Our university has made national headlines due to public controversies related to freedom of speech, sexual harassment, trafficking, and lack of accountability. From Ted Carter’s surprise resignation, to Les Wexner’s ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, to the release of the documentary Surviving Ohio State, our campus community has been grappling with the impact and implications of those events--including feelings of anger, pain, and confusion.
Struggles at OSU have occurred within a wider context of #MeToo. Both at OSU and beyond, #MeToo remains both an active and important global campaign surrounding gender-based violence, as well as a movement with uneven itineraries, goals, and outcomes, thus warranting further examination.
On September 17th, the FREE Center will host a day dedicated to the feminist conversations that are essential to furthering our understanding of responsibility, transparency, and accountability.
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10:30am – 12:30pm:
Panel Discussion: Sexual Violence and Accountability at OSU and Beyond,
featuring HB Franchino-Olsen, Camille Hébert, Syreeta Palackdharry and Eliza Sabo
Representing a variety of different standpoints, this panel will engage in a timely conversation that addresses the larger questions related to sexual violence at the institutional, local and national levels.
The discussion will be followed by an audience participation segment
12:30 - 1:45pm:
Lunch and opportunity to participate in collaborative art project: A Textile of Hope and Healing - Arts Intervention and Procession
Participants in this lunch-time workshop will help to create a fabric banner that features words/images of healing and hope dedicated to those impacted by sexual violence. When completed, we will put this banner in motion by asking all participants to help us carry it across nearby public spaces on campus after the afternoon book talk.
2:00 - 4:00pm:
Book talk: #MeToo and the Politics of Transnational Feminism
Chaitanya Lakimsetti (Associate Professor of Sociology, Texas A&M) and Vanita Reddy (Associate Professor of English and Core Faculty in Women’s and Gender Studies, Texas A&M) will give a public talk about their book, #MeToo and the Politics of Transnational Feminism, which takes a transnational and comparative feminist approach to #MeToo, focusing on the multiple ways that feminist voices from Argentina, Egypt, India, Pakistan, South Korea, the US, and the UK have pushed the boundaries of what counts as politics, justice, solidarity, violence, precarity, and vulnerability. In doing so, the book shows how an engagement with #MeToo allows us to extend and sharpen the empirical, theoretical, and methodological parameters of transnational feminist thought.
The talk will be followed by an audience Q&A.
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All are invited to join.
Registration is requested for planning purposes.
The FREE Center values in-person attendance and engagement at our events. To submit an accommodation request, please email free@osu.edu
