About WGSS graduate programs
WGSS graduate programs continue to thrive at OSU. In Autumn 2025, we welcomed six new graduate students to our program. We also celebrated graduating students, including two MA and one PhD, who completed their degrees in Spring and Summer 2026. In addition to navigating important topics and discussions in the classroom, our graduate students are also further demonstrating their learning and development in other spaces through participation in student organizations or other leadership roles. Two of our students were also awarded and completed fellowship experiences during the academic year through Global Arts + Humanities Cross-Disciplinary Research Exchange and American Association of University Women. We are so pleased that our graduate students are being recognized beyond our department for their engagement in such impactful scholarship.
Celebrating our 2026 graduates
The department celebrated three recent graduates who completed their graduate studies this year in WGSS. Learn more below about the future plans for one of our recent grads!
Congratulations to:
- Kashif Dennis, PhD, Summer '26
- Hannah Moore, MA, Summer '26
- Nowshin Sharmila, MA, Spring '26
Nowshin Sharmila
In fall 2026, Sharmila will begin her PhD journey at OSU in the Department of Geography. Her research interests lie in feminist labor geography and labor economy. In her master's research in WGSS, she studied how sex workers in Bangladesh navigate a legal gray zone that the state uses to control and exploit their labor through bribery and extortion mechanisms. In her future doctoral research in Geography, she intends to work on Bangladeshi female migrant domestic workers in the Gulf, asking how broker networks, state policies, and household relations under kafala system combine to produce gendered unfreedom. Drawing on feminist frameworks from WGSS training, she will bring a geographic lens to understand how moral economies of control shape migrant women's lives across borders. Congratulations, Sharmila, as you begin this next chapter at OSU!
Spotlighting our alumni: Q&A
Kristen Kolenz, PhD, '20
Q. Can you share about your current field of work?
A. I’m an assistant professor of international studies and the incoming chair of Latin American studies at Centre College, a small liberal arts college in central Kentucky. Some of my favorite classes to teach focus on social justice and race in a global perspective and through a feminist lens. I’ve also really loved bringing students into my advocacy work; I’ve helped students find justice-oriented internships and jobs, worked side-by-side with them on my own projects, and mentored emerging research that takes seriously students’ lived experiences. My work in Central America has led me to develop a deep commitment to immigration justice in the US. Since 2021, I have worked closely with El Refugio, an Atlanta-based nonprofit that accompanies immigrants at Stewart Detention Center and their loved ones through hospitality, visitation, support, and advocacy. We have released two reports on medical neglect and abuse inside the detention center, organized a collection of letters and art from over ten years of correspondence with people in detention, and curated an evolving art exhibition.
Q. Can you share how you believe your time with WGSS prepared or benefited you in your current profession, artistic projects and/or activist work?
A. As a teacher and mentor to undergraduate students, I draw on the examples set by my professors at Ohio State all the time. I share reading and note-taking strategies that Cricket Keating taught my cohort in our first years of coursework. When I’m reading and grading student papers, I remember the impact of the affirmations that Guisela Latorre and Shannon Winnubst wrote in the margins of my dissertation chapters alongside very constructive criticism. In my seminars, I recall the impact of active listening and timely intervention that Mytheli Sreenivas modeled in her Transnational Feminisms class. I’m deeply aware of and grateful for the theoretical and practical foundation in feminist pedagogy that WGSS at Ohio State gifts its students. I’m a confident teacher and mentor because of my training at OSU.
Sessions on sex
The Sex-Ed Program is a wonderful campus resource run fully by our very own WGSS graduate students. The program offers presentations on Sexual Pleasure, Health, and Safety (SPHS) to facilitate dialogue focused on pleasure, health, and safe(r) sex practices. PhD student, Sawyer Federinko, who began in the program in Autumn 2025, has taken initiative to continue innovating on how we can promote sexual education at the university.
