Working on the theme of feminist rage, students from WGST 3001 (taught by Dr. Megan Rivers-Moore) learned the basics of letterpress printing at the Book Arts Lab in 杏吧原创 University’s MacOdrum Library. Check out the students’ creations below!

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The Pauline Jewett Institute of Women鈥檚 and Gender Studies is pleased to invite creative thinkers to submit proposals for our upcoming event, Communal Conversations: A Roundtable Symposium on the Future of Knowledge-Making, that aspire to move beyond institutionalized (academic, governmental, religious, medical, etc.) methods of inquiry and knowledge-making.

Please see here to access the full call for submissions and the guidelines to submit. This is open to all undergraduate and graduate students, as well as community members. Submissions can be sent to wgstsymposium2022@gmail.com by February 5^th, 2022.

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Dec 6, 2021

Dear friends of the Pauline Jewett Institute of Women鈥檚 and Gender Studies:

On this National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, we continue to to remember and to mourn the women whose lives were cut short at 脡cole Polytechnique in Montreal on December 6, 1989.  Although we cannot restore this terrible loss, we continue to honour and recognize it through the work that we do at the Institute to address gender-based violence, which continues in a multitude of forms.  As our poster suggests, there are intersectional connections to be made to specific forms of violence and misogyny against racialized and Indigenous women, transgender women, and femmes, LGBTQ2SIA+, and gender non-binary people.  We dedicate ourselves to creating spaces that are safe for open discussion and study for all, and where grief can be expressed, so that we can transform the worlds we live in to eradicate violence.

Ann Cvetkovich

Director, Pauline Jewett Institute of Women鈥檚 and Gender Studies

杏吧原创 University

Message to Undergraduate Students in WGST 1808

Dear 1808:

Today, December 6, is the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, which is recognized across Turtle Island. This is a very important day that I would like to comment on. Please note, that there are references to violence below, especially gender-based, misogynistic violence. Please do not hesitate to contact anyone on the teaching team should you be looking for resources to discuss this violence.

 I would like to add that it is up to everyone in our community, regardless of gender, or ability, or race, or sexuality, or class, to call attention to not only the darkness of the misogynistic and gender-based violence that continues today, but also to the many victories for those who have fought for change.

However, as feminist thinkers in our learning community of WGST 1808, we are also keenly aware that when we talk about and take action on misogynistic and gender-based violence, we will consider gender, ability, race, sexuality, class, among other things. We will especially remember and consider that the very supports our communities can offer have workers who are the very perpetrators of the violence, such as in the legal system.

We are going to continue to talk about all of this in WGST 1808 and I am happy to talk about it with anyone via Zoom or in-person at 杏吧原创. – Katherine Bausch

If you are looking for information on this National Day of Remembrance (this article contains detailed descriptions of violence and also national resources for support to talk about misogynistic and gender-based violence):

If you are looking for supports at 杏吧原创:

杏吧原创 Sexual Assault Survivor Support:

杏吧原创 Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Prevention and Support Services:

If you are looking for other community-based supports:

Under the Umbrella:

Somerset West Community Health Centre Support Line for African, Caribbean, and Black Communities:

MMIW Ontario:

Western Ottawa Community Resource Centre:

For information and resources related to women with disabilities and violence:

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Dear friends of the Pauline Jewett Institute of Women’s and Gender Studies:

As we prepare for yet another Convocation without being able to gather in person, I’d like to extend a note of congratulations to this fall’s graduates.   I wish that we could hear your names called out as you cross the stage to receive your diplomas, share hugs and handshakes (or the socially distanced equivalent) with you and your families, and offer wishes for your future success.  I know that you have faced additional challenges in completing your degrees during a pandemic.

Please join me in congratulating Mikaya Christensen and Amanda Johnson, who have earned their BA degrees in Women’s and Gender Studies, as well as our two MA graduates, PJ Javier and Erin McHarge.

With best wishes,

Ann Cvetkovich

Director, Pauline Jewett Institute of Women’s and Gender Studies

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Ryan Conrad is participating in a book launch event for a new anthology of queer writing about growing up with the AIDS crisis that just came out from .

