With every feminist critique of contemporary arrangements lies a vision of the world beyond–a feminist imagination. This panel explores artistic, scholarly, and activist practice and the utopian visions that drive and sustain it. What kinds of worlds do feminist, queer, trans, and other visionaries dream of? How do those worlds not only disrupt the existing gendered, sexual, racial, and imperialist capitalist order, but offer the possibility of new forms of collective and creative existence, and new forms of collaboration?  What insights do these utopian visions have for feminist technologies, embodiments, labor relations, ecological arrangements, and creative practice? What fractures or failures do our utopian visions reveal? How do they link our feminist histories to our feminist futures? How do they begin to enact those visions in the present? 
Panelists:

•  Adrienne Keene, Joukousky Family Assistant Professor of American Studies, Brown University
  Adrienne Keene is an Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnic Studies. Her research areas include college access, transition, and persistence for American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian Students, including the role of pre-college access programs in student success. Additionally, she examines representations of Native peoples in popular culture, Native cultural appropriation in fashion and design, and the ways that Indigenous peoples are using the internet, social media, and new media to challenge misrepresentations and create new and innovative spaces for art and activism.
  As a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, Dr. Keene has a deep personal commitment to exploring research methodologies that empower Native communities and privilege Native voices and perspectives, with the ultimate goal of increasing educational outcomes for Native students. She is also dedicated to pushing back against stereotypes and misrepresentations of Native peoples on her blog, Native Appropriations (nativeappropriations.com), which has received national and international attention as a voice on contemporary Indigenous issues. 

• Frances Roberts-Gregory, Program Director, Initiative for Energy Justice, Northeastern University
  Dr. Frances Roberts-Gregory joins Northeastern University as a Program Director for the Initiative for Energy Justice. Her feminist activist research explores the experiences of women and youth of color advocating for environmental, energy, and climate justice, with a specific focus on Black and Indigenous women in Gulf Coast Louisiana. She completed her doctoral studies at UC Berkeley in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management and is a co-founding member of the Feminist Agenda for a Green New Deal. Frances is also the advisory board co-chair for the Hive Fund for Climate & Gender Justice and supports the Women and Gender Constituency at UNFCCC COPs. Her areas of scholarship include: Gender and Climate Change; Feminist Environmentalism(s); Environmental, Energy, and Climate Justice; Community Geography.
• Jayna Brown, Professor & Chair of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, Brown University
  As well as numerous essays on race, popular music and social dance, media, and black feminism, Brown is the author of two books, both published by Duke University Press: Babylon Girls: Black Women Performers and the Shaping of the Modern (2008) which argues for the centrality of black expressive cultures to the meanings of modernity, and Black Utopias: Speculative Life and the Music of Other Worlds (2021), which traces black radical utopian practice, from the psychic travels of Sojournal Truth to the cosmic transmutations of Sun Ra. Brown is co-editor of the journal Social Text and has also been a contributing journalist for NPR's music programming. Her areas of research and specialization include black expressive cultures, speculative/science fictions, science studies, and gender and sexuality. Her current work is located at the intersections of race, performance and ecology.
• Payal Kumar, Planned Parenthood
  Payal Kumar (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist, LGBTQ+ health equity worker, and community organizer based on Massachusett and Pawtucket territory. In their clinical work, they manage the Gender Affirming Care program at the Planned Parenthood League of MA, with a background in translational research and advocacy against medical violence. As an artist, they have performed spoken word and facilitated imaginative workshops in different spaces across the country - grassroots protests, universities, national gatherings like the Allied Media Conference, and gallery spaces like the Museum of Fine Arts. Through murals, zines, and paintings, Payal's visual work weaves together folk art from their ancestral villages with Americana motifs to amplify movement work and explore the in-between spaces of trauma, coloniality, and embodiment. They are on the board of Subcontinental Drift Boston, a monthly open mic space dedicated to uplifting South Asian voices, and are active with transnational movements fighting for labor, caste, and gender equity. Through creative strategies, they cultivate playful intergenerational dialogues that challenge us to unearth our collective power.
• and me! Yin Q

HOSTED BY CONSORTIUM OF WOMEN & GENDER STUDIES/ MIT

My child asked me this morning, at 10 years old, “Mommy, am I pretty?” and I want to cry. It’s a question that is inevitable and is too powerful. I have to say yes but I also say “You are more important than Pretty”

Pretty.. I wish I could say it doesn't matter, but I made a career of my pretty, my pretty enough. For so long, I was pretty on the outside and so fucking ugly, mean, and sad on the inside... When I see pretty, mean girls, I get it. I remember. You hurt because you were hurt and it all hurts when we are measured by PRETTY. Beyonce sang it best, but we've ALL (feminists and all the women artists/poets/singer since time began)  been saying this same line for so long and will continue to say, because it's a cultural disease that isn't going away anytime soon. PRETTY HURTS.

I have stopped posting photos of my kids on social media and I will try to keep them from accessing Facebook and social media platforms as long as possible, knowing how these platforms are causing more pain to young girls than those supermodel magazines did to me and my generations. (Kate Moss led us all into starvation of self worth).

​I am always posting about my work and community, but don't ever doubt that MOTHER is the most dear role I play in this world and in this lifetime. It's cliche' but... everything I do, I do for them. I wish I could always shield them, protect their bodies and minds with my own, but I know that, as they are full-fledged tweens now, the harshness of the world is upon them and our dark blood magic is flowing. But still I frantically carve at the world's edges, hoping to smooth a gentler space, sowing seeds of joy.
​
And always this goal, too:

One day, when the inevitable bully tells them that their mother is a whore, I hope that they will reply, "Fuck Yeah." -from my IWD speech 2019

Photo by Aeric Meredith Gordon
c 2012