Dr. Heidi R. Lewis
Keynote

“What Do We Do Now?: On the State of Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies”

Thursday, April 9, 2026, 4:00pm CDT

Attacks on Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies and kin disciplines like Black Studies did not begin with Donald Trump’s election as the 45th or 47th President of the United States. However, they have become more pronounced, especially since he vowed to defund “any school pushing critical race theory, transgender identity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content” and to “advance a measure to have [colleges and universities] fined up to the entire amount of their endowment,” if they don’t terminate diversity programs. As a result, many in the field have understandably asked, “What do we do now?” During this keynote, Dr. Heidi R. Lewis will engage with this question by encouraging participants to make space for anxiety, frustration, fear, sadness, disappointment, and rage. At the same time, she will invite participants to remember who we’ve been, who we are, and what we do so we can continue to resist…fiercely.

Heidi R. Lewis is the immediate past president of the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA), the 22nd president of the organization. Lewis is the David Lucile Packard Professor of Feminist & Gender Studies at Colorado College and Editor-in-Chief of Oxford Bibliographies in Gender & Women’s Studies. Her scholarship and teaching are primarily focused on feminism (emphasis Black Feminism), Hip Hop (emphasis Rap), and media studies. She is Series Editor of Expanding Frontiers: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality (University of Nebraska Press).

Most recently, Lewis published Make Rappers Rap Again: Interrogating the Mumble Rap “Crisis” (August 2025), the first in the Oxford University Press Theorizing African American Music Series. Previously, she published In Audre’s Footsteps: Transnational Kitchen Table Talk (edition assemblage, 2021), as well as book chapters and articles in the second volume of Rethinking Women’s and Gender Studies, Womanism Rising, The Cultural Impact of Kanye West, the Journal of Popular Culture, the Journal of Black Sexuality and Relationships, and Unteilbar: Bündnisse gegen Rassismus. She has also contributed to NewBlackMan, NPR, Ms., KRCC, Bitch, and Act Out and given talks at Vanderbilt, the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement, Portland State, the U.S. Olympic Committee, the Kampagne für Opfer Rassistischer Polizeigewalt, and many other organizations in the U.S., Canada, and Germany.

For more information, see Lewis’s personal website.

Dr. Michele Tracy Berger
Joint Plenary

“Promises, Pivots and Possibilities: Lessons Learned from Researching Women’s and Gender Students’ Career Pathways for Almost Two Decades”

Friday, April 10, 2026, 10:00am CDT

The first edition of Transforming Scholarship: How Women’s and Gender Studies Students Are Changing Themselves and the World was published in 2011. The book was inspired as a response to their WGS students finding themselves answering questions about their career trajectories in uncertain times and to assure others (and themselves) of having a life and career while concentrating in WGS. Through interviews and a global database, this book contributed to a new way of talking about the value of the women’s and gender studies degree and how graduates made their way as workers and civic leaders.  Authors Michele Tracy Berger and Cheryl Radeloff will trace their journey as friends and colleagues producing the three editions ofTransforming Scholarship. They will address the promise of finding work and making a life with a background in women’s and gender studies graduate in challenging times (or even times that seem normal comparatively)  as discussed not only in Transforming Scholarship, but by national WGS practitioners, pivots or the adaptations majors/minors/faculty/departments have made or are considering in response to the job market/current political climate, changes in interests or the addition of skills and knowledge that may require incorporating WGS sensibilities into different fields, and possibilities or why WGS and feminism is needed more than ever in order to address the very real issues that have been at the heart of WGS since its inception. They will be joined in conversation by a moderator who will be able to pose questions and provide context so that audience members can apply lessons learned about career potential in WGS for themselves and the next generation of WGS practitioners.

Michele Tracy Berger is the Eric and Jane Nord Family Professor and director of the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University. She is the author of many books, including Workable Sisterhood: The Political Journey of Stigmatized Women with HIV/AIDS. She is a leading scholar in applying intersectional approaches to studying areas of inequality. This work spans the fields of public health, political science, sociology and women’s and gender studies.

She earned a graduate certificate in women’s studies and a PhD in political science from University of Michigan. Her teaching and research interests include multiracial feminisms, racial and gender health disparities, qualitative methods, contemplative practices, HIV/AIDS activism, the health and wellness practices of African American women and girls. Her work on modern contemplative practices takes many forms. She has conducted research evaluating yoga interventions with at-risk elementary and middle school children in K-12 public schools. This work makes connections between vulnerable communities and their opportunities and impediments to experience health, resiliency, and well-being.  She is also interested in the use of yoga and other contemplative practices by women of color. In much of this work, she argues that feminist methodological questions bring about power, social location, intersectionality, and critical theory are vitally important to intervene in traditional biomedical or psychological frames of health.

