ONLINE: Resistance & Reimagination: Gender, Change & the Arts

media release: The UW Women's and Gender Studies Consortium is excited to announce a fully virtual conference for our spring 2021 WGSC and 4W conference, April 8-10, 2021! We will revisit many of the themes pertaining to gender, change, and the arts we had to pause last year, and offer last year’s presenters and artists new opportunities to share their work.  While this year’s event will look different than previous years, there will still be many opportunities for sharing research and engaging in dialogue, including a virtual poster session, virtual art exhibits, and several exciting keynotes and plenaries. Registration will be free this year, and is now available. Please read on to see more details.

Theme: This year’s theme encourages a feminist lens to argue against a separation amongst art, politics, activism, and epistemology. With the help of the arts, we can envision how to deconstruct, decolonize, and reimagine life and society. Creative work can be seen as an end in itself and as a feminist tool of inquiry, knowledge production, and critical resistance.

Format: This year we will feature virtual posters, art exhibits, and roundtables discussions that consider the arts as a site of inquiry, pedagogical practice, methodology, activism, exploration, and social transformation. Our keynotes and plenaries similarly include conversations with scholars, students, activists, artists, civil society leaders, and community members who consider the arts as a site of inquiry, pedagogical practice, methodology, activism, exploration, and social transformation. Programs include:

all weekend: Virtual Poster Session and Virtual Art Exhibition

Thursday, April 8, 2021

11:00-12:30: 4W Streets Panel: Pedagogy of Care: Artistic Tools for Discussing Human Trafficking

12:45-2:00: Growth Starts at the End of Your Comfort Zone

2:30-3:30:  Reflecting Mirrors of Possibilities at UAACC

4:00-5:30 Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha Keynote

Friday, April 9, 2021

9:00-9:45: Virtual Coffee Hour with 4W Director, Lori DiPrete Brown

10:00-11:30am: Femrite

11:45-12:45: Outreach and Leadership Committee: Students’ Educational, Professional, and Community Impact (Alverno College)

1:00-2:15: Deploying Art-based Activist Strategies to Address Environmental Justice Issues

(Virtual Roundtable)

2:30-3:45: Decolonizing Gender Studies Roundtable (Virtual Roundtable)

4:00-5:30: African American Health Network

6:00-6:45: Networking Hour with WGSC Director, Stephanie Rytilahti

7:00pm: Mask-Ulinity: A Socially Distanced Drag King Revue

(Virtual Event)

Saturday, April 10, 2021

9:00-9:45: Virtual Coffee Hour with 4W Assistant Director, Olivia Dahlquist, and the Global Artisans Initiative

10:00-11:15 Activist Artist Roundtable: Reimagining Resistance, Gender and Change Through the Arts

11:30-12:30: Women Directly Impacted by Incarceration Organizing for Housing Systems Change (Virtual Roundtable)

1:30-3:00: 4W Women in Translation Panel, Virtual Event

3:15-4:30: Disability Pride Madison:  (Virtual Roundtable)

***Closed Captioning Provided for all Events. To order books, visit A Room of One’s Own Feminist Bookstore