Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies

Congratulations to our MA graduates!

Terri Bailey graduated with the MA in Women’s Studies in Spring 2022. She hosted Warrior Women’s Wellness, a day-long, multigenerational workshop celebrating Self-Care for the Feminine Divine, and successfully defended her MA Project, Womanfesto of the Divine Feminine and the Laws of S.H.E. (self-care, healing, and empowerment). After graduation, Terri plans to continue her work with her nonprofit, Bailey Learning and Arts Collective (BLAAC2basics.com), and relaunch her women’s empowerment group, The Queens Room (queensroom.org).

Priya Gurjar graduated with her MA in Women’s Studies in Spring 2022. She successfully defended her non-thesis project “(De)Constructing the Archive: Sexual Violence and the Power of Storytelling” with the supervision of Dr. Maddy Coy. She extends her gratitude to her cohort and the Center faculty for their continued support throughout her MA.

Bailey Haas graduated with her MA in Women’s Studies in Spring 2022. With the supervision of her committee chair Dr. Kendal Broad, she successfully defended her non-thesis project titled, “The Half Teaspoon Podcast: Collaboration, Conversation, and Care in Coalition” in March. Bailey plans to continue her podcast in the future and continue to explore queer/disabled approaches to knowledge production and coalition. She would like to thank Dr. Broad, her collaborators, her cohort, and all of the Center faculty and staff who she has had the privilege of learning with and from over the last two years.

María Saldana graduated with an MA in Women’s Studies in the Spring of 2022. Thanks to the mentorship and care of Dr. Jillian Hernandez and Dr. Della V. Mosley, she successfully defended her thesis titled, “Cuentos de Amor: Meditations and Reflections from the Queer Peruvian Diaspora.” Since then, she has shared her work at Cal Poly Pomona and continues building with the PUMAS Collective and the WELLS Healing Center. She’s excited for all that will come post-academia and continues to sit in gratitude for the love and abundance that has found her these past two years.

Jess Trochez graduated with the MA in Women’s Studies in Spring 2022. She successfully defended her project, “Con Todo Mi Corazón y Alma: A Love Letter to Sex Workers in Honduras and a Critical Interrogation of Colonial Violence Against Queer Communities of Color” with the supervision of Drs. Della Mosely and Jillian Hernandez.

Lucy Xie graduated with an MA in Women’s Studies in Spring 2022. With Dr. Manoucheka Celeste’s mentorship, Lucy successfully defended her MA project titled, “Evaluating the ‘Model Minority’ Narrative Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic: Interviews with Transnational Chinese Families and their Experiences of Discrimination.” She presented this work at the Association for Women in Psychology in Chicago. During her time in the program, she worked as an RA and TA. She received the Certificate of outstanding Merit at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

News and updates from our continuing Graduate Students

Ebonee Brown is a rising second-year MA candidate in the Center. She is currently working on her research involving Atlanta’s Trap music genre and gender performance. She will develop her research over the summer by close-reading and analyzing André “André 3000” Benjamin of Atlanta’s Outkast and trap artist, Jefrey “Young Thug” Williams, with the supervision of Dr. Manoucheka Celeste.

Ecem Ece will continue to work on their MA project, which stresses writing positionalities from the lenses of Feminist and Queer Theories. During the summer, Ecem will be reading, thinking, and writing about if/how researchers state their positionalities in their work and situate them as a part of their feminist and queer methodologies.

Beth Holden is a rising second-year MA student in the Center. She is currently working on her thesis tentatively titled, “How Do We Reach Recovery? A Feminist Analysis of Alcohol Use Recoveries.” Her thesis investigates racialized and gendered conceptualizations of substance “misuse,” as well as Alcoholics Anonymous, for-profit online recovery models, and community-based recovery methods that utilize harm reduction and mutual aid. She has already completed a draft of Chapter 2 of the thesis and is writing Chapter 3 over the summer months.

Kelsey Malles will continue research for her MA project. This project serves as a tool to understand the intersections of beliefs retained in vegan and feminist practices. She will spend the summer reading and volunteering at local farms. She hopes to travel and spend more time with loved ones. She is looking forward to engaging with new material for her project and deepening her understanding of where veganism and feminism overlap in the fight for liberation.

Nagdeska Paulino is a rising second-year MA student in the Center. Her research is centered around climate change studies and argues that climate change needs to be studied through an intersectional lens. Nag’s project plans to create an accessible resource that covers climate change and its connections to systems of power and alternative ways to teach and learn about the climate crisis. She will be producing this project with Dr. Maddy Coy as their Committee Chair.

Elisa Rios will continue research for her MA thesis, focusing on racial and ethnic identity formation of Afro-Latinas through the lens of anti-blackness and triple consciousness. She is looking forward to going back home and continuing her research in the summer. She is excited for the year to be done and to get IRB approval.

This story appears in the Spring 2022 issue of the Gender, Sexualities, & Women’s Studies Newsletter. Read more from the issue.