Upcoming Events
Sarahfest Art Show featuring Jaime Aelavanthara
Part of a two-month art show at the Powerhouse - The Art of Emotion
Thacker Mountain Radio Show
Special Sarahfest Episode of Thacker Mountain Radio Show with Dawn Barham
Celebrating Sarahfest! – A series of lectures, films, concerts and exhibits sponsored by The Sarah Isom Center for Women & Gender Studies at the University of Mississippi.
FREE Admission!
Doors: 5:30 pm
Show: 6 PM; Book signing: 7 PM
Isom Lecture Series Presented By: Bobby Fieseler
Bobby Fieseler presents How to Stop a Red Scare: The Florida Johns Committee (1956 - 1965) and the Mississippi Redemption
Isom After Dark: “The Psychology of Horror”
Dr. Carrie Smith presents "Isom After Dark:” The Psychology of Horror
Isom Lecture Series Presented By: SaraEllen Strongman
SaraEllen Strongman presents "Our Own Magazine": Building Black Lesbian Community in Azalea, 1977-1983
Free Screening: Steel Magnolias
Join us for a special free screening of Steel Magnolias to cap off the inaugural Dolly Day of Service. Feel free to dress up and have fun. Attendees are encouraged to bring a children's book, a non-perishable food item for Grove Grocery, or make a donation for the music programs at OHS or LSHS.
We might even have some “house wine of the South” available!
Isom Lecture Series: Non-Procreative Production: Tending to the Present in Cather's “O Pioneers!”
Kimberly (Kim) Kotel (she/her) is a visiting lecturer in American Studies for the Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. She has a Ph.D. in English with a Graduate Minor in Gender Studies from the University of Mississippi, an M.A. in English and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Chapman University, and a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona. Her dissertation research explored asexual impulses in early 20th century French, American, and English literature during heightened periods of pronatalism. She teaches a graduate class in advanced academic writing and undergraduate classes in American literature and U.S. history and culture.
Isom Lecture Series: Sexuality and Historical Interpretation
Long before the development of queer studies, claims about sexuality have been integral to the historical analysis of individuals, events, and phenomena. While this aspect of the human psyche has long been an explanatory tool in biographical analysis of individual motivation, historians have equally drawn on implicit claims about normative and anti-normative behavior, as well as population-level changes in sexual mores, to account for national identity, economic transformation, and political ideology. This lecture, with examples drawn from the historical study of the nineteenth-century U.S., will examine how historians’ understanding of sexuality has shaped their interpretation of the past. The historical interpretation of the Civil War, from the decades after the war through the twenty-first century, has depended, in particular and in consequential ways, upon how historians think about sexuality.
About Dr. Donnelly:
Andrew Donnelly is a literary and cultural historian specializing in the periods of the U.S. Civil War and Reconstruction and in the field of Southern Studies. He is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Memphis. He received his PhD from the English Department at Harvard University in 2020. His work has been supported by research fellowships from the Boston Athenaeum, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Center for Mark Twain Studies, and the Library Company of Philadelphia. He has been working with the Freedom Project Network in Mississippi for more than a decade, developing a program that brings PhD students and university faculty to teach summer college-bridge courses for high school students at the Freedom Projects in Mississippi. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Mellon/ACLS Public Fellows program, serving as education programs manager for the National Book Foundation and a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Mississippi in English and Southern Studies.
2025 Trans Studies Lecture: Long Tensions: Trans Advocacy, Homonormativity, and the Reed Erickson Archives
The Trans Studies lecture was established in 2021, growing out of a Trans Summit hosted by the Division of Diversity and the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies in 2019.
Lucy Somerville Howorth Lecture: "I Can't Afford You, But I Need You": Lesbian Bars, Queer Parties, and Trans Hangouts for the End Times
To honor her long career in public service and her enthusiastic support of women’s rights, the Lucy Somerville Howorth Lecture Series was established at the University of Mississippi. The endowed series brings distinguished speakers to the campus in the area of women’s studies.
2024 Asexuality Studies Lecture: “The Ace Gaze is Here and it is Nerdy, Delightful, and Queer: Thinking Compulsory Sexuality, Amatonormativity, and Gender with Asexuality StudieS”
The ACE studies lecture was established in the spring of 2022 as part of the Glitterary Festival, a queer literary conference. We subsequently moved this lecture to the fall, to coincide with Asexuality Week at the end of October.
