Join us for The New School’s Gender & Sexualities Studies Institute annual convening, April 17th and 18th, 2025. This year, we bring together scholars, artists, writers, activists, and students to address the topic “Gendered Bodies, Gendered Justice.”

VIEW SYMPOSIUM PROGRAM→

We are now experiencing an incredibly fraught political time for gender rights, with Executive Orders on the meaning of “gender,” attacks on trans rights, reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and more. Meanwhile, the (ongoing) engendering of male power structures appears to be the ruling order of the day. The bodily autonomy, political empowerment, and collective wellbeing of all who do not conform to historically hegemonic and traditional gender norms have become subjects of intense debates, legislation, and culture wars. In the face of “anti-DEI” and “anti-woke” conservative backlash, how are individuals, communities, and organizations pushing back? How might we approach a new epoch of feminist activism that learns from and builds upon the successes and shortcomings of the past? That is, how can we pursue a durable, equitable future that effectively incorporates the intersections of misogyny, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia with racism, ableism, natalism, nationalism, anti-environmentalism? Can we imagine a future of gender justice and what might that future entail? This symposium will address these questions and related topics.

Thursday, April 17, 6–8 PM: Book Launch for Sexual Racism and Social Justice (co-presented by The New School's Sex Tech Lab)
Join us for a special evening celebrating the publication of the groundbreaking edited collection, Sexual Racism and Social Justice: Reckoning with White Supremacy and Desire. The New School will host authors (from here and abroad), artists, and performers -- including our very own professors, staff, and students -- as we celebrate a text that brings together research, reflections, and creative works unpacking the role of sexual racism in the very foundations of our societies, determining the ideas, bodies, and systems positioned as desirable.

Friday April 18, 8:30 AM–5:30 PM: Symposium panels and presentations
Speakers: Abigail Perez Aguilera; Lori Brown, Natalya Dikhanov, Sadie Imae, and Lindsay Harkema; Carolina Cortes and Lara-Zuzan Golesorkhi; Martina Di Francesco; Amita Khurana; Jeanine Marie; Mark McBeth; Talea McCalman; Merel Noorlander and Alialrodha Abdelhassan; Sedef Ozoguz; Chimera Singer; Michael Waters; and members of the “Psychology of Gender” class, the Sex Tech Lab, and Pani Farvid.

Join us for The New School’s Gender & Sexualities Studies Institute annual convening, April 17th and 18th, 2025. This year, we bring together scholars, artists, writers, activists, and students to address the topic “Gendered Bodies, Gendered Justice.”

VIEW SYMPOSIUM PROGRAM→

We are now experiencing an incredibly fraught political time for gender rights, with Executive Orders on the meaning of “gender,” attacks on trans rights, reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and more. Meanwhile, the (ongoing) engendering of male power structures appears to be the ruling order of the day. The bodily autonomy, political empowerment, and collective wellbeing of all who do not conform to historically hegemonic and traditional gender norms have become subjects of intense debates, legislation, and culture wars. In the face of “anti-DEI” and “anti-woke” conservative backlash, how are individuals, communities, and organizations pushing back? How might we approach a new epoch of feminist activism that learns from and builds upon the successes and shortcomings of the past? That is, how can we pursue a durable, equitable future that effectively incorporates the intersections of misogyny, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia with racism, ableism, natalism, nationalism, anti-environmentalism? Can we imagine a future of gender justice and what might that future entail? This symposium will address these questions and related topics.

Thursday, April 17, 6–8 PM: Book Launch for Sexual Racism and Social Justice (co-presented by The New School's Sex Tech Lab)
Join us for a special evening celebrating the publication of the groundbreaking edited collection, Sexual Racism and Social Justice: Reckoning with White Supremacy and Desire. The New School will host authors (from here and abroad), artists, and performers -- including our very own professors, staff, and students -- as we celebrate a text that brings together research, reflections, and creative works unpacking the role of sexual racism in the very foundations of our societies, determining the ideas, bodies, and systems positioned as desirable.

Friday April 18, 8:30 AM–5:30 PM: Symposium panels and presentations
Speakers: Abigail Perez Aguilera; Lori Brown, Natalya Dikhanov, Sadie Imae, and Lindsay Harkema; Carolina Cortes and Lara-Zuzan Golesorkhi; Martina Di Francesco; Amita Khurana; Jeanine Marie; Mark McBeth; Talea McCalman; Merel Noorlander and Alialrodha Abdelhassan; Sedef Ozoguz; Chimera Singer; Michael Waters; and members of the “Psychology of Gender” class, the Sex Tech Lab, and Pani Farvid.