Past Projects
The Care Crisis
Between August 16, 2021 and October 08, 2021, GSWS/FQT gathered data from Penn faculty, staff, post docs, and graduate students through its Caregiving on Campus Survey. The survey sought to measure the level of support employees with caregiving responsibilities had received from the University as of fall 2021, as well as feelings about return to campus policies. The survey also attempted to assess the needs of caregivers at the institutional and departmental level.
The findings are telling: only 9% of respondents felt ‘adequately supported,’ by the University’s pandemic caregiver policies and even fewer (1.3%) felt fully supported. Overall, more than a third (34.6%) of survey respondents indicated that they felt ‘abandoned’ by the University’s pandemic caregiver policies to date, while nearly half (46.3%) felt abandoned in the University’s return to campus plans.
The full analysis of the findings of this survey, together with recommendations for the University on how this care crisis might be addressed can be found below. Please circulate the report and its recommendations widely, and join GSWS/FQT in advocating for revitalized Penn policies that treat care as the critical infrastructure that it is.
“His and Her Earnings Following Parenthood in the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom”
Pilar Goñalons-Pons' new article "His and Her Earnings Following Parenthood in the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom" (American Sociological Review), co-authored with Kelly Musick, Megan Doherty Bea, examines how parenthood shapes within-family gender inequality by education.
“Delaying, debating and declining motherhood”
Lauren Martin has published the research she worked on as an APC Visiting Scholar in the latest issue of Culture, Health & Sexuality: An International Journal for Research, Intervention and Care. The article, "Delaying, debating and declining motherhood," tracks childless women’s reproductive decision-making and behaviours over the course of 4 years and 2 waves of participant interviews.
APC Story Corps: Reflections on Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble @ 30
Perhaps the most recognizable gender theorist in the world, Judith Butler came to prominence after her 1990 book, Gender Trouble, popularized the concept of gender performativity. Since that time, the book has been a staple of not only gender and queer studies classrooms, but has been taken up in policy circles, popular media, and, perhaps most perversely, as fodder for far-right movements in many parts of the world. Butler’s theories also have a “troubled” relationship within the field, particularly as transnational, queer of color, and trans scholarship becomes less marginalized. In this series, we ask members of the GSWS/APC community to reflect on how they engage with Butler’s text thirty years on.
Free Speech & Safe Space: A Feminist Zine
A collective of students, activists and teachers at the University of Pennsylvania is calling for submissions for a zine on free speech and safe spaces. Following up on our zine last year on feminist pedagogy, this year we want to create a zine that opens up a conversation about the tensions and provocations around queer and feminist practices of collective care versus the need to produce open and sometimes difficult conversations. Partnering with the Alice Paul Center, our goal is to create an accessible and inclusive zine that thinks through some of the following topics:
- Trigger warnings
- Feminist community/classroom standards
- Call out culture
- Microaggressions
- Managing difficult conversations
These topics are just starting points, we welcome your thoughts and experiences of balancing open discussions with protecting each other from harm. As a feminist collective, we are interested in creating a feminist dialogue on these topics. We want to hear from students, activists, educators and others interested in contributing to a feminist conversation about free speech and safe spaces, both inside and outside traditional classrooms.
Queer Internet Studies
This special issue includes papers and reports from the second Queer Internet Studies Symposium (QIS2), hosted by the Alice Paul Center and held at the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) on 17 February 2017. The goals and aims of QIS2 were to connect, share, collaborate, and amplify the work and voices of scholars, artists, and activists who study issues related to queer lives on the Internet on behalf of social justice. These conversations, projects, and connections sought to unpack the importance of queer history and archives, by generating a space to interact with digital materials as well as intervene in computational, software, and hardware selections and practices.
Feminist Teaching & Learning. A Zine
Partnering with the Alice Paul Center, a collective of students, activists and teachers at the University of Pennsylvania created an accessible and inclusive zine that offers a partial dialogue on how feminist ethics and ideals play out in the classroom, whether that classroom is in a university or on the street, in a computer lab or in the kitchen, on social media or in person. Our call for contributors drew submissions from students, activists, librarians, educators and others interested a feminist conversation about teaching and learning.
Stories of Sage Supporters
In honor of National Women’s History Month and QPenn, the Alice Paul Center and GSWS Program are celebrating the people who have inspired us through their support, encouragement, and wisdom. Who has made a difference in your life? Did they inspire you, support you, teach you, or strengthen your belief in your own abilities? We invite you to join this project by sharing your story about an inspiring person in your life who has helped you to become the person you are today.