Annual Conference Resource Lists

In 1970, 55 years ago, Toni Cade Bambara published The Black Woman: An Anthology, a now-classic Black feminist text featuring many of our revered and beloved icons, such as Kay Lindsey, Alice Walker, Abbey Lincoln, Nikki Giovanni, Gail Stokes, Grace Lee Boggs, Audre Lorde, Frances Beale, and Paule Marshall. One decade later, Bambara published The Salt Eaters, the classic novel that taught us "wholeness is no trifling matter." As NWSA President Heidi R. Lewis points out in “Feminists We Love: Toni Cade Bambara” (2014), Bambara gave us "a feminism that was unapologetically Black" from the time she began sharing her wisdom with the world until she passed away 30 years ago at the tender age of 56. She gave us "a feminism that was loud, strong, collective, vulnerable, powerful, communal, honest, and intimate." She gave us "the kind of Black feminism that wasn't afraid to look around and that refused to suffer fools."1 During this plenary, President Lewis will honor Bambara's life, work, and legacy alongside some of the women who were closest to her—activist Zoe Bambara, Toni’s granddaughter; Black feminist lesbian survivor-healer and award-winning writer-filmmaker Aishah Shahidah Simmons, Bambara's student; as well as two of Bambara's close friends, writer, curator, and women's health activist Linda J. Holmes, and Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall, past NWSA President and founding Director of the Women's Research and Resource Center and Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women's Studies at Spelman College, home of the Toni Cade Bambara Papers. 

1 Heidi R. Lewis, “Feminist We Love: Toni Cade Bambara.” Toni Cade Bambara 75th Birthday Anniversary Forum, edited by Aishah Shahidah Simmons and Heidi R. Lewis. The Feminist Wire, 2014.

Panelists: 

• Zoe Bambara, Doula and Cultural Worker

• Beverly Guy Sheftall, Spelman College

• Linda J. Holmes, Independent Scholar

• Heidi R. Lewis, Colorado College & 22nd NWSA President

• Aishah Shahidah Simmons, Survivor-Healer-Filmmaker-Writer

📚  Access the Companion Resource List Soon!

Since Donald Trump's election as 47th President of the U.S. empire, many of us have understandably asked, "What do we do now?" As we pose and respond to this question and similar ones, we should make space for our anxieties, frustrations, and fears. We should allow our sadness, disappointment, and rage to breathe. We must also make space for remembering. This is the spirit in which we are gathering this year. Our annual conference is an honour song, a space where we will remember our feminist struggles and feminist victories. In addition to asking "what do we do now," we NWSA encourages us to ask, what might become possible when we remember who we are and who we've been? What can we (re)learn by remembering the places and spaces from where we come, the places and spaces who made us who we are? What might become possible when we remember the people and communities who taught us how to resist? President Lewis will explore these and related questions during this year's presidential address. Following the address, President Lewis will continue the conversation alongside Shariana Ferrer-Nuñez, Aurora Levins Morales, and Gina Starblanket in order to breathe into memory and give way to a louder, stronger feminist honour song.

Panelists:

• Shariana Ferrer-Nuñez, La Colectiva Feminista en Construcción 

• Aurora Levins Morales, Writer and Poet

• Heidi R. Lewis, Colorado College & 22nd NWSA President

• Gina Starblanket, University of Victoria

📚  Access the Companion Resource List Soon!

Puerto Rican feminisms emerge within and develop under the material conditions in the “world’s oldest colony.” Rican feminist struggles against extractivist white settler colonial systems are also struggles against the violent logics of cisheterosexism, ableism, and capitalism. They’re struggles for landback, bodily autonomy, climate justice, and food sovereignty. As colonial subjects of the US since 1898, the Rican feminist struggle continues. 

In this plenary, Jessica Pabón joins Rican feminists of the diaspora and archipelago to discuss how and why these ongoing struggles dis/appear in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies classrooms, research, advocacy, and activism. In doing so, we invite the NWSA membership to a collective honoring of the legacies, lineages, and leadership of Puerto Rican feminists. 

Panelists:

• Zoán T. Dávila Roldán, La Colectiva Feminista en Construcción 

• Mayra Ivette Díaz Torres, Colectivo Ilé

• Iris Morales, Activist, Writer, & Independent Scholar

• Jessica N. Pabón, Independent Scholar & NWSA Member at Large

• Yamilin Rivera-Santiago, Activist, Writer, and Community-Based Communications Specialist

📚  Access the Companion Resource List Soon!

