News

GSWS has released a survey which aims to get a sense of how caregivers at Penn have fared during the pandemic and what their future needs may be. All faculty, staff, students, and postdocs at Penn are welcome to complete the survey and share with your networks.

To the Penn Community,
As incoming Director, I am pleased to announce that the GSWS Executive Board has voted to change the name of our research center to the Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies, effective July 1, 2021.

Sliney also is the first Penn student to receive the Fulbright-National Geographic Storytelling Fellowship, and now she is preparing to move to Paris to pursue her project. She plans to make a documentary film featuring stories of French-Maghrebi women immigrants juxtaposed against the way they are portrayed in French cinema. Check out the story in Penn Today. 

GSWS/APC Affiliated Faculty Member Amy Hillier was featured in the Philadelphia Inquirer as part of a recent story on the Philadelphia School District's efforts to make schools more inclusive spaces for transgender students. Read the full article here.

Incarcerated writers who participate in the P.O. Box 34 program are paired up with a Penn undergraduate student who corresponds with them about their work. Check out this Penn Today story including commentary from GSWS/APC Board Member Jessa Lingel. 

With 117 bills proposed across 33 U.S. states, 2021 is a record-breaking year for anti-trans legislation. Read Erin Cross, Amy Hillier, and Heather Love's commentary in the Penn Today feature on the motivations for and implications of these bills. 

Simran Chand's double award-winning honors thesis titled “Familial Sexual Education for South Asian American Undergraduates and its Implications on Sexual Wellbeing,” used qualitative and quantitative analysis to determine the experiences of parental sexual communications among second-generation South Asian American Penn students. The findings and social implications of her research are featured in the Penn Today article, "Sex, taboo, and family conversation."

This year students in the course Gender, Sex, and Urban Life, created and taught by Davy Knittle, completed photo essays as part of their assessment for the course. The assignment drew inspiration from the work of photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier, and in particular from her documentation of the Flint Water Crisis. You can view some of the students' work on the Urban Studies website.

GSWS/APC Board Member and Sociologist Pilar Gonalons-Pons' research on gender norms was featured in Penn Today. Gonalons-Pons research, conducted with Markus Gangl of Goethe University Frankfort, assesses how cultural norms around gender shape the length of romantic partnerships.