2024 St. Mary’s College of Maryland WGSX Colloquium Program – Calendars & Events

About the Series

The first annual Women Studies colloquium was held March 22-24, 2000. With the support of the Alice McLellan Birney Women Studies Fund, the cross-disciplinary study area in Women, Gender, & Sexuality presents a colloquium each spring in connection with Women’s History Month. Since 2000, the WGSX Colloquium has become an established tradition at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. This successful annual program has regularly drawn large audiences to events that have offered powerful interdisciplinary combinations of scholarly discourse and artistic expression (including film screenings, theatrical performances, and exhibitions) to discuss a topic critical to women’s lives.

THIS YEAR’S THEME – VISIBILITY OF DISABILITY: EXPLORING THE INTERSECTIONALITY OF DISABILITY, RACE AND GENDER

The 2024 Colloquium continues the program’s tradition of engaging with critical intellectual themes, this time focusing on disability visibility. This topic is not only timely given the current political landscape, but is of interest and relevance to the students, faculty and staff at SMCM. This topic, in part was inspired by student activism (i.e., Disability Speak Out event on March 3, 2023, where students with disabilities expressed their honest opinion and personal experiences regarding accessibility on campus, and at the same time, provided a place for students, faculty, staff, and other entities allies to listen). In September 2023, the National Institutes of Health designated people with disabilities as a population with health disparities. The “designation, new research program and update to NIH mission are actions to ensure inclusion of people with disabilities.” As we aim to build a more welcoming and inclusive campus, this is an urgent topic to address. It provides an ideal opportunity to model the intersection of academic study, social engagement, and social justice activism, which defines the WGSX Program curriculum.

2024 WGSX Colloquium Committee: Gili Freedman and Brian Smithson (co chairs), Angie Draheim

2024-25 WGSX Program Coordinator: Betül Basaran

2024

About the Series

THIS YEAR’S THEME – VISIBILITY OF DISABILITY: EXPLORING THE INTERSECTIONALITY OF DISABILITY, RACE AND GENDER

EVENTS

“Care at the End of the World: Health/care Infrastructure and Wild Disability Justice Life-Writing”

“Reproductive Care and Disability”

“Mental Health, Memories, and the Earth”

Students Talkback