Feminist Summer Camp, Part 2

Wednesday

The group met at the Ms. Foundation for Women today to hear from Suzanne Grossman, Kara Pollard Elverson, and Melissa Marie Gonzalez about feminism in the workplace, career advice, and grad school. We learned about job searching tips, the importance of researching grad school programs, the importance of putting ourselves out there, and a lot of other advice. 

When that informative session was over, we had lunch and listened to Courtney Martin, Julie Scelfo, and Veronica Chambers talk about different feminist approaches to media. Courtney talked about her journey as a freelance feminist author, writing a book and blogging for Feministing.com. Julie discussed her background as a journalist and her experience at various big-name news corporations, such as Newsweek and the New York Times. Veronica talked about her experience at Glamour magazine and their Women of the Year awards ceremony. 

We traveled to the Feminist Press in Manhattan and discovered what it means to run a feminist publishing company. We learned about what makes a book feminist enough to be published by the press, about the various tasks of Feminist Press interns, the long and powerful history of the organization, and the steps it takes for a book to be published. We had a short but lively debate about the future of print media and the impact of reading devices (such as iPads and Kindles) and then left for Bust magazine. 

At Bust, we met with Debbie Stoller, Executive Director and one of the Founders of the magazines. She told us about the history of Bust, her conception of cultural feminism, her vision for the magazine and how it's changed over the years. We talked briefly about blogs and magazines and then left to go our separate ways for dinner. 

Many members of the group went to a happy hour event sponsored by Paradigm Shift, Soapbox, and Feministing.com. We schmoozed with the feminist elite of NYC including Shelby Knox, Jessica Valenti, the staff of Paradigm Shift, Courtney Martin, and many more! It was surreal and amazing to be in the same room as so many brilliant women. 

Thursday

This morning we met in Brooklyn at a space called Powder Keg, a place created by writers as an intentional space for writing and creativity. We had an introduction to the space by two of the writers who established it and they told us about its history and how they modeled it on Virginia Woolf's idea that each writer needs a room (or space) of her own. 

The Guerilla Girls came and gave us an interactive workshop about their work protesting the lack of women's work in the art world, particularly focusing on theaters that don't perform and produce plays written by women. They had us create our own one minute visual representation of certain issues in feminism, such as intersectionality, the power of language, why feminism is considered a "bad word," and gender  non-conformity. 

The two women who founded Arts Effects came and talked to us about their theater company that focuses on promoting good relationships between girls. Their teen girl campers wrote a play that ended up touring across the country and winning several awards. They had us talk about our feminist click moments and improv short plays that incorporate all of our experiences. 

We took the train to a different part of Brooklyn to a place called Streb Lab for Action Mechanics, where we learned what pop action art is and participated in an hour and a half long pop action class. We learned different dance/action techniques, such as the "klump," and practiced "popping" into different poses.

Friday

We each had our own feminist internship today! Some people went for four hours, others for eight or more hours, at different feminist organizations all around NYC.