Please stop by our welcome reception next Tuesday 2/28 to say hello to Mika Gadsden, our inaugural Community Leader in Residence. We will have light refreshments from 4:30-6pm. There will not be a formal program, just time and space to engage with each other and with Mika!
We hope you can join us.
Join Women’s & Gender Studies and the 1967 Legacy Program for a dialogue with Dr. Wendi Manuel-Scott and Tamika “Mika” Gadsden and moderated by Legacy Scholar Miyah Jackson on Friday, February 24th from 2PM-3PM at Maybank 101. We look forward to seeing you there!
What is your hometown, your pronouns, and your major(s)/minor(s)?
My hometown is Franklin, TN. I use She/Her pronouns. My major is International Studies.
What areas/aspects of gender activism and/or advocacy for women and girls you find most engaging/interesting/what you’re most passionate about?
I am most passionate about advocating internationally for women’s and girls’ rights; I am specifically interested in education. Malala Yousafzai has been one of my biggest inspirations for years.
Tell us about any extracurricular work you’re doing (ex. volunteering/local activism), or any involvement you have on campus with clubs/organizations.
I am the Founder and President of Cougar Refugee Alliance (CRA). I started this club at the College of Charleston in Spring 2022 because I saw the need to support Afghan refugees arriving in Charleston. I had worked with refugees back home in Nashville, and I knew how vital our help was in helping them transition to self-sufficiency in the United States. We have worked with Lutheran Services Carolina, our area resettlement agency, to assist over 80 Afghan refugees who have arrived in the area. In our first semester we grew rapidly to 75 members. CRA held a fundraiser, a school supply drive, and helped to coordinate and staff childcare during a Cultural Orientation for all recently resettled refugees. Our advocacy will continue as refugees from various parts of the world will be resettling in the Charleston area.
I also serve as a student representative of the College’s Task Force on Refugee Resettlement. This campus wide collaboration arose from some of my initial discussions with Dr. De Welde about what I wanted to do for my activism project as a Ketner Emerging Leader. Comprised of faculty and staff from across the College and student representatives, this taskforce focuses on coordinating campus involvement in local refugee resettlement efforts such as by establishing “Circles of Welcome” for families. I help to lead and coordinate student involvement with task force initiatives, and am a student liaison with Lutheran Services Carolina.
I am also a Charleston Fellow and an International Scholar, active in the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, Charleston Hillel, and the Chaarg Fitness Club.
What does being a Ketner scholar mean to you?
Being a Ketner Scholar means actively working to create change in the local community to promote acceptance. I think it means to have courage to step up and advocate for those who do not have the same privileges that I do as a white American woman with the ability to attend college. It means going out into the community and making a hands-on impact.
What are your plans and goals after graduation?
After college, my goal is to work for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees or for a refugee resettlement agency. I hope to apply what I learn from the International Studies program to work on policy change to make refugee resettlement a more efficient and effective process.
Join WGS and The Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art for a panel discussion organized by the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at the College of Charleston around themes explored in Jovencio de la Paz: The Ends of Rainbows on Wednesday, February 8, 2023 at 6:00PM.
This event will take place in person with a virtual participation option at halsey.cofc.edu/live
The panel participants are selected by WGS and is comprised of:
Kris de Welde, Director and Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies
Sarah Schoemann, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science
Christina García, Assistant Professor, Department of Hispanic Studies
WGS is co-sponsoring an amazing event with Tara Bynum. She’ll discuss her recent book, Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America.
Join us on Tuesday, Feb. 7th at 7PM at the Avery Research Center, 125 Bull St., Charleston, SC 29424
From the publisher UI Press: In the early United States, a Black person committed an act of resistance simply by reading and writing. Yet we overlook that these activities also brought pleasure. Tara A. Bynum tells the compelling stories of four early American writers who expressed feeling good despite living while enslaved or only nominally free. The poet Phillis Wheatley delights in writing letters to a friend. Ministers John Marrant and James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw memorialize their love for God. David Walker’s pamphlets ask Black Americans to claim their victory over slavery. Together, their writings reflect the joyous, if messy, humanity inside each of them. This proof of a thriving interior self in pursuit of good feeling forces us to reckon with the fact that Black lives do matter.
A daring assertion of Black people’s humanity, Reading Pleasures reveals how four Black writers experienced positive feelings and analyzes the ways these emotions served creative, political, and racialized ends.
