Friday morning I attended the second session of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, (En) gendering Social Justice: A symposium for Undergraduate Student Work in Women’s and Gender Studies. When I walked in, the first session was still going on and I was able to hear the ending questions and answers of the presentation. I was thrilled to start off my experience at the symposium this way. To answer one of the questions, a speaker said intersectionality within feminism is essential to regard and is a part of the entire vision of feminism. Knowing what this word meant and already understanding its importance to identify when considering feminism or equality, I immediately felt like I fit in.
The second session was titled “Representations”. There were three speakers for this session and their names were: Peter Saunders, Kathlynn Thomason, and my favorite, Nyameer Puok. All three of them had prepared to talk about a movie, a book, or genre and to conduct a portrayal of the characters, actors, directors, or authors and how their roles contributed to a bigger vision, or representation. My ratings of these speakers can be put like Goldilocks put it in the story of the Three Bears; one was too hot, one was too cold, but the last one was just right.
Peter Saunders majors in English and he spoke about the movie and book Requiem for a Dream. His essay was extremely thorough and very well written, his execution on the other hand, for me at least, was hard to follow and I had a difficult time retaining information. What I did retain was brilliant though. He mentioned that the women in the story had to reach salvation through pain and the women also did not have a happy ending. I wish I could have read it so I would be able to understand his main points better. My advice to him would definitely be to speak slower. This is the presentation that I would consider to be “too hot” because of how much information he gave, although brilliant, was hard to follow.
The...