SJZ: Social Justice Zine Vol. 5, spring 2020
e n i Z n a r a u Q
Table of Contents 2
Closed for Business
Schmarrah McCarthy 3 In the Shadow of Lisa Marie our Midnight Sun Nohner 8 After forty days M. Catherine Jonet 9 Future Projections M. Catherine Jonet 10 Smile Oana Chivoiu 11 Mulberry Katy Stuckel 12 Wear Your Mask! Alex Cunningham 13 Pandemic Playlist Melanie Sweeney 14 LGBTQ+ Crossword Karina Puzzle Calderon 18 Caffeine Ros Parker 19 Pandemic Routine Lora Enfield 21 Tabs I kept open on Laura Anh my phone Williams 22 LGBTQ+ Crossword Karina Answer Key Calderon
collage poem poem poem photo poem mural playlist crossword comic essay poem
“Closed for Business” Schmarrah McCarthy Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands
Born and raised in Grand Cayman, I was always aware that my tiny island nation was both the portal to my dreams as well as my potential prison. This 24” x 36” collage grapples with the restrictions placed upon us during this COVID-19 pandemic; as well as the fleeting nature of time and memories. We will forever remember these strange times. We will remember our static positions as the world, as we knew it, unraveled around us.
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In the Shadow of our Midnight Sun Lisa Marie Nohner Baton Rouge, LA Birds have, in fact, fallen from the sky en masse—they clap to the ground, bleeding from their eyes and beaks. Black plumage flutters around them, the ornate confetti of the damned. If you open the window, you won’t hear any singing. Instead, you’ll hear a lot of silence, and beneath it, a dull, electric hum. A buzzing. Locusts. Humans have, in fact, begun falling to the ground en masse: not bleeding, but also, not screaming. Not breathing. Their lungs, two beautiful balloons, pink and fresh, steadily fill with water that turns to ice and then, mysteriously, to glass. And then the bleeding. We make deals, trade-offs about who will brave the songless world to buy our San Pellegrino— I'll clean, if you approach the contagion zone. I’ll disinfect the remnants, if you risk your life to get us crackers. One of us has to stay well enough to care for the other, right? But when we meet eyes, a question lingers in the space between us. It is one that, until a week ago, we believed we were too young to have to ask. Someday soon, the toilet paper will be gone. And so will our Lysol wipes. Our paper towels. These little luxuries, the only security that remains. When we come in from the outdoors, we change our clothes and shower. We disinfect the groceries in plastic gloves with carefully diluted bleach. And everyone feels it, the way the universe has tilted,
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suddenly uncertain on its axis. Gravity changes. Everything is heavy. Once upon a time, my apartment building had bed bugs. Having bed bugs doesn’t turn your lungs into ground glass—just your brain. The only magic bullet is to throw everything that can’t fit into a moving truck away. You scrap your life as you knew it: the books, the magazines, the bargain bin shoes – a jacket you once loved but you can’t be certain won’t bite you. What goes in the truck gets gassed and hopefully, the parasites will die. But until you find the time for that kind of genocide, you have to exist. In total self-isolation, except for the questions that plague you every minute of every day: Where are the bugs hiding? Are there eggs in my shoes? My purse? My car? They are so rarely in your actual bed. They hide in the walls. They hide in electronics. In hairbrushes. In the laptop. In your dog's bed. In your cat’s fur. Hotels are hot zones. Thrift stores can't be trusted. Even the airport is suspicious. Nothing is safe from contamination. You shower twice a day. You sprinkle diatomaceous earth in a circle around your bed the way a witch sprinkles salt around her home. You shake out your clothing before you put it on. But then you get in your car and the paranoia begins to creep: Are they in here with you?
