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Oh, here we go again. The voices in their head. I breathe deeply, attempting to calm the unnaturally fast rhythm of my heart as my own head spins. I can forgive you. I can move forward. But I can’t forget what you said last night. Knees nearly giving way, I lean on the bathroom vanity,Continue reading “Some Things Are Better Left Dead”

One more time. C’mon girl, you can do it. I spoke the words over myself for the tenth time that dawn, praying that, if prayed loud enough, they would somehow end up as a prophecy instead of a plea. After all, isn’t that what the poets and prophets did? Wrote and wept tears of inkContinue reading “The Lie that Love is Enough”

When situations become awkward at Georgetown, we usually default to asking the infamous Georgetown intro: your name, where you’re from, what year you are, and what you are studying. I’ve got the first three questions down pat: Kami Steffenauer, Southern Illinois, and Class of 2026. But when it comes to the last question, I sometimesContinue reading “At the Center of Our World: Finding Pride in my Women’s & Gender Studies Major”

My motherhood in television paper for my Reading Motherhood English class: Born and bred in a Midwest rural town, I came to know I Love Lucy as one of my family’s staples, watching reruns in black-and-white that transported my sister and me into a crowded New York City apartment where one woman reigned supreme –Continue reading “Two Wombs Intertwined: Reading Motherhood in Lucy Becomes a Sculptress”

My final paper for my Reading Motherhood English class: A few months ago, my girlfriends and I were watching Beyoncé’s “Run the World (Girls)” music video, an international hit of the Queen dancing fiercely and fearlessly, owning her sexuality as a source of power as opposed to something of which to feel shame. One ofContinue reading “If Sexuality means Selfishness & Motherhood means Selflessness: A Comparative Analysis of Black Motherhood & Sexuality in Imitation of Life and Beloved“

My final paper for my Women in Christianity class: Historian and Baylor professor Beth Allison Barr wrote in her groundbreaking book The Making of Biblical Womanhood “Patriarchy may be a part of Christian history, but that doesn’t make it Christian” (Barr 37). Yet this notion has spread throughout U.S. evangelical subculture, most infamously in theContinue reading “For All Are One: Mistaking Complementarity for Biblical Womanhood”

My term paper for my Race, Gender, & Coloniality in Latin America & the Caribbean class: Of all the topics I’ve studied as a women’s and gender studies scholar, very few have stirred such strong reactions as did the subject of sex work in the Caribbean and Latin America. Eyes saddened, mouths curved downward, heartsContinue reading “The Lives They Wish with The Protections They Deserve: A Study of Sexual & Reproductive Labor as Decolonization in Latin America and the Caribbean”

Exhausted, I placed my hands on my thighs, futilely attempting to catch my breath and steady my shaking heart. Gasping, I ran my hand along the front of my knee, feeling but not seeing the long coil indented upon my skin, forever marking my body as changed, broken, and made new again. Yet new doesn’tContinue reading “Whole – A Disability Study of Dios”

When I told my group of friends that I was planning on studying abroad this summer, their initial reaction was, “You can’t wear that in Ecuador.” I looked down at my sports bra and short shorts and burst out laughing, recognizing that modesty has never been one of my virtues. But the laughing stopped whenContinue reading “Mimicking Colonial Ideologies: The Myth of Liberal Feminism”

My final paper for my Slavery in the Ancient Mediterranean Classics class: Since Moses Finley first published his ground-breaking work, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology, in 1980, classicists and scholars alike have investigated the institutions of slavery in antiquity, particularly in the Roman context. While this field has sought to remove the idealistic lens historiansContinue reading “The Fear of Economic Instability: A Study of Rural Slaves in Roman Antiquity”