Dissenting Voices volume four captures seven diverse authors who employ traditional essay format to straddle an array of topics important to the Women and Gender Studies discipline

LeSavoy, Barbara

English

The College at Brockport, State University of New York: Digital Commons @Brockport

Dissenting Voices
Volume 4 | Issue 1
9-10-2015
Note from the Editor
Barbara LeSavoy
The College at Brockport, State University of New York, blesavoy@brockport.edu
This Opening Voices is brought to you for free and open access by the Women and Gender Studies at Digital Commons @Brockport. It has been
accepted for inclusion in Dissenting Voices by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @Brockport. For more information, please contact
kmyers@brockport.edu.
Repository Citation
LeSavoy, Barbara (2015) "Note from the Editor," Dissenting Voices: Vol. 4 : Iss. 1 , Article 3.
Available at: http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/dissentingvoices/vol4/iss1/3
Note from the Editor 
I am thrilled to introduce volume four of Dissenting Voices, a student engineered e-
Journal collaboratively designed, authored, and published by undergraduate Women and 
Gender Studies majors as an extension of their Women and Gender Studies Senior 
Seminar at The College at Brockport. 
Dissenting Voices grows out of a course learning structure where Women and Gender 
Studies students reflect upon their undergraduate experience in the discipline, and 
through engagement, activism, and synthesis of acquired knowledge, establish a 
theoretical foundation to inform future feminist practices. Course readings comprise 
students’ discipline-specific interests, enabling an intellectual forum in which the 
students dialogue on a women and gender focused topic. This work culminates in a 
meaningful capstone project grounded in contemporary and emerging feminist 
scholarship. 
Dissenting Voices volume four captures seven diverse authors who employ traditional 
essay format to straddle an array of topics important to the Women and Gender Studies 
discipline. Two leading authors showcase the volume.  These opening voices include an 
auto-ethnographic essay that uses queer and anarchist theory to examine ways fat 
oppression is linked to capitalism followed by an essay that teases out the erosion of 
intersectionality in postfeminism with a focus on representations of women as 
portrayed in popular music. Continuing with more voices, five submissions, varied in 
scope, address Disney Princesses and the Reproduction of Gender Roles, Rape Culture, 
Title IX and Campus Awareness, Sexual Assault in the Military, and Body Image and 
Self-loathing on Instagram. 
Standing on the shoulders of prior Dissenting Voices authors, volume four interrogates 
the power structures that press down on and border-cross the margins under which we 
live and learn. Students’ writing analyzes rigid societal codes that inscribe identity and 
exposes societal structures and policies that complicate gender equality measures. 
Whether research scrutinizes body oppressions, critiques race and gender performed in 
popular culture, dissects behaviors around gender-based violence, or assesses military 
transgressions in policing sexual assault, writers in this volume ask, where has society 
failed us, how can we become better informed on these failings, and how might we 
Dissenting Voices, v. 4, issue 1, Spring 2015  iii 
deploy progressive women and gender-produced knowledge to leverage and mobilize 
social change?  
Similar to prior semesters, and as an extension of in-class work, students staged several 
activist projects including a One Billion Rising Revolution flash mob, a trans-awareness 
Origami Swan Project, an International Women’s Day salon, a collaboratively designed 
Clothesline Project installation, and a worker’s rights rally for the Fight for15.  The e-
Journal concludes with a photo essay that documents our women and gender-informed 
activism. Bridging theory with praxis, Dissenting Voices preserves the authenticity of 
student voice, sanctioning a wide range of ability and talent that students’ senior 
seminar coursework engenders. 
In my early role as Brockport’s Women and Gender Studies Director and faculty 
developing a new Women and Gender Studies senior capstone course, I had what 
seemed a pipedream in conceptualizing a student journal. Semesters of dynamic student 
activism and thought inspired me to imagine a women and gender studies publication 
that would bring to light undergraduate creative agency realized on the cusp of feminist 
knowledge. Dissenting Voices, as named and populated by its 2012 student founders, and 
pioneered onward by this 2015 class, is this dream forward. 
 
Barbara LeSavoy, PhD 
Director, Women and Gender Studies 
Executive Editor, Dissenting Voices 
  
Dissenting Voices, v. 4, issue 1, Spring 2015  iv 


Note from the Editor

https://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1048&context=dissentingvoices

Note from the Editor

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