Learn more about WGST's annual lectures
Our Adrenée Glover Freeman and Dr. Mary Baskin Waters lectures take a deeper dive into issues that affect our community.
Upcoming Events
- Title: "Surrounded and Beset By Enemies": Eighteenth-century Catawba Women's Responses to War
- Abstract: In the 1700s, Catawba women responded to the world around them by reshaping their lives in response to the crises occurring near their villages. However, they did not sit by complacently, waiting for history to happen to them. Instead, Catawba women pivoted in response to the profound societal upheavals and contributed their physical and emotional labor in caring for their people. Bauer will discuss how Catawba women reassessed foodways production, burial practices, and self-defense strategies because their families’ lives and the Nation's survival depended on such measures.
- Bio: Brooke Bauer, Ph.D., is a citizen of the Catawba Nation in South Carolina and an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. She is the author of the award-winning book Becoming Catawba: Catawba Indian Women and Nation-building, 1540-1840. She has published in the online Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History and the Journal of the Early Republic, and contributed chapters in The Early Imperial Republic: From the American Revolution to the U.S.-Mexican War; Engaging Childhood in Vast Early America; We Will Always Be Here: Southern Native Peoples on Living and Thriving in the 20th Century and Beyond; and The Ethics of Anthropology and Amerindian Research: Reporting on Environmental Degradation and Warfare. Her current manuscript is a co-authored project that analyzes the Indigenous public history initiatives of Southern Native Nations.
- Location: Lumpkin Auditorium, Close-Hipp Building 8th Floor Conference Center
- Register Here: bitly/mbw2026
Novel Nook: Book Hangouts
- Unlike a traditional book club where everyone reads the same book, Novel Nook hangouts allow for members to talk about books they are already reading or want to read. The objective is to bring people together for open conversations that sustain empowering atmospheres for self-expression and collective curiosities.
- The Novel Nook Lending Library is housed in the WGST office suite, Close-Hipp 503. Its objective is to encourage freedom of thought and sociality in this modern age of digital media.
- The Novel Nook group meets the last Friday of the month at All Good Books from 5-6:30PM.
- Each gathering will be broken into three half-hour parts: silent reading, group conversation, and social time. Join us for part or all of the event.
- Email rdobson@mailbox.sc.edu to join the listserv or GroupMe.
Annual Lectures
Past lecturers include:
2025 Shannon C. Eaves [pdf]
2022 Aisha Durham [pdf]
2019 Kimberlé Crenshaw [pdf]
2018 Ijeoma Oluo (view a clip)
2016 Anita F. Hill [pdf]
2015 Claudia Rankine [pdf]
2013 Nikky Finney
2011 Anita F. Hill
2009 Tameika Isaac Devine
1995 Patricia Hill Collins
Previous Events
- September 17, 2025: Queering the German Archive: History, Art, and Activism in Weimar Berlin with Clayton Whisnant
- October 4, 2025: How to Make Music in an Epidemic: Musical Responses to the AIDS Crisis with Dr. Matthew Jones
- October 7, 2025: Adrenée Glover Freeman Lecture with Shannon C. Eaves
- January 31, 2025: The Potential of Operatic Spaces Today with Naomi André
- February 6, 2025: Gamecock Connect First Generation Networking Dinner
- March 2, 2025: First Sunday Supper at the Harriet Hancock Center
- March 25, 2025: 8th Annual Dr. Mary Baskin Waters Lecture with Dr. Elizabeth Dale
- April 4, 2025: Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood with Gretchen Sisson
- October 8, 2024: Adrenée Glover Freeman Lecture with Dr. Shaneen Dials-Corujo
- March 13-23, 2024: "How Can Arts Foster Community Healing, Solidarity, and Social Change?"- A Women's Well Being Initiative Exhibition
- March 14, 2024: Gay Sign Language Crash Course & Comedy Night with Hayden Kristal
- March 20, 2024: "Stating the Obvious: Lessons from Epic Failures" with Dr. Monica McLemore
- April 7, 2024: “Practicing Health Equity: The History of Early African American Women Physicians”- 7th Annual Dr. Mary Baskin Waters Lecture with Dr. Vanessa Gamble
- April 11, 2024: Poetry Slam at Finnley Center
- April 12, 2024: WGST Award Ceremony
- May 19-23, 2024: South Carolina Women's and Gender Studies Undergraduate Summer Institute
- September 8-9, 2023: WGST at 50: From the Past Into the Future
- September 27, 2023: Transwomanhood's History with Dr. Jules Gill-Peterson
- October 9, 2023: Adrenée Glover Freeman lecture with Dr. Daphne A. Brooks
- November 8, 2023: Cancer Alley and Eco-activism with Dr. Rosalind Hinton
- January 18,2023: Post-Roe in the US: Lessons Learned Globally to Inform Local Action with Dr. Deborah Billings
- January 18-22, 2023: Girls Speak - Women's Well-Being Initiative Exhibition
- January 30, 2023 “Getting Zucked:” Examining Digital Violence and Injustice Online and IRL with Dr. Kishonna Gray. Part of the Violence (In)Justice Press Play Lecture Series.
