It’s Women’s History Month (yay) and the first anniversary of the pandemic (not so yay). It’s truly one of those hard times where we’re asked to think about important contributions and struggles of the past, the harshness of the present, and the potential of the future. As a co-coordinator of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Minor here at TAMU-CC, creating a calendar of events has posed its own particular set of problems this March. After our last WHM was interrupted, we felt the greater need to create a community to celebrate women’s history and to imagine different futures. How do we celebrate and recognize women’s contributions while staying safe? How do we foster a sense of community (scholarly, campus-wide, across disciplines) on platforms that can sometimes feel alienating (looking at you, WebEx)? So far, we’re making it happen.
Our Women’s History Month started strong with two fascinating guest faculty speakers: Dr. Larisa Veloz and Dr. Sara Ramírez. Dr. Veloz shared her rich archival work that highlights the ways women migrated between the US and Mexico in the 1910s through the 1950s. She shared images of migration records, letters, and maps to show the ways women, in particular, resisted border policing and made new migrant pathways. Bringing together radical visual and performance art from Andrea Muñoz Martinez, who reclaims images of negativity with la cucaracha, Dr. Ramírez contends that such reworkings of negative “shadow beasts” allow both artist and audience to work through collective and historical traumas, offering a site for healing and recovery. The WGST co-coordinators were so thrilled that the Wagenschein funding for Women’s History Month allowed us to bring these faculty researchers to our TAMU-CC campus community virtually. All of our guest faculty speakers work across Texas (from El Paso to Austin), and it has been a real joy to be able to virtually bridge the Texas-sized distances between us.
We’re going to continue to have these important conversations online about living and sustaining gendered lives, so we hope you can make some of these events! You can find the full calendar that highlights Netflix watch parties, a brunch, and other events (with clickable registration links), but I want to draw attention to two events: “Women’s Gaming and Cultural Critique” on Saturday 3/20 at 2pm and Dr. Crystal Webster’s “History and Legacy of Black Childhood in America” on Monday 3/29 at 6:30pm. While the previous library blog post highlighted how Kanopy can help you stream through the pandemic, you can also join Brittany Maxey and myself on twitch.tv/jaywayhe to stream a playthrough of some video games while we talk about sci-fi genders with the chat. Watching is free and easy, but you will need a free Twitch account to participate in the chat, and I 10/10 recommend you participate in the chat because past streams raise some really cool, critical ideas in chat. Dr. Webster will map out the ways Black childhood occupies many conflicting positions in cultural history, and she will trace key terms and ideas to help us think about future equity.
This is all to say, please join us for the latter half of Women’s History Month’s virtual events. In a time when conferences are cancelled, classes feel overwhelming, and maybe we’re stuck in a rut, these virtual events are proving to be a great extracurricular space to think together about women’s history, gender, race, and embodiments.