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At the office: Are they here too, nesting in the keyboard, crawling up the legs of your chair? You try like hell to vacuum and sanitize every surface every single day, And still nothing feels clean. Somehow, you sense the bugs are hiding inside you. Somehow, the bugs have become you. When the sun does go down you spend all your time on bed bug websites, reading over cases, looking for some solution. Some right way to return to normal. To find an ordinary world. You become an expert on the subject. You know so much about the habits of bed bugs, their mating strategies, the exact size and shape of their many exoskeletons, the color and locale of their fecal matter—your knowledge is obscene: it frightens people, makes them paranoid too. Welcome to Hell, party of one! When you do sleep, you leave the lights on—until the awful day you learn it’s not the lighting or the lack thereof that attracts them— It is the CO2 in your breath. You imagine them crawling over your face, into your hair, laying eggs in your ears. Sometimes you sob about it. But usually you are too tired to produce tears. So you buy safety goggles. You buy a shower cap. You wrap a gauze headband around your ears before you go to sleep. You strap on a surgical mask. You wear long pants and tuck them into your socks. You don long sleeved shirts. Gloves. Everything tucked into everything. This is what it feels like in the hot, moist heat of the pandemic: everyone tucked in, everything tucked up, but still no one is really safe.
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You don't know where the virus is hiding: Is it on your laptop? Is it on the door handle? Did someone spit— Is it lingering on the soles of your shoes? Or worse— It is already inside you. Multiplying. Pollinating your cells. Germinating. Shedding from your fingertips each time you touch the keypad at the grocer's. Every time you reach for a can of your precious carbonated water. Each time you stroke your partner’s arm. You sneeze once. A cough follows. You are constantly counting backwards— How many days has it been since you were last in contact with another person? Another outside object? How many minutes can you hold breath? Can you hold it while you stand in line at the gas station? Could you hold it long enough to pass through an aerosol cloud of Covid19 lingering the air for fifteen minutes after someone’s misdirected sneeze? This time, there is no silver bullet. Our bodies are wild cards or time bombs: carriers or infected, surviving or succumbing to a microscopic organism named for a crown worn by the sun. Life is surreal in the way that Hollywood always teased: This is a George Romero film, This is a Stephen King adaptation, This is a game of survival horror. The headlines are projecting the same stories that function as the world building for any narrative about contagion. Only now we’re looking, reading, watching closely— peering into the depths of our screens, waiting for the answer that isn’t coming,
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as what seems like an entire country is entombed before our very eyes. And as the numbers grow and cities lock down and the death toll rises, the tests just seem...meaningless. It takes 2-14 days to develop symptoms, 3-5 days for the test results to come back. No one is contact tracing. We're supposed to secure our masks before assisting others, but we never considered what to do in the absence of masks, in the absence of oxygen— how to keep breathing without enough ventilators. How many days do you have left? How many days does anyone? The shutters are locked, the windows are closed, and the curtains drawn, but Outside, the humming loudens.
Lisa Marie Nohner was born in a bottle of Prozac. She's a Senior Instructor at Louisiana State University. While she's still teaching classes about shower girls and bleeding prom queens, she's doing it d i g i t a l l y now, because we live in the future. Lisa barely survived bed bugs-- will she survive the pandemic? Don't touch that dial, now: we're just getting started.
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After forty days M. Catherine Jonet Las Cruces, NM I look around me & I radiate love It’s like a familiar montage from a movie genre—luminescent Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor #headcanon, re: the moment before the ending, not THE ENDing, but the moment before the ending the moment before THE END FULL STOP breath breathing such fucking impermanence a dazzling fucking sight and yet, shot: sequence, shot tragedies re-arrange new hope arises
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Future Projections (May 2020) M. Catherine Jonet Las Cruces, NM My family tells me I shouldn’t hook up our old projector to beam movies from our driveway. A rural child, I was raised on the dreamy playscapes of oily popcorn and drive-in cinema. Hell, you could even go to church at one, collection plate passed from car to car. Outstretched hands social distancing toward hallelujah and each other. And now, family says my projections will draw in the presence of others; cinema, I have learned, is a dangerous art. Speed of sound, speed of light. Crash of thunder. I am quite literally projecting—beaming—not unlike some pirate radio (I already have, indubitably, a podcast); while other children played, I was the DJ of my grandmother’s RCA console, Bloomington, Indiana, scoring my family’s daily labors and strife. Shoebox tape recorder on the ready for any domestic imbroglio. Hisses. Glitches. Clicking pops. The textured anomalies of sputtered repetition. Analog flounces. Get a look at me in this snapshot moment, glowing, radiating, casting shadows: speed of sound, speed of lightning strike. The bending beams of gloaming. I am the Dark Lord of the Empire Now. I am Sisyphus and I have the Ring. Lady of Dragonstone deserved her own medical marijuana card. My wife enlightens, none of this—hands gesticulating in swirls—is a useful development. Save your block party for Halloween.
