What Is the University For? Series Launch Speaker – Dr. Kristian Contreras

“Yearning for an Otherwise: On Feminist Kinship, Courage, and Transgression in American Academia” 

Dr. Kristian Contreras
Wed. September 30, 1:00pm

Irving & Dorothy Levy Hall
232 North Park Street
5th Floor, room #5188

This conversation foregrounds the theoretically generative, insurgent, and transformative practices embedded within – and across – the field of Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality studies (GWSS) in (re)imagining the University as a site of feminist struggle as well as possibility in these tenuous times of authoritarianism. This season asks us to defend our field of advocacy and activism, scholarly work, social transformation, and all ways that feminism pushes against the confines of what is possible when equipped with a feminist education. Attendees are invited to anchor themselves in the intellectual and interdisciplinary traditions that define the contours of GWSS, seed meaningful connections that bloom into deep solidarity in, and outside, of the classroom despite (and in spite of) increasing attacks on our field.

Dr. Kristian Contreras (she/her) is a Black feminist dreamer and educator. Her work focuses on honoring the ways in which we’ve survived, created, loved, and learned despite the presumed deficits associated with our socio-political identities.  

Kristian’s experiences as a first-generation daughter of Caribbean immigrants and Scholastics Book Fair aficionado lay at the foundation of an ever-present curiosity – who holds the power in telling our stories? What is possible if we could do more than survive a world designed to keep us at its figurative bottom? How can we thrive beyond this assigned marginality? These questions fuel her commitments towards building feminist futures and permeated her academic journey. Kristian was the first in her entire family to graduate with her B.A in English Literature at the University of Delaware and is humbled to know that for many in her circle, she is the first Afro-Latina they know with a PhD (Syracuse University). 

Kristian is the founding director of the Gay Johnson McDougall Center for Global Diversity and Inclusion at Agnes Scott College, former Title IX Coordinator for Students, and is proud of her collaborative work with equity-focused organizations like Parenting for Liberation, the Joseph and Evelyn Lowery Institute for Justice and Human Rights, as well as her past stewardship of the National Women’s Studies Association. Drawing from her years as a higher education administrator and skill as an equity and inclusion educator, Kristian merges social justice education, Black transnational feminist fire, ancestral and communal blueprints, a love for art as activism, and the cultural power of storytelling to transform those curious daydreams into liberatory realities.  

When she is not working or pretending to be an Ivy Park ambassador, Kristian can be found lost in a romance novel, investing in my eyebrow maintenance, or asking herself “What Would Janet Mock Do”? Kristian remains inspired by community building, the legacy of Black Women writers, the freedom of a library card, carnelian adornments, being in love, and surpassing the limitations often associated with marginality.