LGBTQ+ Resource Center Archives - ��Ƶ

Nurturing Minds

Susan Landers — Wed, 14 May 2025 14:24:07 +0000

In college, when many young people are first learning how to make their way in the broader world, accessible mental health services can mean the difference between resilience and crisis, between healing and isolation. These services are not just about managing stress or overcoming obstacles—they are essential to students’ success.

At ��Ƶ, the Personal Counseling Program provides free and confidential services, offering a range of support, including individual and group counseling, crisis intervention, and workshops on stress and time management.

These services are not simply a convenience. Many students face very significant obstacles in accessing community services, including co-pays that are unaffordable for the student, insurance disclosures to families who oppose seeking help, and long waiting times for appointments. If they don’t have access to campus services, many become discouraged and drop out.

With demand for mental health services on the rise, the staff—four full-time licensed mental health professionals, along with several part-time staff comprised of master of social work and doctoral trainees—plays a vital role in supporting student well-being. The program provides more than 4,000 sessions annually to over 700 students, a number that has grown significantly in recent years.

Increasing Demand

“Before the pandemic, we were already seeing an increase in the severity of mental health issues among college students,” says Gregory Kuhlman, the director of the program and a professor in the M.A. program in mental health counseling. “Now, the impact is even greater.”

Kuhlman says that the demand for services has been “elastic,” meaning the more accessible and welcoming the services, the more students seek support.

In previous pandemics, studies showed that up to 7% of people experienced post-traumatic stress. The college’s diverse student population has felt this impact acutely. Many students come from communities heavily affected by the crisis, including health care and other frontline workers, and families who suffered significant losses.

The impact of social isolation is another post-pandemic concern.

“College is a time when students are supposed to build relationships, but the pandemic disrupted that,” says Andy Hale, one of the program’s licensed clinicians. “Now, many students struggle to connect and aren’t sure where to start.”

Kuhlman also notes a shift in the types of cases the program handles. Previously, only about a quarter of students seeking help exhibited significant risk factors such as suicidality or self-harm. Now, more than half present with serious concerns requiring close monitoring and intervention.

“[While] we don’t have the resources to provide long-term individual therapy to every student,” he says, “we screen everyone who comes in for risk and prioritize care accordingly. Our goal is to ensure that students get the help they need, whether through in-house counseling or referrals to external providers.”

The Power of the Peer

One of the program’s most effective tools is group therapy, which the staff say is incredibly powerful but underutilized.

“People assume individual therapy is better, but research shows that group therapy can sometimes be more effective,” says Hale, pointing out that group sessions provide peer support and community.

“There is often someone in the group who is a step ahead in their healing journey. Watching peers navigate similar challenges can be incredibly powerful,” he adds.

Prarthana Patelia, a second-year student in the mental health counseling M.A. program, says that the college years are an ideal time to engage in these services. “Most students are juggling so many things—personal issues, career aspirations, choosing a major. These things can induce so much anxiety. When you have this type of service on campus, you don’t even have to go out of your way. It can be life-changing to have someone in the field who can listen to you and give you the right guidance.”

The program provides various group therapy options, including interpersonal process groups, cognitive behavioral therapy groups, coping skills workshops, and mindfulness-based sessions. Some groups have formed organically around shared experiences, such as grief support or navigating masculinity.

As mental health challenges continue to evolve, the staff will remain committed to adapting its services, Hale says.

“Students are figuring out who they are, what they want, and how to navigate life’s challenges. If we can support them in that journey, it benefits not just the individual but the broader community as well.”

Broad Impact

To ensure that students know about available services, the program collaborates with various campus organizations, including the LGBTQ+ Resource Center, the Immigrant Student Success Office, and the Women’s Center. While they offer general workshops on things like time management and stress management, they sometimes create tailored supports for special populations.

“This might look like designing a specialized workshop, visiting a resource space in the wake of a painful or traumatic event for that community, or support at a campus event that the organizer anticipates may be emotionally charged,” explains Hale.

Beyond individual well-being, mental health professionals at the college agree that mental health services are integral to student retention and success.

“Academic success is often accompanied by good attention, organizational, and study skills, and these skills can be impacted when facing mental health concerns,” says Professor Paul McCabe, chair of the Department of School Psychology, Counseling, and Leadership.

“Students who are struggling with mental health issues, stress, and trauma may not be able to fully attend to their studies and cope with life demands. Counseling can help students develop coping strategies and self-care so they are better able to focus on their studies, thus leading to increased academic success.”

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Life Through a Different Lens

Susan Landers — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 17:00:32 +0000

Photo Credit: Peter Bienkowski

When he was two, Ocean Vuong ’12 landed in Connecticut with his family, refugees from Vietnam. Considering himself his family’s “one chance” at moving up the socioeconomic ladder, he found his way to ��Ƶ, where he graduated with a B.A. in English with a focus on 19th century American literature.

Vuong went on to write the bestselling novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Press, 2019) and two books of poetry, Night Sky With Exit Wounds (Copper Canyon Press, 2019) and Time Is a Mother (Penguin Press, 2022).

Currently on hiatus from writing as he awaits the publication of his second novel, The Emperor of Gladness (Penguin Press, 2025), the MacArthur “genius” fellow has been focusing on photography and his first show at the Toledo Museum of Art. We caught up with him to talk about his journey from Saigon and his life as an artist.

How was your family’s experience moving to the United States?

I was two when I came over and, interestingly enough, my first memory of America—and it became a very quintessential American memory—was eating KFC. That was because the church that sponsored us gave us a stack of KFC coupons, which my family immediately called Old Man Chicken because of the picture of Colonel Sanders on the coupons. None of us could read English.

