Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice in Post-Dobbs Ohio
September 13 (Tuesday), 5:00-6:00 PM
Virtual (Register in advance for this meeting.)
The Laura C. Harris Series welcomes Jessie Hill, Alana Jochum, and Michele Storms, legal scholars and advocates who will discuss the changing reproductive rights and justice landscape, particularly in Ohio, and speak to issues specifically related to gender justice and health, and gender, race, and reproductive justice work in “Gender, Race, and Reproductive Justice in Ohio” a virtual panel discussion.
Jesse Hill, JD, is Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development and Judge Ben C. Green Professor of Law. She joined the faculty in 2003 after practicing First Amendment and civil rights law with the firm of Berkman, Gordon, Murray & DeVan in Cleveland. Before entering private practice, Hill worked at the Reproductive Freedom Project of the national ACLU office in New York, litigating challenges to state-law restrictions on reproductive rights. She also served as law clerk to the Honorable Karen Nelson Moore of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Hill’s teaching focuses on constitutional law, civil rights, reproductive rights, and law and religion. Her scholarship has been published in the Michigan Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Georgetown Law Journal, and the Texas Law Review, among others. Hill earned her Bachelor of Arts from Brown University and her Juris Doctor from Harvard University.
Alana Jochum, is an attorney and Executive Director of Equality Ohio. She received her Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science from Baldwin Wallace University and Juris Doctor from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. She has been passionately engaged in the fight for LGBTQ+ equality at the local, state, national, and international level for more than a decade. Jochum spent time in Mumbai, India volunteering with the Humsafar Trust, a nongovernmental organization working to advance LGBTQ+ equality in India. After returning home, she worked at United Way of Greater Cleveland and continued her LGBTQ+ volunteer work through the Human Rights Campaign. She became an Associate at Squire Patton Boggs, LLP where she focused her legal practice on complex civil litigation, international law, product liability disputes and other commercial litigation. She also represented clients in habeas proceedings before the Sixth Circuit and at the District court level. Jochum left Squire in 2014 to work with Equality Ohio full time where she has the privilege of advocating for LGBTQ+ equality statewide. She also proudly serves as a Board member for the Equality Federation, a national organization focused on capacity building and support for statewide LGBTQ+ organizations across the country.
Michele Storms is the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington (ACLU of Washington), former Deputy Director of the ACLU of Washington, and previous Assistant Dean for Public Service and executive director of the William H. Gates Public Service Law program at the University of Washington School of Law. Preceding those roles she served as a statewide advocacy coordinator first at Columbia Legal Services and later at the Northwest Justice Project where over a combined five-year period she coordinated civil legal aid advocacy in the areas of family law, youth and education, housing, elder law, Native American and right to counsel issues. She was also previously on faculty at the University of Washington School of Law where she founded what is now the Child and Youth Advocacy Clinic and taught several other courses. In addition to her service on numerous boards and guilds both locally and nationally, Storms served on the Washington State Access to Justice Board for six years and the board of One America. Storms is concerned with equity and justice for all and has dedicated her professional and personal attention to access to justice, preservation of freedom and democracy for all and ensuring that all humxns safely reside in the “circle of human concern.”
Thiossane West African Dance Institute
September 22 (Thursday), 11:30 AM
Academic Quad (In case of rain indoor performance will take place in the Library Atrium)
Campus visit September 21 & 22 (Wed & Thur)2022
Denison’s Laura C. Harris Series is excited to welcome the Thiossane West African Dance Institute. Thiossane (pronounced cha- sahn) was formed with the express purpose of bringing authentic West African cultural representation to a variety of local, national, and international communities. The Institute offers many programs, including School Programs, Performances, and Dance and Drum Lectures. Thiossane introduces the richness of West African culture through dance and music to create a space of learning and growth in traditional African culture.
Olena Nikolayenko
Youth Movements and Elections in Eastern Europe
October 10 (Monday), 7:00 PM
Herrick Hall
The Laura C. Harris Series welcomes Professor of Political Science at Fordham University Olena Nikolayenko, presenting “Youth Movements and Elections in Eastern Europe.” Nikolayenko is also an associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University. Her research interests include comparative democratization, social movements, political behavior, women’s activism, and youth, with a regional focus on Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia.
Nikolayenko will talk about her recent book, “Youth Movements and Elections in Eastern Europe” (Cambridge University Press, 2017), in which she examined interactions between nonviolent youth movements and incumbent governments during national elections in five post-communist states: Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Serbia, and Ukraine. Her current research focuses on (1) anti-government protests in contemporary Russia, (2) women’s engagement in high-risk activism in Ukraine, and (3) political consequences of remittances in Eastern Europe
Jasbir Puar
Homonationalism and the Decline of the U.S. Empire
October 19 (Wednesday), 7:00 PM
Burton D. Morgan Center - Lecture Hall 115
* All audience members are required to wear masks.
The Laura C. Harris Series welcomes Professor and Graduate Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University Jasbir Puar presenting a lecture, “Homonationalism and the Decline of the U.S. Empire.”
Puar has been a faculty member at Rutgers University since 2000. Her most recent book is “The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability” (2017) published with Duke University Press in the series ANIMA: Critical Race Studies Otherwise that she co-edits with Mel Chen. Puar is the author of award-winning “Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times” (2007), which has been translated into Spanish and French and re-issued in an expanded version for its 10th anniversary (December 2017). Currently professor Puar is completing her third book, a collection of essays on duration, pace, mobility, and acceleration in Palestine titled “Slow Life: Settler Colonialism in Five Parts.”
Puar’s major awards include a 2018 Fellowship from the Palestinian American Research Council and the 2013-14 Society for the Humanities Fellowship at Cornell University. She received the 2013 Modern Languages Association Gay Lesbian/Queer Caucus Michael Lynch Award for her years of scholar-activist work. In 2017, Puar’s article “Bodies with New Organs: Becoming Trans, Becoming Disabled” (Social Text #124) was awarded the Modern Language Association’s Gay Lesbian/Queer Caucus’s Crompton-Noll Prize for Best LGBTQ Studies Article.
Puar has held numerous Distinguished Lectureships and delivered international keynote addresses at the Troubling Seasons of Hate Conference at the University of Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa, December 2017); European Geographies of Sexualities Conference (Barcelona, Sept 2017); Conflicted Bodies (Goldsmiths, London, Sept 2017); Defazendo Genero (Campina Grande, Brazil, October 2017); among others.
Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times by 
Ester Gotfried Rwela and youth activists
Solidarity from the South: Albinism Activism in Tanzania
October 27 (Thursday), 11:30AM
Virtual (Register in advance for this meeting.)
The Laura C. Harris Series welcomes Ester Gotfried Rwela and youth activists presenting “Solidarity from the South: Albinism Activism in Tanzania” a virtual panel discussion.
This panel brings together young adult activists with albinism in Tanzania, where the genetic condition has multiple meanings beyond biomedicine, to share their experiences with stigma, violence, and a burgeoning movement for the rights of people with albinism worldwide. Specifically, panelists will discuss how they have responded to the wave of killings of people with albinism in Tanzania over the past 15 years, as well as to rumors of a clandestine trade in albino body parts at the hands of traditional healers claiming that these parts bring wealth. They will describe the advocacy work they do on behalf of those with differently abled and non-normative bodies in the Global South.
Denison Libraries, 100 W College, Granville, Ohio 43023 Phone: 740-587-6235, email: reference@denison.edu In order to view PDF documents, you will need to have the free Adobe Acrobat Reader software installed on your computer