On March 18, 2005, Dr. amina wadud led a mixed-gender Friday prayer in New York City, an act that is almost exclusively reserved for men in Islam. Guided by a deep understanding of the Islamic faith and the politics and practices of interpretation (or tafsīr), Dr. wadud’s work has been shaped by a long and ongoing commitment to fighting oppression and centering social justice within Islam. Her ground-breaking books Qur'an and Woman: Rereading the Text from a Woman's Perspective (1992) and Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam (2006) have been translated to many languages and are critical works that continue to inform a growing body of scholarship dedicated to Islamic exegesis. Dr.wadud’s extensive scholarship is shaped by her activist work that transcends neat divisions between the local and the global and insists on the dignity (or karama) of all Muslim practitioners regardless of gender, race, sexuality, age, ability or national background. By connecting the transcendent with the material and lived realities of being Muslim, Dr. wadud’s labor and long legacy of struggle (or jihad) have been defined by a resolute insistence on the spiritual wholeness and well-being of Muslim communities worldwide. Her academic and public scholarship have paved the way for a growing body of Muslim feminist knowledge and praxis that insist on multiple and encompassing range of gendered interpretive possibilities within the Muslim faith. As we mark the 20th anniversary of Dr. wadud’s agential and principled act, how might we understand its significance and enduring relevance today? How does it relate to her broader and continuing scholarship and activism? What are the interpretive and material spaces that Dr. wadud’s work opens, and what intergenerational forms of faith-based activism and scholarship does it inspire within the U.S. and transnationally? What are the ways in which this work has been resisted, misunderstood, or rebuffed by dominant interpretive communities and how might we reckon with such critiques beyond their repudiation or disavowal? This panel invites participants to critically encounter Dr. wadud’s labor and legacy in a time of increased anti-Muslim policies and sentiment and growing political and social unrest through an insistence on an ethics and praxis of care that inspire rigorous engagement, collective imagination, and interpretive possibilities.

Panelists:

• Su'ad Abdul Khabeer, University of Michigan Ann Arbor

• Juliane Hammer, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill

• Inaash Islam, College of the Holy Cross

• amina wadud, Executive Director QIST1 (Queer Islamic Studies and Theology)

• Kristian Contreras, NWSA Executive Director

📚  Access the Companion Resource List Soon!

Co-founded in 1970 by then nineteen-year-old Sylvia Rivera and twenty-five-year-old Marsha P. Johnson, STAR was an organization dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for “street people,” especially estranged youth and housing insecure folks, and providing a space for them to embrace their full selves. Originally named the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries and revived in 2001 as Street Transgender Action Revolutionaries, STAR eschewed respectability, undermined personal convenience, and advanced collective advancement. Birthed following sit-ins at Weinstein Hall after New York University revoked utilization of the space for “gay” dances and meetings, STAR manifested as a continuation of the worlds Rivera and Johnson built from audacity, willful dissent, and love. As homage to their insistence on expansive movement building and disinterest in palatability, this presidential session stages a critical conversation about worldmaking politics through/for trans aliveness today. The work of our panelists align with the aspirations of STAR and contribute to spacious and embodied configurations of self-actualization, community, and coalition building.

Panelists:

• Marielle De León Toledo, activist, writer, and computer scientist

• Dominique C. Hill, Colgate University & NWSA Lesbian Caucus Chair

• Julian Kevon Kamilah Glover, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, University of Michigan

• Roque Raquel Salas Rivera, Universidad de Puerto Rico Mayagüez

📚  Access the Companion Resource List!

