This award is 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 she 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.

Photo on the left is Terry Alexander and on the right is Zarya Shaikh with Courtney Alexander at the WGSS graduation 2022.

Professor Lisa Diedrich presents the 2022 Terry Alexander Award in WGSS to Zarya Shaikh:

Zarya is graduating with a BS in Biochemistry and a BA in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS). Zarya is the rarest of students. She combines keen intellect, curiosity about the world near and far, and real empathy for others who suffer and struggle daily to make their lives better. I have had the pleasure of working with her this year on an initiative that is truly transformative.

In January 2021, after trying to find information for a research project about Muslim LGBTQ+ physicians, and finding nothing, Zarya had the idea of creating a podcast to fill a much-needed gap in resources and advance social justice in medicine and healthcare. This idea would become Queer Diagnosis: The LGBTQ+ Health Podcast. Zarya is the host for the podcast which interviews LGBTQ+ folx involved in the medical decision-making process including patients, medical students, healthcare providers, and everyone in between. As the QD podcast mission statement explains, the “goal is to sustain visibility and a sense of community in healthcare across the spectrum that is gender and sexuality. We’re here to learn not only how to take care of patients but also each other on our journey to provide high-quality, culturally sensitive care.” The QD podcast has been an immediate hit and in less than a year the podcast team has produced ten episodes, which are both incredibly informative on a wide range of social issues and deeply moving.

In fall 2021, WGSS teamed up with the QD podcast to create an internship for students wanting to learn about podcasting and work on producing the content for the podcasts, including transcripts of all the interviews, as well as artwork, web content, and social media to promote the project. In its first semester, the QD podcast internship was a huge success.

Zarya is right now applying to medical schools, and I know her hope is to continue the Queer Diagnosis podcast as a medical student and beyond in her work as a physician. She is already a remarkable young woman, and I have no doubt she will become a truly extraordinary doctor.

Congratulations, Zarya!

Shout out to Zarya Shaikh & the @QueerDiagnosis podcast from @SBUPrez at today’s @stonybrooku graduation! Zarya also received the Terry Alexander Award at the @WGSSSBU ceremony! Congratulations, Zarya – we are so proud of you! #SBUGRAD #WGSSgraduation2022 pic.twitter.com/cfsytsmFHw

— WGSS@StonyBrook (@WGSSSBU) May 20, 2022

Check out Raven Dorsey’s amazing speech at #WGSSGraduation2022!! See below for Professor Diedrich’s introduction of Raven.

Raven Dorsey is a doula and social worker born and raised in Wayne, PA. Raven completed her bachelor’s degree in Women, Gender and Sexuality studies with a concentration in gender, sexuality and public health from SUNY Stony Brook in 2016. That year, she received the Terry Alexander Award in WGSS. Raven, who was on the Track and Field team at SBU, also received the Seawolves Impact Award at the Stony Brook Athletics Wolfie Awards.

I’ll just mention one way that she made an impact at Stony Brook. She spearheaded a partnership between Stony Brook Athletics’ and the America East Conference on the You Can Play Project, which promotes inclusion and acceptance of LGBTQ athletes and coaches. As Raven wrote in her report on this work, You Can Play Project allowed her to apply concepts and practices she had learned in her Women’s and Gender Studies classes “to promote positive change in a place where I spend so much of my time.” Raven helped organize four YCP nights, at Women’s Volleyball, Men’s and Women’s Basketball, and Women’s lacrosse games. The event sponsored by the conference-winning Men’s basketball team was written up in a glowing feature on the initiative in USA Today.

After graduating from Stony Brook, Raven went on to earn her Master’s of Social Work at the University of Pennsylvania in May 2018. After completing her MSW, Raven joined the Women’s Law Project as a Development Associate where she coordinated events and fundraising efforts in the Philadelphia area. In late 2019, she joined the Warren for President campaign, in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Raven currently serves as a Deputy Director of Engagement for the Paid Leave for All Campaign, a National Campaign fighting for a Federal Comprehensive Paid Family and Medical Leave policy. Most recently in 2021, Raven began serving as a volunteer Advance Associate for the Office of the Vice President. Although her full-time work is centered around federal policy, Raven’s passion work, and pride and joy is serving her community as a trained labor and postpartum care doula.

We are very pleased to announce the 2022 recipient of the Vivien Hartog Graduate Student Teaching Award: Ashley Barry.

First, we want to introduce this award and Vivien Hartog. Then Ashley’s advisor, Lisa Diedrich, will introduce Ashley.

This award is named in honor of Vivien Hartog, a Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies graduate certificate student who died before she could complete her Ph.D. in Sociology. It goes to the graduate student instructor we think most 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 through the lens of an international women’s movement.”

Professor Lisa Diedrich on Ashley Barry:

I am delighted to tell you about this year’s winner of the Vivien Hartog Graduate Student Teaching Award, Ashley Barry. Ashley’s dissertation, “In/Sane on Screen,” is a cultural study of psychiatry and mental illness in film. She explores mad tropes and figures in film to understand how madness functions symptomatically within larger capitalist and ableist structures and intersecting with race, gender, sexuality, and class. Ashley has a wealth of experience teaching for both the Writing Program and WGSS, and she has also worked as a Writing Center Tutor, where she has a reputation as an incredibly effective and supportive tutor. Having observed Ashley teach, I can say that her pedagogical excellence is manifold: from the conceptual framework and design of her classes to the varieties of in-class and online exercises she has students do to her care for and attention to her students’ needs.

