OUTober 2016

Location: Red Square

Come join us on our annual Coming Out Day, featuring a door through which students “come out” as proud LGBTQ Hoyas and Allies. Be sure to pick up and wear your “I AM” t-shirt throughout the day to promote visibility and awareness.

Location: HFSC Social Room

Professors of Sociology Brian McCabe SFS ’02 (Georgetown) and Theo Greene COL ‘02 (Bowdin College) will discuss how we relate to space through our identities and the subsequent roles queer people play in shaping neighborhoods. McCabe and Greene will explore what it means to belong to a community, given the reality of gentrification and forced relocation, for queer people both of color and not.  

Dates: October 6-8, 13-15

Location: Davis Performing Arts Center, Devine Studio Theater

From the Theater and Performance Studies Programs comes an entrancing adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey, featuring a young refugee named Anon and their journey to find home and family. Anon must navigate the chaotic, ever-changing landscape at the intersections of gender and citizenship, as they struggle to be defined in this world as both who they are and who they are not.

Purchase tickets here.

Location: White Gravenor 201A

Come and learn about allyship with GU Pride & QPOC as one of our events for OUTober! The event will have three components:

• a basic grounding in allyship-related concepts
• a discussion on what cis, straight, allo allyship should look like to the queer community
• a discussion on what queer allyship should look like within the queer community

Location: Meet at front gates at 9:00 am 

Sign ups are now closed for a private tour of the US Holocaust Museum led by Dean Sam Aronson where we will learn more about the lives and experiences of the LGBTQ victims of the Holocaust and the origins of the pink triangle. Tour will last approximately 2 hours.

Location: SW 107, GU School of Medicine Med-Dent Building

The Office of Diversity & Inclusion sponsors a discussion of several case examples and the personal experiences of Dr.David Klein and Dr.Jamie Henry, both Majors in the US Armed Forces, concerning the medical and dynamic policy considerations for caring for those with gender dysphoria in the military healthcare system. 

Location: HFSC Social Room

Join GUPride, QPOC, and Latino Leadership Forum as we discuss the history of LGBTQ movements and the ways that these movements have affected people in the District. We will be hearing from three panelists who have worked and studied, or otherwise been invested in, DC’s LGBTQ history. The event will be catered by Amsterdam Falafelshop!

The panelists include:

Professor Bonnie Morris (she/her/hers): “I have taught women’s history courses for the WGST program at Georgetown since 1996. And I have been out as a lesbian, in the classroom and everywhere else, for 36 years… since I was 18 years old right here in DC. I am the author of 14 books, 3 of which were Lambda Literary Award finalists, and serve on the board of the Rainbow History Project.”

Miss Earline Budd (she/her/hers): Earline Budd is a 58 year old transgender woman constantly fighting to make a difference in the lives of transgender people and other members of the lesbian, gay and bisexual (LBGT) community. She is one of the founding members and former Executive Director of Transgender Health Empowerment, Inc. founded in 1996. Earline is currently in the process of starting a new grass root 501 c(3) non-profit organization named “Empowering The Transgender Community, ETC” which will provide an array of services for transgender people in the DC area. Earline currently is a Treatment Adherence Specialist at HlPS located here in the District of Columbia, serving clients who are transgender or gay/bisexual males.

David Perez: David M. Pérez served as president of the board of the Latino GLBT History Project (LHP) from May 2011 to February 2015. During his tenure David expanded the project’s programs in history, education, and cultural celebrations for metropolitan Washington, DC’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Latino community. David first attended DC Latino Pride in 2008, became an LHP volunteer in 2009 and joined the LHP board of directors in 2010. David completed his 6 year term on the LHP board of directors on December 31, 2015.

Learn more about the event here.

Location: Devine Black Box Theatre

How do we look at each other? How do we allow ourselves to be seen? How do our movements and physicalities shape how we perceive the world around us? How much can we affect the way we see others? Can we learn to see – across lines of difference – in new ways? 

