SEWSA 2020

Embodying Disobedience, Crafting Affinities

The spring 2020 conference was to be held at the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg, the theme chosen by the USF Women’s and Gender Studies Department was Embodying Disobedience, Crafting Affinities. Marking the 44th year in which the conference has been hosted, the department and the university wanted to present and display presentations, workshops, self-care, and networking that honored feminist women of color that not only embodied disobedience, but critically engaged with intersectional discourses and actively stood against oppression. From early abolitionists like Sojourner Truth, to civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, to writers like Audre Lorde and Gloria Anzuldúa, to the Combahee River Collective, to theorists like Kimberlé Crenshaw and Saba Mahmood, the WSG department wanted to express the ideals that have been set before all of us to engage with feminist theory, gender and sexuality, intersectional theory, critical race theory, and more interdisciplinary critical theories.  

What does it mean to embody disobedience? With the intent of asking students, faculty, activists, and scholars how they could answer such a question in practice and in scholarship, the conference was to be a space of open conversations that aimed to critically answer this question.

Before the conference was set to begin, a series of workshops included Shoog McDaniel, an artist and photographer that focuses on the connections of queer peoples and nature. Her show, Bodies Like Oceans, is a workshop designed for them and the attendees to engage is conversations, readings, and photography exercises. McDaniel makes the practice of embodying disobedience not only through engaging with others, but through the practice of photographing and creating representations of fat women, transwomen, and women of color displaying and actively speaking against oppressive views of gender, sexuality, race, and body type.  

While working through the ideology of what is embodying disobedience, the other part of the theme for this year’s conference was crafting affinities. Affinity is defined as, “Senses relating to connection, and to the forming of connections,” (OED). To craft one means to come together, form coalitions, and create activist bonds built upon the ideals of working intersectionally to combat oppressive and repressive forms throughout society. One workshop was Kenyette Tisha Barnes and a conversation on #MuteRKelly: Transforming Passion to Activism through exploring how she co-founded the #MuteRKelly movement and moving through the pain of sexual abuse and committing to activism to raise awareness and help others. This only can happen when people, and most of the time it is women, come together and form bonds and coalitions to fight against this abuse and oppression that are often at the hands of men. 

Not only does this conference physically embody disobedience with the call for presentations, papers, and workshops, but students, faculty, and scholars react to this idea through this physical practice of research and presentation. While presentations and workshops are a vital function of crafting affinities while embodying disobedience, another large part of the conference is focusing on one’s self. Self-care is often neglected and deemed unnecessary, but the WGS department and SEWSA felt it imperative to allow attendees to participate in such breaks during the conference where anyone could come and focus on their physical, emotional, and mental well-being through the practices of yoga, meditation, coloring, puzzles, and walks. The last of the three workshops before the conference was set to begin also modeled a different kind of self-care – activism and self-care through the work of theater. Finn Lefevre’s workshop on Trans Applied Theater: Rehearsing for the Revolution where students and allies could learn how to support themselves and others through the practices of naming, gender exploration, and resisting heteronormativity. 

Not only was there the engagements with workshops, panels, presentations, and keynote speakers, but the WGS department also scheduled a myriad of other activities attendees could engage in while at the three-day conference. There was to be a Motherhood mini-conference, a community based exhibition hall featuring organizations, art exhibits, and other tactile and sensory activities, a caucus social, and the ability to explore the land in which the Tocobaga Indians had lived on during the 1500s. Unfortunately, due to the impact of COVID-19 in the United States and for the safety of everyone, it was decided that the 2020 conference would be cancelled. In light of this, the USF WGS department has been featuring a digital Exhibition Hall on their local Facebook page to highlight some of the artists, activists, organizations, and scholars that were going to be present at this year’s event.