M. Catherine Jonet is a scholar and a creative. Her areas of specialization are queer and LGBT+ representation in visual and print cultures. She is the founder of the Feminist Border Arts Film Festival
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Smile Oana Chivoiu Lafayette, LA
On one of my walks, I meet this cool lady who chose this great frame for her picture after saying that she doesn't want a picture with that ugly thing on her face....but even her mask was pretty, white with green polka dotsâ?¤ Her eyes had a beautiful smile of mixed emotions đ&#x;˜ˇ. I'm a teacher, a street photographer, and a traveler missing the people in the classrooms and on the streets. And also missing those that I would have met if I were traveling....
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Mulberry Katy Stuckel Las Cruces, NM I wanted glass jars so I went to the place where all things come from. You can never leave this place until you pay for the things you've wanted. Bill tells me The trees near our house know where we are. They feel our vibrations in their roots. They call out to us with yellow leaves when they are thirsty. We make jam
Katy Stuckel is an artist and poet who has been known to create art utilizing materials she sometimes finds out in the desert.
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Wear Your Mask! Alex Cunningham Super Smash Games Tacoma, WA
Alex Cunningham is a painter/artist/vandal obsessed with cartoons. He just finished mowing the lawn and is drinking a nice cold beer. He's been painting for over 15 years and watching cartoons for over 30.
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Pandemic Playlist Melanie Sweeney Spring, TX
1. “The Temptation of Adam” by Josh Ritter 2. “Have You Ever” by The Avett Brothers 3. “Anchor Below” by Fairground Saints 4. “Room @ the End of the World” by Matt Nathanson 5. “Living Room, NY” by Laura Stevenson 6. “Closer” by Tegan and Sara 7. “Miss Misanthrope” by Jealous of the Birds 8. “If You Need to, Keep Time on Me” by Fleet Foxes 9. “I Should Live in Salt” by Asgeir 10. “From the Dining Table” by Harry Styles 11. “Fine One Day” by Tom Rosenthal 12. “Build It Better” by Aron Wright 13. “Survivalist Fantasy” by Kyle Morton 14. “Don’t Give Up On Me” by Andy Grammer 15. “Are You Bored Yet?” by Wallows, featuring Clairo 16. “Never Be Daunted” by Jaymay 17. “If the World was Ending” by JP Saxe and Julia Michaels 18. “Stressed Out” by Kina Grannis 19. “World Gone Mad” by Bastille 20. “Stay” by Tyler Hilton
Melanie Sweeney is the author of the nonfiction chapbook Birds as Leaves. During quarantine, she “adopted” and renamed her neighbor’s cat.
