East African Queer and Trans Displacements: An Online Conversation with the Editors
The last decade has seen a sharp rise in state-sponsored homophobia and transphobia in East Africa, including discriminatory legislation and religious condemnation, and many LGBTQI+ people have been forced to flee their homes. But East Africa is also a site of activism, community, and enterprise where the contexts of belonging are redefined. The University of Washington African Studies Program and Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies are pleased to host the a dialogue among the editors of the first book to explore these subjects—East African Queer and Trans Displacements—which features critiques and creative works by LGBTQI+ diasporic writers and artists from the region with first-hand experiences of displacement. Download the book for free here—East African Queer and Trans Displacements—and join the online conversation!
John Marnell is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the African Center for Migration and Society, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.
B Camminga is a Lecturer in the Sociology…
Event interval: Single day event. Online Meeting Link: https://washington.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_QtlNgMl1QNmdwpEVolw_fg. Accessibility Contact: sameerai@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Target Audience: Free and open to the public.
Tuesday, May 26, 2026, 8:00 AM – 9:30 AM.
Zoom.
Spring Celebration | The revolution will be frosted: Join GWSS for cake and community!
Have you been curious about GWSS and want to learn more? Are you already part of the GWSS community but looking to get more involved? Are you a seasoned GWSS-er looking forward to the next chance to connect?
You are all invited to join us at our Spring Celebration!
The Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies is looking to welcome new faculty as adjuncts, graduate students to our certificate programs, and undergrad majors and minors! With the sun out (some days, at least) and the school year sprinting to a close, this is the perfect opportunity to celebrate, make new connections, and imagine what comes next for GWSS together—why not over a slice of cake?
In a time marked by mounting challenges to our field, as well as higher education at large, we are gathering to share appreciation for the folks that make what we do possible, and welcome new faces interested in the important scholarship and community work GWSS has and continues to undertake.
Despite the precarities of the time, our…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: University of Washington Club (Faculty Center) (FAC). Accessibility Contact: gwss@uw.edu. Event Types: Special Events. Target Audience: All are welcome!
Tuesday, May 26, 2026, 5:30 PM – 6:30 PM.
GWSS RSO | Year in Review: Constitution review and archival project with UW Special Collections
Details TBA.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Savery Hall (SAV). Campus room: SAV 162. Accessibility Contact: gwss@uw.edu. Event Types: Meetings. Student Activities.
Thursday, May 28, 2026, 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM.
The Prosecution of Transgender as Heterodoxy in Qing Dynasty China | Prof. Matthew Sommer, Stanford
Professor Matthew Sommer’s new book The Fox Spirit, the Stone Maiden, and Other Transgender Histories from Late Imperial China (Columbia UP, 2024) considers a range of transgender practices and paradigms in Late Imperial China, illuminating how certain forms of gender transgression were sanctioned in particular contexts and penalized in others. This talk will focus on the crime of “a male masquerading in female attire” (男扮女裝), which was prosecuted by applying the statute against “using deviant ways and heterodox principles to incite and deceive the common people” (左道異端煽惑人民). Anatomical males who presented as women sometimes took a conventionally female occupations such as midwife, faith healer, or even medium to a fox spirit — yet, suspected of sexual predation, they risked death for the crime of “masquerading in women’s attire,” even when they had lived peacefully in their communities for years.
Matthew H. Sommer (BA Swarthmore, MA U. of Washington, PHD UCLA) is the Bowman Family Professor of History…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Student Union Building (HUB). Campus room: 340. Accessibility Contact: histmain@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Thursday, May 28, 2026, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM.
Lecture: Simone Stirner, “Haunting, Quilting, Melting: Shapes of Queer Memory”
What happens to our understanding of relational memory when viewed through queer histories? In this talk, Stirner examines memory art dedicated to often neglected queer and trans histories after National Socialism, from translucent quilts to an installation that melts a concentration camp gate and rewelds it into new forms. Beyond arguing for the inclusion of queer histories in relational frameworks of remembrance, the talk proposes that attending to the distinct shapes and textures of queer relationality reshapes the concept itself, showing how queer memory practices expand and transform what it means to think memory relationally.