Queer Studies Lecture featuring Briona Simone Jones
DATE IS TENTATIVE
The Queer Studies Lecture was established in 2014, connected with the development of the queer studies emphasis in the Gender Studies minor.
Student Leadership Workshop: "Present and Accounted For: Embodying Inclusive Leadership"
The student leadership workshop “Present and Accounted For: Embodying Inclusive Leadership” will provide attendees with practical strategies for inclusive leadership, emphasizing the importance of presence and accountability in creating welcoming environments for all.
Sacred Harmony: Navigating Faith and Identity
In his lecture, "Sacred Harmony: Navigating Faith and Identity," Rev. Karmen Michael Smith will share insights from his journey of reconciling his identity with his faith, offering perspectives on how others can navigate these often complex waters.
The Art of the Unexpected Multi-Location Art Exhibition
Nutt Auditorium + Reception
Free Admission
Queer Studies Lecture: On Paranoid and Reparative Writing: Indigenous Creative Methodologies
This fall’s Queer Studies lecture will be given by Joshua Whitehead
Ace Lecture: "Wanting Nothing or Nothing Wanting? Asexuality, Desire, and the Matter of Absence"
This year’s ACE Studies Lecture will be delivered by KJ Cerankowski.
Art Of The Unexpected Multi-Location Art Exhibition
Nutt Auditorium + Reception
Free Admission
Sarahtalk: what we don't talk about - film screening and discussion
Presented by Melanie Ho, MFA (SouthernDocs).
What are you supposed to do when you are no longer able to love someone you’re supposed to? what we don’t talk about unpacks gendered familial tensions in the moments leading up to a wedding.
About: Melanie is a queer Vietnamese American filmmaker and writer with roots in Florida and Mississippi. Her work focuses on trauma, familial relationships, gender, displacement, and intimacy.
Since graduating from the UCSC’s Social Documentation MFA program, Mel has worked on various projects as an editor and a cinematographer. She is currently a director/producer at the University of Mississippi’s Southern Documentary Project (SouthDocs), creating intentional storytelling in the South. Mel is a 2022 NeXtDoc Fellow and Gotham/HBO DDI Fellow.
Sarahtalk: Exploring the Impact of Pregnancy Loss during Adolescence on Maladaptive Coping
Presented by D’Andre Walker, Ph.D (Legal Studies)
Pregnancy loss is associated with a host of negative psychological consequences. Studies have found that those who experience fetal demise are at risk of developing anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. While studies have advanced our understanding on the psychological impact of pregnancy loss, there is a lack of research investigating the behavioral outcomes associated with this life stressor. To address this gap in literature, the current project examines the relationship between pregnancy loss and maladaptive outcomes.
About:
D’Andre Walker received his Ph.D. in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Arizona State University. Prior to his current appointment as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Legal Studies at the University of Mississippi, Dr. Walker served as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Iowa. His primary research and teaching interests include criminology, gender and crime, juvenile delinquency, juvenile justice, and race and crime. His work has appeared in various outlets, including the Journal of Child and Family Studies, Journal of Criminal Justice, and Deviant Behavior.
Finding Mary Jones in New Orleans: Unfinishing Black Trans History
Dr. Jules Gill-Peterson will deliver the joint 2023 Isom Student Gender Conference Keynote/Lucy Somerville Howorth Lecture/Trans Studies Lecture entitled “Finding Mary Jones in New Orleans: Unfinishing Black Trans History”
Description:
Where does the association of trans womanhood and sex work come from? This talk considers the remarkable life of Mary Jones, a Black trans woman arrested in 1836 in New York City. At trial, Jones testified to the Black social world in which she lived and worked, including a reference to visiting New Orleans. Following the riddle of her journey from New York to the Mississippi Valley, Jones prompts how trans womanhood as a modern way of life may have been built into the emergence of the service economy in the antebellum era, with Black gender caught in the contradictions and symbiosis between enslaved labor and wage labor.
About Dr. Gill-Peterson:
Jules Gill-Peterson is an associate professor of History and Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of Histories of the Transgender Child (2018) and a general co-editor of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. Her next book, A Short History of Trans Misogyny, will be published by Verso.
Isom Student Gender Conference
For more information, visit: https://isomstudentgenderconference.org/
Sarahtalk: Queer Cinema and the Sense of Something Better
Presented by Elizabeth Venell, Ph.D. (Gender Studies).
