Center for the Study of Women

Gender, Criminalization, Authoritarianism, and Agency with Andrea Ritchie
2026-04-08 11:00 - 12:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Rolfe 2125
When: April 8th from 11:00AM -12:30PM
Where: Rolfe 2125
Join us for a powerful conversation on gender criminalization, authoritarianism, and agency with Andrea Ritchie. This event will explore how systems of policing and surveillance disproportionately impact marginalized communities while examining the broader rise of authoritarian practices.
Andrea Ritchie is a writer, lawyer, and activist for women of color, especially LGBTQ women of color, who have been victims of police violence. Drawing on her extensive work as a scholar, organizer, and author, Ritchie will unpack the ways in which gender is used as a tool of control within legal and social systems.

UCLA Center for Reproductive Science, Health and Education Distinguished Speaker Series ft. Teresa K. Woodruff
2026-04-08 16:00 | CNSI Auditorium
Where: California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), UCLA Campus

When: Wednesday, April 8th at 4pm PT
Teresa K. Woodruff, Ph.D. is a leader in higher education and an internationally recognized biologist specializing in reproductive science. Woodruff is president emerita of Michigan StateUniversity (MSU) and MSU Research Foundation Distinguished Professor in the Department of Obstetrics,Gynecology, and Reproductive Biology as well as in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at MSU. In 2006, she coined the term “oncofertility” to describe the merging of two fields: oncology and fertility preservation. Working at the national level, Woodruff championed a new National Institutes of Health Policy mandating the inclusion of both male and female biological variables in fundamental research. As a leading research scientist, teacher and mentor, Woodruff was awarded the National Medal of Science byPresident Joe Biden in 2025 and the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science
RSVP Here

Dreaming Together: California Student Survivors Reimagining Campus Responses to Sexual Violence
2026-04-10 10:00 - 12:00 | Royce Hall
Event Video

Event Details
Where: Royce 314 + Zoom
When: Friday, April 10th from 10:00 AM-12:00 PM PT
Survivors + Allies is a UCLA-student organization within the CSW|Barbra Streisand Center dedicated to advocating with and for survivors of sexual violence and sexual harassment (SVSH). Over the past year, we conducted a mixed-methods research study across California college campuses, including the University of California (UC), California State University (CSU), and community college systems, to better understand the conditions that enable or prevent student-survivor healing.
We invite you to join us for the official launch of our 2025-2026 research report. We are excited to present our findings and recommendations with you.

Beyond the Concrete: A Conversation About the Lost Art of Letter Writing with John Rodriguez
2026-04-14 16:00 - 17:00 | Virtual
When: April 14, 2026 at 4 pm PST
Where: Virtual
John Rodriguez is a UCLA alumnus whose sentence was commuted by the California Governor in 2017 after he discovered a life-changing passion for education while incarcerated. Today, he serves as the Education and Communications Manager at Root & Rebound, leveraging storytelling to bring visibility to overlooked narratives. John dreams of returning to prison someday—not as an inmate, but as a teacher with the power to help others find their way out through education. Prabhat Gautam will be introducing and interviewing John Rodriguez.
The event is part of a Fiat Lux Seminar “Law, Justice, Literary Production, and Education Behind Bar” in the Department of English. This talk is co-sponsored by the CSW|Streisand Center.
All all welcome to attend via zoom.
Meeting ID: 927 8244 7447
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Thinking Gender 2026: Feminist and Queer Ecologies
2026-04-17 | James West Alumni Center, 325 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Thinking Gender 2026
36th Annual Graduate Student Research Conference
“Feminist and Queer Ecologies”
Friday, April 17, 2026
James West Alumni Center, UCLA Campus
View Conference Program and Schedule
Watch Videos from Thinking Gender 2026

