Recap: GSS Year-End Celebration: Gender & Sexuality Studies Program

Recap: GSS Year-End Celebration

June 11, 2020

Thanks to everyone who joined us in our celebration last week! Click here for the recording of the event.

Director's Address

As this trying academic year winds down, on behalf of the Advisory Board of the Gender & Sexuality Studies Program, I want to thank all of you for your flexibility in responding to the need to do your course work remotely. We understand that this was a challenge for everyone, but we also want to acknowledge that getting back home, finding the time, space, and emotional energy to focus on coursework, and assembling the necessary technological resources was especially difficult for some of you. We hope you were able to find the support you needed and that you will communicate with us over the summer and through the fall if you still need our help in dealing with the ongoing challenges produced by the global pandemic.

The Board also wants to express its outrage at the brutal murder of George Floyd and so many others who have been harmed and killed by anti-black racism and police violence. Recently, GSS signed the letter written by For Members Only, the Black Graduate Student Association, and Coalition NU and sent to the Northwestern administration calling for investment in life-giving institutions and divestment from law enforcement. The Advisory Board also met this week to discuss concrete ways the GSS Program can better integrate the transhistorical and transnational histories of anti-black violence, colonial domination, and recognition of the pervasiveness of social inequity and injustice into its curriculum and all that we do. We have also put together a detailed response to the Gender-Queer, Non-Binary, and Trans Task Force Report setting forth the ways GSS intends to move forward and provide leadership for implementing the report’s recommendations. That response will be uploaded soon to the program website.

Finally, you can read the remarks I gave at the GSS Awards Ceremony and End-of-the-Year Celebration. While those remarks focus on this year’s seniors and foreground the Program’s distress at the killing of George Floyd and our solidarity with the protests that developed in its wake, they were meant to include all of you in the program’s praise for the ways you continue to teach, challenge, and inspire all of us.

With admiration and gratitude for your participation in the work of the Gender & Sexuality Studies Program.

Jan Radway, Director

LIST OF GRADUATING SENIORS with a GSS MAJOR/MINOR (2019-20):

Sam Bernitz (Major: Journalism – Minors: GSS, Film & Media Studies)
Samuel Berston (Major: Social Policy – Minor: GSS)
Allyson Bondy (Major: GSS – Minor: Legal Studies)
Phoebe Chase (Major: Journalism – Minor: GSS – Certificate: Integrated Marketing Communications [IMC])
Hailey Cox-Montijo (Major: Human Development and Psychological Services – Minors: GSS, Sociology)
Ying Dai (Majors: GSS, Asian American Studies)
Adam Davies (Majors: GSS, Social Policy)
Maya Glenn (Major: GSS – Minor: Sociology)
Max Godart (Major: Neuroscience – Minor: GSS)
Elissa Gray (Majors: Journalism, Political Science – Minor: GSS)
Elise Hausman (Major: Radio/TV/Film – Minors: GSS, Theatre)
Emily Hoecker (Major: Social Policy – Minors: GSS, Political Science)
Jiyul Kim (Majors: GSS, Psychology, English Literature)
Eliza Levy (Majors: GSS, Radio/TV/Film)
Justin Chor Yu Liu (Major: Radio/TV/Film – Minors: GSS, Asian Humanities)
Jeremiah Magier (Major: GSS)
Ebony McKeever (Major: Neuroscience – Minor: GSS)
Talley Morton (Majors: GSS, Journalism)
Alex Neumann (Major: Political Science – Minors: GSS, Legal Studies)
Erin O’Loughlin (Major: Journalism – Minor: GSS)
Milan Polk (Major: Journalism – Minor: GSS)
Amira Richards (Major: Neuroscience [concentration in Biology] – Minor: GSS)
Erin Saunders (Major: GSS – Minor: History)
Sloane Scott (Major: English – Minor: GSS)
Hannah Solmor (Major: Communication Studies – Minor: GSS – Certificate: Integrated Marketing Communications [IMC])

Awards

Donations

As part of our celebration and as a way both to honor our graduating seniors and to mark the gravity of the moment, GSS has decided to contribute individually to a number of different organizations working for social justice in the wake of the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd. We would like to invite you to donate to one of these organizations (or any other of your choice) in honor of this year’s seniors.