This past week, WGSS graduate instructor Callen Zimmerman became the target of alarming negative media attention.

The WGSS Department expresses our collective support and deep concern for Callen Zimmerman. We are appalled by the vicious attacks being waged against them, and we condemn all forms of doxing, intimidation, and online harassment.

Callen Zimmerman is a PhD candidate in excellent standing in the WGSS Department. They are a brilliant scholar and an innovative teacher with a steadfast commitment to social justice, feminist pedagogy, and transformative knowledge production. Callen has always been and continues to be a valued and respected member of our department.

We unequivocally support the academic freedom of our graduate students, and we join the American Association of University Professors and the National Women’s Studies Association in calling on our university administrators to fully protect these freedoms on our campus. In times of war, the importance of academic freedom cannot be understated; exceptions must not be made.

This past summer, WGSS students Avina Mathias and Emelyn Pareja-Garcia assisted local filmmaker Mara Ahmed on her anti-colonial feminist project Return to Sender. Her film will premiere at the Cinema Arts Center in Huntington on Oct 1st, and the companion art exhibit (which Avina and Emelyn helped curate) will be on display at Huntington’s History & Decorative Art Museum from Sep 17 to Oct 15.

Return to Sender: Women of Color in Colonial Postcards & the Politics of Representation is a short, experimental film that challenges the documentary medium in unexpected ways. The film opens with three contemporary South Asian American women who recreate British colonial postcards from the early 20th century. Dressed in lavish traditional attire and jewelry and shot exquisitely in a darkened studio, the women emulate the awkward poses of the postcard women, only to subvert the colonial male gaze and acquire autonomy by choosing an action of their own. This symbolic ‘returning’ of the Orientalist gaze is layered with discussions about Eurocentric beauty standards, representations of South Asian women in media and culture, stereotypes, othering, identity and belonging. The film hopes to create community by facilitating conversations about erasure and the politics of representation. This project was supported by a NYSCA grant administered by the Huntington Arts Council.

WGSS students Avina Mathias and Emelyn Pareja-Garcia worked with Mara Ahmed this summer to assemble the catalog for the companion exhibition. You can check out the catalog online!

Avina Mathias is in her junior year at Stony Brook and is majoring in Political Science, with an interest in how data affects US elections and public policy. Last spring, she took WST 102 with graduate instructor Frankie Petronio, which expanded her understanding of social constructivism and the importance of intersectionality. Her work on the Return to Sender catalog was greatly influenced by the concepts discussed in her WST class, especially the correlations between social construction, colonization, imperialism, and gender. This project also helped her begin the process of deconstructing the colonized understanding she has of her own culture as an Indian American. She sends a huge thank you to Mara Ahmed and the WGSS department for the invaluable lessons she learned through this incredible opportunity. Be sure to read Avina’s personal essay in “Who Is the Other?” in the catalog.

Emelyn Pareja-Garcia is a senior majoring in Psychology BS and minoring in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and the current Vice President of Planned Parenthood Generation Action at Stony Brook. After graduating this December, she hopes to work in the field of psychology and eventually pursue a Master’s in Social Work degree. Her ultimate goal is to help people in minority groups find the resources they need for life to be less stressful. While working on the Return to Sender catalog and watching Mara’s earlier film A Thin Wall, Emelyn not only learned about colonial representations of women but also explored the sense of otherness and “double consciousness” that women of color, herself included, often experience. In her personal essay, “Una Chicana Por Dentro y Por Fuera,” for the catalog, she reflects on these themes and explains why she likes the word “Chicana” to describe herself because she is “neither just American nor just Mexican” but “a blend of both cultures.” Emelyn is so glad she got to work and connect with two amazing people this summer!

WGSS@SBU is thrilled to welcome Dr. Jenean McGee to our department. Dr. McGee joined Stony Brook University this fall as Assistant Professor of Digital Black Feminisms. She is currently conducting research on how African American women build communities online and teaching a graduate seminar on Black feminist and womanist theory.

Dr. McGee holds a PhD in Ethnic Studies from the University of Colorado Boulder, an MA in American Studies from the University of Massachusetts Boston, and a BA in English from Southern Oregon University. Her research focuses on social media and surveillance capitalism and draws upon her expertise in African American studies, Black studies, and digital studies. In her current project, Dr. McGee explores the benefits and dangers of African American women building online communities via social networking sites owned by major corporations (like Google and Facebook). Next semester, she’ll be teaching two undergraduate WST courses: an introductory feminist theory class and a special topics course on digital Black feminisms.