Women’s and Gender Studies program at the College of Charleston announces its inaugural Community Leader-in-Residence
Charleston, SC – The College of Charleston’s Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) program is proud to announce its first Community Leader-in-Residence, an initiative to bridge the College and the greater Charleston community in partnership to advance equity and justice. The WGS program is honored to host Tamika Gadsden as its inaugural Community Leader-in-Residence (CLR), serving in this capacity from January through August 2023.
The Community Leader-in-Residence will support students in applying keystone concepts of the WGS discipline: intersectionality, power, resistance, equity, justice, and advocacy, in their understandings of and skills in areas such as community organizing, political and policy intervention strategies, needs assessment, effective communication, evidence-based advocacy, inclusive strategizing/planning for community action, and grant writing. Finally, the CLR will help to advance the College’s 2020-2030 Strategic Plan in the area of Academic Distinction through innovations for sustainable solutions, commitments to diversity, equity, inclusion and justice, and impactful, strategic partnerships.
This initiative is the culmination of years of critical dreaming by WGS students, faculty, and administrators. In 2018, Women’s and Gender Studies students were central to forming I-CAN, the Intersectional Cougar Action Network, which quickly became a voice for intersectional feminist student activism. Following the 2020 protests against the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and many other Black and Brown individuals as well as sustained national attention to a racial justice movement, the WGS program formed the Student Advisory Committee (SAC) with intentional representation of students with AALANA (African American, Latinx, Asian and Native American) and other underrepresented identities. The SAC provides WGS students with opportunities for shared governance in the program. One of the Committee’s first actions was to detail the Community Leader-in-Residence proposed by I-CAN, as a strategy for developing student leadership capacities.
Embracing the idea, over the last two years the WGS Executive Faculty Committee developed the position description, taking care to ensure that the role is reciprocal and sustainable, and that the initiative honored students’ original vision while advancing WGS program priorities.
Tamika “Mika” Gadsden is a Charleston-based content creator, media entrepreneur and organizer. The daughter of Jim Crow refugees, Mika has built a significant digital presence as an activist and has built Charleston Activist Network Media, LLC. – an outgrowth of her work as the South Carolina leader of the state’s Women’s March organization. Mika also hosts Mic’d Up, a daily livestream show on Twitch.
While the role is continually being defined in collaboration with Gadsden, the WGS program invites student scholar-activist-leaders in WGS and at the College broadly to join faculty leaders in welcoming Gadsden and ensuring her time as the Community Leader-in-Residence is generative and transformative.
The Women’s and Gender Studies program explores the intersections of gender, class, race, ethnicity, age, religion, ability, and sexuality within different cultures, contexts and time periods, offering a Bachelor of Arts major and minor at the College of Charleston, introducing students to relevant social issues while fostering critical thinking, strong verbal, writing and research skills, encouraging social advocacy, emphasizing diversity, and giving invaluable, tangible experience.
For more information, quotes, photos, or to schedule an interview, please email Kris De Welde, Director of WGS at deweldek@cofc.edu.
WGS is excited to be co-sponsoring the 3rd annual Black History Month lecturer, Dr. Tamika Nunley. Join the Department of History at College of Charleston and co-sponsors of this event on Wednesday, February 15, 2023 at 5:30 p.m. in the Septima Clark Auditorium on the College of Charleston campus (ECTR 118, 25 St. Philip St). ?
Tamika Nunley is Associate Professor of History at Cornell University. Her first book, At the Threshold of Liberty: Women, Slavery, and Shifting Identities in Washington, D.C. (University of North Carolina Press, 2021) reveals how African American women—enslaved, fugitive, and free—imagined new identities and lives beyond the oppressive restrictions intended to prevent them from experiencing liberty, self-respect, and power. Nunley traces how black women navigated social and legal proscriptions to develop their own ideas about liberty as they escaped from slavery, initiated freedom suits, created entrepreneurial economies, pursued education, and participated in political work. In telling these stories, Nunley places black women at the vanguard of the history of Washington D.C., and illuminates how they contributed to the momentous transformations of nineteenth-century America. This book was named the 2021 Letitia Woods Brown Book prize winner for best book in African American women’s history and the 2021 Pauli Murray Book prize winner for best book in Black intellectual history. Nunley is currently finishing a second book, The Demands of Justice: Enslaved Women, Capital Crime, and Clemency in Early Virginia, 1662-1865 with the University of North Carolina Press.
This lecture is co-sponsored by the African American Studies Program, the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World, Center for Public Choice and Market Process, Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston, Department of Political Science, Office of Institutional Diversity, and the Women’s and Gender Studies Program. Registration is not required.