During Spring 2026 semester, Sawyer had the opportunity to be a panelist for SASHA’s Sex Week, alongside Sociology graduate student, Sinem Esengen, and dating coach and educator, G'ontae King. Topics discussed on the panel were pleasure, consent and communication, birth control methods and their effectiveness, as well as gender versus sex versus sexuality. Additionally, Sawyer presented to undergraduate students in Dr. LaVelle Ridley’s course, WGSST 2230: Gender, Sexuality & Race in Popular Culture. They explored similar topics as the panel, in addition to topics of anatomy, as well as activities for students to independently explore and process their thoughts and experiences.
Dr. Ridley shared her experience in having Sawyer join her classroom, noting how “Sawyer did an excellent job using digital tools and small group exercises to create a comfortable environment for students to learn about sex education, a first for the majority of the 36 student class…Sawyer proceeded to offer a pleasure-centered and LGBTQ+ inclusive presentation that emphasized communication and consent throughout, championed self-advocacy in intimate and clinical settings, and, most importantly, made space for a range of emotions from the students, including embarrassment, shame, and discomfort." Dr.Ridley also noted how student evaluations included references to the “presentation's relevance to our discussions about pop culture, particularly the dominant cisheterosexist depictions of sexuality, shame around women and trans/queer people's bodies, and the importance of consent and agency in interpersonal interactions.”
We look forward to hearing more about the offerings from the Sex-Ed Program in the coming academic year! If interested in hosting the program for a presentation, Sawyer welcomes you to reach out (federinko.1@osu.edu)!
The impact of student groups
Amika Starr is a second year MA student in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) who participated in various student groups this past year. Their favorite organizing experience was with the Revolutionary Student Union (RSU), facilitating monthly events writing letters to people who are incarcerated.
Q: What is the Revolutionary Student Union (RSU), and what are some of the events you do?
A: RSU is the Columbus-based branch of a national student group by the same name. It focuses on politicizing and mobilizing local campuses in the struggle against racialized capitalism and heterosexist oppression. Last academic year (2025-2026), we collaborated with several other clubs, such as Ohio Youth Climate Justice (OHYCJ) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and organized various events, including protests, townhalls, teach-ins, film screenings, and monthly gatherings writing letters to people who have been caged by the state.
Q: What sparked the idea to host letter-writing events?
A: Our club was part of a national movement protesting the imprisonment of Tarek Bazrouk, a Palestinian student activist arrested in New York during the summer of 2025. We organized a rally demanding his release, but still wanted to do more. That’s when I suggested holding a get-together where people could write him and other incarcerated folks letters of support. This was inspired by work I had done back in my hometown in Nevada with a mutual aid group called Radical Seeds of Reno.
Q: What steps did you take to get started?
A: I began with researching, mainly searching online for incarcerated folks who were looking for penpals and creating a list of their names and mailing addresses. We then collected supplies, trying to use stuff we already had, like notebook paper or envelopes lying around people’s houses. I also had the pleasure of bringing letter-writing to the WGSS Love Club event in February, where attendees wrote 25 letters to Tarek.
Q: What is the most rewarding part of letter writing?
A: The opportunity to learn from people as they write and theorize about their experiences in prisons, connecting their personal realities to larger systems of inequality. One of my pen-pals is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer who has sent me some of her pieces that critique the prison-industrial complex in really brilliant, creative ways, especially as its violences are enacted against her body as a queer Asian woman. She and I also print out our favorite feminist essays, annotate them, and send them back and forth, like Mia Mingus’s work on abolition. Mingus is an Asian American activist for disability and transformative justice.
Q: What are some funny or interesting moments you've had with folks at the events or who you've written to?
A: I always have fun doodling in my letters. If folks are ok with it, I like to draw them. My favorite drawing was for the friend I mentioned earlier, when I designed a cover for her cookbook of microwave-based recipes, with her leaning smugly against a microwave.
Q: What are your hopes for letter writing and other RSU events next year?
A: I hope to continue writing letters and organizing different events. Right now, RSU is focusing on fighting mass surveillance, specifically the proliferation of Flock cameras across Columbus. A national issue, really, since my summer back in Reno has been spent attending city council meetings over Flock cameras. Surveillance of our campuses and communities is tied back to the prison system; our fight needs to be interconnected as well.