WGSS Undergrad Ambassador Imani Chung sat down with Dr. McGee to find out more about our newest faculty member.

Tell us some of the things you want your students to take away from your classes.
I would like students to find confidence in themselves and their ability to think critically and analyze the world around them.

What’s your favorite class that you took as an undergrad?
Great, yet tricky question; it would have to be between two literature courses, one on the Harlem Renaissance and another course that focused on POC and indigenous writers.

Early bird or night owl?
Early bird

Is there a quote or saying that you live your life by?
Yes, it is a Toni Morrison quote, “If there is a book you want to read and it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”

What are you currently listening to?
I have been listening to a lot of podcasts lately, but the music I have been enjoying is Janelle Monáe, Caamp, Beyoncé, and Doja Cat

Video meetings or in-person meetings?
I enjoy both. But I do prefer in-person meetings. They are more personal.

Any advice for graduating WGSS majors / minors?
Take your time figuring out what you want to do in life; it is a marathon, not a sprint.

This fall, Imani Chung and Athena Wilkinson are serving as our undergrad program ambassadors. In addition to building community among current WST majors and minors, Imani and Athena are also working to increase the visibility of WGSS on our campus and beyond. Through this experiential learning internship, our ambassadors are developing their leadership skills and exercising their professional creative capacities – all while growing the SBU feminist community and earning credits toward their WST degrees!

Imani Chung (she/her) is double majoring in Psychology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality studies while also pursuing the Masters of Business Administration (MBA) Fast Track program. When Imani first arrived at Stony Brook, she never imagined majoring in a non-STEM field, let alone something like WGSS. But she soon discovered the unique way WST classes help us understand the diverse ways human beings move through the world. As it turns out, WGSS is a life-changing major! Now, she wants to spread the word to other students. As our program ambassador, Imani is promoting the department through our social media networks and creating faculty and student profiles for the WGSS blog.

Athena Wilkinson (she/her) is double majoring in Music and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and minoring in Art History. She was initially going to double in History instead of WGSS, but then she discovered WGSS’s interdisciplinary and intersectional approach to examining the world. Through her WST classes, she didn’t have to settle for a “white washed” version of history and could focus on scholarship written by and for women of color. As a seasoned program ambassador – she was one of our Spring 2023 ambassadors! – Athena is excited to continue expanding our department. She’s also begun the process of establishing an SBU chapter of the National Women’s Studies Honor Society. More information coming soon!

As a “Collective Rising” intern, Jonell Ashby, a WGSS major, worked with SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective during Summer 2023. Jonell’s experience assisting with the Trust Black Women project has inspired her to become a full spectrum doula.

Jonell Ashby is an 18-year-old senior majoring in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. While taking her first WST course at Stony Brook, her instructor, Frankie Petronio, told her about the Collective Rising summer program, which places women of color from all over the US in internships with reproductive justice organizations.

Collective Power for Reproductive Justice placed Jonell with SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective for Summer 2023. As a “Collective Rising” intern, she helped produce the first-ever “Trust Black Women Universe” project for Essence Festival in New Orleans, Louisiana. At the event, SisterSong shared their mission statement and their experiences in reproductive justice organizing with thousands of attendees. (She even got to see Monica Simpson, the ED of SisterSong, interview Vice President Kamala Harris!) Jonell also helped launch a youth-centered menstrual equity project, which involves a giveaway featuring people of color-owned and organic menstrual brands. Along the way, she learned a lot about creating social media content for social justice. Later in the summer, Jonell was selected to serve as a TA for Frankie Petronio’s summer class. In this capacity, she developed a unit on reproductive justice based on the knowledge she obtained from her internship.

After this powerful experience, Jonell wants to be involved in the hands-on work involved in making a real difference in the most marginalized communities. Hearing the stories shared at the Trust Black Women Universe let her know that the basic everyday needs (including but not limited to reproductive healthcare) of Black women are not being met. Her passions reside in Black maternal health, so she is now undergoing training to become a full spectrum doula. She knows that reproductive justice groups like Collective Power and SisterSong are doing important work to change the lives of people. This is the kind of impact Jonell wants to make through her own work!

Three WGSS PhD candidates – Ashley Barry, Jade Kai, and Galia Cozzi Berrondo – have served as Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, & Access (IDEA) Grads in the College of Arts and Sciences. By taking part in this experiential learning and professional development opportunity, Ashley, Jade, and Galia have been instrumental in enhancing the research and learning environment at Stony Brook and advancing the broader project of social, economic, and environmental justice.

