Department of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies

April 14, 2026

2:30-4:00PM | Mandel Forum

The United States finds itself in regular cycles of racial reckoning and retrenchment—from Reconstruction to so-called Redemption and Jim Crow, from the enactment of landmark civil rights legislation to the execution of the Southern strategy, and from 2020s multiracial protests to the swift elimination of policies etching out a more inclusive society. In Black Evidence, Smith investigates the history of a habit that has diminished the quality of American democracy: muting the testimonies and insights of its Black citizens. This investigation pinpoints the technologies of resistance to Black evidence: excluding, gaslighting, terrorizing, medicalizing, and adultifying. Together, these tools turn Black witnesses into liars in the courtroom, Black patients into super bodies that don’t feel pain in healthcare settings, Black people into subhumans in scientific experiments, Black children into superpredators—and democracy into a prerogative state. Smith emphasizes the idea that none of this is inevitable and outlines some of the skills needed to build a truly multiracial democracy. 

About the Author

Candis Watts Smith 

Sponsored by the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the Department of African and African American Studies, and the Department of Sociology. is Professor of Political Science at Duke University.  She is the author or co-author of dozens of articles and books, including Stay Woke: A People’s Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter and Racial Stasis: The Millennial Generation and the Stagnation of Racial Attitudes in American Politics. Her research on the patchwork of unequal access to reproductive healthcare resources across the United States has been supported by the National Science Foundation. Smith is a co-host of the Democracy Works podcast, and her TEDx talk on myths about racism has been viewed over two million times.

Sponsored by the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the Department of African and African American Studies, the Department of Politics, and the Department of Sociology.

October 23, 2025

2:45-4PM | International Lounge

Join us for a reading with Carson Faust from his debut novel If the Dead Belong Here (Viking, 2025). Carson will read from his novel followed by a discussion moderated by Dr. Preston Taylor Stone, Ph.D., the 2025-2027 Helaine B. Allen and Cynthia L. Berenson Postdoctoral Fellow.

About the Novel 

When six-year-old Laurel Taylor vanishes without a trace, her family is left shattered, struggling to navigate the darkness of grief and unanswered questions. As their search turns to despair, Laurel’s older sister, Nadine, begins experiencing nightmares that blur the line between dream and reality, and she becomes convinced that Laurel’s disappearance could be connected to other family tragedies. Guided by her elders, Nadine sets out to uncover whether laying the ghosts to rest is the key to finding her sister and healing her fractured family. 

About the Author

Carson Faust is the debut author of If the Dead Belong Here (Viking, 2025). He is two-spirit, and an enrolled member of the Edisto Natchez-Kusso Tribe of South Carolina. He is the recipient of artist fellowships and residencies from the McKnight Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, and the Camargo Foundation. His fiction has appeared in TriQuarterly, ANMLY, Waxwing Magazine, among other journals, and has been anthologized in Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology (Vintage, 2023). He lives in Minnesota, where he is at work on a second novel. (Text courtesy of Carson Faust.)

Sponsored by the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the Gender and Sexuality Center, the Mandel Center for the Humanities, and the Massachusetts Center for Native American Awareness (MCNAA).  

October 15, 2025

3-5PM | Rapaporte Treasure Hall

The 31 st Tillie K. Lubin Symposium considers our contemporary moment through the prism of madness through a conversation with Senegalese author and feminist activist Marietou Mbaye, pen name, Ken Bugul. The discussion will be grounded in her novel, The Abandoned Baobab (University of Virginia Press, 2008). Ken Bugul will be joined by Professor Marame Guèye (East Carolina University) and Professor Odile Cazenave (Boston University) in a conversation moderated by Professor Émilie Diouf (Brandeis University).

About the Speakers

• Marietou Mbaye choose to adopt the pen name Ken Bugul, which means the one nobody wants, in Wolof. She is an internationally acclaimed Senegalese novelist with 11 novels. Le Baobab fou (1982) -in English, The Abandoned Baobab (University of Virginia Press, 2008) - marked her entry into World literature. The novel has been translated into several languages and has been characterized as a feminist manifesto. It is a canonical text in Francophone African Literature. Ken Bugul’s novels are introspective and center around questions of gender, sexuality, madness, African spiritualities, indigenous approaches to healing, ecology and urban development, race and migration.
• Marame Guèye is a Professor of African and African Diaspora Literature in the Department of English at East Carolina University where she also serves as Thomas Rivers Distinguished Professor for Global Understanding. Her research is on the verbal art of women, hip hop, and migration.
• Odile Cazenave is Professor of French Studies in Romance Studies, African Studies, and the Center for the Study of Europe, and is an Associate Faculty of the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. Her research interests focus on the writing and reception of postcolonial literary and filmic narratives in French.

This event will be moderated by Dr. Émilie Diouf, Assistant Professor of English, African and African-American Studies, and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Brandeis University.

April 8, 2025

5pm-8pm | Rapaporte Treasure Hall

“Are scientists the poets of the natural world? Or are poets scientists of the imagined world?” posits Mali, one of the characters in Anton Hur’s debut novel, Toward Eternity: A Novel (HarperCollins Publishers, 2024). This conversation with South Korea’s preeminent translator and author will delve into the central themes of this intimate work of speculative fiction: the “art” of being human, language, the possibilities and perils of technology like AI, love, futurity, and so much more. Hur will also explore what it means to cultivate a literary life and navigate the world of literary publishing. 

March 25, 2025

4-6PM | Mandel Forum, Mandel Center for Humanities

How does a changing world and its progressively counter-democratic ideologies and trajectories impact how we theorize, live, teach, and apply gender and feminisms of Africa in/and the US, European, and global African diaspora? Three distinguished and experienced feminist and gender studies leaders, scholars and activists provide critical perspectives on this perilous historical moment. A reception with refreshments will follow the discussion.

About the Speakers:

• Dr. Nemata Blyden is the Armstead L. Robinson Professor of 19th Century African American History, the University of Virginia.
• Dr. J. Jarpa Dawuni is a lawyer, social entrepreneur, feminist scholar, Associate Professor of Political Science at Howard University, and the director of the Institute for African Women in Law.
• Dr. Christine Vogt-William is the Director of the Gender and Diversity Office of the Africa Multiple Cluster, University of Bayreuth, Germany.

This event will be moderated by Dr. Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso, Associate Professor of African and African American Studies at Brandeis University

November 14, 2024

5:30pm | Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall at Brandeis Women's Studies Research Center

In honor of National Native American Heritage Month, WGS, in partnership with the Massachusetts Center for Native American Awareness (MCNAA), will hold this reading of Fire Exit, with Dr. Claudia Fox Tree (MCNAA) who will facilitate the discussion. Event location TBA.

We invite you to register for the event to receive a complimentary copy of the book to read prior to the community reading group by Thursday, September 26. RSVP via link in our bio. Will be held at the Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall at the Brandeis Women's Studies Research Center.