News and Events

2024 GSFS Graduates
GSFS students celebrating their graduation 2024

The Gensler Symposium 2026 will be held on March 31st and April 1st. Please follow the link below to our webpage with all the relevant information. Bread and Puppet Theater will be here for a performance and a workshop! 

https://sites.middlebury.edu/gensler2026/

Check out this new article in Ms. Magazine defending the value of the field of Women’s and Gender Studies:

Our Graduates’ Successes: What the Data Tells Us About the Value of Cultural and Gender Studies Degrees

And take a look at the latest interview of Professor Laurie Essig on fascism and feminism in Ms. Magazine:

https://msmagazine.com/2025/04/22/feminism-fascism-laurie-essig-democracy-russia-usa-putin-trump/

The 2024 Gensler Symposium entitled Feminism, Fascism and the Future is featured in this recent article:

https://www.middleburycampus.com/article/2024/04/feminism-facism-and-the-future-annual-gensler-family-symposium-addresses-anti-gender-movement

Check out this article about other recent GSFS events on campus:

https://www.middleburycampus.com/article/2023/12/feminist-trivia-project-symposium-encourage-students-to-act-on-intersectional-issues

Professor Carly Thomsen’s Feminist Mini-Golf Course celebrated its grand opening on May 12, 2023:

https://vtdigger.org/2023/05/21/mini-golf-massive-topics-feminist-course-opens-as-teaching-tool-in-middlebury/

https://www.addisonindependent.com/2023/05/18/feminist-mini-golf-gets-players-talking/


Students from Professor Laurie Essig’s course White People lead the cause to bring non-white food to campus:

https://www.middleburycampus.com/article/2023/05/student-led-proposal-aims-to-bring-culturally-diverse-food-trucks-to-middlebury/?fbclid=PAAaYzhmLnkA60-6uP2HAsAvg8M9Gvl3EhqHtdBEv_PLpqRrjJRmJPDQzF4Lo
 

As part of the “Visualizing Reproductive Justice: A Call to End Fake Clinics” exhibit that showcased the art of the first GSFS-Chellis House Public Feminism Fellows on September 27, 2022, Dr. Virginia Thomas gave a talk entitled “The World Building Power of Queer Aesthetics.” You can watch Dr. Thomas’ talk here: https://vimeo.com/760040169
 

Newsletters

Upcoming Events of Interest

  • A photo of Rachel Siegel

    Unconditional Love (of dancing, mangoes, and me): an anti-diet dance theater performance

    An anti-diet dance theater performance that uses an intersectional approach to understand anti-fatness in relation to capitalism, race, and patriarchy through an historic lens, current analysis, and personal experience. Using ensemble and solo dance, song, storytelling, research, and projections, this one-hour show is also about body liberation, pleasure, dancing alone in the mirror, eating mangoes, and shaking off that which binds us.

    Performed by Laura Haines, Winnie Looby, Alex Heisler, Zoraya Hightower, Hadley Mueller, Rhonda Doonan, and Rachel Siegel.

    Mahaney Arts Center Dance Theatre

    Open to the Public

Program in Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies

Chellis House
Middlebury College
Middlebury, VT 05753

Laurie Essig, Director

Chellis House 202

(802) 443-5355

lessig@middlebury.edu

On leave Spring 2026

Catharine Wright, Acting Chair

cwwright@middlebury.edu

Spring 2026: Tuesday and Thursday 3-5 pm and by appointment

Victoria Luksch, Coordinator

Chellis House 205

(802) 443-3112

vluksch@middlebury.edu

Mon-Thurs 9am-5pm