Dr. Berger’s books include Workable Sisterhood: The Political Journey of Stigmatized Women with HIV/AIDS (Princeton University Press, 2004), the co-edited collections Gaining Access: A Practical and Theoretical Guide for Qualitative Researchers (Altamira Press, 2003) and The Intersectional Approach:  Transforming the Academy Through Race, Class and Gender (University of North Carolina Press, 2010) and the co-authored Transforming Scholarship: Why Women’s and Gender Studies Students Are Changing Themselves and the World (Routledge 2011, 2014, 2021). She is the author, most recently, of Black Women’s Health: Paths to Wellness for Mothers and Daughters (New York University Press, 2022), the first monograph to focus on the role of southern African American mothers and their adolescent daughters in shaping health practices.

She is a sought-after public speaker and commentator. Her public scholarship has appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Ed, Ms. Magazine, The Feminist Wire and other media outlets. She is currently co-chair of the Ms. Scholars Board.

For more information, see Berger’s personal website.

Dr. Cheryl Radeloff
Joint Plenary

“Promises, Pivots and Possibilities: Lessons Learned from Researching Women’s and Gender Students’ Career Pathways for Almost Two Decades”

Friday, April 10, 2026, 10:00am CDT

The first edition of Transforming Scholarship: How Women’s and Gender Studies Students Are Changing Themselves and the World was published in 2011. The book was inspired as a response to their WGS students finding themselves answering questions about their career trajectories in uncertain times and to assure others (and themselves) of having a life and career while concentrating in WGS. Through interviews and a global database, this book contributed to a new way of talking about the value of the women’s and gender studies degree and how graduates made their way as workers and civic leaders.  Authors Michele Tracy Berger and Cheryl Radeloff will trace their journey as friends and colleagues producing the three editions ofTransforming Scholarship. They will address the promise of finding work and making a life with a background in women’s and gender studies graduate in challenging times (or even times that seem normal comparatively)  as discussed not only in Transforming Scholarship, but by national WGS practitioners, pivots or the adaptations majors/minors/faculty/departments have made or are considering in response to the job market/current political climate, changes in interests or the addition of skills and knowledge that may require incorporating WGS sensibilities into different fields, and possibilities or why WGS and feminism is needed more than ever in order to address the very real issues that have been at the heart of WGS since its inception. They will be joined in conversation by a moderator who will be able to pose questions and provide context so that audience members can apply lessons learned about career potential in WGS for themselves and the next generation of WGS practitioners.

Cheryl Radeloff is an adjunct professor of Sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas as well as Women’s Studies at the College of Southern Nevada. She is also a health educator working in public health who previously was employed as a Disease Investigator and Intervention Specialist. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2004. Her dissertation “Vectors, Polluters, and Murderers: HIV Testing Policies toward Prostitutes in Nevada” explored the development of mandatory testing laws for legal and non legal sex workers in the state of Nevada. She is the co-author of multiple editions of Transforming Scholarship: Why Women’s and Gender Studies Students are Changing Themselves and the World with Michele T. Berger for Routledge Press.

Dr. Rachel Kuo
Plenary Moderator

“Promises, Pivots and Possibilities: Lessons Learned from Researching Women’s and Gender Students’ Career Pathways for Almost Two Decades”

Friday, April 10, 2026, 10:00am CDT

Rachel Kuo is Assistant Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She writes, teaches, and researches race, feminist politics, social movements, and digital technology. Her book Movement Media: In Pursuit of Solidarity (Oxford University Press, 2025) brings together archival research and ethnographic fieldwork to demonstrate how technologies enhance and foreclose possibilities for political organization across uneven racial and class difference. She works closely with community partners in developing her research, and her longer-term research goals and questions center and engage emergent questions and practices from grassroots social movements. Her research has received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Social Science Research Council. She is a founding member and current affiliate of the Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies and also a co-founder of the Asian American Feminist Collective. She is co-editor of the anthology We Are Each Other’s Liberation: Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities (Haymarket Books, 2025). Her writing has also been published in Media, Culture, and Society, Political Communication, Social Media and Society, New Media and Society, Journal of Communication, and Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. She has also co-edited the World Without Cages and Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities projects with the Asian American Writer’s Workshop.  She has a PhD and MA in Media, Culture, and Communication from New York University, and BA in Journalism from the University of Missouri.

For more information, see Kuo’s personal website.