As NWSA President Heidi R. Lewis writes in “On the State of the Field and Related Concerns” (2024), her second presidential blog, “For more than 50 years, Women’s and Gender Studies and feminist artists, activists, and scholars have been at the forefront of examining the ways power is mediated by gender and sex, race and ethnicity, class, caste, nation and citizenship, age, and ability […] We have recovered and commemorated women’s and nonbinary folks’s contributions to academia, law, medicine, sport, politics, and other fields. We have insisted on the importance of studying gender-based and sexual violence, disparities in healthcare, pay gaps, and other inequities. We declared ‘the personal is political.’ We’ve taught the critical distinctions between gender and sex. We’ve studied the feminization of poverty. We’ve critiqued hierarchical binaries like man-woman and heterosexual-queer. We’ve learned how to necessarily differentiate between sexism and misogyny. We’ve studied rape culture. We’ve taught fat shaming. We’ve taught slut shaming. We coined intersectionality, the matrix of domination, and ‘white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.’” During this presidential session, we will honor our pasts, reflect on our present, and prepare for our futures by celebrating our formidable colleagues at San Diego State College (now San Diego State University), who inaugurated the first Women’s Studies Program 55 years ago in 1970. 

Panelists:

• Nadia E. Brown, Georgetown University & NWSA Advisory Board Member

• Frances B. Henderson, The University of Kentucky

• Irene Lara, San Diego State University

• Alexandra Pagán Vélez, Universidad de Puerto Rico Río Piedras 

• Elithet Silva-Martínez, Universidad de Puerto Rico Río Piedras

📚  Access the Companion Resource List Soon!

This presidential session honors the thirty-fifth anniversary of the passage of the Americans with Disability Act (ADA), especially the work of the (often under-recognized) activists who made the bill possible: including Yoshiko Dart, Chai Feldblum, Judy Heumann, Joyce Ardell Jackson, Johnnie Lacy, Sylvia Walker, and Patrisha Wright. While the ADA marked a pivotal moment in civil rights history, legal protections alone have not dismantled the structural ableism that intersects with gender, race, class, sexuality, nationality, and other systems of oppression. This panel explores disability justice as a feminist practice-one that challenges dominant frameworks of inclusion and instead centers collective care, interdependence, and radical accessibility. Panelists will address key questions: How do feminist and disability justice frameworks inform one another? How can feminist movements more meaningfully engage with disabled communities, particularly those most marginalized, such as disabled women of color, queer and trans disabled individuals, and those with chronic illnesses? Drawing on intersectional feminist and crip theories, lived experiences, and activism, this panel will advocate for a feminist practice that goes beyond compliance with legal mandates and instead fosters accessibility as a form of collective liberation.

Panelists:

• Nirmala Erevelles, University of Alabama

• Kristina Gupta, Wake Forest University & NWSA Member at Large

• Maria Rovito, Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences

• Sami Schalk, University of Wisconsin Madison

📚  Access the Companion Resource List Soon!

Born in the city of Fez during the French colonial period in Morocco, Fatema Mernissi (1940-2015) went on to become one of the most well-known Moroccan feminists of her times. Along with other feminists of her generation, like Assia Djebbar and Nawal el Saadawi, Mernissi helped to introduce readers across the world to the richness and complexity of postcolonial feminist thought from Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA). She embodied a form of feminist critique that centered subjugated and forgotten knowledges, was deeply rooted in the rich histories and heterogeneous lived realities of Morocco, and was informed by the dynamism and liberatory potentialities of the Islamic tradition which she reinterpreted through a feminist lens. In doing so, she contributed to decolonizing feminist epistemologies, challenged dominant ideas about gender and sexuality in Islam and the SWANA region, and troubled the secular normativity that prevailed in much feminist thought.  She also spoke back to notions of Western superiority and was unapologetic in her critiques of Western hypocrisy. Coinciding with the ten-year anniversary of her death (2015) and the 50th anniversary of the publication of her first book Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Muslim Society (1975), this Special Session commemorates her many legacies while reflecting on the continued significance of her insights on feminist knowledge, memory, history, exegesis, storytelling, resistance, dreaming, and the imagination for our feminist work today.    

Panelists:

• Rosemary Admiral, The University of Texas at Dallas

• Umme Al-wazedi, Augustana College & NWSA Secretary

• Nadia Guessous, Colorado College

• Zakia Salime, Rutgers University 

📚  Access the Companion Resource List Soon!

