Students enrolled in the joint undergraduate/ graduate seminar Challenging Coloniality: Caribbean Sexualities in Transnational Perspective took home first prize at the Graduate and Undergraduate levels for the 2019 annual Women’s and Gender Studies et Recherches Féministes (WGSRF) essay awards. Congratulations to WGSI PhD Student Ryan Persadie for winning Graduate First Place, Essay title: “Citizenship from Within: Indo-Caribbean Masculinities, Cutyney Erotics and Qoolie Potentials”.
RYAN PERSADIE, first year PhD student, won first prize at the graduate level for his essay, Citizenship from Within: Indo-Caribbean Masculinities, Chutney Erotics and Qoolie Potentials. Ryan is a PhD student in Women and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto. He holds a MA in Ethnomusicology and Sexual Diversity Studies from the University of Toronto, a Bachelor of Education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto and a Honours Bachelor of Music from the University of Western Ontario. His doctoral research investigates the interrelations of soca and chutney music, queer diasporic Carnival geographies in Canada and the US, queer Indo-Afro Caribbean intimacies, and LGBTQI+ identity formation, performance, and embodiment across, between, and within Indo-Caribbean diasporas. Ryan’s dissertation project is tentatively titled: Performing Qoolie Diasporas: Embodied Cartographies of Queer Indo-Caribbean Identity, Community, and Belonging in Toronto and New York City.
Congratulations to WGSI undergraduate students Alisha Stranges and Luci Kim on their awards:
Undergraduate First Place: Alisha Stranges, Essay title: “Watch out fi dis!: The Re-Narration of Homoerotic Desire in Lawrence Graham-Brown’s ‘Ten Minutes into the Honeymoon.'” ALISHA STRANGES (Drama and Women and Gender Studies, and an incoming MA student in Fall 2019), won first prize at the undergraduate level for her essay, Watch Out Fi Dis!The Renarration of Homoerotic Desire in Lawrence Graham-Brown’s “Ten Minutes Into the Honeymoon.”
Undergraduate First Runner Up: Lucie Kim, Essay title: “It’s Not a Caribbean Girl Thing: Exploring the Construction of the Lesbian as a ‘Foreign Contaminant’ in Caribbean Nation-Building Projects.” LUCIE KIM (Biomedical Toxicology, Minor in Equity Studies and Women and Gender Studies) took the first runner up award for her essay, It’s Not a Caribbean Girl Thing: Exploring the Construction of the Lesbian as a ‘Foreign Contaminant’ in Caribbean Nation-Building Projects.