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LGBTQ+ Crossword Puzzle Karina Calderon
WORD BANK (no spaces) ALLY ANDROGYNOUS ASEXUAL BICURIOUS BISEXUAL BUTCH CISGENDER CIVIL UNION CLOSETED COMING OUT CROSSDRESSER DRAG
FLUID FEMME GAY GENDER EXPRESSION GENDER IDENTITY GENDERQUEER GENDER VERIFICATION HETERONORMATIVITY HETEROSEXUAL HOMOSEXUAL INTERSEX LESBIAN
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LGBTQ PRONOUN QPOC SAAB SEX SEXUAL ORIENTATION TRANSGENDER TRANSMAN TRANSWOMAN TWO SPIRIT
ACROSS 3. A hyphenated term used within some American Indian and Alaska Native communities to refer to a person who identifies as having both a male and a female essence or spirit 4. A person who is not open to themselves and/or others about their sexual orientation or gender identity 5. An outdated clinical term, often considered derogatory and offensive, used to describe someone who is emotionally, romantically, and/or sexually attracted to members of the same sex/gender 9. Assigned to a person at birth on the basis of primary sex characteristics (genitalia) and reproductive functions 11. A person who experiences little or no sexual attraction to others and/or a lack of interest in sexual relationships 13. An umbrella term to describe a person born with reproductive or sexual anatomy and/or a chromosome pattern that can't be classified as typically male or female; these variations also called "difference of sexual development" (DSD) 17. A type of testing in sports from 1966-1996 by the International Amateur Athletic Federation (now World Athletics) to verify sex chromosome and ensure binary gendered competitions; also called "sex testing" or "femininity testing" 19. A curiosity toward experiencing attraction to people of the same gender/sex 20. A person whose gender expression is masculine; often preceded by "soft" or "stone" 22. Words used to refer to a person's gender in conversation; sometimes called "personal gender ____," "proper gender ____," or less often "preferred gender ____" 23. The acronym used to distinguish queer people of color from queer white people; also written with a "T" to include Trans people of color 25. The acronym for people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer; also "GLBT" or "LGBTQ+" 26. A person's emotional, romantic, or sexual attraction to other people 27. The process through which a person first acknowledges, accepts, and appreciates their sexual orientation and/or gender identity; often involves sharing that identity with others 28. A person who is assigned male at birth but identifies and lives as a woman; also abbreviated "MTF" 29. A gender identity label often used by people who do not identify with the binary of man/woman and embrace a fluidity of gender identity 30. A description for when a person identifies and/or presents themselves as neither distinguishably masculine nor feminine
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DOWN 1. A person who experiences emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions to more than one sex, gender, or gender identity 2. An external display of one's gender, through a combination of clothing, appearance, mannerisms, and other factors that may or may not reflect their gender identity or sexual orientation 3. A person who is assigned female at birth but identifies and lives as a man; also abbreviated "FTM" 6. A person's innate sense of their own gender (male, female, or something else), which may or may not correspond to the sex assigned at birth 7. Often attached to "gender" or "sexuality," a term to describe an identity that may change or shift over time E.g., man and woman; bi and straight 8. The assumption that everyone is heterosexual and that heterosexuality is superior to all other sexualities 10. A person whose gender expression is typically feminine, be it physically, mentally, or emotionally 12. A person who is emotionally, romantically, and/or sexually attracted to a person of the opposite gender 14. An umbrella term to describe a person who is challenging, questioning, or actively changing gender from that assigned at birth 15. A description for when someone's sex assigned at birth and gender identity align similarly; also called "non-trans" 16. Historically used in the United States to describe a state-based relationship recognition for same-sex couples that offered some or all state rights, protections, and responsibilities of marriage 18. A non-LGBTQ person who supports equal civil rights, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ social movements; also an LGBTQ person who supports other identities within the community 21. A person who wears clothes associated with a different gender, regardless of sexual orientation and/or gender identity 24. The act of performing a gender or presenting as a different gender, usually for the purpose of entertainment; followed by "queen" for hyper femininity or "king" for hyper masculinity 25. A woman who is emotionally, romantically, and/or sexually attracted to other women 26. The acronym for the sex assigned to a person at birth, most often based on their external anatomy, that is unrelated to their gender identity; also called "designated sex at birth" (DSAB)