This past year, she has developed and taught a topics course for WGSS that connects to her research and introduces students to the emergent academic field of Mad Studies, as well as to mental health and Mad Pride activism, including the contemporary consumer/survivor/ex-patient movement. It is not hyperbole to say that she received rave reviews for her teaching this course. On her evaluations, students were universally effusive about the class and Ashley. She was lauded for being “extremely effective,” “knowledgeable,” and “innovative” in her teaching, as well as “extremely understanding,” “super accommodating,” “flexible,” and “very forgiving” in her engagement with her students. It is clear from the evaluations that Ashley’s course and her pedagogy has positively impacted students’ lives.

Ashley is active and well-connected on campus and in the wider Long Island community. As an undergraduate at Stony Brook, she worked with the LGBTQ* Services Center, completed the Office of Multicultural Affairs’ Social Justice League Certificate Program, interned at the Planned Parenthood Hudson Peconic, and was selected as a member of the Steering Committee of the Long Island Unity Collective. Since entering our graduate program, she has continued to engage in social justice work, especially in relation to improving and expanding accessibility on campus. As part of this disability justice work, she is currently a member of the GSO’s Disability Advocacy/ADA Working Group. She is a leader in WGSS and beyond. This year, Ashley was chosen as one of the inaugural cohort of Inclusion Diversity Equity and Access (IDEA) graduate fellows at Stony Brook and has been working on a project to expand wellness and inclusion within graduate education. She (along with Desi Self) was selected as the WGSS graduate student representative and served in that role as the campus went into lockdown and began teaching remotely. They were instrumental in creating programming focused on supporting best practices in online pedagogy, as well as social gatherings on zoom that helped counter isolation among graduate students. Everything she does—research, teaching, and advocacy—is concerned with making spaces more welcoming and inclusive. For all these reasons, we think Ashley represents well the spirit and commitments of Vivien Hartog.

Congratulations, Ashley!

Amanda Stuart is a graduating Sociology and Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies- Concentration in Gender and Social Change B.A with a minor in English and History. As graduation approaches, WGSS seniors reflect on their time in the department. 

What made you pursue a Women’s and Gender Studies (WST) major/minor? 

WGSS courses are very interesting and enlightening and helped me to reconcile my experiences living within the intersectionality of my identities as an African American woman. I loved learning about the intersection between race, gender, and sexuality and how these identities have impacted my life experiences which have been very empowering to learn about throughout the WGSS courses I have taken over the last four years at Stony Brook. 

 Are there any professors and/or classes that had an impact on you

I have taken some of my favorite courses through the WGSS department. Freshman year I took my freshman seminar course GLS 102 in Spring 2019 with Mary Jo Bona. I absolutely loved her as a professor, she was always animated and warm and she sparked my passion for WGSS. I especially enjoyed the courses Race and Sex work with Cristina Khan and Black Women’s Literature in the African Diaspora with Tracey Walters.  I have taken a few courses with Cristina Khan whom I admire as a professor. She is very insightful and brilliant as her lectures are always intriguing. I have taken WST 102 with her which has solidified my passion for WGSS. Her class taught me the foundation of the subject that I have brought with me throughout my other WGSS courses and within my life. I am also her TA for one of her WST 102 course sections this semester which is rewarding as I was a student of hers four years ago, and now I work alongside her as her teaching assistant.

What will you miss most about the WGSS department when you graduate?

I will miss all of the professors that I have taken and all of the WGSS courses I did not have the opportunity to take during my time at Stony Brook. However, I will definitely pursue more courses within higher education in the future. 

What do you plan on doing in the future? 

I would love to work in an organization where I could empower people like me specifically women of color that exist within intersectional identities that are marginalized within American society.

What began as a tool to bring together WGSS staff, students, and alumni during the pandemic will continue! The WGSS department will be sharing a song or songs that embody all of their hard work this semester, as well as creating our own graduation soundtrack! #WGSSGraduation2022

Cassandra Skolnick

“I am selecting the song, Unstoppable by Sia, because it has been my theme song and source of empowerment throughout my undergraduate career. I have experienced many obstacles, from discrimination to an emergency health scare…and throughout, “I put my armor on, show you how strong I am.” I refuse to let anything stop me from achieving my goal of earning my undergraduate degree and dedicating it to my family and professors who supported me on my journey.”

“Keeping to the theme of women’s empowerment, Kalie Shorr delivers powerful lines that resonate strongly with me; “…I might fall down but I get back up, I shine brightest when the going’s tough.” It is another song that has made my Spotify “On Repeat” playlist. We must remember that as feminists, we are challenging power hierarchies that are not going to relinquish their power willingly; they are going to obstruct our progress. And, to those individuals who stand in my way and try to hold me back, just know… ‘I got my high heels on with my boxing gloves, I can knock you out with a one-two punch’.”