It was unfathomable how good it was to us. We were coming out of postwar Vietnam at a time when folks were cutting their rice rations with sawdust. I remember my grandmother and my mother coming home with these buckets of chicken, and we felt like we made it.

Your family started out life in the U.S. in New England?

Hartford, Connecticut. We were surrounded by Jamaican, Haitian, and Dominican immigrants whose families had worked the fields in New England after World War II, so it was already a place of deep, rich immigration. It was not so strange to us, and we were not received as strangers. We had no TV or radio, so I did not know America was mostly white until I was 11, 12 years old. Not until I finally made it to a mall and the suburbs. Nowadays immigrants can go to YouTube to get some sense of the world.

The community embraced us, they saw us. At the heart of this was a legacy of endurance and success from Black and Brown immigrant communities coming through the Great Migration, settling in Hartford, and working in those fields.

We were war refugees. Many of us never aspired to be doctors, lawyers, or businesspeople, even in the old country. We were farmers, and we would be farmers forever, and that was fine. We’ve been doing that for a thousand years. When we came to America, there was none of that aspiration. And so we received everything in that community as a bonus. I’m grateful for that.

What prompted you to come to New York?

I think the larger answer might be queerness. I didn’t know what New York was, but I had to try it. And so it was kind of like this North Star. I went to New York to go to business school. There was no pressure from my family. I didn’t have to overcome immigrant family expectations, but I ended up putting pressure on myself. I was lucky to have folks who said, “Go do whatever you want. If you fail, there’s a seat right next to me at the nail salon.” And even McDonald’s. My mom said, “You can be a manager at McDonald’s. That’s a salary, right?”

But the pressure is there for anyone who is awake in America. You look around and say, okay, my people tell me I can do whatever I want, but I see them struggling, and I know that I’m their way out. I’m the foot forward. So I’ve got to put that foot in the right place, in the most practical place.

I thought maybe marketing. Marketing is art, and I can look at art. It’s communication. I had this desire to communicate. I didn’t yet know I wanted to be a poet, but I had this desire to communicate. I went to Pace University to study business and marketing. But I couldn’t do it. I was surrounded by people in suits, and when they went off to internships at Goldman Sachs and Chase Bank, I felt like a fraud. Who was I kidding?

So I walked out one late October afternoon. You could see the Brooklyn Bridge from Pace Library. And I looked at that bridge and remembered poems I had read by Hart Crane and Walt Whitman, “To Brooklyn Bridge” and “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” And I thought, okay, let me walk across that bridge and decide. I walked across and said, “That’s it. I’m not going to go back.” I never went back.

Photo Credit: © John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation–used with permission.

What happened next?

I was too ashamed to go home and tell my mom I failed. So I bummed around. I lost my housing, so I stayed on friends’ couches. I went to open mics. I told myself that if I was going to be here, I might as well follow in the footsteps of my heroes, Allen Ginsburg, James Baldwin, and Amira Baraka, and stay in the East Village and see what happens.

One day, I realized I had to go home. I was running out of money, but I couldn’t go home empty-handed. I was the only one. My family had one die to cast, not even two dice, just one—me. A friend suggested I try CUNY; I was still considered a resident and could get in-state tuition. So I enrolled in ��Ƶ and earned a B.A. in English. I told my mom I was earning a business degree.

Could you talk about your experience in the English department? Who were your mentors?

The B.A. was great in that I got the core curriculum, which people bemoan and ask things like, “Why am I here studying rocks when I’m a biochemistry major?” I asked the same thing for about five minutes, and then my mind started opening. I’m telling you, to this day, I still use stratified rock as a metaphor for history and time and literary traditions. When I teach, I say, “Look, it’s like stratified rock. We are the top. We’re the grass, and the grass is the thinnest part. And it’s the briefest part. So while we’re alive, we have to do what we can. The dead have spoken, and they are the stratified rock there.” And that came from Geology 101, core curriculum, ��Ƶ.

My professors and mentors were Ronnie Natov, Geri DeLuca [professor emerita], and Ben Lerner. At the time, I didn’t have a sense that Vietnamese American life and Vietnamese history were viable for poetry. My teachers at ��Ƶ said, “If you don’t do it, who will?”

I didn’t understand that at first. So they gave me Isaac Bashevis Singer and they gave me Toni Morrison. They said, “Look at Morrison’s Beloved; she’s writing about the first generation coming out of slavery. I was able to see the parallel. My mother is similar in how she witnessed the war, and now she’s on the other side of it. So if Morrison can go back 150 years and salvage a story, here I am living in the first generation of it; I need to write this down.

Your work speaks directly to your life as a Vietnamese refugee in America and a gay man.

Everything I write comes through this body and how this body is perceived in the world. And so that’s categorical, but it’s also specific. It’s this body and it’s an Asian body. But I can’t start the day seeing myself as a category determined by media or cultural abstractions. I have to start as Ocean. And Ocean moves through all of this.

You are taking a break from writing and reacquainting yourself with photography.

Yes. Photography is not new for me; I began shooting some years ago, photos of my friend’s band. But what got me exploring other subjects is that when I was 19, I published my first poem in the Connecticut Poetry Society’s journal. It was a small thing. And I had won this little award at that time. It might as well have been the Pulitzer—you’re 19, you win a poetry prize. I remember getting the prize and the issue in the mail, and I biked to my mother’s nail salon. I couldn’t wait to tell her that I was legitimate, that I didn’t waste my life on this weird thing that I’d been doing that nobody understands. And I got to her nail salon and showed it to her. The first thing she said was, “Well, how come it’s only one page?” There’s nothing like a mother to bring you right back down to earth. And being illiterate, the next thing she said was, “I can’t read it.”

