WGSC Student Award Winners 2024

Anna Nelson
Anna Nelson

Anna Nelson, UW-Madison – When Feminists Disagree: Pedagogical Responsibilities in Teaching Feminist Theory

Feminism is not a monolith. Throughout its history, there exists disagreement between Marxist, liberal, radical, and various other feminist theories. Just as conflict exists amongst theorists, students also have various interpretations and applications of feminism. Although the feminist classroom inherently analyzes critiques of the social status quo, there exists a gap between the presence of disagreement amongst students and the practice of disagreeing in the classroom. Disagreement has powerful influence on students’ understanding and engagement with content as well as democratic participation beyond the classroom. Cultivating and properly navigating disagreement amongst students themselves while making space for them to adequately critique their curriculum, professors, and peers provides opportunity to improve both. This paper employs a philosophical approach to teaching feminist theory by analyzing its purpose, exploring current classroom dynamics, and providing methods to better encourage student disagreement. Current political discourse already exhibits critique of the feminist classroom from those arguing that these spaces are not amenable to open discussion and debate. To both address these critiques and improve the learning of GWS students, this paper ultimately asks: what are the pedagogical responsibilities when teaching feminist theory in higher education?

Anna Nelson is a senior at UW-Madison with a double major in Philosophy and Gender & Women’s Studies with a certificate in 2D Studio Art. Her thesis explores the responsibilities of teaching feminist theory in higher education and the importance of disagreement in improving current methods. Outside of school, Anna serves as a Co-Editor in Chief for the Madison Journal of Literary Criticism—an abolitionist magazine publishing art, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and more. After graduation, she is looking to work in audio journalism as well as have more time to run, bike and enjoy the sun outside!

Noelle Candler
Noelle Candler

Noelle Candler, UW-Madison – “Hold me, water”: Exploring Care Collectives and Colonial Realities in Cantoras by Caro De Robertis

Traditional discussions of political resistance raise images of masculinized forms in the cultural imagination, while feminized efforts are obscured or overlooked. In their novel Cantoras, Caro De Robertis crafts the tenacious world of five queer women who find refuge from the violently enforced silence of Uruguay’s civic-military dictatorship through acts of feminine care and community building. How can femme care collectives heal the pain imposed by neoliberal ideologies and authoritarian oppression? The novel’s radically communal femininity coexists with Uruguay’s material reality as a nation founded on colonial invasion. As these women resist through care, they too are implicated in a long history of violence against and erasure of indigenous lives and cultures. Addressing this tension between healing and harm recognizes the significance in continuing to understand that liberation for any must be liberation for all.

Noelle Candler is a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, majoring in Gender & Women’s Studies and English Literature. Noelle’s academic focus lies in exploring the intersections of gender, sexuality, and literature in political resistance. In her free time, she enjoys going on walks in the Arboretum and journaling.

Lane Lemke
Lane Lemke

Lane Lemke, UW-Madison – Re-imaging Power, Dependency, and Care Through Kink.

Queer of color critique, crip theory, queer and trans studies, and pleasure activism combine to enable a powerful understanding of liberation and marginalized sexuality and pleasure Although queer, trans, disabled, and communities of color experience historical tensions, particularly in the form of mutual disavowals, we also face countless unifying experiences, many of which stem from the same intertwined and intersecting oppressive forces. Sexuality is one of these common areas in which marginalized communities experience oppression in the form of pathologization and institutional barriers. Understanding the barriers to pleasure and autonomy that trans, queer, disabled, and people of color face as non-normative subjects in American society, I argue that kink is a meaningful avenue through which these communities can access these liberties among others. In addition to potential self-actualizing and liberatory benefits, engaging in kink-related practices, dynamics, or attitudes has the potential to facilitate transformative understandings of power, dependency, and care. Furthermore, specific kink-related practices may include benefits such as pain relief, identity exploration and affirmation, and processing trauma. Ultimately, kink may be the answer to Tobin Siebers’s call for us to think “expansively and experimentally about what defines sexual experience.”

Lane Lemke is an undergraduate student, graduating with a degree in Gender and Women’s Studies, as well as certificates in LGBTQ+ Studies and Folklore. Their work revolves around their own identities as a queer, trans, disabled person, additionally informed by anti-capitalist, anti-racist, and anti-colonial scholarship. Lane loves watching movies, gardening, and snuggling with his cat. He is passionate about community aid and plans to continue engaging in this work after graduating.

