Roxane Gay

Wilkinson College is committed to leading the conversation in our community on issues of humanity, unity, and justice through our annual Engaging the World (ETW) event series. Since 2020 this important series has focused on the topics such as the significance of race, environmental justice, Ethnic Studies and most recently, health equity. This year’s 2024-25 Engaging the World (ETW): Leading the Conversation on Gender & Sexuality aims to promote informed, sustained, and enriching dialogues through an in-depth exploration of gender and sexuality.

The ETW keynote will feature author Roxane Gay on Wednesday, September 25. Gay is the author of The New York Times best-selling essay collection Bad Feminist and is a cultural critic whose writing is unmatched and widely revered. Her work garners international acclaim for its reflective, no-holds-barred exploration of feminism and social criticism. With a deft eye on modern culture, she brilliantly critiques its ebb and flow with both wit and ferocity.

“I’m so excited to share the insightful and trenchant commentary of Dr. Roxane Gay with more of my students this year,” said Professor CK Magliola (Sociology, Director of Women’s Studies).

“My FFC will be reading her collection of essays, Bad Feminist (2014)—what is now a “contemporary-classic” in the field of Women’s and Gender Studies— and her powerful memoir, Hunger (2017). Gay’s work teaches us to keep faith, humor, and courage alive, to learn through trauma, the importance of intellectual feminist criticism and making one’s voice heard above the mean turbulence of our social media times,” said Magliola. 

This year’s ETW series includes film screenings, poetry talks, lectures, and other events focused on gender and sexuality, examining how bodies, lived experiences, and subjectivities are shaped by the social constructs of gender and sexuality. Through dialogue and conversation, we will explore how culture, power, institutions, and social structures shape our understandings of gender and sexuality.

Some planned events include, Sex-Positive Approaches to Address Social Determinants for Health for the LGBTQ+ Community with Ronald Rivera (Oct. 22), Gender, Race, and Masculinity (Nov. 6) Global Feminisms (Nov. 12), and The Queer Subject: Voice, Identity, and Memory in Poetry and Pose with poet Charles Jensen (Nov. 19).

“I’m excited that the Tabula Poetica series is able once again to collaborate with the Engaging the World program. Poet and nonfiction writer Charles Jensen is a terrific addition to both programs because he writes about masculinity and being queer in very personal ways while exploring how cultural concepts shape each of us as individuals,” said Dr. Anna Leahy (Director of MFA in Creative Writing and Tabula Poetica). “I hope that his work will contribute to ETW’s interdisciplinary conversation and reveal to our students that contemporary literature is often both personally meaningful and culturally relevant.”

We hope you’ll join in the conversation. Visit the Engaging the World website to see a full list of events and mark your calendars!