After that incident with my mother, I wanted to start shooting photographs of my family. I wanted to show my mother my vision of the world and how I saw all of us. So I’ve been taking these little documentary photos ever since. When I showed them to her, she said something that kind of haunts me to this day, and colors my understanding of my work. I showed her the photos, and she looked through them and she said, “Wow, our life is so sad.”

As soon as she said that, that’s exactly what I saw. And it’s interesting that in Vietnamese, the word sad is buồn. But it doesn’t just mean sad. There’s an undercurrent. It has a more capacious definition that includes a type of wistful, melancholic beauty. You can say, “I am buồn,” and you just said you’re sad. But if you go look at a sunset—you stop your car, go out, and seek it out—you can also say buồn. So it applies to this kind of fleeting lost somberness, which made a lot of sense with what I was taking.

And I started to see that in all of my work, my novels later on, in my poems, which are laced with this kind of sadness. It was a private practice. Only very recently, my friends, many of whom are photographers, started to see my images. And they told me that I needed to start sharing them or it would be a waste. So I began to commit to it, and it’s been a lovely, lovely relationship.

With writing you have to be exact, and there’s no luck. Sontag said it best—there’s no luck in writing. I’ve never accidentally written a good sentence. You wrangle away and it’s painstaking. But you can accidentally take a good photo.

You are a poet, novelist, photographer, and as importantly, an educator. What do you see as today’s generation of students’ greatest strengths?

They’re so good at expressing their needs. I admit my generation was a bit “it is what it is. Take it or leave it. Do what you can.” But they have this kind of spirit that says, “No, we are going to get what we want.”

This new sense of self-determination has come from the efforts of LGBTQ activism, which has made space for queer folks to be more normalized in fighting for our rights, and I’m really proud to see my young students not only make space for queer voices, but for queer students to lead discussions, movements, and to center the cultural conversation around themselves and their needs with poise, determination, and pride.

And I think we’re seeing a lot of that in the political discourse as well. Their demands are heard. The students who I educate, educate me as much as I do any of them.

Is there anything else you’d like to share?

I want to thank the ��Ƶ Department of English for getting me an emergency grant in 2009, when I lost my housing and was one semester away from graduating.

My housing situation blew up and I was out on the street, and I don’t know how they did it but they bailed me out. The Department of English advocated to help me. I wrote them a note that I had to go back to Hartford and they said, “No, no, no. We’re not going to let you leave. We’re going to figure this out the one last semester.” Then they came back with the funds. I don’t know what would have happened without that.

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Walking with purpose

Audrey Peterson — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 17:09:11 +0000

Before Damon Evans ’19 graduated from ��Ƶ with a degree in Africana Studies, he had a successful career as an actor and singer, co-starring in the iconic 1970s sitcom The Jeffersons and performing on Broadway and classical music stages worldwide. Born and raised in Baltimore during a time when being gay and out to one’s family was much less common than it is today, Evans strove to live his authentic life. The young singer was working in New York City when one of the most seminal events in gay history, the Stonewall Inn uprising of June 28, 1969, occurred.

Here, he talks about his early love of opera that spurred his true calling as a classical singer, his decision to return to college, and his advice to the younger generation.

How did you get started singing?

I was living in Baltimore as a teenager with my grandparents in the 1960s, and I was afforded the opportunity through a scholarship to attend a private boarding school called Interlochen Arts Academy my senior year of high school. I studied voice at the academy’s music camp. After I graduated, I started my own opera company in Baltimore—The Baltimore Chamber Opera.

Right out of high school?

Yes. I was 17. In 1967, we presented a double opera bill of Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Medium and The Telephone at the Arena Playhouse in Baltimore—the second-oldest Black community theater group in the United States after the Karamu Playhouse in Cleveland Ohio—with a return engagement by popular demand that included excerpts from George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess. It’s important to know that all the participants were African Americans between 17 and 22. Two of those singers ended up at the Metropolitan Opera.

At a time when it was challenging at best, you were out as a gay man?

I knew at a very young age that I was gay. There was a lot of homophobia in my family to deal with. Early on I was conscious of the fact that I was a Black gay male representative in whatever I did on stage. And although my family never made an effort to get past their prejudices about homosexuality, they did instill some very positive qualities and truths in me: Once you get in the door, you have a responsibility. Once you’ve surveyed the territory and made your contribution, you bring in the next person.

You were an eyewitness to a seminal moment in history for the LGBTQ community.

Yes, the Stonewall Inn uprising. I was 19, living in New York City and working at Radio City Music Hall in 1969. I operated the elevators there. I’ve always been an avid reader. On the corner of the Monster Bar across the street from the Stonewall Inn in the Village was this bookstore, not an adult bookstore but a regular bookstore, a frequent haunt of NYU students. That’s where I bought Alain Locke’s The New Negro and Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. It was a Saturday and I had gotten off work around nine o’clock. I rode the subway down to Sheridan Square. The uprising had happened in the early morning hours. All I can remember is that the atmosphere was different—tense. I remember seeing people of color, and at that time, we were not welcome down there.

So you were taking chances being there at the intersection of race and sexuality.

Yes. The most marginal people were protesting—butch lesbians, drag queens, street kids. They were the ones who fought back that night when the police raided the Stonewall. There were moments of rejoicing that, at last, we had stood up for ourselves. The gay playwright Doric Wilson said, “This was our Rosa Parks moment, the one we had been waiting for.” Once the protests became broader and more organized, you saw images of White gays on flyers and posters. But you’ve got to give credit to the most marginalized people who fought that night, and people of color were included.

