The theme for the 2023 Gensler Symposium on Feminisms in the Global Arena is “Performing Feminist Joy.” Feminist joy interrupts gender, raced, and classed histories of happiness and reinserts all bodies as sites for pleasure activism. 

If, as Judith Butler says, gender is created and naturalized through its repetitive performance, then what happens when we perform feminist joy over and over again?

This year brings a variety of feminist scholars, activists, and artists together to help us create new worlds and new forms of resistance through pleasure. Anahi Russo-Garrido, Treasure Brooks, Jae Basiliere, Stina Soderling, Kelly Sharron, and Abe Weil will give a combination of workshops and lectures. These events are an invitation to think with feminist and queer theory about affect, praxis, politics, and ethics—and how they play out in our lives. 

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Thursday, April 13, 4:30 – 6 p.m., Hillcrest 103 (The Orchard)

From Self to Collective Care: Anti-racist Mindfulness and Meditation Practices

Presentation by Anahi Russo Garrido, PhD, Associate Professor and Chair/Director of Gender, Women and Sexualities Studies/The Gender Institute for Teaching and Advocacy, GITA, Denver, CO.

This presentation centers around comparative analysis of scholarly discussions on self-care in feminist and queer studies and perspectives shared by meditation practitioners of color. While some scholars of care tend to frame meditation and mindfulness as a neoliberal technique of governance with the only goal of personal happiness and self-improvement, people of color who use contemplative practices in their recently published teachings, instead present a complicated picture of the relationship of self- to collective care. For the latter, these practices are crucial not only to communal survival but also to contemporary racial justice activism. The presentation also reflects on gardening, as a contemplative practice, in a community garden in a predominantly black and latinx neighborhood in Colorado. Gardeners and meditators posit these contemplative practices as a mode of interconnected self and collective care in support of anti-racist activism, which function against neoliberal imperatives that privilege privatization, speed, and individualism.   

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Friday, April 21, 2 p.m. – 6 p.m., Hillcrest 103 (The Orchard)

2 p.m.- 3 p.m. Fun as Freedom: Alternative Praxis for Feminist Coalition Building

Treasure Brooks will discuss how her work co-creating the feminist media company “The Meteor” was a pursuit of creative resistance. Drawing upon the scholarship of activists such as adrienne maree brown (Pleasure Activism) and Tricia Hearsay (Rest as Resistance), Brooks will also discuss her theory of communal play as a viable strategy for feminist coalition building. Her talk will examine the adverse effects of premature adulthood in communities of color and offer historical examples of playful resistance within Black diasporic and indigenous traditions. Additionally, there will be a creative exercise facilitated among participants focused on architecting feminist future.

3 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. Tea and Creative Exercises on Architecting Feminist Futures with Treasure Brooks

4 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. Joint Talk and Drag Performance by Jae Basiliere

Does Resistance Have To Be A Drag?

As part of the backlash against trans rights, conservative lawmakers in eight states have passed more than a dozen bills attempting to criminalize or restrict drag performances. Despite this marked increase in hateful rhetoric in the public sphere, drag performers across the country continue to make art, celebrate community, and find joy in the spaces they occupy. This joint talk and drag performance will consider what it looks like to counter hate with art, perform in the face of fear, and infuse unrestrained joy into activist projects.  

Zoom link for today’s events: https://middlebury.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_zHnz-pf-T966p_04Gojcxg

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Saturday, April 22, 12 p.m. – 5 p.m., Chip Kenyon Arena (hockey rink in the athletics facility)

Feminist Environmental Justice

An Earth Day arts competition! Students—in groups or as individuals—will make art out of found and recycled objects. This exercise aims at helping participants think about why environmental justice is a feminist issue. At the end of the day, a panel of judges will determine the winners and award prizes, including a $500 grand prize! Ultimately, the art produced in the competition will be featured in the feminist mini golf course, in a hole dedicated to environmental and reproductive justice. Prior to the competition day, participants will receive additional instructions, as well as a prompt.

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Friday, April 28, 4 p.m. – 5:30 p.m., Innovation Hub

Queer Relationality: Thinking with Breath and Bread 

Talk and workshop by Dr. Stina Soderling

This combined lecture and workshop will investigate the pandemic surge in sourdough baking through the lens of queer theory. What can we learn about longings for connection by paying close attention to the living and breathing of microorganisms, and humans’ care in keeping microbes alive? Drawing from her recent work on queer ecologies and queer affect, Soderling will outline how thinking with breath and breathing can be helpful for social justice purposes—especially  in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and when  “I Can’t Breathe” became a rallying cry for racial justice in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Dr. Soderling will also lead participants through making sourdough bread, an organism that is in and of itself alive with breath. We will end with eating sourdough bread and drinking kombucha, thinking collectively about the queerness of fermentation and the possibilities this practice opens up for feminist, queer, and racial justice. Participants are encouraged to bring sourdough, yogurt, scobys, and other cultures to share and swap. 

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The Joy of Feminist Building: Creating Reproductive Justice Mini Golf   

A collaborative day of feminist building! Join Vermont Works for Women’s Trailblazers’ Program and students from Hamilton College’s “Theories of Sexuality” class as we build, shape, and create! Use power tools and paint, create art, and help bring the feminist mini golf course to fruition! No prior skills needed. Lunch provided.  

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Production and Reproduction: Forests, Moss, and Fungi

An interactive workshop with Abe Weil and Kelly Sharron 

Forests are abundant: as the world’s most biodiverse terrestrial landscape, the forests index a rich choreography of altruism, health, and mutual aid assembled through subterranean alliances and mycorrhizal networks that provide paths for sharing—from hormones to alert signals—life-sustaining nutrients throughout the forest. The most creative science on the sociality of forests invites us to consider the irreducible interdependency of the forest as its own ontological site. Like Spinoza’s ‘substance’, the forest’s capacity to be read as a single organism asks us to revisit its situatedness within the haughty individualism of Darwinian evolution. While these metaphors of philanthropical forest life inspire connections to a rhizomatic politics, we can also learn about the catastrophic effects of human behavior. This talk draws together the ways that the spatial relations between bodies as trees help us to ask questions about emergent systems of cooperation and the complexity of social reproduction. As we ping with fascination, do forests sense us? 

As we discuss the reproduction of social life in the forest, there will be a guided workshop to produce a preserved moss assemblage.

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Friday, May 12, 4 p.m. – 5:30 p.m., Chip Kenyon Arena (hockey rink in the athletics facility) 

Feminist Mini Golf Exhibit Opening plus Feminist Trivia

4 – 4:30 p.m. Mini Golf Exhibit Grand Opening

4:30 – 5:30 p.m. Feminist Trivia with Trivia Time’s Dr. Kelly Sharron 

Join the host of Trivia Time, Kelly Sharron, for a special live event to kick off the opening of the feminist mini-golf course! This will be a special slate of trivia devoted to Queering Reproductive Justice. Rounds will include general knowledge, music, and visuals. Bring some friends and play as a team! After the event, questions will be incorporated into the final hole of Middlebury’s feminist mini-golf course.