Join us for a day of graduate student presentations highlighting innovative research at the intersections of gender, sexuality, environment, and justice. The conference will feature keynote speaker Cutcha Risling Baldy (Cal Poly Humboldt; NAS Rou Dalagurr Food Sovereignty Lab & Traditional Ecological Knowledges Institute), whose work centers Indigenous feminisms, land relations, and food sovereignty.
“Feminist and Queer Ecologies,” explores how environments and ecologies are shaped, understood, and contested through relations of sex, gender, and sexuality. The theme also considers how feminist and queer theorists, artists, and organizers have drawn on ecological processes and environmental knowledge to build new insights, movements, and practices.
Gendered and colonial ideas of wilderness, domesticity, and reproduction have historically shaped landscapes and environmental policy. At the same time, feminist and queer methodologies—from place-based storytelling to multimodal practice—offer critical tools for climate resilience, environmental justice, and community well-being. Around the world, social movements resisting environmental injustice—from Standing Rock to Flint, from the Everglades to rural India—have been led by women and gender-expansive people. Climate change and climate justice continue to affect communities differentially along lines of gender, sexuality, race, and class, revealing how struggles for ecological flourishing are inseparable from feminist and queer justice.
Feminist and queer ecologies demand multidisciplinary collaboration. This year’s theme invites environmental scientists, humanists, social scientists, artists, organizers, and practitioners to come together across methods, disciplines, temporalities, species, and geographies. It encourages experimentation with scientific inquiry, ethnography, storytelling, political theory, environmental history, modeling, and other forms of knowledge-making and truth-telling.

Conference Keynote:
“Indigenous Women Know How to Save the World: Framing a California Indigenous Ecofeminist Ethic.”

This talk builds a California Indigenous ecofeminist ethic grounded in place, fugitivity, resistance, and humor. It asks what it means to rethink how we talk about climate change and to recognize how land, water, and more than human relatives model resilience, refusal, and justice. By examining examples from California such as the damming, diversion, and even paving over of rivers, this talk argues that environmental devastation is not a future fear but an ongoing history that Indigenous peoples have survived and theorized for generations. Green colonialism, conservation land grabs, and the expectation that Indigenous communities must solve climate change while contributing the least to it exposes the absurdity and gaslighting in contemporary environmental discourse and policy. At the same time, Indigenous women who have long been leaders in ecological knowledge and restoration are kept busy navigating patriarchal structures rather than being supported as the scientific and cultural leaders they already are. Ultimately, this talk explores how the world around us is already feminist, already resistant, and already offering models for collective thriving beyond capitalism, patriarchy, and extraction. Indigenous peoples carry structures and methodologies that are sustainable, relational, and deeply grounded in place. We have lived them. And we are still building these futures now.
Cutcha Risling Baldy, Associate Professor of Native American Studies at Cal Poly Humboldt researches Indigenous feminisms, California Indians, Environmental Justice, Traditional Ecological Knowledge and decolonization. She is also the Co-Director of the NAS Rou Dalagurr Food Sovereignty Lab & Traditional Ecological Knowledges Institute.
In 2025 Dr. Risling Baldy along with Co-Director Dr. Kaitlin Reed were awarded the James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award for their work with the lab. Her book: We Are Dancing For You: Native feminisms and the revitalization of women’s coming-of-age ceremonies received “Best First Book in Native American and Indigenous Studies” at the 2019 Native American Indigenous Studies Association Conference. She received her Ph.D. in Native American Studies at UC Davis; her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from San Diego State University; and her B.A. in Psychology with a Specialization in Health and Development from Stanford University. She is also the volunteer Executive Director for the Native Women’s Collective, a nonprofit organization that focuses on the continued revitalization of Native American arts and culture. She is Hupa, Karuk, and Yurok and enrolled in the Hoopa Valley Tribe.
Thinking Gender Blog Posts

Fire Tender Film Screening
Tuesday, February 10, 2026
12:15–1:15 PM | CSW|Streisand Center
Join us for a screening of Fire Tender, directed by Roni Jo Draper (Yurok), followed by a discussion.
Fire Tender tells the story of Yurok tribal members returning to traditional fire practices as an essential form of land stewardship. The film centers on Margo Robbins—grandmother, cultural educator, healer, and Indigenous fire practitioner—who is leading efforts to restore Yurok fire sovereignty: the right to use fire for tribal land care, a practice outlawed under settler colonial policies.