You went from stage to television screen with the role of Lionel on The Jeffersons—must-see TV at the time.

I had initially auditioned for the role of JJ in another Norman Lear show, Good Times, so when I was called to Los Angeles to audition for The Jeffersons, Norman remembered me and liked me from earlier, and I got the part without the required screen test.

Your career as a classical singer began in earnest after you left television?

There was The Jeffersons and the mini-series Roots: The Next Generation, the sequel to Roots in 1979, in which I starred as Alex Haley. In 1983, I won the role of Sportin’ Life in George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess in Chicago. We were two weeks in when I was attacked on stage in the middle of a performance. My attacker, Michael V. Smartt played the starring role of Porgy. I remember being escorted off stage after the incident and saying that I couldn’t go back on, to get my understudy ready. I don’t know why he attacked me—possibly jealousy over my television career.

You didn’t go back?

No, I couldn’t. The irony is that my singing career would never have happened without those two weeks in Chicago. Not long after I quit, I got a call from Alec Treuhaft from Columbia Artists; their classical label was CAMI. They had seen me in Chicago and wanted me to meet people who were in from London. I met the great theater director Trevor Nunn CBE, conductor Sir Simon Rattle, and artistic director Brian Dickie. They looked at my résumé and said, what is The Jeffersons? I reprised my role of Sportin’ Life at the world-famous Glyndebourne Festival in 1986. The point is, they wanted me for my talent, not my television success.

I made my Lincoln Center debut in Phillip Glass’ opera Akhnaten. I auditioned one afternoon for the great soprano Beverly Sills and her staff. Within five weeks, I found myself in rehearsals and standing on the stage of the New York State Theater. I had no time to be nervous because it all happened so quickly.

Although I had appeared at Lincoln Center I instinctively knew that being black, and gay, and a television actor that my career as a classical singer would take off overseas. From there I made my debut with the London Symphony Orchestra in the first Leonard Bernstein Festival. I also sang as a soloist with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Boston Pops Orchestra, and soloed at Carnegie Hall among other great venues.

What made you decide to go back to college?

I started my academic life at Bronx Community College at the invitation of Dr. Carolyn G. Williams, president of the college. Over the years I was in and out, in and out. I finally finished my associate degree in 2016. When it came to getting my bachelor’s degree, ��Ƶ was a no-brainer—for me it was always at the top of the CUNY system. And although I had always wanted to attend an H��ƵU, I felt I had a mini-H��ƵU with professors Lynda Day, George Cunningham, Prudence Cumberbatch, Rosamond King, and Dale Byam of the Africana Studies Department. But the genesis of seeking a bachelor’s degree, particularly in Africana studies, was thanks to my grandparents, primarily from my grandfather. After I graduated from high school, my grandmother gave me a gift—a European tour. She wanted me to have cultural enrichment and to be able to compete with White students. My grandfather had an eighth-grade education, yet the man was a prolific reader. My interest in and love of Black history and culture comes from him.

Now you are writing a memoir.

Yes. Professor Byam had been after me to do so. And it wasn’t until after I had graduated and was off campus that I felt I could do it. I did a Zoom presentation for the Africana Studies Department in April 2021, which was open to everybody. Afterward, people kept saying, oh, are you going to write a memoir? Are you going to do a one-man show? And that’s what prompted me because up until then, I not only sat on my story, but I also didn’t think I had a story to tell.

What do you want to tell today’s students?

Back when I was growing up, for me to compensate for the fact that my family could not accept I was gay, I did all these things to prove myself to them and be the “star” of the family. I was always judged by the latest achievement. So when I retired from performing, I felt like a failure. My husband put up all of these pictures on our wall showing my accomplishments throughout my life, and it wasn’t until then that it sunk in what I had achieved, and I owned it. It’s about enjoying the journey and embracing the process even when it’s not smooth. Own what you’ve accomplished. In the end, when that curtain comes down, it’s the work you leave behind. That is your legacy.

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Fashion Sense

Richard Pietras — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 15:49:35 +0000

Starting at a young age, Christopher Richards was fascinated by the fashion and dress of other cultures. He was intrigued by the complex and layered meanings of fashion as an art form, but he never thought he could create a viable career centered on fashion.

Flash forward to college, where he studied anthropology and African/African-American studies at Rollins College. During this time, Richards became particularly interested in Black American and African histories and cultures. He then completed a master’s program in museum anthropology at Arizona State University, where he examined how African art is often misinterpreted, or provided with limited descriptions, in museums. As part of the degree program, Richards arranged for an internship at the Museum for African Art in Long Island City, New York.

Although the museum no longer exists, it was helping develop an exhibition proposal on African fashion that made him realize he could blend his love of fashion, art, and African culture into a viable career path. Since then, Richards has been able to study, learn, and teach the relevancy of African art, coupled with the importance of fashion as a meaningful art form.

With a Ph.D. in African art from the University of Florida, and now a decade of teaching experience as an associate professor of art history, Richards has recently accepted a new role as director of Women’s and Gender Studies. Richards talked about how diversity, inclusion, and understanding are at the root of much of his work.

Why is African art and clothing so important to you, and what can students learn from studying it?