His contribution is about growing up outside the metropolises and the role film/video/tv played in teaching me about queer HIV/AIDS histories, politics, and survival in the ’80s and ’90s.

There’s an event on Monday November 1st Event details below!

Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing up with the AIDS Crisis

*Ottawa Writers Fest Book Launch!*

Speakers: Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Ryan Conrad, Alexander McClelland, Kate Doyle Griffiths, & Eddie Walker

Date:  Monday November 1, 2021  |  7:30 PM ET

Location: Zoom

Event link:

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This summer, I had the privilege of being asked by Professor Conrad to participate in the Students as Partners program to improve the First Year Seminar course I took last year in the Women鈥檚 and Gender Studies program, Intro to LGBTQ Studies. I was incredibly excited at the prospect of this opportunity, as this was my favourite class that I took last year. Together, Professor Conrad and I have enhanced the course significantly, creating a better experience for this year鈥檚 students.

The first thing that we did was compose a welcome flyer for the incoming cohort of students. Many students last year did not read the full course description or just saw the course listed as a special topics course in Women鈥檚 and Gender Studies. Professor Conrad and I wanted to ensure that there was ample opportunity for students to be sure of what the course really was about so they could be more intentional about their enrollment. We also revised the syllabus so that the course would run more smoothly, as well as taking out or substituting some readings to make the content more manageable. Lastly, Professor Conrad invited me to speak about my experience taking the class to this year鈥檚 cohort and give them a chance to ask questions of a student who had taken the course already.

Working with Professor Conrad was an incredibly beneficial experience for me, and I learned a lot. It was a huge exercise in critical thinking, both about my own learning and about the things said by my former classmates about the course. I gained great insight into what goes into creating a course at the collegiate level. Furthermore, I was able to appreciate the extra care that has to go into a course that teaches about lived experiences and histories, especially in a context where many people taking the class may have a strong personal connection to the material.

I am of the firm belief that the work we have done together is of great benefit to the course, and by extension the department. Being a pilot course last year, Professor Conrad and I were able to make significant improvements to the class, and make those improvements based on the experiences of students, rather than just a professor guessing at what worked and what didn鈥檛. I really think that these improvements will result in a greater enjoyment from this year鈥檚 cohort, which will benefit both students and the department in turn.

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Patrizia Gentile‘s book has been nominated for a 2021 Best Scholarly Book in Canadian History Prize, awarded by the Canadian Historical Association. 

The prize is given to the non-fiction work of Canadian history that is deemed to have made the most significant contribution to our understanding of the Canadian past. The winner will be announced at the CHA AGM on June 14th, 2021.

Our warmest congratulations to our colleague Pat!

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Megan Rivers-Moore interviews one of our students about why they picked 杏吧原创 and Women’s and Gender Studies

The post FASS Program Spotlight is on Women’s and Gender Studies! appeared first on Feminist Institute of Social Transformation.

Congratulations to our Contract Instructor, Alan Santinele Martino for defending this thesis with the department of Sociology at McMaster University on October 8th!

His dissertation is entitled “The Romantic and Sexual Lives of Adults with Intellectual Disabilities in Ontario, Canada”

Alan’s research focused on the romantic and sexual lives of adults with intellectual disabilities in Ontario, Canada, by putting into conversation theories from the sociology of sexualities and critical disability studies. It uses a sexual fields analytic framework (Green, 2014) to explore the consequences of sexual stratification on the experiences of disabled people.

Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 46 adults with intellectual disabilities, this research explores how they are kept out of sexual fields through a series of disabling social processes. It also examines how participants make sense of their gender and sexual identities based on gender habitus acquired in their lives and how they are often confined to 鈥渉etero-romantic鈥� forms of sexual expression and traditional gender roles. Finally, this project explores how participants navigate the sexual fields available to them and their strategies for negotiating those fields.

This research brings to view previously unexplored sexual fields within the existing sexual fields literature. It discusses what Alan calls intellectual disability sexual fields, spaces exclusively for people with intellectual disabilities, as well as more mainstream sexual fields.

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