Cosponsors
African American Studies Department
American Indian Studies Center
American Indian Studies Department
Anthropology Department
Asian American Studies Center
Asian American Studies Department
Bixby Center to Advance Sexual and Reproductive Health Equity
Center for Community Engagement
Center for the Study of Racism, Social Justice & Health
Chicana/o and Central American Studies Department
Chicano Studies Research Center
Critical Race Studies Program (Law)
Department of Geography
Disability Studies
English Department
Gender Studies Department
Graduate Division
Humanities Division
Information Studies Department
Institute of American Cultures
Institute of Society and Genetics
Institute of the Environment and Sustainability
Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin
International Institute
Iris Cantor Women’s Health Center
Labor Center
Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies
LGBTQ Campus Resource Center
LGBTQ Studies Program
Luskin Center for Innovation
Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies
School of Engineering
School of the Arts and Architecture
School of Theater, Film and Television
Social Welfare Department
Sociology Department
Water Resources Group
Friendly Reminder: Seating is first-come, first-served. Due to frequent no-shows, we overbook our events; a reservation does not guarantee a seat. Please arrive early. We appreciate your understanding.

Book Event: Queer Throughlines: Spaces of Queer Activism in South Korea and the Korean Diaspora
2026-04-21 14:00 - 16:00 | 10383 Bunche Hall, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA
Prof. Ju Hui Judy Han (UCLA) joined by Prof. Giancarlo Cornejo Salinas (UCLA), Prof. Grace Kyung-won Hong (UCLA), Laura Hyun Yi Kang (UC Irvine), and Dr. Yeong Ran Kim
Tuesday, April 21, 2026
2:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Bunche Hall, Room 10383

About the Book
Queer Throughlines draws on years of direct participation, interviews, and ethnography to examine transnational Korean LGBTQ+ activism since the 1990s. Han maps the sites and routes of leftist and queer political movements, highlighting challenges posed by Christian conservatives in both South Korea and the United States. The book uses the concept of “throughlines” to weave together a web of movement stories across time and space: a coalition of Los Angeles-based LGBTQ+ activists and allies fighting an anti-gay petition campaign led by Korean immigrant churches; queer activists involved in anti-war protests in Seoul; progressive clergy embracing inclusivity and risking heresy charges and excommunication; and queer and trans activists refusing to be sidelined form visions of political change underway. These moments do not always line up in a straightforward narrative of victory of progress, yet they create powerful lines of solidarity, community, and kinship.
Moderated by Grace Kyung-won Hong (Asian American Studies and Gender Studies at UCLA, it will begin with brief comments by Ju Hui Judy Han (Gender Studies at UCLA) and then shift to an open ended dialogue among panelists, with Giancarlo Cornejo Salinas (Gender Studies at UCLA), Laura Hyun Yi Kang (Gender & Sexuality Studies at UC Irvine), and Yeong Ran Kim.
Discussion
Moderated by Prof. Grace Kyung-won Hong, Dept. of Asian American Studies, UCLA

Our Universities on the Brink: The Institution and the Commons
2026-04-23 12:00 - 13:30 | Haines 352
CULTURE, POWER, SOCIAL CHANGE PRESENTS…
Charlie Hale, Dean of Social Sciences,
UC Santa Barbara
Our Universities on the Brink: The Institution and the Commons
Thursday 4.23.26
Haines Hall 352
12:15 PM
This paper builds from the premise that, to confront the multiple forces of disruption, all who inhabit universities are called upon to engage critical university studies. This is especially crucial for those who belong to the imagined “we” that Dean Hale invokes at the outset, since “our” efforts to advance and defend an alternative social purpose of the public university are most vulnerable to these forces. His analysis explores the general contours and contradictions of this work, and more specifically, what happens when the efforts are supported by the dean’s office.
Both the analysis, and his ideas for possible ways forward, rest on a distinction between the institution and the commons. This notion of the commons offers a means to fortify our defenses and inspire a collective sense of purpose as we engage in a necessary, and hopefully short-lived, strategic retreat.
Charlie Hale is the author of Resistance and Contradiction: Miskitu Indians and the Nicaraguan State, 1894-1987 (1994); and “Más que un indio…” Racial Ambivalence and Neoliberal Multiculturalism in Guatemala (2006); editor of Engaging Contradictions: Theory, Politics and Methods of Activist Scholarship (2008); co-editor (with Lynn Stephen) of Otros Saberes: Collaborative Research with Black and Indigenous Peoples in Latin America (2014); author of articles on activist scholarship, identity politics, racism, land rights and territorial autonomy, resistance to neoliberalism among Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples of Latin America. Director of LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections (UT Austin, 2009-16) and President of the Latin American Studies Association (2006-7).