If you would like to pre-register for the lecture, you may do so here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/black-womens-history-as-american-history-with-tamika-nunley-tickets-514881984877?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
The Qisasna program engages American and Yemeni students in 1) online dialogue sessions to learn about each other’s cultures and discuss issues of mutual interest, and 2) collaboration to produce international podcasts related to shared challenges and opportunities—all through virtual exchange. No previous podcasting experience is necessary, as podcast training will be provided. Students will gain valuable skills in cross-cultural engagement and dialogue as well as international podcast production, and become part of a program alumnae network with access to additional US Department of State-sponsored opportunities. There is no fee to participate in the program.
Through our previous and current collaborations, partner universities participated through different kinds of arrangements:
Please feel free to visit the following link to see some student testimonials about the positive impact Qisasna has had: https://www.stevensinitiative.org/impact/sound-waves-a-virtual-journey-in-podcast-making/
Opportunity for interested undergraduate students to participate in virtual exchange with students in Yemen this semester
The ‘Qisasna’ (‘Our Stories’ in Arabic) program will engage American and Yemeni students in 1) online dialogue sessions to learn about each other’s cultures and discuss issues of mutual interest, and 2) collaboration to produce international podcasts related to shared challenges and opportunities—all through virtual exchange. No previous podcasting experience is necessary, as podcast training will be provided. Students will gain valuable skills in cross-cultural engagement and dialogue as well as international podcast production, and become part of a program alumni network with access to additional US Department of State-sponsored opportunities. There is no fee to participate in the program.
Requirements to participate:
1. Be a US citizen currently enrolled as a university undergraduate.
2. Commit to attending 3 online dialogue sessions with Yemeni students and completing an 8-hr self-paced online podcast skills training by Mar./Apr. 2023.
3. Commit to attending 1 final online dialogue session and to working with fellow American and Yemeni students to complete a short podcast, and related tasks, by May 2023 (each student group will determine its own schedule for meeting to produce podcasts).
The Qisasna program is being facilitated by AMIDEAST and the International Center for Religion & Diplomacy (ICRD) as part of the Stevens Initiative of the US Department of State.
Benefits for students who complete the program include:
· Receiving a digital badge that can be posted on LinkedIn profiles (badge issued by AMIDEAST references the Stevens Initiative program that is sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the US Department of State);
· Acquiring media skills in podcast production through training by a professional podcast company and hands-on experience;
· Developing technical skills in using Microsoft Teams, a platform used by many employers;
· Building skills in cross-cultural communication, teamwork, and project implementation;
· Co-creating a podcast for broadcast to international audiences;
· Joining a program alumni network and becoming eligible for involvement in continued alumni activities from the Stevens Initiative and the US Department of State. Alumni are invited to join the US Department of State International Exchange Alumni site which provides access to events, research databases, alumni grant fund opportunities, and other resources. Alumni are additionally invited to join Localized, an online professional development platform. Alumni may also be invited to have their stories featured on the Stevens Initiative website. In addition, alumni are eligible for special consideration for internship and networking opportunities from the International Center for Religion & Diplomacy.
Spaces are limited! To apply, please complete the online form at the link below as soon as possible. Applications will be considered on a first-come, first-served basis.
For questions, please contact Loujain Kiki at loujain@icrd.org .
The Qisasna program is being facilitated by AMIDEAST and the International Center for Religion & Diplomacy as part of the Stevens Initiative of the US Department of State.
This list was created with current WGS students (especially upperclassmen) in mind. While by no means exhaustive, the document linked below lists countless M.A., Joint Degree, and Ph.D. programs in WGS. This list also includes programs that have WGS minor, concentration, or certificate programs.
WGS is excited to share our next issue of our WGS Connect Newsletter! This issue features WGS’s podcast What IFF? that was launched by student Marissa Haynes, new faculty and affiliate faculty members (Cristina Dominguez and John Thomas), introducing WGS’s new Associate Director – Lauren Ravalico, REI reflections with WGS student Kristen Graham, and more!
We hope you enjoy this special issue! WGS is already outlining the next newsletter, and we cannot wait to share the next iteration of WGS Connect in the spring! In the meantime, be sure to check this blog site and our social media to keep up-to-date on Women’s and Gender Studies’ current events and spotlights.
WGS would also love to hear from you! Always feel free to reach out with ideas for the blog or newsletter. We embrace all things collaboratively produced and will continue to embody that philosophy in all that we do.
Use the button below to view this special digital PDF, complete with embedded links and lots of great info on WGS students, faculty, events, and more.