Affirming Multivocal Humanities

Affirming
Multivocal
Humanities

Affirming Multivocal Humanities recognizes the importance of the study of race, gender, and sexuality to promote just and equitable futures. Our milestone initiatives emphasize: Academic Freedom, Art as Activism, and Trans Justice. Part of the goal of the implementation of this grant is to highlight our Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Queer Studies undergraduate researchers' extraordinary achievements here at Oregon State University.

Upcoming Events

Join Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at OSU for Gender in Cinema at Darkside Theater. Experience powerful stories exploring gender, identity, and resilience on screen at our film festival in collaboration with Das Films with generous support from the Mellon Foundation, featuring Kristen Lovell's "The Stroll” and Lina Soualem's "Bye Bye Tiberias”. WGSS will be showing two films:

Wednesday, May 7th at 6pm for The Stroll followed by a discussion

Wednesday, the 14th at 6pm for Bye, Bye Tiberias followed by discussion

The Stroll

Synopsis:

"The Stroll" documents the experiences of Black and Latina transgender women sex workers in pre-gentrified 1980s/90s New York City, detailing their survival through violence, policing, and sisterhood. Through archival footage and interviews, the film creates a vital historical record of a marginalized community displaced by gentrification, connecting their struggles to the broader fight for trans rights.

Kristen Lovell Bio:

Kristen Lovell is an American trans rights activist and filmmaker whose experiences navigating homelessness and sex work in New York City deeply inform her advocacy. Her directorial debut, the award-winning documentary The Stroll (HBO, 2023), reclaims her history and documents the lives of trans sex workers in the pre-gentrified Meatpacking District, serving as a vital piece of trans history.

Bye, Bye Tiberias

Synopsis:

"Bye Bye Tiberias" is a documentary directed by Lina Soualem that follows the director as she returns with her mother, actress Hiam Abbass, to her mother's native Palestinian village in Israel. The film explores Hiam's decision to leave her family behind to pursue her acting career in Europe and delves into the lives and legacies of four generations of courageous Palestinian women, connecting their personal stories to the broader history of displacement and resilience.

Lina Soualem Bio:

Lina Soualem is a French-Palestinian-Algerian filmmaker and actress, born in Paris. After studying History and Political Science at La Sorbonne University, she worked as a journalist and film festival programmer. Her directorial debut was the documentary "Their Algeria" (2020), which explored her paternal family history. Her second feature documentary, "Bye Bye Tiberias" (2023), focuses on her maternal Palestinian family and her mother, actress Hiam Abbass. Soualem has also acted in several films.”

Past Events

Please join us for this special event on Thursday, February 20th, from 2-5 pm., and Friday, February 21st, from 5-7 pm, at The Pride Center featuring award-winning poet Brody Parrish-Craig! Brody will facilitate a poetry workshop on Thursday, February 20th, from 2-5 pm titled, ‘Unreliable Historians: Reclaiming Truth and Agency in Creative Writing.’ This workshop will explore the power of poetry to confront and challenge distortions of truth. Participants are encouraged to bring a printed copy of a text or document that demonstrates writing that has disregarded truth, history, or lived experience in some way. This could include inaccurate news articles, textbooks, documents, medical charts, legal records, frustrating emails/correspondences, legislation, policy documents, and more. Please bring a copy or scan of the document that you can alter during the workshop. Join Brody for an open mic and poetry reading on Friday, February 21st, from 5-7 pm. All workshop participants are invited to share their own poetry inspired by the workshop themes. No prior poetry experience is necessary. Brody Parrish Craig (they/them) is the author of The Patient is an Unreliable Historian (2024) & Boyish, which won the 2019 Omnidawn Poetry Chapbook Contest. They are the editor of TWANG, a regional anthology of trans and gender nonconforming creators from the South and Midwest. Craig currently co-leads TLGBQ+ community arts programming in the Ozarks & teaches writing at NorthWest Arkansas Community College. This event is sponsored by the Women, Gender, and Sexuality studies program and is funded by the Affirming Multivocal Humanities Mellon Grant (PI Dr. Mehra Shirazi).

Art Against Sexual Violence
April 22, 2024

In community with Women, Gender, & Sexuality | Queer Studies Department with The Mellon Foundation Grant in honor of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. In this show, we highlight our undergraduate and graduate underrepresented student researchers. Themes include, but are not limited to, Palestine as a gendered issue, Missing & Murdered Indigenous women, QTBIPOC victims of hate crimes, gender and representation in pop culture.

Poetry as Insurgent Art with Jamila Osman
May 8 and 15, 2024

Alternative Modes of Knowledge Production: Poetry as Insurgent Art Join Award winning poet Jamila Osman's poetry workshop! Jamila believes in the power of poetry to create community, heal collectively, and produce scholarship through the insurgent art of poetry.

2070 People’s Encyclopedia Zine Making Workshop with Walidah Imarisha
Friday, January 31, 2025 • 2-4 p.m.
Lonnie B. Harris Black Cultural Center

Open to OSU faculty, staff, and students • RSVP with [email protected]

Workshop presented by Walidah Imarisha, an educator and writer. She is the co-editor of two anthologies, "Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories From Social Justice Movements," and "Another World is Possible." Imarisha is the author of "Angels with Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison and Redemption," which won a 2017 Oregon Book Award, as well as the poetry collection "Scars/Stars." She has received a Tiptree Fellowship for her science fiction writing. She is the writer and co-producer of "Space to Breathe" (2024), a documentary/science fiction hybrid film set in an abolitionist future. Imarisha currently teaches in Portland State University’s Black Studies Department and is the director of PSU’s Center for Black Studies. In the past, she has taught at Stanford University, Oregon State University and Pacific Northwest College of the Arts.

Sponsored by Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Affirming Multivocal Humanities from the Mellon Foundation.

Walidah Imarisha: Dreaming and Building Just Futures Lecture
Friday, January 31, 2025 • 5-6 pm
Memorial Union Journey Room

Open to OSU faculty, staff, and students • RSVP with [email protected]

In this workshop with Walidah Imarisha, participants will imagine themselves 50 years in the future and engage in writing entries for the 2070 People’s Encyclopedia about current issues and events now, as a way of imagining how the world today can lead to the world we want.

Sponsored by Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Affirming Multivocal Humanities from the Mellon Foundation.