Rellihan and Boisseau
Tracey Jean Boisseau and Heather Rellihan “The Only Thing I Have an Enduring Allegiance to Is Feminism”: WGSS, the Refusal to Regret, and the Survival of the Field In the immediate wake of the 2024 US election and through spring 2025 during the first few months of the new presidential administration, we collected oral histories […]
Luna
Ceci Luna “Let This Radicalize You Rather than Lead You to Despair”: Re-Imagining Futures for Gender Studies Figure 1 Gender Studies Under Attack Figure 2 The Last Advanced Feminist Theory Class Figure 3 [redacted] Figure 4 The End of Gender Studies Figure 5 “Let This Radicalize You Rather than Lead You to Despair” — Mariame Kaba Figure 6 A Safe Space […]
Pinto
Samantha Pinto The Feminist Institutional Trolley Problem In my Introduction to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies course, I teach the infamous philosophical trolley problem. The problem presents a scenario in which a trolley operator must choose between two fatal outcomes: staying on the present track and killing five laborers in her path or switching tracks […]
Matthiesen
Sara Matthiesen Studying WGSS In early November 2024, Prentis Hemphill moderated a conversation between Angela Davis and Lama Rod Owens on the themes of community, trauma, solidarity, Black liberation, and collective freedom at the East Bay Meditation Center, a spiritual home with an activist legacy in the San Francisco Bay Area. Three days prior, Donald […]
Bouchard Et Al
Helis Sikk What’s So Bad About Being Disappointed? In 2026, it is impossible to consider my position at Brown University without the prism of December 13, 2025, when a gunman opened fire in a large lecture hall, killing two students, injuring nine others, and leaving the campus changed. Words such as “resilience,” “community,” “care,” and […]
Sikk
Helis Sikk What’s So Bad About Being Disappointed? In 2026, it is impossible to consider my position at Brown University without the prism of December 13, 2025, when a gunman opened fire in a large lecture hall, killing two students, injuring nine others, and leaving the campus changed. Words such as “resilience,” “community,” “care,” and […]
Cooper
Brittney Cooper Black Feminist Waymaking Under Fascism On the very first day of the spring semester of 2026, I called our department administrator to check in. I needed her help with something, but I also wanted to know what was going on at the physical location where we teach. Though campus had been open since […]
Briggs
Laura Briggs Teaching “Gender Ideology” and “Critical Race Theory” in Trump’s America: Fear and Solidarity in the Classroom In January 2025, I walked into the first meeting of my course, the History of Race and Sexuality in the United States, with my heart pounding. I thought I was feeling much more anxious than I needed […]
Mitra
Durba Mitra On Anticipatory Complicity In 2025, in higher education, we have used and heard the phrase anticipatory compliance, about universities rapidly reworking everything from legal admissions policies to the racial and gender composition of faculty and staff, to the very fields of research deemed valuable, in fear of the loss of billions in federal […]
Owens and Nash
Emily A. Owens and Jennifer C. Nash Institutional Feelings: Practicing Women’s Studies in 2026 We commissioned this roundtable on the tenth anniversary of a conversation we began in Feminist Formations under the umbrella of “Institutional Feelings: Practicing Women’s Studies in the Corporate University.” That moment was marked by the new stark realities of the corporate […]