Readings include ‘How My Period Ruined My Girlhood and Empowered My Womanhood’
This past Thursday marked the debut of West Chester University’s “Women’s & Gender Studies Collection,” a free online “peer-reviewed,” “trusted,” and “radically open-licensed resource” available to anyone.
According to its website, the collection “welcome[s] a variety of approaches” and “highlight[s] the wide array of feminist scholarship and creative expression [via] interdisciplinary and cross-cultural perspectives to critically examine complex intersectional experiences.”
Delco Today reports the collection kicked off with a keynote address by “internet yeller” Ijeoma Oluo, author of the books “Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America” and “So You Want to Talk About Race.”
Oluo (pictured) was part of the 2020 National Anti-Racism Teach-In (a “core principle” of which was “racism is the norm”) where she talked about the former book.
In 2021, Oluo’s “Mediocre” was given to participants at a no-whites-allowed forum on white supremacy at Pennsylvania’s Elizabethtown College.
In an interview with NPR, Oluo noted “Mediocre” is about “this idea that white men deserve political power and wealth and safety and security just because they’re white men.”
She added the notion “protects the belief that white men are perceived as stronger and more successful than women and people of color regardless of skill or achievements.”
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Oluo further claimed white males “believe that greatness and prosperity are coming despite the realities of their financial situation or career,” but when it doesn’t pan out they “often blame women and people of color for taking it away.”
The WCU Women’s & Gender Studies Collection launch, part of a $100,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation’s “Affirming Multivocal Humanities” initiative, also featured “student panel sessions” and an Oluo book signing.
The collection is divided into several categories and features papers such as “Misogyny and White Supremacy Prevails Through Online Radicalization” and “How My Period Ruined My Girlhood and Empowered My Womanhood.”
The Teaching Materials section currently only contains West Chester’s “Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies” course syllabus, which notes enrollees will be able to “apply feminist theories, including theories of intersectionality, to personal, local, and global contexts.”
According to the syllabus, those majoring or minoring in the subject will be able to “apply principles of social justice” and “promote equity in a variety of fields.”
Professor Lisa Huebner, a “feminist sociologist of gender” whose interests include “gender and intersectionality theory” and “transnational care work and intimacy,” came up with the idea for the collection, according to the Delco Today report. She currently serves as its director.
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IMAGE: The Root/X
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