What I have observed, and what I often teach my students, is that dress and fashion are one of the most important and valued forms of artistic and cultural expression for Africans. Whereas specific sculptures or forms of masquerade may no longer be practiced or understood, dress and fashion are constantly being engaged with, discussed, and reimagined. It’s also incredibly accessible; anyone, regardless of gender, ethnicity, or wealth, can adorn their bodies in meaningful ways. By exploring African art and fashion, students can learn the sheer complexity of African visual culture and how their own lives and heritages are often linked to practices rooted on the African continent. It also teaches them to be culturally sensitive, and that to fully understand a specific art form or practice, it’s necessary to know its original, cultural context.

You have a new multiyear exhibit this year showcasing . How did that come about?

It started in 2015 when I guest-curated my first exhibition, Kabas and Couture: Contemporary Ghanaian Fashion. At the time, there had been very few exhibitions that examined the fashion culture of a single African nation. It was really a celebration of designer and everyday fashions in both historical and contemporary contexts. Almost 10 years later, the Harn Museum of Art has asked me to revisit that initial exhibition, drawing upon its unprecedented collection of Ghanaian fashion, which I helped build. Much has changed in the last 10 years in terms of research on African fashion, so I’m excited to be reassessing specific garments in new ways. There will be three distinct themes, with the first exhibition focusing on African feminism and fashion.

You are also the author of What inspired you to write that?

“Cosmopolitanism and Women’s Fashion in Ghana: History, Artistry and Nationalist Inspirations” by Christopher L. Richards

My dissertation focused on the history of fashion in Ghana, and I attempted to document every designer who contributed to building and maintaining Ghana’s fashion culture from the 1950s through today. While transforming my dissertation into a book, I realized that African men frequently receive more accolades and global promotion as fashion designers than women. I found this troubling, as the forerunners of Ghanaian fashion were all women. I decided to shift the focus of my book to make a clear statement: that women have been and continue to be the creators and innovators of Ghanaian fashion. I wrote the book to tell these women’s stories, and to show that fashion has been an integral part of Ghanaian culture since before the country’s independence in 1957. I ultimately hope the book can contribute to de-centering the notion of fashion as an explicitly European form of expression.

Speaking of books, you also helped launch the LBGTQ+ Resource Center’s book club with director Kelly Spivey. Talk a little about that.

The LGBTQ+ Book Club has been one of the most delightfully surprising events I’ve helped organize at ��Ƶ! It started with an idea, as a way to engage students in a more casual and relaxed setting, but to allow them to think and discuss issues critical to the LGBTQ+ community. We began in November 2023 and have had meetings every month. At one meeting, I looked around and realized we had over 20 attendees! It’s a great feeling to know that we’re fostering a supportive community for our students, through a shared love of reading, and that they enjoy coming together and discussing LGBTQ+-themed graphic novels. Although the book club is on hiatus for the summer, we’ll be back in the fall, and we already have quite a few exciting books chosen.

As the new director of the Women’s and Gender Studies program, what will your expertise and experience bring to the role, and what most do you want students to learn?

I think I am the first art historian to hold the position of director, so I’m excited to bring my background and knowledge of art and art history to the program. In terms of what I want students to learn, I think what’s most important is that having a knowledge of women’s history and issues surrounding gender is important for all fields of study. Regardless of whether a student is studying psychology or computer science, taking classes in the Women’s and Gender Studies program, and my courses on African art, will help make them more informed, culturally aware, and well-rounded/sensitive global citizens!

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Risky Business

Audrey Peterson — Sun, 02 Jun 2024 15:23:59 +0000

It took R.O. (Reese Okyong) Kwon 10 years to write her first book, The Incendiaries (Riverhead Books, 2018). Begun while in the M.F.A. program in creative writing at ��Ƶ, the novel follows a young South Korean–born American woman who becomes drawn into a dangerous cult on her college campus. The debut novel racked up accolades. Out this May, Kwon’s second novel, Exhibit (Riverhead Books, 2024), explores what she says are desires and taboos, the admission of which is risky, given her upbringing. Here, Kwon talks about how a crisis of faith spurred her vocation as a novelist, the oasis that was ��Ƶ, and what she had to overcome to be true to herself and her art.

Tell us about your background.

I was reading all the time, which is not unusual for writers. My parents—they’re Catholic, very religious—didn’t like to leave me with babysitters, so they would take me along to church gatherings on the weekend. I would bring a pile of 10 books at a time. In high school the principal asked a few of us what we wanted to be, and I said, “I want to be a novelist.” But then, when I went to college, I sort of veered away from that because I’m a first-generation Korean immigrant. I was born in Seoul, and I moved here with my parents when I was almost four.

My family had serious money troubles, and I couldn’t picture what it would be like to be an Asian writer, a Korean artist in America. Even just a handful of years ago, there really weren’t that many of us, at least not writers who were publicly visible. That paucity of examples made it even harder for me to imagine what it would look like to be a writer in America. So, I majored in economics.

What did you veer toward?

I was trying to do the practical thing. I was planning to work at the kinds of jobs that would let me buy my parents a house. But when I left college, I was working at a job that I hated, something like 80, 90 hours a week. I was just so miserable. I was only a few months into the job when I was talking to my mother, and it felt like a very cinematic moment in that I was in the grocery store staring at some cans, and I was telling her a little bit about how deeply miserable I was.

She said, “Well, why don’t you go to grad school?” I was staring at a wall of soup cans, and it felt as though the world went from grayscale to color. Grad school would at least buy me two years of cover, during which I could get back to writing. ��Ƶ still had its application period open, and I really wanted to go there in part because one of my teachers in college was friends with the novelist Michael Cunningham, who directed the M.F.A. program at the time. He’s one of my favorite writers.

So you are accepted into the M.F.A. program.

