headshot of Qwo-Li Driskill

Qwo-Li Driskill

Qwo-Li Driskill will be the featured speaker of the 24th annual Women’s and Gender Studies Symposium on Friday, March 22.

Driskill, an associate professor in the School of Language, Culture, and Society: Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Oregon State University, will give an address titled “Performing Revolution, Scholarship, and Decolonial Practice” at 1 p.m. in the Prairie Room of the Bone Student Center.

View the schedule for the 24th annual Women’s and Gender Symposium.

Co-founder and member of the Indigenous People’s Interest Group for the National Women’s Studies Association, Driskill has been honored several times for their non-fiction and trans and gender-variant literature. They are also the director of Graduate Studies and Queer Studies, and an affiliate faculty with Ethnic Studies, Public Policy and Social Justice. They are an advisory board member of the Arts & Social Justice Living-Learning Community, and Advisory Council member for the Eena Haws Native American Longhouse at Oregon State.

The symposium showcases the scholarship being done by students at Illinois State University and neighboring institutions. The event is free and open to the public. The symposium, much like the women’s and gender studies discipline, is committed to a transformative analysis of gender as it intersects with class/caste, sexuality, race, ethnicity, ability, age, coloniality, and transnationality.

The symposium is sponsored by Illinois state University’s College of Arts and Sciences, Department of English, Department of History, Department of Philosophy, LGBT/Queer Students and Services Institute, Milner Library, MECCPAC: A Dean of Students Diversity Initiative, Office of the President, Harold Sage Foundation Fund and Illinois State University Foundation, and the Women’s and Gender Studies program. More information on the symposium can be found at the Women’s and Gender Studies website.

Those who need accommodations to fully participate in this event can contact Jamie Anderson at (309) 438-2947.

The Illinois State University Speaker Series seeks to bring innovative and enlightening speakers to the campus with the aim of providing the community with a platform to foster dialogue, cultivate enriching ideas, and continue an appreciation of learning as an active and lifelong process.

This program supports the Core Values of the University’s strategic plan.