Category: Diversity & Equality
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Mug vs. Mugshot: The Unspoken Privilege of Cis-Passing Trans Femininity
In December 2024, the British Fashion Council awarded Alex Consani, a 21-year-old openly transgender model, the prestigious Model of the Year award. Alex has modeled for major luxury fashion houses such as Chanel, Versace, Alexander McQueen, and Marc Jacobs, among others. She is presented not as a “trans model,” but simply as a model—an artist…
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We All Live in Phantom Country Now
A haunted house. A ghost. A spirit. A phantom. We know these things aren’t real, but when you’re anxious and afraid they sure seem so. And anyway, the fear is real. It’s a disturbing feeling, having no control in a fluid and uncertain situation. We begin to doubt that we were ever in control. …
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Design Justice: “Design Values: Hard-Coding Liberation?” A Review
Sasha Costanza-Chock’s Design Justice is a framework that questions and re-imagines the role of design, power and justice in technology systems. Design Justice is a widely cited framework that complicates current technology design practices, testing, and conception. It’s an attempt to grapple with and align the numerous technological, ideological and social entities such as social…
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The Anti-Gay Agenda: The Rise of Political Homophobia in Eastern Europe
Though eastern Europe has never been an exemplary model for human rights, the past few years have engendered major concerns for the LGBTQIA+ (LGBT) community within this region. Key political leaders across eastern Europe have chosen to use the LGBT community as scapegoats for underlying societal issues and to bolster campaign platforms to garner the…
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Why Do We Need Comprehensive LGBTQ+ Sex Education in the United States?
Upon graduating in the spring, I hope to pursue a career that focuses on community building and support for LGBTQ+ youth, by ensuring that they have access to comprehensive sexual health education. There are many misconceptions about the age-appropriate content that youth should be exposed to, and I hope to close that gap to…
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Thinking-feeling the Louise Lennihan Arts and Sciences Grant Showcase
“Otro Mundo es Posible”, by Beatriz Aurora, from her collection “Historias Pintadas: el color de la lucha zapatista”. Source: Araucanía Thinking-feeling the Louise Lennihan Arts and Sciences Grant Showcase The Futures Initiative supported eight student projects with the Dr. Louise Lennihan Arts and Sciences Grant this year. On November 11th, we came together to share…
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Language: A Major Barrier for Vaccinations.
On April 28th in Surrey, British Columbia, the Fraser Health Authority had opened up “pop up” clinics in order to mass vaccinate major hot spot areas in Surrey at Newton Athletic Park. This pop-up clinic opened with very communication amongst the public with hundreds showing up at the parks from word-of-mouth. After speaking with a…
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Reflections on Black History Month 2021
2020 has been a seminal year for Black history, present and future in the US, as well as globally. Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality, which have been ongoing since 2013, have spread across the world. Only in the US, an estimated 15 to 26 million people participated in the protests by mid-2020, making…
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Race, Racism, and Scholarship on Premodern Race Today
Dear colleagues, It’s been a long time since I’ve posted on HASTAC—for which, my deep apologies—but just before the holidays, I published a blog essay entitled “Why the Hate? The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, and Race, Racism, and Premodern Critical race studies today”: https://www.inthemedievalmiddle.com/2020/12/why-hate-invention-of-race-i… The essay uses a 46-page screed (published as a book…
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Oregon and White Supremacy Annotated Bibliography
I originally created this annotated bibliography as part of a project to design a survey about white supremacy in academic libraries for ACRL-Oregon. During the ACRL-Oregon and Washington joint conference in October 2019, librarians discussed the 2017 shooting of a protester by a white supremacist student at the University of Washington. Academic librarians expressed a…