Schedule

11:30 a.m.–1 p.m., Council Chamber, Fowler Student Center
Panel: Reproductive Healthcare Within and Beyond the State

Moderator: Michelle Callahan, L&C director of health promotion and wellness
Abubeker Mohammed Adilo, PhD student at Addis Ababa University and exchange student at Kyoto University, “Negotiating System and Everyday Practice: Reproductive Justice Challenges in Werabe Town, Ethiopia This presenter has withdrawn.
Madeline Senter, Whitman College ’25, “Reimagining Care: Gender-Transition Doulas and Queer Kinship”
Olga Soloviova Friedlander, L&C ’25, “Between the State and the Body: Abortion, Autonomy, and Soviet Policy, 1920-1955”
Rebeka Kerék, L&C ’27, “Gray Zone: Home Birth Experiences and an Incarcerated Midwife from Hungary” 

11:30 a.m.–12 p.m., Gregg Pavilion
Performance: Toe Touching

Kobey Bonin, Portland-based artist and graduate student at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, and crimson consuela ravarra, intermedia artist
“Toe Touching” is a physical improvisation performance consisting of partner-assisted movements designed to mimic a physical therapy regimen specifically intended to prolong muscle function in the hands and upper extremities. The performance explores the complicated relationship between platonic love, the intimacy of care, gender expression/euphoria, and the hard feelings that are associated with experiencing progressive and terminal neuromuscular disease.

12:30–1:30 p.m., Gregg Pavilion
Workshop: Forms of Address

Facilitated by Miranda Luiz, graduate student at the Pacific Northwest College of Art
This workshop uses guided improvisation to explore how we interpret our affective experiences to make them legible to others. In Part I, participants will reflect on theoretical ideas of gender construction and consider how implicit modes of address play a role in forming subjectivity. Part II will allow for experimentation with different modes of address in improvisation, focusing on writing, movement, and sound. Part III will offer time for reflective discussion.

1:45–3:15 p.m., Council Chamber
Panel: Navigating the Unnavigable: Responses to Institutional Violence

Moderator: Magalí Rabasa, L&C associate professor of Hispanic studies and director of ethnic studies
Aliza King, L&C ’25, “Schools of Thought: Community Responses to Sexual Assault at Lewis & Clark”
Skylar Carothers, Pacific University ’25, and Aimee Wodda, assistant professor of criminal justice, law, and society, Pacific University, “‘I know what pain feels like. I’ve been through it’: A Sex-Positive Criminological Approach to Medical Violence and Self-Blame”
Catherine Lake, L&C ’25, “Women in the Gulags: Gendered Processes of Survival and Resistance”
Sang-hyoun Pahk, assistant professor of sociology, Pacific University, “Administrative Feelings: On Demographic Anxieties in Higher Education”

3:30–5 p.m., Council Chamber
Panel: Playing with Gender: Recreation and Gender Performance 

Moderator: Melanie Kohnen, L&C associate professor of rhetoric and media studies
Amelia Robinson , L&C ’25, “Intimacy in AI” This presenter has withdrawn.
Mark de Gruchy, PhD student at Washington State University, “The Untangled Unity: The Decentering of Heteronormative Masculinity within Pro Wrestling”
Ella Martini, L&C ’22 and graduate student at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, “Barbie Girl in a Criminal Underworld: Dissonant Gender Affects in Yakuza’s Cabaret Club Simulators”
Irene Hilman, Scooter Flanagan, and Alula Hirst, L&C ’25, “Masculinity at the Table: How Indie TTRPGs Create Space Away from the Toxic Masculinity in Mainstream TTRPGs”

3:30–5 p.m., Gregg Pavilion
Panel: What We Are Supposed to Feel [Now]

Jason Damron, assistant professor of sociology, Pacific University, and Cayla McGrail, historian for the City of Portland, “Being Thankful: Queering Feeling in an LGBTQ+ Sites Project”
Kailani Ibanez, Pacific University ’27, “A Social Justice Approach to Filipino Oral History”
Jaymee Morrone, Pacific University ’25, “The Biological Sentimentality of Adoption Narratives”

7 p.m., Council Chamber
Keynote Event
Rage at the Crossroads of Turk and Taylor: On the Uses and Abuses of Transgender History for the Present

Susan Stryker, distinguished scholar, author of groundbreaking work in transgender studies, and award-winning filmmaker 

The site of Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, where trans women and others banded together to revolt against police violence at an all-night eatery in San Francisco’s Tenderloin in 1966, was recently listed on the National Register of Historic Places—the first such site to be so listed because of its connection to trans social movement history. In this talk, historian Susan Stryker explores rage as a shared structure of feeling that informed that act of collective resistance at the corner of Turk and Taylor Streets in 1966, and discusses how that affect has—and hasn’t—been transmitted through acts of public memorialization.

• American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation will be provided. For additional information about accessibility, please consult the Event Details page.
• Book signing and reception to follow in the Beth Miller Lounge (Council Chamber foyer). Books will be available for purchase.

