Past Presenters

Here's a look at recent WGSS Student Research Symposium presenters for whom their presentation became the springboard for further accomplishments in research or creative endeavors:

• Dr. Kate Manne, PhD

  Kate Manne was dubbed “the philosopher of #MeToo” for her timely and widely read analysis of misogyny in Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny (2017) and her treatment of male entitlement in her most recent book Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women (2020). Manne regularly writes opinion pieces, essays, and reviews on moral and political topics—in venues including The New York Times, The Boston Review, the Huffington Post, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Times Literary Supplement. Manne’s address begins with the question: What are the underlying causes of misogyny? In many cases, she argues, it stems from a wrongheaded sense of moral entitlement to a woman’s sexual, emotional, reproductive, and material labor.

• Dr. Arlene Stein

  Dr. Arlene Stein is the director of the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers University. She is the author of Unbound: Transgender Men and the Transformation of Identity. 

  Her scholarship explores gender, sexuality, American culture, and politics. Stein received the Ruth Benedict Prize for her monograph The Stranger Next Door: The Story of a Small Community’s Battle over Sex, Faith, and Civil Rights. She is also the author of Sex and Sensibility: Stories of a Lesbian Generation.

  In 2006, Stein received the American Sociological Association’s Simon and Gagnon Award for her career contribution to the study of sexualities. She teaches courses on the sociology of gender and sexuality, culture, self and society, and trauma/memory, and writing within and beyond academia.  

• Dr. Veronica Ivy

  Dr. Veronica Ivy is an interdisciplinary scholar who has published widely on topics of knowledge, language, gender, and issues of equity (particularly in sport). She is a world-leading expert on trans and intersex athlete rights and offers institutional diversity and inclusion training workshops. Ivy has penned articles for The New York Times, Washington Post, The Economist, NBC News, VICE, and many more. She has appeared on major TV, radio, and podcast interviews to discuss trans issues and particularly trans and intersex athlete rights.  

  In addition to her academic work, she is a two-time Masters Track Cycling world champion and previous masters world-record holder. Ivy, a queer trans woman, is the first known trans woman to win a track cycling world championship.  

  Ivy also engages in advocacy and activism for trans and intersex athletes. Her message is that #SportIsAHumanRight. She brings a unique perspective of being an academic, an athlete, and an activist to her work. She advises various national and international organizations, including the International Olympic Committee. 

• Dr. Karma R. Chávez

  Dr. Karma Chávez is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Mexican American and Latino Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

  Chávez is a rhetorical critic who utilizes textual and field-based methods and studies the rhetorical practices of people marginalized within existing power structures. She has published numerous scholarly articles and books, including Queer Migration Politics: Activist Rhetoric and Coalitional Possibilities, as well as co-founding the Queer Migration Research Network.  

  Chávez works with social justice organizations and her scholarship is informed by queer of color theory, women of color feminism, poststructuralism, and cultural studies.

• Maia Kobabe

  Maia Kobabe is a nonbinary, queer author and illustrator with an MFA in comics from California College of the Arts. Kobabe’s work focuses on themes of identity, sexuality, anti-fascism, fairy tales, and homesickness.  

  Eir* first full-length book, Gender Queer: A Memoir, came out from Lion Forge Comics/Oni Press in May 2019. Gender Queer was a winner of an Alex Award and Stonewall Book Award in 2020, and nominated for an Ignatz Award and the Best Graphic Novels for Teens List from YALSA in 2019. It recently received its fifth printing and has been translated into Spanish, Polish, Czech, and French. 

  Kobabe’s short comics have been published on The Nib, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post. Kobabe’s work has been showcased in exhibitions internationally, from San Francisco to Vienna. 

  Kobabe’s additional projects include Faster Than Light, The Sun, Strength Through Unity, We are the Ashes, We are the Fire, Dancing with Pride, The Nonbinary Bunny, Fireworks, and Fairy Tale. 

  *Maia Kobabe uses e/em/eir pronouns. These are a variation of the gender-neutral pronouns they/them/their. 

• Dr. Tristen Johnson

  Dr. Tristen Johnson (she, her, hers) is a TEDx Speaker and currently works as a Diversity Education Specialist for a top-ranking cancer center in Florida. She is a former higher education professional. She holds a master’s degree from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale and a bachelor’s degree from Western Illinois University. She recently defended her dissertation for her Ph.D. at Illinois State University. Her research focused on Black women professionals who work in diversity roles at predominantly white institutions. She is the founder and owner of The Tristen Johnson, LLC, a business dedicated to consulting, trainings, and workshops surrounding diversity and inclusion initiatives and making body jewelry. In her spare time, she enjoys creative writing, traveling, and advocating for Beyoncé.

• Harsha Walia

  Harsha Walia is the author of the new book, Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism. She is also the award-winning author of Undoing Border Imperialism, co-author of Never Home: Legislating Discrimination in Canadian Immigration as well as Red Women Rising: Indigenous Women Survivors in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Harsha has organized in migrant justice, anti-capitalist, feminist, abolitionist, and anti-imperialist movements for the past two decades.

  Abstract:  In this lecture, Harsha Walia will deliver an unflinching examination of migration as a pillar of global governance and gendered racial class formation. Her talk will explore a number of seemingly disparate global geographies and how borders around the world consolidate imperial, capitalist, ruling class, and racist nationalist rule. Illuminating the brutal mechanics of state formation, her work exposes US border policy as a product of violent territorial expansion, settler-colonialism, enslavement, and gendered racial exclusion. Further, she compellingly details how Fortress Europe and White Australia are using immigration diplomacy and externalized borders to maintain a colonial present, how temporary labor migration in the Arab Gulf states and Canada is central to citizenship regulation and labor control, and how far-right nationalism is escalating deadly violence in the US, Israel, India, the Philippines, Brazil, and across Europe, while producing a disaster of statelessness for millions elsewhere. Instead, she calls for a vision of no borders as an internationalist and abolitionist horizon for freedom.

  • Border & Rule: Global migration, capitalism, and the rise of racist nationalism
  • Undoing Border Imperialism

• Laina Reese Carney, MFA

  Professor Carney is a choreographer, educator and performer of dance. Carney received her MFA in Dance Performance & Pedagogy, as well as her Certificate of Study in Feminist Methodologies & Sexualities from Arizona State University. Her BFA was earned at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.