For several years, Portland State’s Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies program has hosted a spring colloquium to showcase student work and provide an opportunity for WGSS students to build community.
For several years, Portland State’s Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies program has hosted a spring colloquium to showcase student work and provide an opportunity for WGSS students to build community.
This year’s event, which takes place tomorrow in the Smith Memorial Student Union, expands the format from previous years.
“We want to give students a chance to present the work they’ve been working on for the last nine months,” said Amy Keo, a senior in the WGSS department and publicity coordinator for the colloquium. “The colloquium is a chance for people to connect with their peers, who they might not necessarily see in other courses.”
The colloquium is structured to allow students to showcase their work alongside published authors and other professionals.
“We want to provide a networking outlet for our students by putting them on the schedule with people who are making work, who are being published,” she said. “It’s a real learning experience, and getting to know practitioners is a survival tool in any academic discipline.”
Featured presenters include authors Vanessa Veselka and Lidia Yukanizitch.
“[Colloquium coordinator Anna Rigles] has been following Lidia and Vanessa’s careers for a long time. Portland has a really tight-knit community of writers,” Keo said. “I saw Lidia and Vanessa do a reading at Someday Lounge a few months ago, and I was really excited by the interplay they have.”
The colloquium begins at 11:30 a.m. with a free catered luncheon and keynote address by Yukanizitch. Three sessions of student presentations follow.
Sessions cover a variety of topics, from gender representations (“The Straight Jacket of Hyper-Masculinity”) and body image (“Reclamation of Self After Disordered Eating”) to the contemporary discourse on human trafficking.
From 5:30–7 p.m., filmmakers Megan Kennedy and Sid Peterson will present their 34-minute documentary, Put This On The Map, which features Seattle-area queer youth speaking about their experiences. Keo says that the film aims to “re-teach gender identities and sexuality.”
The evening culminates with the first WGSS gala, which begins at 8 p.m. Readings from Veselka and Yukanizitch will be interspersed with spoken word presentations from students.
Ristretto Roasters will be serving coffee throughout the evening, and Ryan Bjornstad (previously of the band Starfucker) will be DJ-ing a dance party starting at 10 p.m.
“We’re putting so much of our work out there and showcasing such personal things—why not have a dance party at the end?” Keo said.
The WGSS program is one of several interdisciplinary departments at PSU. The range of courses students can select to fulfill major and minor requirements can make it challenging for students in the program to connect with one another through shared classes, as they might in more structured departments.
Keo, for example, met Rigles, a recent PSU graduate, last spring when they both worked as peer mentors in a women’s studies course. The two were excited about the idea of making the colloquium a celebratory event featuring student work alongside presentations from literary and cultural professionals.
Unlike many similar events, the WGSS colloquium intentionally avoids giving any one presenter top billing. It’s a move that makes previewing the event difficult, but it’s also central to the colloquium’s purpose. Keo and Rigles believe that giving all participants equal footing sets the tone for a professional learning experience.
“We’re trying to avoid the hierarchical power play that some academic departments have,” Keo said.
