by Jenée Wilde, Senior Instructor, Department of English
“One of the things that became clear during the pandemic is that graduate students were the most affected by lockdowns, but the institution made the least room for addressing how they were affected,” says CSWS Director Sangita Gopal. “Faculty could take a break from research, but graduate students didn’t have that leisure.”
This spring, CSWS resumed the Acker–Morgen Memorial Lecture series after winter weather and pandemic conditions had thwarted the event for the last three years. On May 20, we were thrilled to welcome on campus Dr. Raka Ray, a professor of sociology and South and Southeast Asia studies and dean of social sciences at UC Berkeley. She specializes in gender and feminist theory, domination and inequality, the emerging middle classes, and social movements. Below, political science graduate student Olivia Atkinson offers a personal reflection on Ray’s talk:
by Sangita Gopal, CSWS Director
On June 24, 2022, in a historic and far-reaching decision, the US Supreme Court officially reversed Roe v. Wade, declaring that the constitutional right to abortion—upheld for nearly a half-century—no longer exists. The majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization proposes that the various provisions of the Constitution contain no inherent right to privacy or personal autonomy. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito stated unequivocally that abortion is a matter to be decided by the states.
CSWS sponsored three talks during winter and spring 2023. We invited five of our graduate student affiliates below to share some thoughts on the talks’ themes.
February 16: “Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America”
March 13: “The Right’s Gender Wars and the Assault on Democracy”
April 21: “Just Get on the Pill: The Uneven Burden of Reproductive Politics”
by Jeongon Choi, PhD Candidate, Department of East Asian Languages & Literatures
By Brooke Burns, PhD Candidate, Department of Philosophy
By Isabella Clark, PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology
by Gloria Macedo-Janto, PhD Student, Department of Romance Languages