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29. An umbrella term to describe a person who is emotionally, romantically, and/or sexually attracted to members of the same gender. E.g., men and men; women and women Reference List Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. Routlege. Callis, A. S. 25, November 2009). Playing with Butler and Foucault: Bisexuality and Queer Theory. Journal of Bisexuality, 9(3-4), 213-233. Fausto-Sterling, A. (2012). Sex / gender: Biology in a social world. Routledge. Fausto-Sterling, A. (1993). The five sexes: Why male and female are not enough. The Sciences, 33, 20-25. Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. (n.d.). GLAAD media reference guide – Lesbian / gay / bisexual glossary of terms. https://www.glaad.org/reference/lgbtq Human Rights Campaign. (n.d.). Glossary of terms. https://www.hrc.org/resources/glossary-of-terms It Gets Better Project. (2020, April 28). Finding the right words: LGBTQ glossary. https://itgetsbetter.org/blog/lesson/glossary/ Kiesling, S. F. (2019). Language, gender, and sexuality: An introduction. Routledge. Killermann, S. (n.d.). A comprehensive list of LGBTQ term definitions. It’s Pronounced Metrosexual. https://www.itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/2013/01/acomprehensive-list-of-lgbtq-term-definitions/ Lorber, J. and Moore, L.J. Gendered bodies: Feminist perspectives. Oxford University Press. Milani, T. M. (2015). Theorizing language and masculinities. In T. M. Milani (Ed.), Language and masculinities: Performances, intersections, dislocations (pp. 8-33). Routledge. Rupert, J. L. (2011). Genitals to genes: The history and biology of gender verification in the Olympics. Canadian Bulletin of Medical History / Bulletin canadien d’histoire de la médecine, 28(2). 339365. Parents and Friends of Lesbians And Gays. (2019, July). PFLAG national glossary of terms. https://pflag.org/glossary Spargo, T. (1999). Postmodern encounters: Foucault and Queer Theory. Totem Books USA. Stonewall United Kingdom. (n.d.). Glossary of terms. https://www.stonewall.org.uk/help-advice/glossary-terms
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Karina Calderon is graduate student in the English Department. Her major is Rhetoric and Professional Communication and she plans to declare a minor in Gender and Sexuality Studies. She slowly but surely is going to finish her Ph.D., hopefully before she turns 45. In the meantime, she loves following the Backstreet Boys around the world. 116K miles and counting.
Caffeine Ros Parker Olathe, KS
I'm a 17-year-old artist from Olathe, KS. in addition to drawing really short comics like this one, I'm fond of creating other general cartoons, sci-fi artwork, and oil paintings, usually ocean-related.
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Pandemic Routine Lora Enfield Olathe, KS I quit my job right at the start of the pandemic (March 13). Jim started working from home full-time and the kids’ school was canceled for the remainder of the year. The first month we were in isolation as a family, I was barely productive-- consuming a mass amount of news that resulted in hand wringing despair. In order to keep some sense of normalcy, I have devised a loose schedule of sorts, that I try to do at the same time every day, but if I don’t, I at least try to get it all in. 1. 2. 3.
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Wake up and make the bed. Yes. Make the mf-ing bed. Make it! Put any clothes from the day before in the laundry basket. Drink coffee. Not too much, but enough so my body can eliminate the higher amount of processed food I’ve been eating. Also, since everyone talks to me all throughout the day, I need coffee to not kill anyone. I usually skip breakfast. Trying to intermittent fast. I’m not getting as much exercise as I would like because 1) I’m too lazy to move the car out of the garage so I can unfold my treadmill, and 2) No one wears a gd mask in my neighborhood. NO ONE. Sometimes I either knit or work on art in the AM. Something creative. Sometimes it’s the afternoon. I just try to get something in. Making something (anything!) gives me a sense of accomplishment. YOGAAAAA WITH ADRIENNE! A bunch of my Facebook friends were hyping her up. I had her 30 day yoga series bookmarked on YouTube for about 3 weeks before I finally just said ok, I’ll TRY. Day 2-3 kicked my ass. I still can’t do all the moves, and the ones I can do, I don’t do WELL. But I am becoming more body aware and I definitely am building muscle and my flexibility is really improved. After 10 years hunched over poorly designed desks sitting in poorly designed chairs, this is welcome. I’m on day 19
