xenophobia, directed at Asian and Asian American communities. We recognize that the violence of white supremacy, racism, sexism, xenophobia and heterosexism cannot be disentangled; we remain committed to intellectual analysis and praxis that seeks to dismantle these systems. We stand alongside our friends and colleagues and affirm the recent statement by Dr. Heidi Kim of the Asian American Center. We encourage all to listen to and uplift the voices of Asian American women as we work collectively toward justice.

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We began thirty years ago as a small program with no permanent faculty and are now a vibrant department with a broadly interdisciplinary faculty of nine specializing in fields including History, Global Studies, Sociology, Public Health, Anthropology, Political Science, Media Studies, Studio Art and Photography, and Literature and Literary Theory.  Women’s and Gender Studies expands the process of knowledge production by considering what it means to take gender, race, class, and sexuality seriously in our explanations of the world. It provides a methodology that is interdisciplinary, multicultural, and feminist. Our goal is to offer courses and programming that take full account of the broadest spectrum of issues concerning women and gender in the U.S. and globally. More about the Department

June 2020 – WGST – The State of Our Society.

The Department of Women’s and Gender Studies condemns the ongoing violence against Black communities, most recently exemplified by the brutal murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. We mourn the taking of lives and join others in expressing grief and anger in the face of unrelenting racial trauma. These most recent injustices grow from a vast legacy of white supremacy, institutionalized racism, and gendered violence, occurring in the midst of a global pandemic which has disproportionately affected Black, Indigenous, and Latinx communities in the United States. State-sanctioned racialization of COVID-19 through the narrative of “yellow peril” also has fostered a resurgence of anti-Asian hostility, further demonstrating how this period of crisis is part of a larger history of devaluing the lives of communities of color. The current protests must be understood as part of a collective response to affirm the value and dignity of Black lives against the reprehensible legacies of colonialism, slavery, and capitalism folded into current forms of policing and prisons and starkly demonstrated in health care disparities.

As feminist scholars and activists we understand the extent to which systems of oppression are interlocking. We are committed to openly naming these systems. The violence that we continue to witness is racialized and gendered: its victims are Black, Indigenous, and Latinx women, men, and transgender folx. Its perpetrators are overwhelmingly white men. We must acknowledge the extent to which violence and injustice spread throughout all facets of our lives and are woven into the educational systems, economic realities, interpersonal relationships, and daily experiences. We affirm the collective responsibility of all of us to reflect upon and rectify bias within ourselves and others, and to love one another. We are committed to hear and amplify the voices of the marginalized, interrogate and challenge heteropatriarchal white supremacy in all its manifestations, and work, as the UNC mission statement declares, “to improve society and to help solve the world’s greatest problems.”

We hope you will join us.

Want to learn more?

Books

• Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism bell hooks
• How to Be An Anti-Racist Ibram X Kendi
• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness Michelle Alexander
• The Fire Next Time James Baldwin
• How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective Ed. Keeanga Yamahtta-Taylor
• Between the World and Me Ta-Nehisi Coates
• The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson
• Vexy Thing: On Gender and Liberation, Imani Perry
• Men We Reaped, Jesmyn Ward

Videos

• George Floyd, Minneapolis Protests, Ahmaud Arbery & Amy Cooper, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
• “Yellow Peril” and Anti-Asian Prejudice in the Shadow of Coronavirus, Carolina Asia Center UNC

Podcast:

• https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/podcasts/1619-podcast.html

May 10, 2020

Congratulations class of 2020!!

(click on title/video above)

WGST MAJORS:

(Wikimedia: What’s Your Grandmother’s Name, Belmont Shore Chalk Art Contest, Long Beach California, 2017.)