Simone Stirner (Assistant Professor, Germanic Languages & Literatures, Harvard University) works on poetry and poetics, memory studies, and the intersections of critical and creative practices. Stirner's first book Poetic Grief: Form and Remembrance after National Socialism (Fordham University Press, forthcoming) develops a new framework for understanding the relationship between…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Denny Hall (DEN). Campus room: DEN 359. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, 206-543-3920, humanities@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Target Audience: Free and open to the public.
Tuesday, June 2, 2026, 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM.
For more info visit simpsoncenter.org. 2026 Undergraduate Research Colloquium
Please join us as this year’s Undergraduate Research Grant awardees share their research with the GWSS community. This event is an opportunity to engage with emerging scholarship in gender, women, and sexuality studies and celebrate the work of our undergraduate researchers.
Each student will give a short presentation, followed by responses from GWSS graduate students who will help facilitate discussion. Whether you're a student, faculty member, or community member, we invite you to attend, support these scholars, and take part in the conversation.
A reception with light refreshments will follow the event from 5:00–5:30pm.
Presenters Include:Matty Brown, “Trans/Parent: Relational Ecology of Transmasculine Parenthood” Rona Eslamy, “Leveraging Positionality as Political Power” Hailey T Huynh, “From Suffering to Resilience: Women in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta Leading Adaptation to Hydropower-Driven Fisheries Decline” Zoe Kackman, “fractal: The Role of Visual Design in Political Nightlife” Shelby King, “Direct…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Communications Building (CMU). Campus room: CMU 202/204. Accessibility Contact: GWSS, gwss@uw.edu, 206-593-6900. Event Types: Academics. Lectures/Seminars. Student Activities. Special Events.
Friday, June 5, 2026, 3:30 PM – 5:30 PM.
Dissertation Defense: "Nascent Moves: Loss, Desire, and In/visible LGBTQ Resistances in Bangladesh," presented by Saad Khan
“Nascent Moves” is an ethnographic study of LGBTQ politics in Bangladesh that analyzes the relationship between “queer” and “development.” “Nascent” in his project captures disidentifying with development and progress, and a sense of having “gone back in time” that queer activists experience and endure when confronted with violence.
Challenging the expectation that LGBTQ or any social movements have a knowable teleology and political arc or that they must reach a stable point in the social order to have an impact or warrant scholarly attention, this research focuses on aspects of illegibility, in-betweenness, and informal to analyze the dynamics of queer existence and activism in Bangladesh within contexts of global development, rapid economic changes, political instability, religious orthodoxy, and international and regional LGBTQ+ movements.
“Nascent” thus theorizes emerging queer strategies, explores illegible and legible organizing sites premised upon innovation, contradictions, and possibilities, and…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Padelford Hall (PDL). Campus room: PDL B110-G. Accessibility Contact: GWSS, gwss@uw.edu, 206-593-6900. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Friday, June 5, 2026, 5:30 PM – 6:00 PM.
Lavender Graduation
Lavender Graduation celebrates LGBTQ+ students at UW and honors their resilience, achievements, and community.
Registration Open April 10-May 22.
Event interval: Single day event. Accessibility Contact: qcenter@uw.edu. Event Types: Ceremonies.
Tuesday, June 9, 2026, 5:00 PM – 7:30 PM.
Location TBD.
GWSS Graduation Celebration
GWSS invites you to join us in celebrating our graduates of the 2025–2026 academic year.
This celebration is open to friends and family. No tickets are required.
For full event details and RSVP information, please visit the 2026 Graduation Celebration webpage.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Student Union Building (HUB). Campus room: Lyceum. Accessibility Contact: gwss@uw.edu. Event Types: Ceremonies. Special Events. Student Activities.
Wednesday, June 10, 2026, 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM.
Juneteenth
Holidays
No classes. Most University offices and buildings are closed. Check with specific offices to confirm.
Event interval: Single day event. Year: 2026. Quarter: Summer. Event Types: Academics.
Friday, June 19, 2026.
For more info visit www.washington.edu. Independence Day (Observed)
Holidays
No classes. Most University offices and buildings are closed. Check with specific offices to confirm.
Event interval: Single day event. Year: 2026. Quarter: Summer. Event Types: Academics.
Friday, July 3, 2026.
For more info visit www.washington.edu.