Cristina Khan

MaryJo Bona

One of her favorite Janelle Monáe songs!

Galia Cozzi Berrondo

“This song is all about love and care! It always helps to ground me and remind me about the people that I love around me.”

“To be completely honest, this is the song I have been listening to lately when I get very anxious and it helps a lot. It is also a throw-back to my puberty.”

“I just love this song!”

Angelina Zingariello

“This song has always had a special place in my heart. Throughout the years I have constantly discovered new things about myself; this song reminds me I do not have to be anyone’s idea of what I should be.”

Jackie Donnelly

“This was an especially tough year for me, and hearing this song for the first time (released in 2021) hit close to home. A bittersweet song that captures a year of many lows, but also gives a sense of hope for better days ahead.  And who isn’t soothed by Brandi Carlile’s amazing harmonies? ❤”

“The Kennedy Center Honors this year celebrated Joni Mitchell. My mom and I watched this on Christmas Day together and we were dancing and singing along while we listened to this amazing compilation of some of her most memorable songs. So, so good!”

Karyna Colyer is a graduating Health Science B.S and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Minor. As graduation approaches, WGSS seniors reflect on their time in the department.

What made you pursue a Women’s and Gender Studies (WST) major/minor?

I grew up in a small rural college town, was raised by a single mother, and had the opportunity to attend an all-girls boarding high school, consisting of international students. I honestly didn’t experience much blatant sexism until college because I was fortunate enough to grow up steeped in feminism. My background presented me with the female experience in a lot of different ways and helped me realize and solidify my position as a woman. The events leading up to and during the 2016 Women’s March though, opened my eyes to just how alive and well sexism is in this country, and that gender and sexuality continue to be weaponized. With the exposure I had coming into college, I knew gender and gender studies were extremely important to me. I began my minor as a sophomore and was finally given vocabulary and theories that explained what I had been seeing for years. It was a baffling first semester of classes because I thought as a woman, who grew up around a variety of women, I knew what it meant to be a woman, but I quickly learned how naïve I was. Having the option to pursue WGSS as a minor allowed me to have a more holistic college experience, and helped me develop my interpersonal and professional skills from research to outreach. Coupled with my major in health science, I hope to someday work with underserved women and children, preferably in healthcare education and advocacy. I hope to give back to the communities that have shaped me, and without the deeper knowledge and understanding I gained through my minor I would not be able to do that.

Are there any professors and/or classes that had an impact on you?

I had Professor Khan, who is an adjunct professor I believe, for WST102. She changed my entire outlook on sociology and human interactions. She gave me and our entire class so much knowledge and made us all feel so comfortable while learning it. She made sure we always asked questions no matter how shallow or in-depth, and always gave thorough answers with real life examples. Her ability to help us understand the intricacies of human bodies, social structures, and power dynamics was remarkable. I have taken lessons from that class and use them every single day while also doing what I can to pass on the knowledge that I gained in that class to my friends, family, and peers.

What was your experience like in the WGSS department?

I never felt like I was minoring in “feminism” though, or just women’s studies. I took classes that gave me completely new perspectives on the male experience, and the queer, trans, and LGBTQ experience in general. By developing a broader understanding of all of these things, I think I became a better student, sister, friend, partner, and ally. Taking even just an intro WST class can change a person’s entire perspective, and being involved in this department has been one of my best decisions in college, one that I would recommend to anyone.

Sophia Garbarino is a graduating Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies B.A. who also has a second major in Sociology and a Health, Medicine, and Society Minor. As graduation approaches, WGSS seniors reflect on their time in the department.

What made you pursue a Women’s and Gender Studies (WST) major/minor?

I enrolled in WST 103 with Professor Montegary in the second semester of my freshman year. My 101 fellow is also a WGSS major and talked to me about the program after I decided to stop pursuing the pre-med track. During our first class, we dove right into learning about critical feminist theory, something I’d never been exposed to before. It completely blew my mind! As someone who loves abstract thinking and is passionate about rectifying injustices, I felt like I’d finally found what was missing in my entire academic career up until that point. Nothing in school had really made me think about complex big ideas before that, but intersectional feminism now allowed me to explore concepts without fear of being wrong, because a “right” answer is always subjective.

What was your experience like in the WGSS department?

In complete honesty, I genuinely liked all of the WGSS professors I’ve had. Each one clearly cares about their students – not just their academic performance defined by letters and numbers, but the actual person behind the grades as well. I love the intimate seminar-style classes, which partly comes from the WGSS department being small compared to other programs at Stony Brook, but mostly comes from the students themselves. Everyone has something meaningful to contribute to the conversation. WGSS is also, arguably, the most interdisciplinary field in existence (to date). Everyone can find something that interests them while applying a WGSS lens.

What do you plan on doing in the future?

I plan to go straight to graduate school in the fall to earn a Master’s in Public Health. The courses I’ve taken for the GSPH specialization track have really solidified my interest in public health, and I hope to continue my education and make a real difference in the realm of health inequity. I’m not sure which school I’ll attend yet, but hopefully somewhere sunny.