- February 6, 2023 Teaching Social Justice Seminar Event flyer
- March 23rd: Troubling the Public During Troubling Times with Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom
- March 24th: Stigma, Sensitivity, and Surveys: Measuring Abortion Post-Dobbs with Dr. Laura Lindberg
- Violence (In)Justice Lecture Series
- August 25-September 29, 2022: Socially Engaged Ceramics (learn more on the SVAD website)
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October 6, 2022: Travelling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance with Mia Bay -
October 6-27, 2022: Feminist Horror Film Series: Family Trouble: Parenthood, Gender, and the Monstrous-Feminine (learn more on the Honors College website) -
October 12-26, 2022: Fall Literary Festival (learn more on the University Library website) -
October 17, 2022: Adrenée Glover Freeman lecture with Dr. Aisha Durham
- February 10-13, 2022: The 2022 Comparative Literature Conference: Truth in the Late Foucault (learn more on the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures website)
- February 11, 2022 at 2PM: Writing workshop with Briallen Hopper
- February 12, 2022 at 4:30PM: Odd Birds Books reading with Briallen Hopper – Easy to Love: An alternative Valentine’s Day event celebrating friendship, queerness, spinsterhood, and family
- March 2, 2022 at 4:30PM: Programs of Life with Dr. Patrick R. Grzanka
- March 31, 2022 at 6PM: Dr. Mary Baskin Waters Lecture with Dr. Ruha Benjamin
- April 4, 2022 at 4:30PM: Kashmir: The Personal is Political
- Climates Theme Semester Violence (In)justice Lecture Series: Transgressed: Intimate Partner Violence in Transgender Lives Event Information
- University Libraries' Fall Literary Festival event with Jacqueline Woodson, children's author Event Information
- Climates Theme Semester Violence (In)justice Lecture Series: Intersectionality and Youth Violence Event Information
- Climates Theme Semester Violence (In)justice Lecture Series: Racialized State Violence and the Paradox of Mothers’ (In)visibility Event Information
- Religion, Sexuality and Freedom: a Talk with Dr. Emily Kazyak and Dr. Kelsy Burke
- A Talk with Irish Poet Annemarie Ní Churreáin
- TC Tolbert, editor of Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry
- Claudia Smith Brinson discusses Stories of Struggle: The Clash over Civil Rights in South Carolina
- Matias Viegener joins Dr. Ed Madden's "Queer Times, Queer Lives"
- Joseph Valente and Margot Gayle Backus discuss their work The Child Sex Scandal and Modern Irish Literature
- WGST 298 welcomes Cooper Lee Bombardier to discuss Pass with Care
- 27th Annual Adrenée Glover Freeman Lecture with Sandra Rattley #UNLADYLIKE 2020
- CAS Justice Theme Semester guest speaker Lewis Raven Wallace
- The Challenges and Rewards of Social Justice Guided Teaching and Research and Activism with Dr. Lynn Weber
- Rethinking Recognition: Overcoming Displacement and Reification in Cultural Politics with Georgia Warnke
- Southern Truth Award Lecture with Dorothy Allison, part of the Deckle Edge Literary
Festival
- 26th Annual Adrenée Glover Freeman Lecture with Valerie Smith
- Meet my Major event
- 25th Annual Adrenée Glover Freeman Lecture with Ijeoma Oluo UofSC article Free Times article
- Medusa's Gaze: The Monstrous Feminine Daily Gamecock article on series
- Yours in Sisterhood Screening and Filmmaker Talkback
- Women as Agents of Change in Rule of Law with Dr. Mamphela Ramphele Event Spotlight
- Alumni Panel: What Can You Do with a Degree in Women's & Gender Studies?
- Preserving Personal Archives: Remembering South Carolina Women's History Sophia Institute article