Michigan State to host ‘Queering Racial Justice Summit’ highlighting ‘intersections of queer and racial identity’
Michigan State’s Gender and Sexuality Campus Center is sponsoring a February conference focused on 'the intersections of queer and racial identity.'
The summit follows previous programming hosted by the campus center that focused on race, gender, and LGBTQ identity.
Michigan State University’s Gender and Sexuality Campus Center will sponsor the “Queering Racial Justice Summit” next semester, which highlights “the intersections of queer and racial identity.”
The conference is scheduled for Feb. 20 at the East Lansing-based university. The Gender and Sexuality Campus Center promoted the event in an Instagram post on Thursday, Dec. 18.
“Through presentations, workshops, and coalition-building, attendees are invited to engage with each other to ask questions, pursue professional and personal growth, and affirm the need for solidarity within cultural development,” the post says.
The campus center describes itself as “a student-centered campus resource that works to celebrate, affirm, and empower LGBTQIA2S+ members of the Michigan State University community.”
“Through education, engagement, advocacy, and student support, we work to create an inclusive campus culture for people of all genders and sexual identities,” the description continues.
The campus center has yet to publish a schedule for the “Queering Racial Justice Summit,” but the school also hosted the program in 2022. Events at the 2022 iteration of the summit included “Breaking Down White Supremacy in Everyday Culture” and a talk from L. Tantay, a “second-generation Filipina-American queer trans woman.”
In January 2023, Campus Reform reported that MSU’s Gender and Sexuality Campus Center offered LGBTQ-identifying students an “Unconditional Love Fund.”
The campus center instructs students to “provide a brief description of your funding request, including how your financial need relates to your gender or sexual identity.”
Many universities sponsor identity-based conferences that focus on race, gender, and LGBT identities.
In October, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania organized the “Gender and Sexual Minorities” conference.
According to a school description, the conference “serves as an educational forum for all community members to come together to explore topics surrounding struggles, progress, and movements towards gender equity, visibility, and cultural change.”
The University of Miami hosted a youth sex-ed conference that included sessions on “[q]ueer intimacy & pleasure” and “[c]ultural narratives, intersectionality & reclaiming our stories.”
Other conference topics were “decolonizing gender, embracing sexuality, consent, disability inclusion, kink, STI stigma, sexual health, and non-monogamy.”
In March, Boston University sponsored the “Pre and Early Modern Trans Studies Symposium,” which brought together “the fields of trans studies, medieval studies, and early modern literary studies.”
Campus Reform contacted Michigan State University and the Gender and Sexuality Campus Center for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
