We are excited to announce the 5th KYGWS Conference!  

This year’s theme is “Justice on Trial.” As left-wing politicians and activists across the globe work for human rights and protections, right-wing parties have meanwhile paved the way for conservative laws that harm the bodily autonomy of women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and other marginalized communities. Anti-abortion laws, anti-trans laws, and encroachment on academic freedom are just a few examples of the injustices people are facing at this juncture.

With this landscape in mind, this year’s conference will address the theme of justice, considering issues faced worldwide, such as (but not limited to) human rights, accessibility, inclusivity, and autonomy. 

• Keynote Speaker: Dr. Sameena Mulla, Emory University
• Registration Deadline: July 31
• Cost: Free for all University of Kentucky students and faculty
• Register Here: https://kygws.as.uky.edu/registration-form
  
  Don’t miss out on this opportunity to contribute to meaningful conversations and connect with peers and experts in the field. Reserve your spot today! 

Registration is now open.  The deadline to register is July 31.  
Register here:  https://kygws.as.uky.edu/registration-form

The full conference schedule will be posted here and on the KYGWS conference website once finalized. 

In this series we celebrate and discuss the ways that scholars around campus teach complex gender and women's studies concepts like feminisms, gender, sex, and intersectionality among others.  A 30-45 minute discussion/presentation of pedagogies, challenges and controversies by the scholar(s) is followed by a Q&A with the audience.  

This session's these is "Teaching Intersectionality: Highlighting the Strategies and Stories of International Graduate Instructors"

In this series we celebrate and discuss the ways that scholars around campus teach complex gender and women’s studies concepts like feminisms, gender, sex, and intersectionality among others. A 30-45 minute discussion/presentation of pedagogies, challenges and controversies by the scholar is followed by a Q&A with the audience. After which we will celebrate with light refreshments.

Dr. Mel Stein is a feminist historian and interdisciplinary scholar specializing in race, gender, and sexuality in science and medicine. She is the author of Measuring Manhood: Race and the Science of Masculinity, 1830-1934 (University of Minnesota Press, 2015), an intersectional analysis of scientific racism in nineteenth and early twentieth century America that interrogates biomedical constructions of citizenship, investigates the relationship between racial and sexual sciences, and examines scientists’ attempts to offer medical solutions to the nation’s “race problems.” Her teaching and research interests include health and health disparities, racial thought, the cultural constructions of the body, the history of sexuality, African-American and gender history, feminist science studies, race and policing, and the politics of memory. 

Discussant- Dr. Anastasia Todd, is an Assistant Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies at UK.  She is the author of Cripping Girlhood (Forthcoming, University of Michigan Press). She teaches classes on feminist theory, affect theory, the body, and disability. 

Sponsored by the Department of Gender & Women’s Studies

The Philosophy Department in collaboration with the Department of Gender & Women's Studies and the UK Gaines Center for the Humanities is hosting our second undergraduate talk of the semester! Monday, October 9th, join us in Chem-Phys Bldg Rm 153 at 3pm!  Maja Sidzińska from University of Pennsylvania is speaking on “Cogito, Ergo Sumus? The Pregnancy Problem in Descartes's Philosophy.””

Abstract:

Given Descartes’s metaphysical and natural-philosophic commitments, it is difficult to theorize the pregnant human being as a human being under his system. Specifically, given (1) Descartes’s account of generation; (2) his commitment to mechanistic explanations where bodies are concerned; (3) his reliance on a subtle individuating principle for human (and animal) bodies; and (4) his metaphysics of human beings, which include minds, bodies, and mind-body unions, there is no available human substance or entity that may clearly be the subject of pregnancy. The incompatibility of any of the three options found in commitment 4 with commitment 1, 2, or 3, together with other undesirable consequences should any be selected, results in what I call the pregnancy problem. The pregnancy problem is a previously unconsidered problem for the Cartesian philosophy. Given the pregnancy problem, commitment 1, 2, 3, or 4, or a combination of these would have to be revised for Descartes’s system to avoid a variety of tensions; alternatively, counterintuitive consequences may have to be accepted. Ironically, given Descartes’s interest in generation and medicine more generally, the Cartesian framework struggles to accommodate pregnancy in human beings. This may have implications for the systematicity and sex-neutrality of dualist metaphysics in general.