Choreographers Jess Curtis and Claire Cunningham will offer a lecture and demonstration related to their new work investigating movement, our perceptions of each other and of our environment. Taking inspiration from the work of their collaborator Dr Alva Noë, whose philosophy suggests that perception is an activity happening in our whole bodies and not just our brains – we will investigate, through movement, language, writing, watching, listening and feeling, how difference – of physicality or lived experience- and diversity can both inform and shape our perception.

Location: 311 New North

Come listen to a reading and talk back with Sikivu Hutchinson about her new book which tells the story of the 1978 Jonestown murder-suicide of over 900 people. A story of Black struggle and sacrifice, loyalty and betrayal.

Location: HFSC Social Room

Join us for reflections from Urvashi Vaid, an award winning author, attorney, and organizer in the LGBTQ and broader social justice community whose work aims to address structural inequalities based on intersecting identities. Vaid’s work honors the importance of building the foundations of a movement in the context of the many histories from which our lives flow forth. 

Professor Dana Luciano will join Urvashi Vaid for conversation and will moderate the Q&A that follows. Dana Luciano is Associate Professor of English and a former Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Georgetown University, where she teaches sexuality and gender studies, environmental humanities, 19th century US literature, feminist and queer theory, and queer film. She has taught at Georgetown since 2004. 

Originally from New Delhi, India, Urvashi Vaid and her family immigrated to America when she was eight years old. She graduated from Vassar College (‘79) and continued on to receive her law degree from Northeastern University (‘83). In 1991, The Advocate named Vaid Woman of the Year, Time called her one of the key 50 leaders under 40 in 1994, and in 2009, Out magazine named her one of the 50 most influential people in America.

Vaid is the Founder and Managing Director of Vaid Group LLC, through which she has created an LGBT/HIV Criminal Justice network and researched global LGBT issues. She has served as Executive Director of the National LGBTQ Task Force and founded their Policy Institute. She has also worked as the Director of the Engaging Tradition Project at Columbia Law School and the Executive Director of the Arcus Foundation.

While in law school, she founded the Boston Lesbian/Gay Alliance, and later published two books, Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay & Lesbian Liberation (1995) and Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class and the Assumptions of LGBT Politics (2012), which have been acclaimed by Gay City News as “a must read for every queer activist and anyone concerned about the nature and direction of those who claim they speak for all of us” (Ireland, 2013).

Find the event flyer here.

Location: Leavey Program Room

As we move forward in OUTober, we invite all member of the Georgetown queer community to express themselves by sharing essays, poems, or other reflections in a brave and affirming space. Everyone is welcome to either share or just sit for a study break. Light beverages will be provided.

Location: HFSC Social Room

Events from this summer have left their mark on our communities and are calling us to action. GUPride and Georgetown Against Gun Violence will host a panel of local major activists moderated by Lisbeth Melendex Rivera, Director of Latino and Catholic Initiatives at the Human Rights Campaign. Join us for a night of healing and reflection through a panel discussion and small-group dialogue on the impact of violence on queer communities of color and strategies for moving forward in solidarity. Join us for a night of healing and reflection. 

Location: Makóm

Come celebrate with the Georgetown Jewish Chaplaincy for our annual Pride Shabbat, which allows for thoughtful conversation between Jewish and LGBTQ identities.

Location: Gallaudet University

This annual DC LGBTQA student conference aims to create a community space for education, reflection, and research exchange on leadership and student activism.

Location: Leavey Program Room

After the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, transgender individuals in the military still face the same challenges at work that have always loomed. Shane McCammon, who studies issues affecting trans members of the US military, and Paula Neira, a nurse, attorney, and veteran, will explore trans issues in the military with LeNaya Hezel, director of the Veterans Office, as moderator. 

Location: HFSC Social Room

Vanita Gupta, Head of the Civil Rights Division at the US DOJ will offer remarks regarding her division’s critical work in a number of areas, including advancing constitutional policing and criminal justice reform; prosecuting hate crimes and human trafficking; promoting disability rights; protecting the rights of LGBT individuals; and combating discrimination in education, housing, employment, lending, and voting. A memorial service for Transgender Day of Remembrance will follow.