This past spring, Lizbeth Zúñiga received the Graduate School’s highly competitive President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student.

The WGSS Department has known for years that Lizbeth is a fabulous teacher with an unwavering commitment to feminist pedagogy and mentoring. So, we’re absolutely thrilled to see Stony Brook recognizing Lizbeth’s excellence!

For the past two years, Lizbeth has helped us grow the WGSS major and minor by teaching a number of our gateway classes – including the WGSS survey course, the intro to queer studies course, and the introductory feminist theory course. Whether teaching online or in-person, Lizbeth excels in creating a welcoming environment.

Last fall, the students who took WST 103 with Lizbeth raved about her class in their end-of-semester evaluations. “Everything was valuable in this course,” one student reported, before adding: “everyone should take this course.” Several students commended Lizbeth for incorporating different types of texts into the syllabus and then making sure they understood how those material related to their everyday lives. One student enthusiastically declared, “I love my professor and the topics she teaches!”

Lizbeth also designed her own special topics course called “Chicanas and Latinas in Education.” The assignments for this class showcased the way Lizbeth invites students to apply what they’ve learned in creative, non-traditional ways. For example, she had students complete a “Testimonio Project,” where they were asked to “tell the story of their higher education journey” via a PowerPoint presentation. Students needed to incorporate the assigned readings as they broke down and critically reflected on their educational experiences, from their first “home-teachers” to their experiences as an undergraduate at Stony Brook. Not surprisingly, this course was a total success!

The WGSS Department cannot thank Lizbeth enough for all she does for our students, our undergrad program, and our interdisciplinary field! Congratulations on this well-deserved award!

On April 30, three WGSS students were featured at 2024 URECA Celebration: The Annual Stony Brook Undergraduate Research Symposium. Samantha Aguirre, Gwendolyn Loubier, and V Mancebo prepared poster presentations based on the research they conducted for their WGSS Senior Research Projects. Check out their posters and scenes from the celebration!

from left to right: Sammie Aguirre, Gwen Loubier, V Mancebo

On March 18, WGSS PhD Candidate Ashley Barry took 2nd place in the 2024 Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) Challenge.

Each year, the Graduate School invites doctoral students to compete in a competition designed to enhance their research and communication skills to more effectively share their work with the wider public. This spring, fifteen Stony Brook students – from across a wide range of inter/disciplines – took part in the challenge. They worked with professional development mentors to distill their dissertation projects into 3 minute presentations for a general audience, using only a single PowerPoint slide!

Ashley spoke with the Stony Brook News team about her experience:

“This experience has been fulfilling,” said Barry. “Being the only humanities participant has been really interesting because I see the fundamentals of science communication and what kind of principles I can transfer over to humanities.”

Barry said being in the humanities had both advantages and disadvantages.

People may be more familiar with the work because I study film, but getting them to see the academic rigor of it is another challenge entirely,” she said. “We’ve been working with the Alda Center and that’s been really useful to figure out the audience and rhetorical goals of conveying my research. I had to think about the research outside of the academy, how you want it to hit people, and what you want them thinking about as they leave the room.”

Read more about the competition here. Or just enjoy Ashley’s presentation below!

The WGSS Department was awarded a $100,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation’s “Affirming Multivocal Humanities” program. This award will support WGSS program-building activities during the 2023-24 and 2024-25 academic years.

The “Affirming Multivocal Humanities” program is a component of the Mellon Foundation’s Higher Learning initiative, which seeks to elevate humanities knowledge that lays the foundation for more just and equitable futures. The Mellon Foundation understands the study of race, gender, and sexuality to be crucial to this objective, particularly at this pivotal moment in US history. Indeed, research and teaching in these fields epitomizes the essential exercise of academic freedom within US higher education. In recognition of this fact, Mellon’s Higher Learning initiative offered grants of $100,000 to gender/sexuality and race/ethnic studies programs and department at public colleges and universities across the country.

WGSS@SBU requested funding from the “Affirming Multivocal Humanities” program to support our ongoing efforts to protect academic freedom on our campus and across the SUNY system. To this end, our department is undertaking two distinct-yet-related projects:

Building a SUNY-wide Network of Gender/Sexuality Studies Programs & Departments. We are organizing a series of meetings and workshops with gender/sexuality studies representatives from 20 SUNY campuses across the fall and spring semesters this year. We believe our field will be better equipped to respond to the challenges facing New York public universities if our programs and departments are working in synchrony with one another. Our hope is to establish communication across our campuses and to lay the groundwork needed for launching future research, teaching, program-building, and community-based collaborations.

Protecting Academic Freedom, Advancing Social Justice. We are working closely with the Center for Changing Systems of Power, the Humanities Institute, and colleagues from our allied departments to develop programming about the threats to intersectional, interdisciplinary research and teaching at this historical moment. Last year, we helped organize a panel discussion about the attacks on DEI and gender studies in Florida; a workshop with Faculty First Responders on how higher ed workers can protect themselves from online attacks; and two teach-ins: one about peace and human rights activism in and beyond the academy, and a second about the SUNY system’s reliance on the unfreedoms of prison labor to create spaces of academic freedom.

Follow us on Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) to learn more about this year’s programming!

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.