Last week, the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) program celebrated 50 years since its beginning with two days’ worth of events examining what social issues are just as prevalent now as they were 50 years ago.
The celebrations took place on Thursday and Friday, with events being held in the Student Union, Graduate Hotel, Oak/Herbst Hall and the Benton Museum. The conference was themed “The Uses of Anger,” named after the speech Audre Lorde, who described herself as a Black lesbian poet, warrior and mother, delivered at the third annual National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) conference which was held at the University of Connecticut in 1981.
Members of the organizing committee and core faculty of the WGSS program, Jane Gordon and Sherry Zane, said that they decided to build the conference off of this speech because it was an intervention that addressed the women at the 1981 conference for missing an opportunity for growth.
According to Gordon, while the NWSA has since responded well to this and become a multiracial organization, there are things we as a society are still failing to listen to. “Part of celebrating is also reckoning. We’ve accomplished a lot; what do we still have to do?” she said.
Zane, the interim director of the WGSS program, said, “The same things are happening right now in the United States, and I would say even globally, that were happening in the 1980s. We often think about history as ‘We’re moving forward,’ but we have a lot of the same challenges that those women did then.”
The events included multiple panels and presentations, a workshop, concert, art exhibit opening, lunches, dinner and a career roundtable. These events featured a variety of guest speakers.
Gordon and Zane said that they valued promoting inclusivity and intergenerational learning through this conference, which primarily drove their outreach when seeking out speakers.
The career roundtable took place on Friday morning at the Women’s Center Program room, at which six WGSS program alumni returned to campus to answer questions about how the program affected their lives post-graduation. The event was moderated by current UConn students Morgan Keating, a psychology and WGSS major, and Kate Wagner, a political science major with a minor in WGSS.
Returning to their alma mater were Castella Copeland-Smith, a political science, WGSS and human rights major with a minor in urban studies from the class of 2017; Adam Kocurek, a history and WGSS double major with a minor in English from the class of 2016; Matt Gray, a WGSS and human rights major from the class of 2017, Annika Redgate, a political science major with a WGSS minor from the class of 2021, Brittany Dias, a double major in molecular cell biology and WGSS from the class of 2020 and Megan Handau, a political science and WGSS major from the class of 2018.
Keating and Wagner came in with a prepared set of questions, two of which asked about what hard and soft skills the WGSS program taught the alumni that gave them a leg up in their professional careers.
Handau and Redgate both touched on how the WGSS program provided an environment in which they could develop their own political ideas. Redgate elaborated by saying how the WGSS program taught her how to critically think and analyze media and documents and trained her ability to eloquently defend her beliefs.
“[The wgss program] made me realize that there is more than one road to travel on to make an impact in the world.”
Brittany Dias
“Especially now, [in her job] defending my ideas and thought processes comes more naturally,” she said.
Smith joined by saying how the WGSS program taught her how to come from a place of empathy and understand how compassion is not a weakness. She worked in education shortly after graduation and entered her career knowing that she could come from a place of intersectionality and integrate that into how she wanted to teach her classes. She also said that she realized how well the WGSS program set her up for her career when other teachers or UConn students would ask her where she got this way of thinking from.
“When I started my teaching career, I had a lot of other teachers come up to me and say, ‘Where’d you get this from?’ or I had other UConn students who are like, ‘Wait, I was also a poli-sci major and I didn’t get this skill,’” she said.
The final question of the roundtable asked each of the alumni to offer advice to prospective students seeking out a similar career path to them and what advice they would give to their college selves.
Generally, the alumni had similar responses. The most prominent advice given was to be flexible, be kind to yourself and to know your boundaries in the workplace.
“[The WGSS program] made me realize that there is more than one road to travel on to make an impact in the world,” Dias said.
Brenna McNeece, a sixth-semester secondary English education major, and Aubrey Nash, a sixth-semester allied health science major, attended this event in support of their many friends in the WGSS program. Though they do not have direct ties to the WGSS program themselves, they said that they attend many WGSS events to tie in the perspectives that they gain from the events into their majors and eventual careers.
“Even if we’re not taking a lot of these classes, it’s still important to have that information and bring it into your own field,” Nash said.
McNeece and Nash expressed appreciation for the variety of careers represented at the roundtable. They also shared pieces of advice the alumni gave that they plan to carry into their future endeavors.
McNeece commented that she resonated with Smith’s comments about the education environment and how it has changed since the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Education after Covid, it is a very toxic environment and it’s very unpredictable, so being flexible and knowing your boundaries with the administration is a big thing,” she said.
Faculty handed out a book written by the organizing committee titled “Lessons From Audre Lorde’s ‘The Uses of Anger,’” along with tote bags. If you would like to read more advice from WGSS alumni, you can find it at wgss.uconn.edu/alumni-statements/. If you have more questions about the history behind the NWSA conference or the WGSS program, you can contact any member of the organizing committee.