Gender, Sexuality, & Fem Studies

Please join us for a reading from Professor Saldarriaga’s new book Infected Empires: Decolonizing Zombies, which examines a central figure in contemporary apocalyptic film: the zombie. This creature reveals bloody truths about the human condition, the wounds of history, and methods of contending with them. Studying films from a transnational perspective, Infected Empires presents a vision of a global zombie that resists oppressive structures that racialize, marginalize, disable, and dispose of bodies.

This two-part event includes a reproductive justice exhibit featuring art that focuses on crisis pregnancy centers, as well as a talk about art as a vehicle for social justice by Dr. Virginia Thomas.

Exhibit Opening
12:30-1:30 pm, Tuesday, Sept. 27
Axinn Winter Garden & Axinn Center, Room 229
Exhibit features art by Middlebury’s Public Feminism Fellows: Kamari Williams, Isabel Perez, Alexis Welch, Elissa Asch, Luci Bryson, Emily Ribeiro, and Meg Farley.

Please join us for a discussion of the “Global Gag Rule,” a newly instituted presidential executive order that blocks US federal funding for foreign non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counselling or referrals, advocate to decriminalise abortion or expand abortion services.

In response to learning about the suicides of several teen girls who had experienced slut-shaming and bullying, filmmaker Emily Lindin, herself a victim of sexual shaming, decided to publish her diaries from age 11 to 14 online. From this, the Unslut project and 40-minute documentary evolved. The film includes stories from people of different genders, backgrounds and nationalities. Q&A with filmmaker immediately following the event.

WAGS major Lauren Curatolo ’06 talks about her experience working for the Brooklyn-based Legal Aid Society, the country’s oldest and largest not-for-profit legal services organization dedicated to providing quality legal representation to low-income New Yorkers.

In The Bro Code and Generation M, filmmaker Thomas Keith examined how American culture bombards young men with sexist and misogynistic messages. In The Empathy Gap, he looks more closely at the ways these messages short-circuit men’s ability to empathize with women, respect them as equals, and take feminism seriously.

In celebration of Black History Month, we are screening a powerful documentary on feminist icon, poet Audre Lorde, whose work has inspired intersectional changemakers over the past few decades.

How do you talk about sex? What does it mean to you? Sarah Byrden, MogaDao Sacred Sexuality Teacher and Educator, once more brings her Body of Sex project to Middlebury! Join us as she discusses body-based sexual education through a series of lectures and workshops centered around pleasure, anatomy, community, desire, and relationships. All identities welcomed into a space for education, inclusion, and sexual empowerment.

How do you talk about sex? What does it mean to you? Sarah Byrden, MogaDao Sacred Sexuality Teacher and Educator, once more brings her Body of Sex project to Middlebury! Join us as she discusses body-based sexual education through a series of lectures and workshops centered around pleasure, anatomy, community, desire, and relationships. All identities welcomed into a space for education, inclusion, and sexual empowerment.