9:30–11 a.m., Council Chamber
Panel: Community, Care, and Coalition

Moderator: Sepideh Bajracharya, L&C assistant professor with term of anthropology
Minerva Hayes, Washington State University ’25, “Queer Community Organizing in Response to Societal and Institutional Backlash and Discrimination”
Bella Chamberland, Reed College ’25, “Resisting an Ungrievable Normal: Exploring Emotional Queer Temporalities in the COVID-19 Pandemic”
Grace Marchant, L&C ’25 and GSS co-chair, “Knowing Men: Friendship, Misogyny, and Social Intervention”
Josie Cohen-Rodríguez, PhD student and LGBTQ+ Center student life and community coordinator, Washington State University, “Multimodal Memory Work and Embodied Repertoire: Grounding Queer Futurity through Relational Affective Practice”

9:30–11 a.m., Watzek 245
Workshop: [TRANS]Form: How Stories Can Shape Change in Healthcare

Facilitated by Alexis Rehrmann, community engagement coordinator at the L&C Center for Community and Global Health, and Chloe Flora, L&C ’08.
This interactive, narrative medicine workshop offers an opportunity to explore and reflect on healthcare as a site with potent capacity to share our identities and emotions and elicit moments when we feel most scared or safe, proud or ashamed, neglected or nurtured, euphoric or hopeless. All are welcome; first-come seating. All you need to bring is a willingness to show up and a pen and paper (or your preferred writing tool).

11:30 a.m.–1 p.m., Council Chamber
Panel: Intimacy, Eroticism, and Power

Moderator: Reiko Hillyer, L&C associate professor and chair of history
Mariah Schafhausen, L&C ’25, “Hiding in Bad Sex: Obfuscation and Reification of Oppression within Intimacy”
Stella Coomes, Whitman College ’25, “Teaching Joy(fully): Pleasure-Based Sex Education in Trauma-Informed Classrooms”
Lola Arthur, L&C ’25, “Embodying the Erotic Self: Stories of Shame, Sensation, and Feeling Sexy from Women over Forty”
Kindle Murray, L&C student, “Being Seen and Unseen: The Paradox of Sex Work”

1:45–3 p.m., Council Chamber
Roundtable: Erecting Discourse: Reinserting Sex into Gender and Sexuality Studies

Moderator: Patti Duncan, professor and director of graduate studies in women, gender, and sexuality studies, Oregon State University
Yolyamanitzin Gomez, G’lik Koffink, and Dharmakrishna Mirza, PhD students in women, gender, and sexuality studies, Oregon State University, and Paddy Farr, social worker for the USA-Palestine Mental Health Network

The goal of this roundtable discussion is to provide a foundational understanding of theory in the flesh and autotheory as it relates to disability studies, queer theory, trans of color poetics, and sex work in the borderlands. We privilege consciousness-raising experiences through a collaborative, demystifying, and non-hierarchical framework. We will engage with theory in the flesh and autotheory through conversations and personal narratives.  We regret that this session has been canceled.

1:45–3 p.m., Watzek 245
Workshop: Erasure Poetry: The Art of Dismantling Bigotry

Facilitated by Elio Curtis, L&C ’28
Erasure poetry, often known as blackout poetry, is a form of art that has been used to resist oppression based on gender. This workshop will begin with a presentation highlighting some of the women and gender-nonconforming individuals who have used erasure poetry as a form of resistance, followed by an opportunity for participants to make their own erasure poetry. Supplies will be provided, but participants are invited to bring copies of texts they wish to use in creating their poems, particularly for materials written in languages other than English.

3:30–4:30 p.m., Council Chamber
Roundtable: Losing our Religion? Feelings, Faith, and (Un-)Formation: On the Intersections of Religious and Queer Identities

Brandy Daniels, assistant professor of theology, University of Portland, and University of Portland students Robin Aughney ’25, Sophie Arcangel ’26, and Scott Winkenweder ’25

3:30–5 p.m., Smith Hall, Albany Quadrangle
Synergia Reading and Launch Party

Join us in celebrating the release of the 2024-25 issue of Synergia: Journal of Gender Thought & Expression, edited by L&C students. Refreshments will be served.

7 p.m., Agnes Flanagan Chapel
Keynote Performance: Lessons in Drag, with LaWhore Vagistan

Dr. Vagistan, your favorite South Asian drag auntie, brings the nightclub to the classroom (and vice versa) to explain how critical social theory matters in queer nightlife. Touching on themes that include globalization, feminist theory, and Islamophobia, she stages the nightclub as a site of politics and pleasure. Part lecture, part lip sync, part audience participation, the show demonstrates how much drag teaches us, even requires us, to be in relation with the rest of the world. Book signing and reception to follow in Gregg Pavilion. Books will be available for purchase.