In Spring 2022, as one of the inaugural IDEA Grads, Ashley Barry worked in the Graduate School with Dr. Miguel Garcia-Diaz and Lisa Ospitale on two projects: adapting the NIH “Becoming a Resilient Scientist” Series for SBU graduate students and creating a survey to measure “wellness” across the SBU graduate student population. They were able to bring their expertise on mental health, and in turn learn a lot about survey methods and the difficulties facing STEM graduate students. Their position as an IDEA grad led to joining the Center of Inclusive Education as a Graduate Assistant, which they have been doing ever since!

As an IDEA Grad during the 2022-23 academic year, Jade Kai worked with Dr. Surita Bhatia to develop resource lists and guides that help SBU graduate students and faculty live safe and supported lives both in and outside of academia. For safety in the larger community, Jade created an Online Safety Toolkit with information about online harassment, suggestions for the best ways to respond, and resources for self-care. To help keep safe at school, they crafted a Graduate Student Guide to Mentor/Mentee Relationships that provides mentoring materials and resources for students to know their rights. To promote discussions on race, gender, sexuality, and other issues in hiring and tenure committees, they also developed an informational handout and resource list on Bias in Hiring and Promotion for STEM, the Humanities, and the Social Sciences.

This semester, Galia Cozzi Berrondo will be working closely with Dr. Manisha Desai at the Center for Changing Systems of Power (CCSP) to advance social justice, both within and beyond the academy. Through collaborative intellectual inquiry, CCSP will work on creating cross-disciplinary partnerships with faculty, local and international activists and organizations, as well as the SBU community, to develop research projects that identify, study, and drive change in the root causes of social inequalities. The projects will primarily focus on environmental justice, health disparities, human rights, and carceral studies from an intersectional and transnational feminist perspective. In addition to engaging the SBU community through a CCSP speaker series, one of the center’s first intitiatives will be participating in the Cities for CEDAW campaign, which seeks to “Make the Global Local” by establishing the principles of the convention in Stony Brook and on Long Island.

The WGSS Department is delighted to introduce Marcela Muricy as the 2023 winner of the Terry Alexander Award.

This award is given in honor of Terry Alexander, the mother of Courtney Alexander, a Women’s Studies major who graduated from Stony Brook in 2006. Terry Alexander worked in the New York City public schools, she was an active member of the Brownsville Community Baptist Church, and she was a community activist with the Bed Stuy Park Lions Club in Brooklyn. Terry was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 1982 and, from that point forward, she and her family were regular participants in the annual MS walk to raise awareness about the disease and money to further the research. Terry attended the WGSS graduation in May 2016 to watch her daughter graduate. Sadly, shortly thereafter, she became very ill from MS-related complications and died on December 7, 2006.

The WGSS Department is grateful for the Alexander family’s continued support, and we are honored to give the Terry Alexander Award each year to students planning to pursue a career in health care or health advocacy. Our hope is that this award will generate interest among our students in examining the complexities of caring for people with chronic illnesses while also providing us with the chance to acknowledge the importance of a parent’s love, encouragement, and commitment to education and community work. Terry Alexander is a shining example of all these things.

Professor Liz Montegary presented Marcela Muricy with the award at our spring commencement ceremony. 

The department unanimously selected Marcela for this award in recognition of her unwavering commitment to advancing gender, racial, and economic justice in the field of medicine. Marcela is graduating today with a perfect 4.0 GPA, a double major in WGSS and Biology, and a seemingly insatiable appetite for research. She recently won the Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence in recognition of her academic achievements and wide-ranging research experience. Marcela was also named one of the inaugural Frances Velay Fellows – this is a program designed to champion women in science here at Stony Brook – which supported her research as part of her mentor’s biochemistry lab; and she also received a Guiliano Global Fellowship to fund her community-engaged research on health disparities in Brazil and on the needs of patients at under-resourced hospitals in Rio de Janeiro.

As an innovative feminist thinker, Marcela’s approach to health research and advocacy spans multiple fields and multiple scales, ranging from the biochemical to the sociocultural. Take, for example, her WGSS senior research project (which she completed during her junior year!) on the social and economic impact of anxiety on pregnant bodies and their fetuses. Adverse mental and physical health outcomes, Marcela explains, can be transmitted at the cellular level across generations in ways that leave individuals susceptible to further economic insecurity. Consequently, she argues, addressing perinatal anxiety within poor and working-class communities of color can be a way of interrupting these trends. Her highly original and urgently needed project analyzed the strengths and weakness of existing efforts to address anxiety in expecting parents and offered recommendations for developing more effective resources for pregnant people from marginalized communities.

