Feminist Foundations

Is the AI we use to understand the world might be restricting the way we view the world? AI systems are playing an increasingly important role in analysis, prediction, and decision-making. However, they are trained on mainstream and uncritical datasets that reproduce stereotypical gender roles, abilities, and behavioral patterns, reinforcing biases, which leads to a limited understanding of society.

Feminist work hard to fight against damaging narratives. These are stories designed to harm or limit us. They stymie our imagination and vision of what the world can be. 

Sometimes we get called killjoys because of this. But the "joy" we kill is built upon pain, violence, and damage. We see this in narratives such as: Girls don't like sports. Women are bad at math. She asked for it. Feminists refute such world-constraining stories. In their place, we fashion realities that are caring, restorative, and life-affirming. 

We celebrate and share the work of UC Davis feminist scholars who show us why we need queer, feminist collective movements. Take a moment to learn more about their work. They bring us hope, vision, and inspiration to continue forging paths towards liberation for all.

Take a deep breath in. Go ahead. Now let it out… In that breath is 4 billion years of Earth's history. This was the beginning of Dr. Dawn Sumner's talk at the UCD Feminist Research Institute. Dr. Sumner is the FRI director and a geobiologist who currently conducts research about oxygen levels, cyanobacteria, and microbial mats in Antarctica. Her opening invited the audience to reflect on our interconnected relationship with geological time, one of the themes of the talk.

This course investigates how ecofeminism and queer theory—often inspired by indigenous and decolonial perspectives—disrupt traditional narratives surrounding nature, culture, and power. We will unsettle boundaries between dichotomies such as nature/culture, life/death, mind/body, human/non-human, matter/spirit, and within various social constructs such as race and gender. We will trace the violent effects of patriarchy, human-exceptionalism, white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism, and modern science.

The founders of the Feminist Research Institute created a brilliant vision with immense possibility. We are making good on their vision. We have something solid we can stand on that shows people what we are about. 

I was lucky that when I woke up on November 6, I caught a live stream by Alexis Pauline Gumbs. I recommend watching the entire stream. Gumbs reflected on how during the first 100 days in office, a new president often engages in a display of power by pardoning people, passing laws, implementing new practices, and selecting appointees.. We can do our own version of this too.

In January of 2023, I joined the Feminist Research Institute (FRI) as a research assistant and worked on a project exploring the mobility justice movement. As an undergraduate student new to research, I was expecting to mostly observe the graduate students and FRI’s Director, Sarah McCullough, as they championed the project. In most research settings, undergraduate students play minor roles and mostly observe. Instead, I became a fully integrated member of the research team, an experience that has profoundly shaped my understanding of equity, mentorship, and learning.

Is it possible to intervene in the racist zoning practices that are fueling displacement in cities across the United States? FRI Postdoctoral Fellow Kai Wen Yang’s new article in Urban Geography, Zoning initiatives, divide or unite?

Our fifth annual 2024 FRI Transformative Research Symposium on May 10, 2024 was a success! Thank you to all of our presenters, FRI staff, and attendees.