Modern paradigms of sexuality and visibility are nowhere more intertwined than in “queer cinema,” and in 2023, LGBTQ+ representation in film has never been more prevalent. Yet popular writing on queer cinema often laments the normalization of today’s proliferating images. Venell traces the origin and irony of this critical discontent, and reimagines the function of queer cinema from being a diagnostic tool to becoming a transformative one. Recent films in foreign horror comprise test cases for this new approach.
This Sarahtalk will take place via Zoom. Click here to register.
About: Elizabeth Venell earned a PhD from Emory University in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies with a concentration in Film and Media Studies. She has been an Instructional Assistant Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Mississippi since 2018.
Sarahtalk: FRESH AND CLEAN: A Reading
Presented by LaToya Faulk, MFA (Writing and Rhetoric) .
Feminine hygiene is a billion-dollar industry and women of color are the largest consumers of feminine hygiene products. Studies link excessive use of feminine hygiene products to harmful endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) that cause cancer.
Earlier last year, I learned of Jacqueline Fox, an Alabama woman who died in 2016 of an ovarian cancer linked to talcum use, and I discovered there were countless other women like her. Reports show Johnson & Johnson both knew about the link between talcum and ovarian cancer yet marketed the product to Black and Hispanic women after learning that using baby powder was a vaginal hygiene practice used widely among girls and women in Black and Hispanic communities. In researching hygiene rituals, the expression “fresh and clean” showed up repeatedly when Black women shared feelings that came with their use of tampons, powders, soaps, sprays, douches, wipes, lotions, suppositories, napkins, and creams guaranteed to tame the odorous, fluid draining, and menstruating vagina. The idiom “fresh and clean” isn’t just about the importance and continuous presentation of a newly washed female body, though corporations widely use the phrase in this way. Religious conviction, sexism, and racism are corollaries of the frequent use of harmful, unregulated hygiene products.
I see fiction as a powerful tool for calling into question and reimagining engrained rituals and widely held ideas. We shape the stories we tell, but stories also shape us. In telling the story of two sisters who struggle with ideas of moral uprightness and obsessive feminine cleanliness, the novel FRESH AND CLEAN interrogates the surveillance of Black female bodies and the ways cleanliness instigates ideas about a woman’s worthiness. I also want readers to consider the deadly consequences of our current consumer culture and how easily we place trust in feminine hygiene products simply because they’re on the shelf.
About: LaToya Faulk is a recent fiction graduate of the University of Mississippi’s MFA program and a First-Year Writing instructor in The Department of Writing and Rhetoric. Her work has been published in Scalawag, Southwest Review, Amherst College’s The Common, and Splinter Magazine’s Think Local series. She received a 2022 Pushcart special mention for the essay “In Search of Homeplace,” and she has a forthcoming essay soon to be published in The Global South called “Love is Wanting you Alive.” She lives with her two children in Oxford, Mississippi.
Sarahtalk: Beyond the 'Subaltern': Sounding Sexual Revolt and the Discourse of Oppression among Muslim Women
Presented by Obianuju Njoku, Ph.D. (Music and Gender Studies
This presentation explores how the compendium of music performance, sexual innuendos, comical euphemisms, and other performative mechanisms are invoked in the music-making praxis of Muslim women. I excavate this discourse through the performance of senwele music— a women’s music form in Ilorin, which is commonly fraught with contestation against a background of its sexually suggestive text. Based on fieldwork with a major exponent of senwele, Alhaja Iya Aladuke, this presentation explores the practice, ambivalences and convivialities of senwele music performance within its predominantly Islamic context. Despite the contestations that attend the performance of senwele music, this presentation examines how the sustained practice of senwele music presents a continuum for negotiating socio-religious binaries, gender boundaries, and the multiplicity of the socio-musical experiences of Muslim women.
About:
Obianuju Akunna Njoku is an Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology and Gender Studies jointly affiliated with the Department of Music and the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies. She recently completed her PhD in Music (Ethnomusicology) from Rhodes University. Njoku’s research draws on multi-disciplinary frameworks to examine music and marginality, and the intersection of music, resistance, gender politics and cross-cultural encounters. Her PhD dissertation, ‘Traversing Sonic Spaces: Expressions of Identity, Gender and Power in the Musical Traditions of the Nupe in Northern Nigeria,” examines the prevalent majority-minority binary in Nigeria and how ethnic identity, gender and power are articulated and contested among the Nupe, a minority group, through musical and extra-musical mappings.
Before joining the University of Mississippi, Njoku was a Mellon Postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Music and Musicology/ International Library of African Music (ILAM), Rhodes University. Dr Njoku was recently awarded the African Humanities Program (AHP) Fellowship of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).