Poetic Inquiry – Honors Project
Yes, And – Student-Led Programming | Improvisation + Collective Well-Being
What histories enter the room when a Black woman asks a physician to believe her pain?
As a student planning to work in healthcare and passionate about feminism, Rakshitha Sabesan (Molecular and Cellular Biology major) began this project troubled by the dismissal of Black women's pain and by the power healthcare professionals hold when patients are at their most vulnerable.
Her poem begins with a Black woman waiting in a doctor's office to explain severe menstrual pain. Part of her anxiety comes from anticipating that she may be dismissed again. But, as Rakshitha writes in her artist's statement, “part of her anxiety is generational.” From there, the poem moves through a longer history of Black women's bodies and medicine, including reproductive exploitation during chattel slavery, J. Marion Sims's experimentation on enslaved Black women, forced sterilization, and the surveillance and criminalization of pregnant Black women during the War on Drugs. It eventually returns to the woman in the waiting room, carrying a history she may not consciously know is with her.
Drawing from her knowledge of biology, psychology, and English literature, Rakshitha used poetry to think across history, healthcare, intersectionality, oppression, and generational trauma. For her, understanding the contemporary dismissal of Black women's pain also meant returning to its roots: “solving a problem requires addressing the root of the problem, and that involves understanding its origins.”
Yes, And – Student-Led Programming | Improvisation + Collective Well-Being
Yes, And – Student-Led Programming | Improvisation + Collective Well-Being
As part of the emerging Yes, And series, Adam Vinn, Social Work major, helped bring an idea about cultivating joy, connection and well-being into a shared experience. He organized Improv for Joy, using improvisation as an invitation to listen, respond, take creative risks, and build something with other people in real time.
The logic of “yes, and” is simple: receive what someone offers, then add something of your own. In practice, that asks something harder of us relative to attention, presence, and trust. A willingness to relinquish some control over where an encounter will go.
Denim Day – Clothing is Not Consent Collective Action Project
Denim Day – Clothing is Not Consent Collective Action Project
Students Aki, Alexis, and Bell (majors across Social Work and Psychology) organized a Denim Day event during Sexual Assault Awareness Month as a collective action project examining sexual violence, consent, victim-blaming, and the different barriers survivors may encounter across social locations and particularly on college campuses. The intent was to host a campus-facing opportunity for awareness, reflection, and creative participation. Their work moved beyond a classroom presentation and into a participatory awareness event where attendees were invited to write letters to survivors, draw, create poems, and make art.
Letters and art created during the event was donated to the Women’s Resources Center, allowing what was made together to continue into another campus space.