Amelia Teske
Amelia Teske

Amelia Teske, UW-Madison – Epistemology of the Erotic: Sexual Epistemic Injustice and the Promise of a Feminist Pornography Knowledge Project

From Foucault to Freud, philosophers have sought to explore the notions of perversion, pleasure, and power as they function in the production and consumption of pornography, yet there are no current frameworks under which we might establish the clear functions of injustice brought about by pornography and further work to alleviate and prevent these injustices. This project establishes an epistemic injustice framework specifically tailored to sexuality and pleasure, utilizing Audre Lorde’s notion of the erotic as a marker of the pleasure that sexual-epistemic agents are effectively blocked from accessing due to the epistemic implications of mainstream pornography. Locating Audre Lorde within the context of the sex wars of the 1970s and 80s while providing a close textual analysis of her 1978 essay, Uses of the Erotic, I seek to build a framework for a feminist pornography knowledge project in alignment with her ideology, while addressing the tensions between the erotic and pornography, and negotiating her strict anti-pornography stance in favor of an erotically liberatory mode of producing, consuming, and distributing pornography.

Amelia Teske (she/they) is a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison working towards a B.A. in Philosophy and Gender & Women’s Studies. She is currently writing a thesis on epistemology and pleasure, grounded in an analysis of feminist porn and Audre Lorde’s theory of the erotic. Amelia is passionate about her work for the Office of the Gender and Women’s Studies Librarian where she has been a student employee for three years, as well as her current apprenticeship with Feminist Press. While undecided on their post-grad plans, Amelia hopes to be able to continue to meaningfully engage with philosophy and feminism throughout their career.

 

Jak Kielpikowski
Jak Kielpikowski

Jak Kielpikowski, UW-Platteville – Queer People and Gentrification

Gentrification can take place anywhere; it is the process of taking places that are considered lower class or run down and remodeling them. This often leads to displacement of individuals who were a part of a community before the remodeling but cannot continue to be because of the cost. Displacement and gentrification are not the same. I discuss the differences between gentrification and displacement, the history of queer people being affected by and participating in gentrification, the importance of political organization in these communities, and the erasure of communities. I also cover intersectional voices within the queer community and the effect of intersectionality on the queer community including how erasure affects intersectional voices and ways to stop displacement while renovating and gentrifying these areas. I look at the history of queer gentrification in the western world while acknowledging ways that the eastern world is affected. I explore the questions: What is the history of queer gentrification and how has it affected queer people and BIPOC in the past? Why is having queer communities important? And how can we fix up buildings without displacing the queer people that live there?

Jak Kielpikowski (Xe/They/He/She) is a Civil Engineering Major with a Math and Architecture Minor and a Gay and Lesbian Studies and an Integrated Liberal Arts Certificate from UW Platteville. They are a strong advocate for LGBTQ+ and women’s spaces. Xe hope to change the infrastructure focus in Wisconsin to be more accommodating to women and queer people in their future career. He hopes that their research in gentrification of LGBTQ+ spaces will inform a future where city planners understand what they can do for their community.

Kaitlyn Hein, UW-Milwaukee – ‘Come buy come buy’: Sex and Temptation Through Visual Interpretations of Christina Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market’

Full of beautiful imagery and rife with thinly veiled sexual metaphors, Christina Rossetti’s poem “Goblin Market” (1862) has maintained its popularity throughout the past 160 years, and with each new publication comes new visual interpretations. Exploring representations of “Goblin Market” reveals varied societal views surrounding sex and temptation. This paper focuses on four different visual interpretations of “Goblin Market” spread throughout the last 160 years. The first illustration was created by Dante Gabriel Rossetti when the poem was published in 1862 and is discussed in this paper in the context of Victorian England and their views of feminine sexuality being nonexistent, that before marriage young girls need to remain virtuous and after marriage women still need to be chaste. Then the paper shifts to the 1933 illustration by Arthur Rackham and discusses its meaning within the context of 1920s and 1930s England, as women started to gain more sexual freedoms, including the use of contraceptives. The third illustration was created by Kinuko Y Craft in 1973 and was published in an issue of Playboy, leading to a discussion of sexuality not just in the context of the ‘free love’ movements of the 1960s and 1970s in the United States, but also how where an illustration is published is just as important as when it is published. Finally, Georgie McAusland’s illustration from 2021, published in the wake of social movements like Time’s Up and #MeToo, Laura’s encounter with the goblins is not due to her own shortcomings but puts the blame on the lecherous goblins. The vagueness of the poem allows the artists to apply it in their own contexts, not leave it in the past.  

