This month, Heidi and the FGS Student Advisory Council (SAC) attended the National Women’s Studies Association annual conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

What is NWSA?

Established in 1977, the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) has as one of its primary objectives promoting and supporting the production and dissemination of knowledge about women and gender through teaching, learning, research and service in academic and other settings.

Our commitments are to: illuminate the ways in which women’s studies are vital to education; to demonstrate the contributions of feminist scholarship that is comparative, global, intersectional and interdisciplinary to understandings of the arts, humanities, social sciences and sciences; and to promote synergistic relationships between scholarship, teaching and civic engagement in understandings of culture and society.

NWSA recognizes that women’s studies is broader than what happens in the classroom and acknowledges women’s centers staff as feminist educators. Campus-based women’s centers have a long history of working together with women’s studies to transform the curriculum, the campus environment, and society at large.

Through their scholarship and pedagogy our members actively pursue knowledge to promote a just world in which all persons can develop to their fullest potential—one free from ideologies, systems of privilege or structures that oppress or exploit some for the advantage of others. The Association has more than 2,000 individual and 350 institutional members working in varied specialties across the United States and around the world.

What is the NWSA annual conference?

This year’s conference theme was “Feminist Transgressions,” and featured presentations included keynote speaker bell hooks, a plenary session entitled “Creating Justice: Caribbean Scholarship and Activisms” led by Kamala Kempadoo, Ana Irma Rivera Lassén, and Ana-Maurine Lara and another plenary session entitled “The Imperial Politics of Nation-States: U.S., Israel, and Palestine” led by Angela Y. Davis, Islah Jad, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, and Rebecca Vilkomerson. 

Additionally, Heidi presented a paper entitled “Damn, I Love the Strippers: An Examination of Rihanna’s ‘Pour It Up’” during a panel entitled “The Booty Don’t Lie: Black Women’s Movement Vocabularies” with Stephany Rose, Takiyah Nur Amin, and Raquel Monroe.