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now and wondering what I’ll do after the 30 days is up. But I think I will stick with yoga. I like it. 7. Meditation. I do 10 minute timed meditation through Insight Timer. It makes me more sane, and kinder to myself and family. It provides much needed prospective from thinking I have to solve anything. Be part of the solution, yes, but solving the world’s ills, no. We all need each other to work together for that. I really like the app Insight Timer. It’s the best one I’ve found. 8. Take a shower, every day, whether I’m dirty or not. It just makes me feel like I’m normal. 9. The afternoon is usually spent consuming more news (a habit I’m slowly starting to break), reading, or hanging out with my kids. Sometimes I take a nap, since I’m not sleeping the best at night. 10. try to have dinner ready by 5 or 5:30. I’ve been experimenting a lot, so that’s been really rewarding, although sometimes I get grumpy and it’s just frozen pizza night. PMS week during a pandemic is the worst. I crave the worst foods. 11. After dinner, whatever. Doesn’t matter. I try to be in bed before 11:00. Another thing I try to do is sit out on my porch if it’s sunny. I’m low in vitamin D, so I take a supplement. But really, there’s no substitute for sunshine. I just feel better if I get some sun. My youngest is here right now, so we try to go out early (pre-dawn) to look for foxes, and spend some time just talking. We can go out safely because the rest of the neighborhood isn’t up and walking too close to us. Lora Enfield recently left an exhausting “career” as an administrative assistant. She is enjoying her new-found liberation from work pants, ordering lunches, talking on the telephone, and booking travel for other people. She currently earns money drawing pet portraits. When not drawing, she is probably knitting really ugly moon-boots.
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Tabs I kept open on my phone Laura Anh Williams Las Cruces, NM Cacio e pepe – NYT Cooking Justice Dept. Establishes Office to Denaturalize Immigrants Paris Review Spring 2020 Efficient Creativity | The six-week audio series Sheltering in Place is Not a Writer’s Retreat No-Knead Bread—Mark Bittman Dalgona Coffee (Whipped Coffee) – My Korean Kitchen Sugar and Sex in the American Imagination The Near-Sighted Monkey This is How You Meditate There’s No Shame in Overreacting to the Coronavirus The World is Here in my Spine What I Wish I Did: A Guide to Getting Through COVID-19 Alone DIY Cloth Face Mask: 9 Steps (with Pictures) Opinion: The Ideas that Won’t Survive the Coronavirus Our Pandemic Summer Opinion: How New Mexico is Beating the Virus Claire is Making Gourmet Pop Tarts and She Wants You to Test Them Adult Inflatable Dinosaur Costume “Art is a vehicle to tell the truth in a way that may not be obvious” Q & A with poet Bao Phi Laura Anh Williams is a scholar and artist. During quarantine, she has taught herself to make animated GIFs, sew face masks, cut her own hair, and forge electronic signatures.
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LGBTQ+ Crossword Answer Key
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SJZ: Social Justice Zine
Vol. 5: Quaranzine Spring 2020
SJZ is lovingly cut and pasted together by the academic program in Gender & Sexuality Studies at New Mexico State University. It is a collaboration between undergraduate and graduate students, alumni, faculty, and friends interested in the topic of representation from intersectional and social justice perspectives. This fifth annual issue centers on our lived experiences during the Coronavirus pandemic that has changed our lives during Spring 2020. Gender & Sexuality Studies at NMSU offers a B.A., minor, and graduate minor in the interdisciplinary, intersectional study of gender and sexuality. Our major, minor, and courses are offered both face-to-face AND online. Gender & Sexuality Studies is deeply connected to examining the social from decentered, decolonized positions and skills gained from our degree and our courses translate into vital career resources. We are dedicated to social justice issues, feminisms, and works focusing on race/ethnicity, gender/gender identity, dis/ability, migration, LGBTQIA+, the border/Borderlands, and transnational positionality. We welcome submissions from current NMSU students and alumni as well as the Borderlands community and beyond. genders.nmsu.edu
image from #Janelas, directed by Fernando Cavallari