10:20–11:20 a.m., Council Chamber
Roundtable: Gender Diversity and Language Learning

Katja Altpeter, L&C associate professor of German studies
Philippe Brand, L&C associate professor of French studies
Keith Dede, L&C professor of Chinese
Lali Gößwein, L&C language assistant in German
Masha Hristova, L&C assistant professor of Russian studies
Marsela Missner, L&C ’28
Elliott Negrin, L&C ’25
Magalí Rabasa, L&C associate professor of Hispanic studies
Marie-Eve Thifault, L&C instructor of French

11:45 a.m.–1:15 p.m., Council Chamber
Panel: Bodies and Becoming: Theory, Narrative, and Art

Moderator: Jess Perlitz, L&C associate professor of art and head of sculpture
Diego Zárate Méndez, L&C ’25, “The Feminine Grotesque in the Hybrid Bronzes of Germaine Richier”
Megan Lolley, graduate student and writer-in-residence, University of Idaho, and Sandra Reineke, associate professor of political science, University of Idaho, “My Brilliant Friend Simone de Beauvoir: How Elena Ferrante’s Novels Illustrate Beauvoir’s Insights About the Gendered Experience of Becoming a Woman in Italy”
Alula Hirst, L&C ’25, “Trans Phantoms: Gender Congruent Feelings in a Gender Incongruent Body”
Zoë Smith, L&C ’25 and GSS co-chair, “Subjectivity through Subjection: Dissociation and Gendered (Dis)embodiment”

1:45–3:15 p.m., Council Chamber
Panel: Experiments in Autotheory: Gender, Narrative, Art, and Identity

Moderator: Andrea Hibbard, L&C assistant professor with term of English
Alex Chew, L&C ’25 and GSS co-chair, “‘Je suis ton Orlando’: Exploring Woolf’s Orlando Through a Personal Politics of Recognition”
Corey Near-Ansari, L&C ’26, “Aesthetics of Language as a Tool in Queer Creation of Self”
Chance Hagey, L&C ’27, “How Virginia Woolf Uplifts the Woman Artist”
Alma Forbes, L&C ’25, “An Embodiment Against Credibility”

1:45–3:15 p.m., Gregg Pavilion
Panel: Feeling Out of Place

Moderator: Kim Cameron-Domínguez, L&C assistant professor of anthropology
Raymond Lindquist, PhD student at Washington State University, “‘Is this a Kissing Book?’: Self-Reflections on (Mis)Understandings of Disgust and Amatonormativity Through Popular Culture”
Lauren Hough, graduate student at Pacific Northwest College of Art, “Tangled Thoughts: Feminist Entanglement, Nature, and Cripistemologies”
Mak Thomas, student at Oregon State University, “Emotional Slavery and Activism: The Interconnections for Inclusivity within LGBTQIA+ BIPOC Spaces and the Fight for Black Women Activism”
Shaina Khan, PhD student at Oregon State University, “‘I Didn’t Know the Word for “Gay”’: Being Queer within a Desi-American Family”

3:30–5 p.m., Council Chamber
Roundtable: Rage Against the Machine: Anger as a Tool of Resistance, Community, and Action

aman agah, Ana Carolina de Assis Nunes, Shaina Khan, and Jakki Mattson, PhD students at Oregon State University
As graduate students of varying, multiple marginalized backgrounds, we have first-hand experience of being labeled as angry and emotional in our institutions, in the US and abroad. We come together in this roundtable to share our experiences as feminist scholar-activists in systems of higher education with regards to this feeling of “anger,” and, in a way, to be in dialogue with other scholars who have been labeled as angry or emotional, specifically in relation to our marginalized identities. 

3:30–5 p.m., Gregg Pavilion
Panel: Affective Spaces and Affected Bodies

Moderator: Suhaila Meera, L&C assistant professor of theatre
Alex Neal, graduate student at Pacific Northwest College of Art, “Basic Instinct and Queer Negativity”
Mallary Wilson, graduate student at Pacific Northwest College of Art and adjunct professor at Portland State University, “The Logic of Rage: AI Algorithms, Emotional Manipulation, and the Erosion of Social Discourse”
Emily Robinson, graduate student at Oregon State University, “World-Building with Grief: Feminist Speculation as Healing Justice”
Amy Sharp, director of Washington State University Women*s Center, and Bekah MillerMacPhee, PhD student at University of Idaho and assistant director of health education at Washington State University, “Joyful and Hard: Meet Me in the Women*s Center”

7:30 p.m., Fir Acres Theatre
Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Directed by Rebecca Lingafelter, L&C associate professor of theatre

                               Make thick my blood,
Stop up th’access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th’effect and it

-Lady Macbeth, Act I Scene 7

In this contemporary interpretation of Shakespeare’s play, we explore the relationship between human ambition and the natural world through the lens of folk horror. Drawing on rich inspiration from artists such as Ari Aster, Robin Eggers, and Robin Hardy, as well as pagan traditions embedded in Shakespeare’s text, we will create a world of the uncanny, where our perception and reality blur. The play’s examination of ambition, fear, shame, and conscience are deeply embedded in a gendered understanding of these emotions. For instance, Lady Macbeth must purge herself of her feminine compassion in order to pursue masculine ambition. Our production, created in partnership with the ensemble, will attempt to explode these notions of gender, power, and human significance in the face of a larger mystery. 

• Tickets are required for this event. Use the code gssfeelings (valid only for March 7). Tickets may be available at the door shortly before curtain. Contact gendsymp@lclark.edu if you have questions. 
• Performance will be followed by a talkback.