Feminist Foundations

Thank you to everyone who participated in making FRI’s Strategic Planning Workshop a great success!* 

More than 30 people showed up on a stormy morning and joined us online. Those in attendance included undergraduate and graduate students and faculty from over 15 departments, staff from several offices, one state government agency, as well as engaged community members. 

Celebrating our Past and Envisioning FRI’s Future

On December 1, 2023, FRI hosted its annual Open House from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Thank you to all of the community members and UC Davis faculty, staff, and undergraduate and graduate students who attended. Together, we reflected on the history of FRI, discussed our current programming and feminist research visions, and began conversations about our plans for the future. 

Reflecting on the History of the Feminist Research Institute 

FRI's Future Faces of Research series features the voices of undergraduate students writing about their experiences doing justice and equity focused research.

What values define the way the Feminist Research Institute strives to operate? This was the question the FRI team explored this past year. We landed on three words: humility, collaboration and liberation. These emerged from a process modeling the methods of Max Liborion’s CLEAR Lab, an anti-colonial & feminist lab. We started by sharing stories about a moment that made us glad to be a part of FRI or another learning/activist/professional community.

In “Serena Williams’ Catsuit and #BlackMommaMagic: Speaking Back Through Fashion,” published today in Dismantle, Sarah Rebolloso McCullough brings a feminist sports studies lens to recent controversies surrounding Serena Williams’ tennis attire, and situates them in a historical context that dates back centuries.

Kalindi Vora investigates relationships between gestational surrogates and commissioning parents as part of a larger discussion of the ethics of increasingly globalized assisted reproductive technologies in “Biopolitics of Trust in the Technosphere: A Look at Surrogacy, Labor, and Family,” published in the latest issue of Technosphere magazine. 

Cultural Studies doctoral candidate Jeanelle Hope is researching the role black women artists play in combatting gentrification in the Oak Park neighborhood of Sacramento.  Hope places gentrification in a greater historical context of a racial resegregation that has been ongoing since deindustrialization.

What opportunities and tensions arise in the production of public scholarship at the intersection of scholar-activism and civic engagement in California's Central Valley?

Indigeneity, settler colonialism, and borders are central frames for the feminist research of Ethnic Studies doctoral candidates Leslie Quinatanilla and Jennifer Mogannam.  Quintanilla’s research on the U.S.-Mexico border is in conversation with women of color feminism.  Mogannam examines what is happening in Palestine through a framework of settler colonialism.

Pharmacologist Renae Ryan discusses gender equity in STEM, institutional change-making, and the value and importance of inclusive and diverse research teams.

Renae Ryan is a Professor of Biochemical Pharmacology in the School of Medical Sciences at Sydney University, Academic Director of Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE), and Chair of the Sydney Medical School Gender Equity Committee.