Eager to continue working on this issue, Marcela secured a clinical research position at the Perinatal Pathways Lab at Columbia Medical Center. She will continue in this position for the next year as she broadens her familiarity with the psychobiology of pregnancy and prepares for a career in psychiatry with a focus on perinatal mental health. Thanks, Marcela, for being a fierce advocate for racial, economic, and reproductive justice!

This year, the WGSS Department selected two fabulous graduating students to receive Academic Excellence Awards: Emily Ferrante and Arwen Fluit.

Emily Ferrante

Emily Ferrante maintained an impressive 3.97 GPA as a double major in Business Management and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. At Stony Brook, she weaved together her study of feminist theories and methodologies with her specialized training in the field of accounting. Prof Ritch Calvin was especially dazzled by her performances in his feminist theory class and in the senior research seminar. We wish Emily the best of luck as she pursues a career in accounting and brings a critical gender and sexuality perspective to the financial world.

Arwen Fluit & Prof Mary Jo Bona

Arwen Fluit also maintained a near-perfect GPA of 3.94 during his time at Stony Brook. He paired his double major in Linguistics and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies with a minor in History. Prof Mary Jo Bona was blown away by his brilliant senior research project on the comic book series The New Teen Titans, which he turned into a poster presentation for the 2023 URECA Celebration. Arwen is heading to Boston this fall to begin work on an MA in WGSS and English at Brandeis University. Good luck!

The WGSS Department is delighted to introduce Hafza Girdap as the 2023 winner of the Vivien Hartog Graduate Teaching Award.

This award is named in honor of Vivien Hartog, a Women’s and Gender Studies graduate certificate student who died before she could complete her Ph.D. in Sociology. This award goes to the graduate student teacher we think best exemplifies Vivien’s lifelong commitments to activism, teaching, and learning. Here’s a description of Vivien written by her family that captures something of the kind of person we are honoring with this award:

“In Vivien Hartog’s 55 years, she went through more identities than most could imagine. An incomplete list would include: rebellious daughter; actress in training; young mother, wife (3 times); scientologist; scourge of scientology; business woman; domestic help in a hotel; undergraduate; radical feminist and lesbian; graduate student in sociology and women’s studies. At every point she both threw herself into her new identity and at the same time, remained herself. And one way that she always remained herself was in her commitment to social justice and to human rights. She remade herself regularly, but she always understood her remaking as struggles on a larger stage. Particularly in her last decade, she saw her life though the lens of an international women’s movement.”

Professor Nancy Hiemstra (Hafza’s advisor) presented her with the award at our spring commencement ceremony. 

From left to right: Hafza Girdap, Nancy Hiemstra

Hafza has been an outstanding educator long before becoming a graduate instructor in our department. In Turkey, she worked in high school education for 15 years in various positions and schools, as an English teacher, Vice Principal, International Programs Coordinator, and Director of College Guidance.

After leaving Turkey for the United States in 2016, Hafza worked as an ESL instructor in Atlanta, Georgia. She also became a spokesperson and the Women’s Affairs Director for Advocates of Silenced Turkey, an organization dedicated to defending human and civil rights, a position which she still holds – and which frequently brings her to the United Nations, international venues, and community education forums to speak about the current political situation and women’s rights in Turkey.

Hafza moved to New York and joined our department as a graduate student in 2019. She completed her Masters in WGSS and began doctoral studies in 2020. In Fall 2022, Hafza passed her comprehensive exams and is now developing her dissertation project on Turkish women’s identity after international migration.

Hafza has taught multiple sections of our Intro to WGS courses, both in-person and online, plus a 200-level topics course on “Muslim Women’s Identity and Agency”. She has shown herself to be a dedicated instructor of undergraduates, who puts in a huge amount of time and energy to design and facilitate excellent learning experiences for her students.

Writing about her teaching philosophy, Hafza writes that she endeavors to “create the opportunities and design classes for the students to learn, to think critically, to develop an intellectual perspective, to broaden their minds, to raise awareness of the issues I aim to teach in the class, and to set a journey of self-exploration.”

She has received outstanding student evaluations of her courses, with comments like:

• Professor Girdap was so inviting and made her students feel comfortable where they can learn and discuss anything.
• I really enjoyed how interactive it was, as the whole class could easily become engaged in talking about relevant issues and how our own experiences relate to them.
• All of the information I learned was interesting and valuable. It helped me see the world from different lenses.

Hafza identifies 4 words that guide her, in teaching and in life in general: dream, determination, dedication, and perseverance.

Thank you, Hafza, for inspiring us. Congratulations on receiving the Vivien Hartog Graduate Student Award for Excellence in Teaching!