To date, the Institute for Women's and Gender Studies has supported over 25 projects related to Building Southern Intersectional Futures. These projects incorporate the research of 50+ undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty mentors, across a truly stunning array of disciplines and practices. Here is a sampling of their work! “Learning Lessons from Sister Song” This project asks: How can southern qualities such as valuing intersectionality and organizing community be productive tools for future socio-political progressive frameworks? By examining the relationship between political activism and Southern community values using Sister Song as a case study, we can see how these qualities align with progressive understandings. “Yesterday is Dead” This project is a one-woman show called "Yesterday is Dead," which compares lesbian experiences from the 1920s to now. The show has been performed at UGA, at the Lavender Fest in Atlanta, at the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, and at Rec Room Books. “Go’n by the House” This project on the solidarities of Black southern and Appalachian women through material culture was shared in an exhibition at Lyndon House Arts Center. By examining the material artifacts and cultural expressions of these two distinct yet interconnected communities, the project seeks to illuminate shared histories, foster solidarity, and honor the resilience and creativity of Black and Appalachian women. The exhibition was featured in spring 2025. “Ida B. Wells-Barnett: Migratory Personas” This project explores Ida B. Wells-Barnett as a public and private figure who created her social justice rhetorics to address violence against Black people. Specifically, the project looks at how Wells-Barnett’s travel and migration experiences shaped her public speaker’s and writer’s identity to help her address domestic and global audiences. “9 to 5: The Musical Dramaturgy” This project looked at the history of the 9to5 movement in the US in the context of dramaturgical support for the UGA production of 9 to 5: The Musical." Through the creation of a website, newsletter, public presentations and educational lobby displays, the project spotlighted the real challenges faced by women clerical workers in the 1970s and 80s, and connected their work to the push for workplace equality today, for everyone. “Postpartum Storytelling Project” What metaphors do people use to describe their postpartum experiences? Postpartum parents, generally, are a chronically stressed and under-resourced group—a situation exacerbated by other stressors such as poverty, racism, homophobia/transphobia, ableism, and lack of access to quality medical care and mental health resources. With reproductive healthcare and healthcare generally under threat in Georgia and nationally, this situation may only get worse. This project gives a voice to a variety of local caregivers and illuminates avenues to improve local systems of care. “Feminist Sonic Materialist Analysis of Gone with the Wind” How is womanhood produced on screen in Gone with The Wind? In what ways does vocality shape depictions and understandings of muliebrity, race, and domesticity? How do spoken appellations of people and places figure into utterances? This project explores the role of women’s presence and work in capitalist production, including that of the domestic spheres for both the characters of the film and the female identifying contributors of the projects themselves, (of both the film and the novel) such as writer Margaret Mitchell as well as actresses Hattie McDaniel, Butterfly McQueen, and Vivien Leigh. “The Dress Dilemma of Bengali Middle-Class Women” This project investigated the consequences faced by urban middle-class Bangladeshi Muslim women who deviate from the religious norm of purdah and the class-specific cultural norm of respectability in their clothing choices. Specifically, it seeks to answer the question of how different elements of the normative culture and the actions of ideological dominant groups are affecting Bangladeshi women’s agency and autonomy in making personal clothing choices. These issues are vital for building Southern Intersectional Futures because they delve into the complex interplay of gender, power, and contextual cultural norms in the Global South. “‘You don’t know what you don’t know…’ Exploring Pre-Health Undergraduate Students’ Perceptions of Reproductive Physiology” This project explored how life experiences and educational backgrounds influence students' viewpoints on reproductive health, education, and access in the southern United States, and how community resources can be optimized to effectively educate and inform students on these matters. By investigating how various factors such as access to education and healthcare intersect with individual identities, this research aims to shed light on systemic inequalities and inform educators on effective strategies for promoting equity. “Financing Democracy: The Construction of Viable Campaigns in Democratic Politics.” This project used qualitative methods to help understand the roots of women’s low political representation in the Deep South. Focusing on the Democratic party, this research looked at the role women's organizations play within political party structure, and sought to understand how women envision political futures in the South. "Traditional South Indian Birthing Practices and Their Relevance to Contemporary Indian American Women" This project looked into traditional birthing practices in South India, their differences across regions and subcultures, and how they can be applied to the lives of Indian American people today, in an age where globalization/Westernization has made many lose their roots. "Judia Jackson Harris Memoir" This project focused on the life and work of Judia Jackson Harris (1870-1960), an Athens-born educator, community builder and activist who dedicated her life to pushing for Black representation and community, human equity, and inter-racial dialogue and cooperation. In editing and annotating Harris's unpublished memoir, the researcher asked: What was it like for a community of Black farmers to buy land and build a school in 1900 Clarke County? What were Jackson Harris’ experiences as she encouraged, collaborated with, fought for, funded, and protected these projects? "Reducing Intersectional College Graduate Poverty" A college degree is often viewed as the perquisite for a stable job and ultimately, an economically prosperous life. However, the job market outcomes for college-educated individuals