Author, trans activist Janet Mock to speak on campus
Janet Mock
"An Evening with Janet Mock" is scheduled at 7 p.m., Thursday, March 27, in Gannett
Auditorium of Palamountain Hall. Mock is a trans activist of color and author of the
recently published book Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love and So Much More. The program will be a moderated Q&A session with Megan E. Williams, visiting assistant
professor of American Studies, and Sydney Magruder ’14, followed by a book signing.
Copies of Mock's book will be available for sale.
The event is free and open to the public.
Mock is a writer, activist and the founder of the #Girlslikeus project. In 2011 while working as an editor at People.com, she opened up about her life as a young trans woman in Marie Claire. The episode sparked her work as an activist who uses media to expand our idea of womanhood and hold the LGBT movement accountable to all trans and queer folk, specifically those from low-income and/or people of color communities.
Mock has been a guest on NPR, the Melissa Harris-Perry show and the HBO documentary The Out List, and has been recognized by the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, the Center for American Progress, the Women’s Media Center, and GOOD magazine for her work. She is a board member at the Arcus Foundation, a leading global foundation advancing pressing social justice and conservation issues, and an advisor for the {young}ist, a young people-powered media site. She has also advised programming for trans youth at the Hetrick-Martin Institute in New York City and founded the social media project #GirlsLikeUs, a pro-sisterhood visibility project for trans women like herself.
A native of Honolulu, Mock attended the University of Hawaii at Manoa, earned and earned an M.A. degree in journalism from New York University.
Mock's Skidmore visit is sponsored by Skidmore’s Office of Student Diversity Programs, the departments of American Studies and Anthropology, BARE, the Center for Sex and Gender Relations, the Committee on Intercultural and Global Understanding, Gender Studies, Intercultural Studies, Queer Women of Color Talk, Raices, Skidmore Pride Alliance, Social Work, Speakers Bureau, Ujima, and Vox.
