23rd Annual WGSX Colloquium and Margaret Brent Lecture

Audience

Student

Faculty

Staff

About the Series

The first annual Women Studies colloquium was held March 22-24, 2000. With the support of the Alice McLellan Birney Women Studies Fund, the cross-disciplinary study area in Women, Gender, & Sexuality presents a colloquium each spring in connection with Women’s History Month. Since 2000, the WGSX Colloquium has become an established tradition at St. Mary’s College. This successful annual program has regularly drawn large audiences to events that have offered powerful interdisciplinary combinations of scholarly discourse and artistic expression (including film screenings, theatrical performances, and exhibitions) to discuss a topic critical to women’s lives.

THIS YEAR’S THEME – Expanding Gender: TRANS Experience and Actions.

The 2023 Colloquium continues the program’s tradition of engaging with critical intellectual themes, this time focusing on transgender and gender non-conforming populations. In 2020, nearly 80 different anti-transgender legislatures were introduced. In 2021, that number nearly doubled with approximately 150 proposals. In 2022, activists identified about 280 bills currently filed to restrict transgender individuals’ access to healthcare, bathrooms, education, and athletics. Further, violence toward the transgender and gender-non-conforming community highlights intersectionality, with fatal violence disproportionately impacting transgender women of color. This year’s speakers will focus on the experiences and issues facing transgender and gender non-conforming individuals today.

We believe this topic is not only timely given the current political landscape but will be relevant to the students, faculty, and staff at St. Mary’s. This topic, in part, was inspired by student activism on campus (i.e., the Call Us By Our Names movement) and upcoming SMCM policy changes (e.g., changes in Open Housing, Name Change Policy, reinstating of the LGBTQ+ Student Affairs Advisory Committee).