Workplaces have traditionally been viewed as “straight spaces” in which queer people passed. As a result, historians have directed limited attention to the experiences of queer people on the job. Queer Career rectifies this, offering an expansive historical look at sexual minorities in the modern American workforce.

This talk will consider how contestation around science and medicine appears in litigation and the role of courts in validating controversial, and often incorrect, ideas about abortion from fetal personhood, maternal life, and the safety of abortion.

This talk traces the political power of motherhood and childrearing in Arabic thought between 1850 and 1939. It shows how writers used ideas about childrearing (tarbiya in Arabic) to address key issues in modern social thought, such as freedom, labor, and democracy.

Learn how symbols intersect to represent and unite through alter art. Lennon Hernandez Wolcott will discuss historical and cultural elements to create an Ofrenda (an Offering), through personally crafted mini ofrenda shadow boxes (Nichos) and review the elements for Día de los Muertos (water, wind, earth, fire). Each participant will be shown how to make elements of a Nicho box and then assemble them to create their own.

Please join us in this book talk with Prof. Bruno Perreau. In “Spheres of Injustice”, Perreau studies anti-discrimination policies and politics in France and the US. He shows that reactionary groups abuse the notion of minority by demanding to be protected just as minorities are, while the notion of a “protected class” risks at times encouraging competition among minorities and the very concept of minority is being transformed.

Please join Prof. Houri Berberian and Prof. Talinn Grigor, where they offer the first history of Armenian women in modern Iran.

Chie Ikeya will discuss her research in transnational histories of Asian mobility and intimacy in the era of European colonial empires and her recent book, InterAsian Intimacies across Race, Religion, and Colonialism (Cornell University Press, 2024). Challenging the Eurocentrism of postcolonial studies that remains preoccupied with Eurasian encounters and the European management of race, sex, and desire, Ikeya  uncovers an obscured history of intimacy and estrangement between indigenous people and Asian migrants. She will discuss how profoundly these “South-South,” interAsian interactions shaped modern understandings of identity and belonging that continue to vex Southeast Asian nations today.

Intersectarian and interreligious marriages often provoke strong opposition from Lebanese of all sects and faiths. In this talk, Prof. Lara Deeb will introduce her new book, Love Across Difference: Mixed Marriage in Lebanon.

In this panel, Priscyll Anctil, Alessandra Jungs de Almeida, and J.C.D. Calderón panel will explore the main theoretical, epistemological, and methodological contributions of these edited volumes, emphasizing their main contributions, including how they contest andro-anglo-centered knowledge production and expand the concept of feminist security. For questions, email wgs@mit.edu

Join us for a free film screening followed by a Q&A session

The lecture will take place at Harvard. Through a comparative analysis of the 1944 pronatalist Family Law and Putin’s pronatalist measures, this talk attempts to identify both constant and shifting choices as well as forces that affect the politics of reproduction today. In addition to policymakers, the talk will address the roles of women, doctors, and the Russian Orthodox Church.

Join us for a free film screening followed by a Q&A session with special guests

Please join us in this book talk with Alice Rothchild. “Inspired and Outraged: The Making of a Feminist Physician” tells the story of Alice Rothchild's journey from 1950's good girl to irreverent, feisty, feminist obstetrician-gynecologist forging her own direction in the contradictory, sexist world of medicine.

This talk presents ongoing research on the life and work of Yekaterina Bahaturian (1870-1944) who grew up in Shushi, then a provincial center of the Russian Empire.

Lunch will be provided

Join us in hearing about Prof. Mathangi Krishnamurthy in their examination of the primacy of a particular kind of work that produced the world and worldliness, for a set of men in the 1970s, 80s and 90s in an India navigating the move from socialism to neoliberalism.

Lunch will be provided

In this lecture, Prof. Durba Mitra (Harvard University, WGS) will reflect on the history of abortion in South Asia and the legacies of racism and sexual control rooted in colonialism that shape present-day debates about reproductive rights and bodily autonomy.

Lecture by Camelia Suliman, Michigan State University

The labeling of foreign policies as "feminist" originated with OECD members such as Sweden, Canada, and France before being adopted by various Latin American governments, starting with Mexico. The region's strong commitment to women's and gender rights in international forums is attributed to a well-connected feminist movement. In this lecture, Prof. Solomón will address the shared foundation of OECD and Latin America's feminist foreign policies, emphasizing progressive stances on women's and gender rights and highlight Latin America's distinctive approach, notably its focus on promoting domestic women's rights rather than those of external communities, in contrast to OECD countries.

In Remnants, tattooed and scar-bearing bodies reveal a larger history, as the lived trauma of genocide is understood through bodies, skin, and—in what remains of those lives a century afterward—bones. Gathering individual memories and archival fragments of women survivors, Elyse Semerdjian offers a feminist interpretation of the Armenian Genocide, and issues a call to break open the archival record in order to embrace affect and memory.

With panelists: Giselle Carino, Hawon Jung, and Chantal Umuhoza- please join us for a zoom panel focused on learning from experts on reproductive justice movements, research, and action in various regions around the world including Latin America, Asia, and Africa.

Register now

Webinar with Dr. Sa’Ed Atshan

Webinar registration

Renowned Inuit lawyer Aaju Peter has led a lifelong fight for the rights of her people. But while launching an effort to establish an Indigenous forum at the European Union, Aaju finds herself facing a difficult, personal journey to mend her own wounds after the unexpected passing of her son.

In this sun-soaked, sublimely sensitive debut, writer/director Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren sets her lens on an eight-year-old’s identity crisis over one uncertain summer vacation.

Webinar with Ruth Halperin-Kaddari and Daphna Hacker

Webinar Registration

This talk will be about how South Asian Muslim women used food in their travel writings to distinguish between self and other, shedding light on the role of alimentary identities in shaping colonialism, postcoloniality, nationalism, and globalization.

Sadly this event has been postponed. We look forward to welcoming Juliana Borges to campus later this year.

Juliana Borges will analyze the way in which Black women have been criminally punished in Brazil, from colonialism to coloniality, and the varied forms of Black resistance that they have led in the face of the punitive State.

With panelists: Payal Kumar, Dr. Ndidiamaka Amutah-Onukagha, Rachel Lorenzo of Indigenous Women Rising, and Dr. Rebekah Viloria- Please join us for a panel which will analyze our current political state, the work advocates and researchers have done, and the future for justice movements in the fight for reproductive justice.

Women’s and Gender Studies at MIT honors and remembers the memory of Karl Surkan including the academic and personal connections he held at the Institute and Boston area.

This talk, as part of the McMillan Stewart Lecture Series, will survey the broad ways that gender plays a role in food traditions within the Coptic Orthodox Christian community, both in Egypt and in diasporic contexts. Please join us on April 27 at 5pm in 14E-304.

The Book and The Story Behind It: The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science will feature discussion with author and journalist Kate Zernike and Nancy Hopkins, MIT Biologist who fought for women in science at MIT.