"Dolores": Free Spring Film Screening by CSW|Streisand Center
2026-04-23 14:00 - 15:30 | 1500 Public Affairs
When: Thursday, April 23rd from 2-3:30pm
Where: Center for the Study of Women | Streisand Center, 1500 Public Affairs
Join us at CSW|Streisand Center for our Spring Film Screening of Dolores.
Dolores (2017) is a documentary directed by Peter Bratt that chronicles the life of Dolores Huerta, the undervalued co-founder of the United Farm Workers union. The film highlights her crucial role in fighting for labor rights, racial justice, and feminism, while exploring her life as a mother of 11 and her battle against sexism.
This event is FREE of cost! Additionally, popcorn and tea will be provided at the screening. We would love to see you there!

Political Ontology of the Closet with Sinan Birdal, Gender and Diversity Researcher, Freie Universitat Berlin
2026-04-30 12:30 - 14:00 | Rolfe Hall 2125
Political Ontology of the Closet: Elite Minorities and Sectarian Majorities in the Wilhemine Empire
When: Thursday, April 30, 12:30-1:45 pm
Where: 2125 Rolfe Hall
This talk develops a political ontology of minority articulation by examining divisions within the 19th century homosexual movement under conditions of repression. Sedgwick’s analysis of this movement emphasized the epistemological impasse between minoritizing and universalizing discourses of sexuality.
This talk shifts the focus from epistemology to political ontology.
Drawing on historical reconstruction and critical discourse analysis, the talk examines divisions within the German homosexual movement by focusing on the political thought and activism of Benedict Friedlaender, who attempted to mobilize a political field linking SPD revisionists, extra-parliamentary socialist critics, and left liberals in opposition to his main rival Hirschfeld’s SPD-loyal reform strategy. Friedlaender’s interventions demonstrate how competing sexual epistemologies reflected movement cleavages and contending strategies of minority and majority building. In this context, the talk develops a theory of political articulation by analyzing the relationship between party politics, social movement fragmentation, and coalition

Dean’s Lecture in Humanistic Inquiry: Kate Manne on Sensitivity and Survival
2026-04-30 16:00 - 18:00 | Royce 314
The Inaugural Dean’s Lecture in Humanistic Inquiry
Thursday, April 30
4 p.m. – 6 p.m.
Royce Hall Room 314
Free admission. Reception with light refreshments to follow lecture. Advance registration strongly recommended.
Presented by the UCLA College Division of Humanities
The Dean’s Lecture in Humanistic Inquiry is a biennial lecture dedicated to exploring cross-cutting topics and ideas in humanistic research and examining how humanistic inquiry connects to the most pressing questions of the day.
About our inaugural speaker
Kate Manne is a professor at the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University. She specializes in moral, social and feminist philosophy, and has written three books: DOWN GIRL: The Logic of Misogyny (Oxford University Press, 2018), ENTITLED: How Male Privilege Hurts Women (Crown, 2020) and UNSHRINKING: How to Face Fatphobia (Crown, 2024). In addition to her academic work, she regularly writes opinion pieces and essays for a wider audience, including in outlets such as The New York Times, The Cut, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Nation and Time. She writes a Substack newsletter, More to Hate, exploring misogyny, fatphobia and their intersection.
About Professor Manne’s lecture
Sensitivity and Survival
Accusations of oversensitivity are nowadays very common. Are they typically warranted? Is there in fact a scourge of snowflakes?
In this lecture, Kate Manne will distinguish three things that are commonly meant by “oversensitivity”: over-identification of instances, over-extension of the relevant concepts and over-reactions to the relevant harms or forms of injustice, such as sexism, misogyny and racism. Her talk will draw on two rich humanistic traditions: feminist epistemology and non-ideal theory.
While acknowledging that oversensitivity of all three kinds can and does occur, Manne will highlight and explore the comparatively under-emphasized converse dangers: the under-identification of instances, the under-extension of concepts, and under-reactions or the undermining of warranted reactions, respectively. In view of this, she concludes that what is called oversensitivity is often simply sensitivity: a normatively valuable and justified way of reacting to harms and injustices that often go under the radar in society as we know it.
Please visit this page to register.
Event cosponsors
Thank you to our cosponsors: UCLA Department of Philosophy, UCLA Department of Gender Studies, UCLA Center for the Study of Women | Streisand Center, and UCLA Program in Experimental Critical Theory

Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead | Book Talk and Signing with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
2026-05-12 14:30 - 16:30 | James West Alumni Center, 325 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
When: Tuesday, May 12th at 2:30pm
Where: Founder’s Room, James West Alumni Center
Join Leanne Betasamosake Simpson for a book talk and signing for her newest work, Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead. Leanne
Betasamosake Simpson is a renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg musician, writer, and academic. She is the author of eight books, including As We Have Always Done (winner of the NAISA subsequent book prize) and the novel Noopiming which was short listed for the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Dublin Literary Prize. Leanne’s new work, Theory of Water is a national best seller and won the Writer’s Trust Hilary Weston Prize for non-fiction. Leanne has lectured and taught extensively at universities across Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Europe and has over twenty years experience with Indigenous land based education.

Memory, Madness, Messianism: Thinking with My Father, the Messiah
2026-05-21 17:00 | Rolfe Hall 2125
Date: May 21st
Time: 5 P.M.
Location: 2125 Rolfe Hall (UCLA)
Featured Speaker: Gil Hochberg, Ransford Professor of Hebrew, Comparative Literature, and Middle East Studies at Columbia University, discussing her new memoir, My Father, the Messiah.
UCLA Panel:

Hannah Jakobsen (Comparative Literature)
Rachel Lee (English/Gender Studies/Institute of Society & Genetics)
Michael Rothberg (English/Comparative Literature)

Presented by: The Working Group in Memory Studies and the Abolition Medicine & Disability Justice (AM&DJ) Project.
Co-sponsored by: UCLA Center for the Study of Women/Barbra Streisand Center; UCLA Departments of Gender Studies, Comparative Literature, and English; UCLA Division of Humanities; and the UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies.
Parking: Pay-by-space available in Lot Five (Level Six) and Lot Three.

Feminist Armenian Research Collective Workshop: New Directions in Music, Arts, and Performance Studies
2026-05-26 - 2026-05-27 | Schoenberg Music Building, 445 Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles, 90095, United States
When: May 26th-27th
Where: UCLA Schoenberg Music Building, Green Room
Join us for the Feminist Armenian Research Collective’s (FemARC) Third Workshop, New Directions in Music, Arts, and Performance Studies, which will be held at UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music’s Schoenberg Music Building on May 26–27, 2026. This workshop was organized by Melissa Bilal, Promise Chair in Armenian Music, Arts, and Culture at UCLA and Lerna Ekmekcioglu, McMillan-Stewart Professor of History at MIT.

On May 26th, panels will run all day in the Green Room from 9:30 am to 6:00 pm, followed by an album-launch concert “Piano Works of Koharik Gazarossian” by Nare Karoyan at Schoenberg Hall. The workshop’s concluding discussion session will take place on May 27th (10:00 am – 11:30 am) in the Green Room.

"Legacy": Free Screening by UCLA Film & Television Archive
2026-06-28 19:00 - 21:00 | Billy Wilder Theater, 10899 Wilshire Blvd.,, Los Angeles, CA, 90024, United States
When: Sunday, June 28th at 7:00pm
Where: Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum
Join UCLA Film & Television Archive for a free screening of “Legacy”!
Directed by Karen Arthur, a first-time filmmaker, and independently produced, “Legacy” confounds 1970s Hollywood’s expectations with the introduction of a new kind of cinematic woman. Bissie (played by Joan Hotchkis) is a woman unraveling under the pressures of a vapid and materialistic society. She stuns audiences with her honesty that is confrontational, yet heartfelt, and her vulnerability.