Yes, and for the first time in my life, I was living, breathing, eating fiction and words and poetry. And when I would go out for a drink with friends after class, we would just keep talking about words and fiction and poetry and books and stories. It was paradise for me. The course work was such a delight. The books we were reading were such a delight. I was so heartbroken to leave grad school; I would’ve stayed for five years if they let me.

When did you start writing your first novel?

I started The Incendiaries during grad school. The idea for it came out of a crisis of faith. Although we were very Catholic (my parents still are), in junior high I veered toward evangelical Protestantism. And I was so intense about it that my life plan was really to become a pastor or something along those lines. My dream, my hope was to have a life of serving the Lord. But then at 17, I lost that faith, and it really divided my life into before and after. It was an unwilled loss. In fact, I tried very hard to fight against that loss, and I couldn’t. It’s the pivotal loss of my life and one that is a grief that has not lessened in any meaningful way. I think in some ways it’s always at the core of what I’m writing about. Part of what was so intensely lonely about it was that not only had I lost my faith, but I also lost most of my community because pretty much almost everyone I knew at the time was very religious. The loneliness also came from the fact that I couldn’t find much about the loss of religious faith in books, which was the one place where, as a geeky, introverted high school kid, I was used to being able to go to find fellowship. I went from believing in a world in which essentially no one I loved was really going to die because I believed in life everlasting to a world in which I more or less believe that we’re made of stardust and that’s what we’ll return to. I used to believe in a world that was intricately watched over by an all-powerful God, and that’s gone.

At about the five-year mark, I very seriously thought about abandoning the book and trying to start something else. I thought maybe the book was doomed. And then I remembered that I was trying to write for that 17-year-old girl who felt pretty much alone in the world, and I wanted her to know that she’s not alone. I think with both books, The Incendiaries and my new novel Exhibit, I was trying to write for both a 17-year-old self and a present self who is tired of the loneliness.

Turning to Exhibit—what was the inspiration for that?

I realized that with The Incendiaries there were ways in which I had protected myself. The book is narrated first of all by Will, a straight White man. And I’m a queer Korean woman demographically very far from him. Readers very understandably assumed that Phoebe, the central Korean woman character in the novel, was autobiographical, and that Will, who loves Phoebe, must be very distant from me. That wasn’t the case at all. With Exhibit I wanted to walk away from protecting myself, and I really wanted to risk a great deal more.

How is it risky?

One way to describe it is that it explores what you might risk pursuing core desires. It’s full of sex; it’s full of queer, kinky sex. As an ex-Catholic, ex-evangelical Korean woman, my so much as letting the outside world guess that I might’ve had sex at any point in my life feels so dangerous to my body. So writing Exhibit came with so many anxiety and panic attacks, often daily, sometimes for hours at a time.

Are you working on anything right now?

Lately I’ve been working a lot more on some essays. There’s an essay about how much I don’t want my parents to read Exhibit because of the subject matter. They didn’t fully read my first novel until it was translated into Korean, so there’s that.

Any outside pursuits?

I love powerlifting. I can deadlift something like 30 pounds over my body weight, and I wanted to get to 150% of my body weight before Exhibit came out. It’s one of the very few things I can do that actually turns off the chattering in my brain, I think because it’s so intense, and you really can hurt yourself if you’re not paying attention. I love it. It also is a great antidote to an anxiety attack. One of the many things that I can do to cut down on anxiety is to go through some reps with weights. I strongly recommend it.

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Art Herstory

Susan Landers — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 16:18:52 +0000

It has been a big year for interdisciplinary artist Patricia Cronin. The professor of art from the School of Visual, Media, and Performing Arts earned the title of distinguished professor given by the CUNY Board of Trustees in May—the highest academic honor that CUNY can offer faculty. Soon after that, named her one of “Brooklyn’s 50 Most Fascinating People.”

Cronin’s work has stood the test of time as it examines issues of gender, sexuality, and social justice. She has enjoyed numerous solo exhibitions in the United States and internationally, and her work has been featured at the 56th Venice Biennale in Italy; the American Academy in Rome Gallery; Musei Capitolini and Centrale Montemartini, Rome; Tampa Museum of Art; Newcomb Art Museum, New Orleans; The FLAG Art Foundation, New York; the Brooklyn Museum; and the LAB Gallery, Dublin. Bronze versions of her acclaimed marble sculpture, Memorial to a Marriage (2002)—the world’s first marriage equality monument—are permanently on view at Woodlawn Cemetery, the Bronx, New York, and Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, Scotland.

During October’s National Arts and Humanities Month, we asked Cronin about the impact of her work and how she balances creating art and teaching.

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Advocating for Autism

Richard Pietras — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 15:15:43 +0000

Aaron Jean-Francois (he/they) is a neurodivergent student at ��Ƶ and a dedicated student-advocate championing for the autistic, African American, and LGBTQ+ communities by sharing his story through public speaking. Jean-Francois hopes that by sharing their experiences, other students will accept those who are uniquely different. In honor of Autism Awareness Month, we asked the sophomore about their journey with autism.

What are you studying at ��Ƶ?

I am studying mathematics, with a minor in computer science, to become a math teacher for grades seven to 12.

It is Autism Awareness Month. What do you want people to know about your journey and how you have thrived at the college?

I was born autistic. I was nonverbal until I was three years old. I was sensitive to loud noises, large crowds would overwhelm me, and I didn’t make any friends because I communicated differently. During elementary and middle school, I took speech and occupational therapy until eighth grade Once I got to high school, there were 4,000 people, so I learned to adjust to larger crowds. As a college student, I have adjusted to being around larger crowds and communicating with others. I embrace having autism because being autistic allows me to think in creative ways.