This panel explores the evolution of feminist publishing through the lens of historical and contemporary efforts, with a particular focus on two pioneering presses, The Feminist Press and Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. Both emerged as radical responses to the lack of representation and space for marginalized voices in mainstream media, creating platforms that championed feminist thought, activism, and identity. While developing a Women’s Studies curriculum, Florence Howe struggled to find relevant texts for her writing students at Goucher College. So, a group of women gathered in her living room and founded The Feminist Press in 1970. During a phone call one decade later, Barbara Smith and Audre Lorde discussed the lack of feminist texts published by women of color and decided to “do something about publishing.” So, they co-founded Kitchen Table with Cherríe Moraga, Hattie Gossett, Helena Byard, Susan Yung, Ana Oliveira, Rosío Alvarez, Alma Gomez and Leota Lone Dog. Panelists with diverse publishing backgrounds will discuss how these presses made their work possible and enable them to continue pushing the boundaries of feminist thought and adapting to the rapidly evolving digital world. They will also explore how advanced technologies and multi-modal platforms, such as visual arts, podcasts, and zines, further their mission of enhancing accessibility, diversifying the landscape of feminist voices, and staying true to foundational values of inclusivity, intersectionality, and authenticity.  Barbara Smith once said, “Our lives are not a project for others to work on. We will define ourselves on our own terms.” This panel is an opportunity to remember and honor that critical feminist principle.

Panelists:

• Elizabeth Crespo Kebler, Universidad de Puerto Rico en Bayamón

• Halimah DeShong, University of the West Indies

• Nanda Dyssou, Coriolis Company

• Latoya Lee, California State University Fullerton & NWSA Member at Large

• Xhercis Méndez, California State University Fullerton

📚  Access the Companion Resource List Soon!

This presidential address and opening discussion augments “The Journey Not Only the Arrival, Critical Connections Not Only Critical Mass: (Re)Thinking Feminist Movements,” the theme for our 2024 annual conference in Detroit and the title of President Heidi R. Lewis’ Presidential Address. Detroit was Grace Lee Boggs’ home for over 60 years and the place where she founded the National Organization for an American Revolution with her husband Jimmy 45 years ago. So, our theme honors two of her quotes, “activism can be the journey rather than the arrival” and “movements are born of critical connections rather than critical mass.” Our conference is a space where we gather to think about, discuss, and develop strategies to resist myriad forms of subjugation and oppression. 

We gather to teach and learn from one another, to support and care for one another, to celebrate one another, and to share in each other’s pain and joy. At the same time, it’s just as important to attend to the complicated contours of our relationships with one another. What happens when heterosexism, ableism, and colonialism show up in us? What happens when we perpetuate anti-Black racism, transantagonism, and xenophobia? What happens when we privilege the arrival at the expense of the journey? What happens when we sacrifice critical connections in favor of galvanizing critical mass? These questions, and more will be strengthened by members of the James and Grace Lee Boggs Foundation: Donald Boggs, Aurora Harris, Dr. Gloria House, Alice Jennings, Dr. Scott Kurashige, Tiffany Lee, and Julia Putnam as thought leaders and organizers who embody all that James and Grace Lee Boggs visioned in their activism.

President Lewis’ hope is for us to collectively raise and interrogate these questions for the sake of what she often refers to as the always advantageous but sometimes contentious contours of solidarity. Even though we may be certain about our many intended destinations, she invites us to nurture curiosity about our journeys and connections with each other, because that is the lesson from Boggs that resonates with her most.

🎥  Watch the Plenary Here!

📚  Access the Companion Resource List Here!

In “Multivocal and Multidirectional: The Rich Legacy of Women’s Studies,” President Heidi R. Lewis refers to the late 1960s and especially the 1970s and 1980s as the Golden Age of the kind of organizing that is central to our field. During that time, the National Organization for Women, Redstockings, Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, National Black Feminist Organization, Women of All Red Nations, Salsa Soul Sisters, Combahee River Collective, and other groundbreaking organizations were founded. One of those organizations was NWSA, which was established in 1977 and incorporated in 1978. The following year, the Association held its first conference at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, with nearly 250 sessions and 600 participants. To celebrate that historical moment, we are excited to facilitate a discussion with Layli Maparyan, past Women of Color Caucus Co-Chair; Yi-Chun Tricia Lin 林怡君, past President (2012-14); Premilla Nadasen, past President (2018-20); and Raquel Rubio-Goldsmith, who presented her work on the religious experience of Mexicanas in Arizona during that very first conference. Returning to our histories is a critical aspect of feminist work. At this juncture, it is especially important to revisit our roots for wisdom and empowerment—and for lessons in solidarity—as our art, activism, and scholarship continue to evolve to meet the moment and shape the future. 

