Detroit Mercy’s Women’s and Gender Studies Program hosted its annual Feminist Scholarship Colloquium on Oct. 28. The program encourages faculty to submit any research that they have been working on and want to expand upon.
“Colloquium means calling together,” said Megan Novell, executive director of UDM’s Office of Equal Opportunity.
The University asks a variety of scholars to come together to engage with someone else’s research. Scholars whose applications have been reviewed and accepted then apply for grant money to supply their research. A year later, they come back with their research and present it to everyone there.
“Events like this are important because they showcase the diversity of work from the faculty and scholars,” said Stacy Gnall, poet-in residence and adjunct professor of English. “This research shows how much the research affects and is at the heart of important parts in our lives and academic disciplines.”
The Feminist Scholarship Colloquium is important for bringing to the surface research in women and gender studies that people might not know about.
It provided many different perspectives: from women of color in law, to the care and hospitality that the LGBTQ community receives in hospitals and other places. In a way, this colloquium touched a lot upon and broke down the definition of “gender ideology.”
“Gender ideology is all of the knowledge about how gender is supposed to be done in society,” Novell said.
At this colloquium, each researcher pushed boundaries of gender ideology. Gnall’s presentation, from her project “The Danger Constellation” described the evolution of clothes that women wore and how this affected how they were viewed sexually. In a way, the community holds a certain “idea” about how women should dress.
Gnall was able to demonstrate through her research that the gender that humans identify with does, in fact, affect their human experience. That can be seen through laws and cultural expectations of dress.
“Each new era is a response to the gendered history before,” Gnall said.
This colloquium was able to combine so many different perspectives of sex, gender and sexuality. It is important to consider all of these different perspectives because as Novell said, “there are so many different ways that we live out these perspectives.”
One member of the discussion was Courtney Griffin, assistant dean for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging at UDM’s School of Law. Griffin provided information on why it is important to have minority female figures in the field of law and other fields of study. Griffin herself had never had a Black woman as a professor. She pointed out that representation really is important because, who is going to influence other women that want to go into the same field?
“We know and research shows that Black women prefer to talk to and be mentored by someone who resembles them,” Griffin said. “If there are less Black women in academia, who do they talk to?”
All of the research presented at the Feminist Scholarship Colloquium provided an array of ideas and questions to the audience that still need to be answered for the future of women.