How have you learned to adjust to college life while being a neurodivergent student?

I have learned to keep track of what the due dates are and what I must keep up with. Additionally, I have been actively participating in more clubs to interact with more students in and outside of the classroom. I also enjoy helping people. The Center for Student Disability Services helped me navigate college a bit more easily. Besides giving me extra time, they also provide me with advice on how to adapt to college.

What do you do at the LGBTQ+ Resource Center?

At the LGBTQ+ Resource Center, I am the treasurer of the LGBT Alliance Club. I keep track of the budgets and finances for every event that we do. The club is dedicated to uplifting the LGBTQ+ community and bringing the school community together.

How did you get involved in the LGBT Alliance Club?

I originally wanted to join the club in 2021, but because of the pandemic, I figured that most people wouldn’t be there. During the fall 2022 semester, I decided to take a chance and join. I wanted to connect with like-minded people who are in the LGBTQ+ community. As an active member of the club, it feels great to meet with other people who are like me because it lets me know that I’m not alone and that there are people out there who accept me for being out and proud. The LGBT Alliance Club creates a supporting environment for people like me and the rest of LGBTQ+ community.

You recently received the Marsha P. Johnson Award LGBTQIA+ Leadership Award from the ��Ƶ National Association of Black Accountants. What do you find most rewarding in being a leader in the college’s LGBTQ+ community?

I was very excited and honored to receive the award. To me, being a great leader is all about uplifting others and being proactive in helping people in need. As a leader in the college’s LGBTQ+ community, I get to show people that it is okay to be who you are and that you shouldn’t be ashamed of who you are regardless of what other people say about you.

What message do you want to convey to the college community about autism?

My message is that autistic people communicate differently and that they should be supported for who they are, whether they are a person of color, LGBTQ+, or neurodivergent.

What advice would you give to students who have autism?

If a student who has autism is aiming to be a better communicator, it takes time, it doesn’t happen overnight, but it can happen. Additionally, don’t be afraid to ask for accommodations such as extra time on an exam.

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Call Them by Their Name

Audrey Peterson — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 17:37:50 +0000

What’s in a name? A lot.

Senior Lily Bello knows this, and so do clients at the Name Change Project of the (TLDEF), where she completed an internship this past fall.

“Finding work is very difficult when your documents don’t all match up,” says Bello. ”A legal name change cuts down on the discrimination you face.”

The reality of this—that names are a nexus for the legal, personal, and political—is what spurs people to contact the Name Change Project. And when they do, it is to divulge crucial personal information to someone they have never met, maybe through a translator.

As an intern, Bello was that person.

She conducted initial phone interviews with community members interested in TLDEF’s pro bono name change services. Her job was to find out whether interviewees—mostly based in New York or Pennsylvania, but some from elsewhere in the United States—were eligible for the program to connect them with a lawyer.

But during this process, she discussed sensitive topics, such as previous marriages and divorces. “I’ve had people start crying on the phone, so it’s a lot to process.”

For these interviews, Bello—an anthropology major and LGBTQ studies minor, preparing for graduate work in the anthropological study of transgender communities—drew on her ��Ƶ training, enacting what she sees as the “heart of anthropology”: communication with other people, the attempt to “get on their level and see what they’re seeing, to be able to relate to them easier.”

And when conversations got difficult, Bello shared her own story. It became a point of connection “that I am trans and that I have been through the name change process already.” Despite the challenging nature of these conversations, “people are incredibly appreciative of the free resource,” says Bello of the Name Change Project’s clients, all of whom have low incomes. “So definitely it feels rewarding.”

Professor of and Paisley Currah connected Bello with the internship, designed to accompany the LGBTQ studies minor (but not restricted to students who choose that minor).

Currah, who studies transgender law and policy, has worked with TLDEF in the past, including recently as an expert witness. When a contact at the organization reached out to him about the Name Change Project internship, he recognized it as a valuable opportunity to match “competent, qualified, caring students with a population that’s really in need.”

Bello was the first ��Ƶ student to complete the internship. Her strong work—she has been asked to return in a paid capacity this semester—has paved the way for other ��Ƶ students in the future.

Currah is also looking to expand the LGBTQ community internship so that more students have opportunities to do meaningful and engaging work, at a variety of institutions. “Because I know people, I’ve been able to place [students] in good internships,” he says. “And now, I would like to scale it up.”

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Author and Activist Barbara Smith to Lecture at ��Ƶ on March 16

Communications — Mon, 13 Mar 2023 14:32:57 +0000

In one of her first public appearances since 2020 that will serve as an extraordinary complement to ��Ƶ’s Women’s History Month celebration, author and activist will discuss the values that have shaped her remarkable life with the extended campus community on March 16 from 5 to 6:30 p.m.

Smith’s lecture, “What I Believe,” will be an intimate exploration into her life as a trailblazer who broke new ground as a Black feminist, lesbian, activist, author, publisher, and independent scholar who inspired generations. She was among the first to define an African American women’s literary tradition and to build Black women’s studies and Black feminism in the United States. She has been politically active in many movements for social justice since the 1960s.

“I am so honored to serve as the Hess Scholar-in-Residence during the 2022–23 academic year,” Smith said. “At a time when some in our nation wish to limit the information and ideas that students can access, I look forward to expansive dialogues with members of ��Ƶ’s wonderfully diverse community.”

“As a writer, publisher, teacher, and organizer, Barbara Smith is a transformative force for justice. Her work has reshaped the American academy and society. We are honored to host her for a week of events culminating in the Hess Memorial Lecture,” said Gaston Alonso, interim director for the Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities and associate professor of political science at ��Ƶ.

