Professors Miriam Abelson and Molly Benitez, pictured up front in a Feminist Methodologies class, are part of the steering committee for a new grant from the Mellon Foundation aimed at reimagining social justice and activism in the Pacific Northwest. (Credit: Jeremy Chun Sajqui)
Portland State’s Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies — one of the oldest programs of its kind in the Pacific Northwest — was born out of on-the-ground activism in the mid-1970s by students, faculty, staff and community members.
Following a year marked by activism in 2020, the department brought in two scholar-activists as part of a larger cluster hire in the School of Gender, Race, and Nations. And now out of the pandemic, with the help of a $100,000 Affirming Multivocal Humanities grant from the Mellon Foundation, the department is looking to bolster its connections on campus and across the region to radically reimagine what social justice and activism could look like in the Pacific Northwest.
“We lost many of our connections with each other and our communities during the pandemic and the turmoil of the last few years,” associate professor Miriam Abelson said. “This came at a perfect time when we were already thinking about where we want to move in the future and how we want to rebuild those connections.”
Leading the efforts are Abelson and the department’s cluster hires, Molly Benitez and Kai Hang Cheang. The project’s theme, “Build as We Fight: Radically Reimagining Social Justice,” centers on creating safe spaces for LGBTQ+ folks to be supported and affirmed in their identities and to learn how to translate theory into the practice of social transformation at a moment when LGBTQ+ communities and communities of color are increasingly under attack.
“We’re trying to not only imagine a more equitable future, but also to put it into practice,” Abelson said. “Fighting can be tiring, but Portland and Portland State, though not perfect, can offer spaces where people can come together with hopefully a little less of that threat and find that connection with people who are engaged in the same kind of work and build together.”
Benitez said the department is trying to think about how they can reimagine social justice in a way that goes beyond a basic “fight for your rights.”
“That’s not enough, so part of the ‘Build as We Fight’ is what else do we need to do?” they said. “For a lot of us, that’s about education and community building and relationship building.”
The group sees the project as an opportunity to bring in different voices from historically marginalized communities to enrich how we think about the human experience.
“The impetus of the project really comes from the need to diversify what is traditionally considered the epitome of the human figure — an able-bodied cisgender heterosexual white male — in our political practices. The first step of that work requires us to stretch our imagination of who else is invited to create a more equitable future,” Cheang said.
WGSS will use the Mellon grant to host leading women and queer and trans scholars and activists for a campuswide speaker series that will culminate in a symposium next winter. Each quarter will focus on a different theme, beginning with disability justice. Other themes in the works are trans health care and environmental justice. Writer and disability activist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha will kick off the series later this spring as the keynote for the department’s annual Walk of the Heroines lecture.
“We use a lot of Leah Lakshmi’s work in almost all of our classes on care work and disability justice, and our students love her,” Benitez said. “She’s going to do an additional day where she works with them, which will be really exciting.”
The group is building in opportunities for each keynote speaker to have more intimate group discussions and workshops with WGSS students and faculty in addition to the larger public talks. Programming will also bring in local artists and creatives for workshops on block printing and zines.
“The events will be educational and fun,” Benitez said. “Joy and fun is something we often don’t think about when you think about social justice, but it’s important.”
The grant will also help the department renew and strengthen its ties with local organizations like the Gay and Lesbian Archive of the Pacific Northwest, Q-Center and Sexual Assault Resource Center as well as foster new community connections and collaborations. The culminating symposium will highlight student and faculty research as well as activist and community-centered projects from across the region.
“We really see the work that community organizations and activists do as not a separate thing, but something that’s very much integrated into who we are,” Abelson said.
WGSS is hosting a kickoff event on Feb. 22 at 4 p.m. in Smith Memorial Student Union 296/8. Three alumni speakers will share their experiences working at organizations that serve the region’s LGBTQ+ community.