Angel Bronk
Angel Bronk

Angel Bronk, UW-Stevens Point – Level Up and Wise Up: Women and the LGBTQIA+ in Online Video Gaming

My presentation will cover the evolution of the representation of women and LGBTQIA+ groups in the development of video games, specifically how their roles in the video game world have evolved alongside the growth of gaming and its shift to the online sphere. This expansion has come at a cost, namely the working conditions of these groups and their treatment at the hands of several corporations. I will examine incidents such as the Blizzard Activision lawsuit, how pledges to increase diversity may look fruitful on the surface but are increasingly superficial with each passing patch release, and which companies are truly committing to the cause of diversity and equity.

Angel Bronk is a junior student at the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point studying English and Women and Gender Studies. He works as a peer success coach for the Queer Resource Center and as a writing tutor in the Tutoring-Learning Center. In his free time, Angel likes to walk his Pomeranian and make cosplays to compete in competitions around the Midwest. He recently won first place Journeyman at Anime Milwaukee’s cosplay competition and plans to host a panel at Kitsune Kon in Green Bay about Kirby and the evolution of gender this July.

Grace Files
Grace Files

Grace Files, UW-Milwaukee –  Jennifer’s Body: The Flaw in ‘Female Rage’

This presentation focuses on a genre of horror with growing popularity: “female rage” films. There is a long history in feminist horror studies of bestowing a specifically “female” quality to certain types of rage, often to argue that representations of such rage are in some way empowering or feminist. I challenge this framework through an analysis of the 2009 film Jennifer’s Body, demonstrating how its purported feminism relies on reinvestment in gender roles and binary sex, ultimately reifying the very structures upon which patriarchal oppression relies. By showing how a simplistic reading of Jennifer’s Body as a site of “female rage” precludes other avenues for analysis and overlooks troubling power structures inherent to the titular character’s actions, I hope to demonstrate that “female rage” is not a useful framework for feminist horror studies. Rage in and of itself is not feminist simply because it is expressed by a female, and horror criticism that reinvests itself in the notion of a unique, particular “female” rage ultimately does more work to perpetuate gender roles than to break free of them.

Grace Files is a first-year MA student interested in the history of horror, postcolonial studies, and queer theory, whose research tends to focus on constructions of sex, gender, and monstrosity. Grace also teaches intro Gender Studies courses for the Women’s and Gender Studies department at UW-Milwaukee.

Natalie Riddle
Natalie Riddle

Natalie Riddle, UW-River Falls – Thoughts, attitudes, and perceptions of the LGBTQ+ community in rural, urban, and suburban areas.

Building upon existing research, this investigation explores the obstacles faced by LGBTQ+ individuals based on the size of their community. Findings reveal that rural areas exhibit significantly higher levels of internalized homophobia and that feelings of safety and security were lowest in rural settings, highlighting the unique challenges encountered by LGBTQ+ individuals. The study also identifies a significant correlation between political ideologies and prejudiced opinions, with individuals holding far-right beliefs displaying increased levels of bias against LGBTQ+ individuals. Considering the lack of safety and security in rural areas, urgent attention is required to address safety concerns and create a more inclusive environment for LGBTQ+ residents. To promote inclusivity and safety, our study recommends proactive measures by local entities—employers, organizations, churches, and individuals—in support of LGBTQ+ equality in communities of all sizes. This grassroots approach, initiated at the local level, holds the potential to create a positive ripple effect and contribute to a more welcoming environment for LGBTQ+ individuals in their communities. Recognizing the diversity within rural communities and considering identity markers such as race and religion is crucial for a more accurate and inclusive understanding of LGBTQ+ experiences.

Natalie Riddle (she/her/hers) is a major in psychology with an emphasis in industrial/organizational and a minor in Women’s and gender studies. Title of project: Thoughts, attitudes, and perceptions of the LGBTQ+ community in rural, suburban, and urban areas.”