This lecture event is free and open to the public and serves as the main highlight of the college’s for 2022–23.

The event will also feature President Michelle J. Anderson as well as , distinguished professor of political science, and Professor of English , interim dean, School of Humanities and Social Sciences.

On November 29, Smith was part of a conversation on campus with Theoharis when they discussed selected clips from the documentary , which features Smith and is based on Theoharis’ research and of the same name.

A prolific writer and publisher, Smith has edited three major collections about Black women: Conditions: Five, The Black Women’s Issue (with Lorraine Bethel, 1979); All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies (with Gloria T. Hull and Patricia Bell-Scott, 1982); and Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (1983). She is also the co-author, with Elly Bulkin and Minnie Bruce Pratt, of Yours in Struggle: Three Feminist Perspectives on Anti-Semitism and Racism (1984). Smith is the general editor of The Reader’s Companion to U.S. Women’s History (with Wilma Mankiller, Gwendolyn Mink, Marysa Navarro, and Gloria Steinem, 1998). A collection of her essays, The Truth That Never Hurts: Writings on Race, Gender, and Freedom, was published by Rutgers University Press in 1998. Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith, edited by Alethia Jones and Virginia Eubanks with Barbara Smith, was published by SUNY Press in 2014.

The evening will also include mezzo-soprano Lucia Bradford and the Conservatory Singers, ��Ƶ’s select chamber ensemble, who will perform “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around.” The group will be conducted by Associate Professor/Director of Choral Studies , director of the New York Philharmonic Chorus.

This signature event will be held on Thursday, March 16, from 5 to 6:30 p.m. in the Claire Tow Theater at ��Ƶ. It will also be livestreamed on the .

Highlights From the Hess Week Calendar, March 13–20

Full calendar and speakers

Barbara Smith—Hess Scholar-in-Residence Library Exhibit: An exhibit located in the main entrance of the ��Ƶ Library that will highlight the works and legacy of Barbara Smith. Archival material from the Robert L. Hess Collection will also be presented. Curated by Professor and Librarian Helen Georgas.

March 13, 11 a.m.–12:15 p.m.: President Anderson Welcomes 2022–23 Hess Scholar-in-Residence Barbara Smith Woody Tanger Auditorium, ��Ƶ Library, and on Zoom

March 13, 2:15–3:30 p.m.: “If Black women were free…”: The State of Black Feminism 2023 Woody Tanger Auditorium, ��Ƶ Library, and on Zoom

March 14, 2:15–3:45 p.m.: “Transforming the U.S. Academy” Woody Tanger Auditorium, ��Ƶ Library, and livestreamed on the .

March 15, 11 a.m.–12:30 p.m.: “Justice or Just Us?: Defining a Queer Agenda” Woody Tanger Auditorium, ��Ƶ Library, and livestreamed on the .

March 15, 3:40–4:55 p.m.: “Teaching as a Liberating Practice” Woody Tanger Auditorium, ��Ƶ Library, and livestreamed on the .

March 16, 11 a.m.–12:30 p.m.: “Working for Liberation and Having a Damn Good Time” Woody Tanger Auditorium, ��Ƶ Library, and livestreamed on the .

March 20, 6–7:15 p.m.: “Putting Class Back Into Intersectionality” Online via Zoom

About the Robert L. Hess Scholar-in-Residence Program

The Robert L. Hess Scholar-in-Residence Program, established by ��Ƶ, is supported by the Robert L. Hess Fund. The program serves as a permanent tribute to the scholarly commitment of Robert L. Hess, exemplified during his tenure as president of ��Ƶ. It represents the ideal of the educated individual—knowledgeable, thoughtful, inquiring, alive to the shared purposes and concerns linking all intellectual pursuits. More particularly, it evokes the scholarly and academic virtues embodied in the curriculum at ��Ƶ.

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Author and Activist Barbara Smith Serving as ��Ƶ’s Hess Scholar-in-Residence for 2022-23

Susan Landers — Thu, 17 Nov 2022 11:43:45 +0000

Barbara Smith—who has been politically active in many movements for social justice since the 1960s as an author, activist, and independent scholar—is ��Ƶ’s Hess Scholar-in-Residence for 2022-23. Smith was among the first to define an African American women’s literary tradition and to build Black women’s studies and Black feminism in the United States.

Jeanne Theoharis

On November 29, from 2:15 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., Smith will be part of a conversation on campus with ��Ƶ’s Distinguished Professor of Political Science Jeanne Theoharis. The pair will discuss selected clips from the documentary, “,” which features Smith and is also based on Theoharis’ research and book of the same name. Smith and Theoharis will explore Rosa Parks’ life of freedom fighting, how the many myths of Parks and the movement cloud our understandings of social change, the roles and experiences of women in the movement, and the lessons this history provides for the work of organizing and social justice today. After their conversation, there will be a Q&A period for students, staff, and faculty.

The event will be held in the library’s Woody Tanger Auditorium and will also be livestreamed on the Wolfe Institute’s YouTube channel. At the speaker’s request, masks are required for the in-person event. Room 441 in the library will also be open for guests to watch the lecture online.

You can watch the livestream of the event

To stream the documentary for free before the event, ��Ƶ students, faculty, and staff can email: wolfeinstitute@brooklyn.cuny.edu

More Hess Scholar-in-Residence lectures will be held in March 2023, and a complete schedule of events will be made available soon.

LGBTQ+ Resource Center Archives - ������Ƶ