KXLY’s Peter Choi recently reported on the “Hidden in Plain Sight” exhibit.

Here is our collection of Annual Reports from 2018 to 2021.

In the recent article, published in the Journal of Gender Studies, Dr. Rohrer exposes the ways in which the bankrupt Boy Scouts of American “has been broadly bankrupt from the beginning.”

In this piece, our director, Dr. Judy Rohrer, reminds us “we would do well now to slow down, take stock of the luggage we are carrying and the carcasses we are still dragging.”

Cover image by: NurseTogether, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

We are always proud of all of our faculty, students and staff. This year, we are thrilled that so many of them have been recognized for their incredible work.

Dr. Jessi Willis won the College of Social Sciences Teaching Excellence Award for their enthusiasm and innovation in the teaching and/or learning process, their ability to engage students both within and outside the classroom, the way they inspire independent and original thinking in students and stimulate them to do social, political, and professional work, and their innovations in course and curriculum design.

Dr. Judy Rohrer won the College of Social Sciences Scholarship & Creative Activities Excellence Award for her superlative professional, scholarly, and/or creative activity engagement with her discipline or field, a major or significant publication, scholarship of engagement, or formal presentation in the her field, and external funding recognizing her current or potential contribution to her field as well as her contributions to conversations within and across disciplines.

Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies major, Sam Lee, was selected to receive the Jeffers Chertok Memorial Scholarship from the College of Social Sciences in the amount of $1,250.

Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies graduating senior, Danica Jenck, won the Frances B. Huston Medallion Award for the College of Social Sciences.

Graduating senior, Shilo Stuart, won the Dean Jeffers W. Chertok Honored Student Award for the College of Social Sciences, Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies.

Frances Grace Mortel won two Student Leadership Excellence Awards. Frances was selected as the Social Justice Advocate of the Year and was part of the EWU Film Society team that won the Event of the Year for the Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month Cinema Screenings of Minari & Kapaemahu. Frances is a Women’s and Gender Education Center work study student.

Our Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies director, Judy Rohrer, PhD encourages white people “to stop, to really listen, to not turn away, to directly confront the violence and trauma of White supremacy” in this recent article published in the Inlander.

An Innovative Collaboration

Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies (GWSS) and the Women’s and Gender Education (WAGE) Center were pleased to collaborate with Visual Communication Design faculty Sonja Durr, MFA to host the Black Lives and Movements Matter: Black History Month graphic design contest in her Visual Communication Design 3 – Design for Social Change students. The amazing results were featured on our social media throughout February and the four winning posters will be displayed in the WAGE Center. First, second, and third prizes were awarded.

Submitted content reflected the values and principles of Black activist movements and highlighted inclusiveness and the celebration of Black life. Social media images and posters featured issues related to various diverse Black communities and movements. Students were able to choose historical or contemporary issues and/or leaders. Unique submissions that considered the intersectionality of identities and oppressions were encouraged.

First Place

Mary Hoerner’s Claudette Colvin social media images:

Mary Hoerner’s Claudette Colvin poster:

Second Place

Sela Tran’s George Floyd, Alberta Odell Jones, and Emmett Till social media images:

Sela Tran’s Trayvon Martin poster:

Third Place (Tie)

Cameron Todd’s W.E.B. DuBois social media images:

Cameron Todd’s W.E.B. DuBois poster:

Savannah Johnson’s Black Voices Matter social media images:

Savannah Johnson’s Black Voices Matter poster:

Congratulations to all of the winners and thanks to every student who submitted their work! Winning students will receive gift cards to local vendors.

Katie Horvath, the executive director of the Spectrum LGBTQ+ Center, Judy Rohrer, the director of Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies at EWU, and Naghmana Sherazi, a board member of the Peace & Justice Action League of Spokane worked together on this Guest Opinion for the Spokesman-Review.

They remind readers that 52 community partners in and around Spokane recently set priorities around post-election outcomes: “community safety; planning a coordinated post-election response, and setting the tone by developing a simple 5-point message: We reject white nationalism. We choose and will protect inclusive democracy. We keep each other safe.  We will do our part to ensure everyone’s vote is counted. We demand the results be respected.”

From the Inlander Article:

Dr. Judy Rohrer, director of Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies at Eastern Washington University, provides context for Trump’s moves: “By mobilizing colorblind ideology, these attacks turn civil rights arguments on their heads,” she writes in an emailed statement. “In short form, they argue that discussing and/or dismantling racism and sexism is itself racist and sexist.”

Angela Schwendiman, a professor in the Africana Studies Program at EWU, studies and teaches African American culture, particularly film and media. “I don’t just look at the subjugation itself,” she says, “but the ways African Americans were able to reconstruct a cultural identity separate from their colonization.”

Despite a year that ended in a virtual environment, the Women’s and Gender Studies Annual Report is filled with videos, images, and stories of our 2019-2020 academic year. Please click the image below to read the report. This is our last annual report from before we got our sexy new name. We are now Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies!