43rd Annual Gender Studies Symposium
Being Online
March 6–8, 2024
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43rd Annual Gender Studies Symposium: Being Online -
Keynote speaker Moya Bailey, associate professor at Northwestern UniversityCredit: Colin Blume -
Students display their art from the collage workshop -
Thursday’s keynote speaker, Moya Bailey, presenting "What Are Gender and Sexuality in the World We Want?"Credit: Colin Blume -
Keynote speaker Moya Bailey engages with students at book signingCredit: Colin Blume -
"Queer Perceptions" panelCredit: Suhail Akram -
Keynote Avery Dame-Griff with students after his presentationCredit: Stella Moran -
Poetry and prose reading in Gregg PavilionCredit: Suhail Akram -
Keynote Avery Dame-Griff with 2024 co-chairsCredit: Stella Moran -
Wednesday’s keynote speaker, Avery Dame-Griff, presenting "When It Was Ours: A Queer and Trans Counterhistory of the Internet"Credit: Stella Moran -
L&C students McKenna Jones and Burton Scheer celebrate the successful revitalization of the student publication of Synergia: Journal of Gender Thought and ExpressionCredit: Suhail Akram -
2024 cochairs with keynote speakers and faculty director -
L&C alum Laser Webber, a trans musician and actor, presents his award-winning comedy musicalCredit: Nora Barnard -
Moderator Magalí Rabasa and panelists Jeremy Kregar, L&C ’24, Jason N. Le, and Zoë Smith, L&C ’25, at "Subjectivity and the Body" panelCredit: Colin Blume -
2024 co-chairs August van Nieuwenhuysen, Cameron Kalopsis, and Molly Gibbons addressing reception guestsCredit: Stella Moran -
Former symposium co-chairs enjoying a moment together at the opening receptionCredit: Stella Moran -
LC alum Laser Webber performing a musical history of trans men and his own transitionCredit: Nora Barnard -
Audience enjoys performance by alum Laser WebberCredit: Stephen Mercier -
2024 co-chairs with keynote speakers
Thank you to everyone who participated in and attended this year’s Gender Studies Symposium. Photo highlights are available in the gallery above.
We invite you to enjoy the recordings of the keynote presentations by Dr. Avery Dame-Griff and Dr. Moya Bailey.
The 43rd Annual Gender Studies Symposium, “Being Online,” will focus on the ways in which digital technology, internet platforms, and online spaces have shaped and been shaped by understandings and expressions of gender and sexuality. This year’s events explore gender, sexuality, and digital technologies by thinking about issues of work, leisure, sex, violence, family, privacy, activism, identity, self-expression, and more. Some questions that arise for us:
- How do gender and sexuality influence the ways we use the internet, social media, and digital technologies?
- How has the internet been a space for finding safety, building community, and forging feminist and LGBTQ+ resistance? At the same time, how has the internet facilitated violence, abuse, and harassment?
- How have online spaces been an outlet for self-expression and creativity around gender and sexuality?
- How has the growth of the online sex work industry and dating apps affected sex, intimacy, and labor?
- How do people with identities as gender and sexual minorities experience obstacles or opportunities in the tech industry?
- What aspects of data mining and digital surveillance are revealed when we focus on privacy and security in relation to gender and sexuality?
- How do technologies like algorithms and artificial intelligence amplify, reinforce, challenge, or undermine gender biases, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia?
We hope this symposium inspires dialogue about these changing technologies and their relationship to gender and sexuality.
2023-24 student co-chairs
Molly Gibbons ’24, Cameron Kalopsis ’24, and August van Nieuwenhuysen ’25
August van Nieuwenhuysen BA ’25More about AugustI am one of the cochairs for this year’s Gender Studies Symposium. I really appreciate how involved students are on all levels of symposium planning. It requires lots of dedicated teamwork, but seeing that symposium come to life after months of planning makes it all worth it.
Molly Gibbons BA ’24More about MollyI am a cochair for the Gender Studies Symposium, and I always look forward to attending symposia events. I love learning from the keynote speakers and being able to support my peers and learn about their work.
Cameron Kalopsis BA ’24More about CameronWorking on the Gender Studies Symposium has been a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I feel so lucky to have gotten to play a part in bringing together such a meaningful and informative event.
