By Margaret Bostrom, PhD candidate, Department of English

by Lacey M. Guest, Master’s Student, Department of History, and Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies

by Lola Loustaunau, PhD candidate, Department of Sociology

“One time I hurt my back, because the work there is really heavy, and I remember she [the human resource director] made me cry, gave a warning and wouldn’t let me go to the doctor, and I felt so bad,” said Mercedes, a bakery worker, while seated on her couch. It’s an icy winter morning and we have been talking for a while. Although I had asked about work injuries the answer that Mercedes gave me went beyond stating that she had, in fact, injured her back while working. 

by Angela Rovak, Doctoral Candidate, Department of English

Even before she turned ten years old, Octavia E. Butler knew she was destined to be a writer. In an interview with The New York Times in 2000, Butler recalls that, 

By Laura Strait, Doctoral Candidate, Media Studies, School of Journalism and Communication

by Andrew Robbins, PhD Candidate, Media Studies, School of Journalism and Communication

With funding from a CSWS Graduate Student Research Grant, I was able to travel to the GLBT Historical Society Archive in San Francisco in November 2018 to explore the unsorted collection of “Tranny Fest,” the original name of what is now known as the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival. The collection was donated by the festival’s original co-founders, media lawyer Alex Austin and late filmmaker Christopher Lee, who started the festival in 1997. 

by Peter P. Ehlinger, PhD Student, Counseling Psychology, College of Education

“They’re tired of waiting for things that aren’t going to come.” — Non-cisgender student

“I drank a lot as a young teenager…I think a lot of that came from a strong sense of lack of belonging and social anxiety.” — Non-cisgender student

by Layire Diop, PhD Candidate, Media Studies, School of Journalism and Communication

The figures released by the World Health Organization (WHO) are staggering. Even though fistula was eliminated in developed countries a century ago, it still affects two million women around the world (WHO, 2018). 

by Elinam Amevor, PhD Student, School of Journalism and Communication

The nineteenth century colonial legacy of the British in the Gold Coast—now Ghana—which ensured that men produce cash crops for export to keep the engines of the Industrial Revolution running, while women engage in food-crop production to feed the home, continues to determine the gendered nature of Ghana’s agricultural sector in the twenty-first century. 

by Celeste Reeb, Doctoral Candidate, Department of English

[gentle harpsichord jingle] [music reminiscent of the Jaws theme playing] [exotic percussive music]