Gender, Sexuality, & Fem Studies

At age 25, Leslie Smith was diagnosed with Myotonic Muscular Dystrophy, a neuromuscular disease that causes the wasting of voluntary and involuntary muscles. Leslie grew up in Middlebury where she was a tri-varsity athlete. At Scripps College, she was on her way to being named an All-American tennis player. After she received her diagnosis, life as she’d known it was over, questioning her very identity as an athlete. “Spitfire” tells the story of Leslie’s journey from diagnosis to acceptance, exploring loss, grief, hope, and wheelchair tennis along the way.

Remarks & awards for graduating seniors and their guests in Axinn 229, during the ongoing join reception in the Axinn Center Winter Garden from 4:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.

Virtual screening of the documentary, The Celine Archive, followed by an hour of discussion with the filmmaker, Prof. Celine Parreñas Shimizu, Distinguished Professor of Film and Digital Media at UC Santa Cruz and Dean of the Arts. Registration required; please register right here. 

We are commemorating International Holocaust Remembrance Day with a video-on-demand screening of “Petit Rat” (Vera Wagman, 2021, USA, 45 mins.). https://www.petitrat.com/. In 1940, a French Jewish girl’s dream of becoming a ballerina is cut short by World War II. She vows that if she has daughters, they will become dancers. Nearly 80 years later, she and her two daughters confront the impact of that? pledge. Petit Rat is a portrait of three women, bonded by the intergenerational trauma of war and uplifted by the resilience of familial love.

Roma (Alfonso Cuarón, 2018, Mexico, 135 mins.). In 1970, Cleodegaria “Cleo” Gutiérrez is an indigenous live-in maid in a middle-class household in the Colonia Roma neighborhood of Mexico City. She and another maid, Adela, speak Mixtec when they are together, but Spanish in the presence of the family: matriarch Sofía; her husband, Antonio; her mother Teresa; and their four young children. When Antonio, a doctor, remains in Quebec after a conference, the problems in his and Sofia’s marriage become apparent.

Paris is Burning (Jennie Livingston, USA, 1990, 71 mins) chronicles the ball culture of New York City and the African-American, Latino, gay, and transgender communities involved in it. Critics consider the film to be an invaluable documentary of the end of the “Golden Age” of New York City drag balls, and a thoughtful exploration of race, class, gender, and sexuality in America.

Join Visiting Lecturer and Senator Ruth Hardy and students in her Women in U.S. Electoral Politics class for a panel discussion with women in Vermont politics, including Speaker Jill Krowinski, Senate Pro Tempore Becca Balint, Lieutenant Governor Molly Gray, and several more women in state and local elected office. Panelists will discuss the barriers and opportunities they’ve faced as women in politics, how they approach campaigning and public service, and their priorities as we move into a new legislative session and election year.

Folk songs are a means of communication, a tool of expression, and a way to both resist and nurture patriarchy for some Afghan women. Through songs, women tell a story or express feelings that amplify other women’s voices, and women, usually present in the audience, resonate with them. The song themes are often centered around the stories of womanhood, marriage, migration, war, poverty, and so on.

Naomi Replansky was born in the East Bronx of New York City in 1918, to Russian-Jewish parents who had fled the Russian pogroms. She began to write poems in her early teens. Her first collection, “Ring Song,” was a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry in 1952. Her collection, “Collected Poems,” won the Poetry Society of America’s 2013 William Carlos Williams Award and was a finalist for the 2014 Poets’ Prize.

Please register at go.middlebury.edu/naomi

Dr. Carly Thomsen, Assistant Professor of GSFS at Middlebury, will discuss her newly published book, Visibility Interrupted: Rural Queer Life and the Politics of Unbecoming, with Martin Manalansan from the University of Minnesota and Rosemary Hennessy of Rice University. 

to register visit: go/thomsen