🎥 Watch the Plenary Here!

📚 Access the Companion Resource List Here!

Motivated by a desire to highlight the various forms of contemporary activism that fall under the “transnational feminist” umbrella, this presidential session highlights the various registers of resistance employed by activists in Brazil, China, Nicaragua, Palestine, and Turkey against state violence, surveillance, repression, occupation, and exile. We are coming together in this session with the hope of amplifying and activating critical coalitional feminist tactics for navigating authoritarian, colonial, national, and imperial powers. 

Access the Companion Resource List Here!

From viral hashtags to grassroots movements, the digital realm has emerged as a powerful arena for amplifying marginalized voices and driving impactful activism. Throughout the years, U.S. presidential elections have highlighted the crucial role digital platforms play in shaping narratives, mobilizing constituents, and driving tangible change. Given the outcome of the US presidential election, this session will highlight a diverse group of panelists, from grassroots organizers to scholar-activists, who will share their experiences and insights on how they have used the dynamic landscape of social media as a catalyst for political empowerment and social metamorphosis, particularly within disenfranchised communities.

Access the Companion Resource List Here!

In 1974, activists including Lorelei DeCora Means, Madonna Thunderhawk, Phyllis Young, Janet McCloud, and Marie Sanchez founded Women of All Red Nations (WARN). Involving members from over 30 tribal communities, WARN challenged settler colonialism - especially coercive sterilization and mining on native lands - while also advocating for the rights of women within native communities and sovereignty movements. This presidential session celebrates the 50th anniversary of the founding of WARN by bringing together Indigenous feminist scholars and activists to discuss key issues in Indigenous feminist scholarship and activism, including the ongoing need to challenge settler colonialism and the violence it enables against Indigenous women and Two-Spirit People, as well as the ways Indigenous feminists theorize notions of (non)human relationality, environmental stewardship, decolonization, and sovereignty.

Access the Companion Resource List Here!

Founded in 1974, Salsa Soul Sisters was the first organization dedicated to and led by Black lesbians in the United States. A network of homegirls, they created a legacy of political strategy rooted in creativity, pleasure, and care that remains timely and critical in this moment. This presidential session celebrates this legacy by staging a conversation around archiving Black queer stories, educative innovations, collective care practices, and the raw work of coalition building across differences. This honest dialogue consists of panelists whose work aligns with core principles, actions, and aspirations of Salsa Soul Sisters and watering care communities in the tradition of “A village taking care of itself” today.

Access the Companion Resource List Here!

Audre Lorde first visited Berlin in 1984 and returned annually until she transitioned in 1992. Inspired by her many visits, she wrote “This Urn Contains Earth from German Concentration Camps,” “Berlin is Hard on Colored Girls,” and other texts, including the “Foreword” to Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out, the first book published by Afro-Germans and the first to define “Afro-German,” a term Lorde coined with her Black German comrades and friends. 30 years after Lorde, Heidi R. Lewis journeyed to Berlin to teach her annual study abroad course for the first time. During her many visits, Lewis has also practiced transnational worldmaking with Black women in Germany, many who had relationships with Audre, such as the late Ika Hügel-Marshall, Ria Cheatom, and Katharina Oguntoye. During this session, Lewis will celebrate Lorde’s 90th birthday by honoring her time in Berlin with Katja Kinder, Peggy Piesche, and Maisha Auma of Generation Adefra, Germany’s first grassroots activist group for Black women.

Access the Companion Resource List Here!

In 1972, Chicana women working in the Farah Manufacturing Company waged a battle to form a labor union in order to fight for better working conditions. The strike, a landmark in the history of what would come to be known as Chicana feminism, ended in favor of the Chicana workers in 1974. This was one of many important events in the 1960s and 1970s that would lead to the formation of Chicana feminism as an activist and intellectual formation. Since then, Chicanas have continued to develop theory and praxis in order to better the lives of Mexican-descended women, queer and trans folks, children and families, and communities writ large. This panel is comprised of Chicana feminist activists, thinkers, and community builders who continue the legacies forged in the Farah Strike and so many other activities from half a century ago. The panelists consider the key contributions of Chicana feminism as well as the exciting new trajectories such work takes in the 21st century.

Access the Companion Resource List Here!