in the United States are not equal among all people. This project looks at leveraging social network analysis to improve job prospects for African refugees through higher education. "Athens Area Latina Mothers' Engagement in Their Children's K-5 Education" How do Latina im/migrant mothers engage in their children’s K-5 education in Athens, GA, and surrounding counties? How do Latina im/migrant mothers perceive local schools (including the work of teachers, school climate, provision of services, leadership, etc.) and assess their children’s schooling in the U.S. South? What factors mediate Latina im/migrant mothers’ interactions with and participation in public elementary schools? This study drew on interviews with a range of Latina mothers in the greater Athens, Ga community to begin answering these questions about the im/migrant experience of parenting an elementary school aged child. "Understanding the Housing Experiences of Disabled Tenants, Homeowners, and Womxn of Color through Archival Storytelling" The U.S. South is a region with deep historical - present wealth and health inequalities along intersections of marginalized identities of gender, race, sexuality, ability, etc. The South also is the region with the highest rates of disability in the U.S. Meanwhile, evictions are one significant form of housing precarity that disproportionately impacts working-class womxn of color, particularly Black and Latinx womxn. This project looks at historical stories of disabled and multiply-marginalized tenants, homeowners, and /or womxn of color about housing insecurity in an effort to reimagine the presents-futures of housing justice movements. "Black Women’s Educational Care through the Jeanes Teacher Legacy" In the quiet corners of some of Georgia's archival repositories lie fragments of an extraordinary story. The annual reports, faded correspondence, training manuals, and photographs tell of women who transformed Southern education from within its most constrained spaces. These are the records of Georgia's Jeanes Teachers, an African American educational organization founded by a white female philanthropist, Miss Anna T. Jeanes in 1908. The Jeanes Teachers worked in circumstances designed to break them. Instead, they built. They created schools, organized communities, trained generations of educators, and modeled forms of leadership that insisted on seeing the whole person and the whole community. This project recovers their stories not as relics but as resources—as evidence that Southern Black women have always been theorists, organizers, and visionaries whose practices hold wisdom for our contemporary struggles. "Southern US Women's Suffrage: Stories for Contemporary Audiences" Who are the women in Southern US Suffrage History whose stories need to be told to a contemporary audience? How have performance and theatre shaped the women’s suffrage movement, and how has the movement evolved over time, specifically for women in the South and rural areas? This project looks at historical evidence of southern women active in the suffrage movement as the basis for a creative engagement with suffrage themes for a modern audience. "Community Partnership and Intergenerational Dialogue in Underserved Local Communities" Working with underserved communities requires flexibility and adaptability, which is a byproduct of centering their needs and experiences rather than our own. During a time of political crisis and instability, creative approaches are imperative to capture this sociopolitical moment and platform lived experiences. This project works with several local Athens community groups to create workshops that foster creativity and discussion to combat isolation and strengthen the local Athens community. "Multidimensional poverty in Athens-Clarke County" Poverty is not merely a lack of income; it is a web of deprivations that intersect with histories of racial exclusion, regional disinvestment, and policy neglect. Athens is one of the lowest-ranked U.S. counties in terms of child income mobility, despite the presence of a major public university. Yet we lack up-to-date, publicly accessible data to inform policy and practice. This project seeks to address this gap through the creation of a publicly accessible “Poverty in Athens” website, hosted by the UGA School of Social Work. This site will feature both official and multidimensional poverty measures (based on the global Multidimensional Poverty Index), with breakdowns by demographic group and benefit uptake rates. "Women, Peace, and Security in Athens-Clarke County" In October 2000, the United National Security Council unanimously passed resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (WPS), which recognized that the experiences of women and girls in conflict had largely been ignored by the international community and called upon actors from civil society, federal governments, and international organizations to increase women’s representation in all levels of decision making. This projects asks “Are there benefits to the localization of Women, Peace and Security for Athens-Clarke County and how would a local ordinance support the security needs of women and girls based on their intersectional identities?” "Granger Smith, 'Country Drag,' and the Myth of White Southern Innocence" This project examines how, in majoritarian spaces, drag functions as a controlled technology of safe transgression. It permits excess, flamboyance, and gender instability, but in a form that ultimately leaves dominant structures intact. Extending from this theoretical premise, we ask the following questions: How does Granger Smith’s “country drag” persona use the myth of white Southern innocence to perform, disguise, and circulate nationalist and racist aesthetics while remaining culturally unaccountable? How does his music and career trajectory reflect the mobility of identity afforded to him by his white Southern male identity? "Teaching Queer Ecojustice: Posthumanist Pedagogies Amidst Climate Crises" This project engages a community-based approach for articulating ‘queer ecojustice’ philosophy and pedagogies through the creation of a year-long ‘teaching and learning community’ of educators who work within universities, land-based environmental education, and social movement training contexts. Fostering a public discourse supports social movement actors who are working on systems of solidarity for navigating the acceleration of ecological crises, and will hopefully increase the survivability of marginalized communities amidst accelerating climate change.
