From Thursday, October 25 to Sunday, October 29, Dr. Jacklyn Weier and Xan Daggett represented Illinois State University’s Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) program at the annual National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) conference in Baltimore.
NWSA, whose mission is to promote and support “the production and dissemination of knowledge about women and gender through teaching, learning, research, and service,” hosted its first conference in 1979. Several decades later, NWSA continues to engage with threats to marginalized communities, as well as to women’s, gender, and sexuality studies as a field. This year’s conference theme was A Luta Continua/The Struggle Continues: Resistance, Resilience, Resurgence, and it kicked off with the keynote address, Black Women Taught Me: Honoring Legacies of Black Feminist Thought, Movement Building, and Feminist Solidarities, by Kimberlé Crenshaw, Paula J. Giddings, and Beverly Guy-Sheftall, with greetings from Angela Davis.
Weier and Daggett’s presentation, (Re)Building Engagement: Post-COVID Strategic Planning in WGSS, detailed research conducted at Illinois State to improve WGSS programming and outreach following low engagement due to COVID-19. They, along with recent ISU graduate Kate Fortner, began with a survey of ISU faculty, staff, and students to assess attitudes toward the WGSS program and barriers to event participation. Through the analysis of almost 700 responses, Weier, Daggett, and Fortner determined programming accessibility factors, as well as pressing concerns of the ISU community in hopes of growing engagement with WGSS as an academic and professional field.
Next year’s NWSA conference will take place in Detroit November 14-17, 2024.
