Pembroke Center at Brown University

03/09/2026

Welcome back to campus! 🎓✨

As the new academic year kicks off, the Pembroke Center invites you to its newest exhibition: “Moments from an Extraordinary Life: Nellie B. Nicholson’s Scrapbook,” now open in the garden-level gallery of Pembroke Hall.

Nellie B. Nicholson (Class of 1911) is Brown’s third known Black woman graduate. As a student, athlete, teacher, suffragist, and civil rights activist, her journey offers a compelling narrative of resilience, community, and both ordinary and extraordinary moments.

Step into history this semester and explore her original scrapbook.

🗓 Exhibition Dates: Sept 1, 2026 – Aug 31, 2027
📍 Location: Pembroke Hall | Gallery, Garden Level

26/08/2026

Ready for Fall 2026? 📚

Swipe through to check out our Gender and Sexuality Studies (GNSS) course offerings for the upcoming semester!

GNSS 0120: Introduction to Gender and Sexuality Studies

🎓 Instructor: Denise Davis

🗓️ Schedule: Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays 1PM-1:50PM

📖 About the Course:

In this course, we will explore the interdisciplinary fields of Gender and Sexuality Studies, considering the relation between formations of gender and those of sexuality across a range of historical and disciplinary contexts. In doing so, we will consider how both sexuality and gender are shaped in relation to race and ethnicity, economic inequality, and the postcolonial legacy.

GNSS 1410/PHP 1410: Gender, Race, & Health

🎓 Instructor: Madina Agénor

🗓️ Schedule: Mondays, 3PM-5:30PM

📖 About the Course:

This interdisciplinary seminar addresses how gender, race, and health have been socially and politically constructed and how health inequities across and within racialized and gendered groups have been socially produced over time. We will discuss and apply interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological approaches for critically addressing issues of gender, race, and health, including from critical health studies, gender and sexuality studies, Black studies, and Indigenous studies. Using a case study approach, we will explore key topics pertaining to gender, race, and health, including scientific racism, eugenics, and (bio)medicalization, as well as activism, care, and healing.

GNSS 1535: American Horror Stories

🎓 Instructor: Wendy Lee

🗓️ Schedule: Tuesdays, Thursdays, 2:30PM-3:50PM

📖 About the Course:

This course investigates the relationship between institutions and individuals, the general and the personal, and the normal and the monstrous in U.S. horror literature and media. Why are so many institutions-prisons, hospitals, universities-described in terms of horror, as institutional nightmares? How do horror subgenres—Gothic fiction, body horror, psychological horror, monster stories, zombie narratives—function and what cultural work do they perform? How and to what effect are monstrous” and “normal” figures racialized and gendered?

GNSS 1541: Dist

11/08/2026

The Pembroke Center mourns the passing of Pembroke Center Advisory Council member Johanna Fernández, a 1993 graduate of Brown University.

A social justice activist beginning in college, Fernández led the student push for need-blind admissions while at Brown. After graduation, she continued her activism in various ways, becoming a leading advocate for Mumia Abu-Jamal, the imprisoned political activist and journalist, and most recently for fair access to healthcare for all New Yorkers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Notably, while researching the history of the Young Lords Party as a scholar of History and social justice movements at Columbia University and then as Associate Professor at Baruch College, Dr. Fernández connected local police surveillance to the federal COINTELPRO operation through a 2014 Freedom of Information lawsuit against the NYPD. Her legal battle forced the recovery of the "lost" Handschu files—over one million pages of domestic political surveillance records from 1954 to 1972.

Fernández made history during the short time she was with us. She authored the groundbreaking and award-winning book The Young Lords: A Radical History (2022); served as an active alumni, speaking at multiple Brown University events; contributed two oral histories to the Pembroke Center Oral History Project; and secured the safety of her archival papers and those of Mumia Abu-Jamal through the Pembroke Center Archives. To be sure, Johanna Fernández ensured that the fight for social justice would continue in her absence.

05/06/2026

Your Friday night movie has arrived: check out N/A, now freely available from PBS, and directed and produced for film by Donna Zaccaro '83, P'19, member of our Friends of the Pembroke Center Advisory Council. Emmy winner Holland Taylor and Broadway's Ana Villafañe star as two U.S. Representatives, generations apart, who couldn't be more different. Inspired by real people and events, the play N/A is a battle of wills and wits between N, the first woman Speaker of the House, and A, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.

Emmy winner Holland Taylor and Broadway's Ana Villafañe star as two...

29/05/2026

In case you missed it: watch Research at Risk, the 2026 Pembroke Commencement Forum, on our YouTube playlist: https://buff.ly/AO9BnTY. Sponsored by the Friends of the Pembroke Center, co-sponsored by the School of Public Health and Brown Women's Network. Thanks to Katie Biello, Shufang Sun, Anne Fausto-Sterling, and Gray Babbs for a great conversation about threats to gender and sexuality scholarship within public health and the biological sciences. Thanks also to Leora Tanenbaum '91 from the Friends Advisory Council for introducing the event.
Brown University School of Public Health
Brown Women's Network
Brown Alumni & Friends

22/05/2026

TOMORROW! The Friends of the Pembroke Center present
Research at Risk: Threats to Gender and Sexuality Scholarship
The 2026 Pembroke Center Commencement Forum
Saturday, May 23, 2026 | 11:00 a.m. | Pembroke Hall 305

This event is co-sponsored by the Brown Women’s Network and the School of Public Health.
Brown Women's Network
Brown Alumni & Friends
Brown University School of Public Health

Learn more on Events@Brown: https://buff.ly/oOtdxHP

22/05/2026

Congratulations to this year's student prizewinners! Slide 1: Ruth Simmons Prize to Reina Salama ’26 (top); honorable mentions to Tigerlily Hillenbrand Arlt ’26 (left) and Piper Wallace ’26 (right). Slide 2: Joan Wallach Scott Prize to Arlyn Patino ’26. Slide 3: Marie J. Langlois Dissertation Prize to Semilore Sobande Ph.D.'26 (left) and honorable mention to Sarah Christensen Ph.D.'26 (right).
Brown Graduate School Brown University

21/05/2026

Check out the latest issue of Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies!

21/05/2026

Celebrating the 135th anniversary of Pembroke College: Speaking 61 years after graduating, Mary Jane Mikuriya '56 shares an account of her experience as an American student and woman of Japanese and Austro-Hungarian descent during the second World War and after. Mikuriya's papers are also held in the Pembroke Center Archives. Originally "The Women's College," Pembroke College was the women's college in Brown University until 1971. https://buff.ly/DPkFaZk

19/05/2026

Saturday! The Friends of the Pembroke Center present
Research at Risk: Threats to Gender and Sexuality Scholarship
The 2026 Pembroke Center Commencement Forum
Saturday, May 23, 2026 | 11:00 a.m. | Pembroke Hall 305

This event is co-sponsored by the Brown Women’s Network and the School of Public Health.
Brown Women's Network
Brown Alumni & Friends
Brown University School of Public Health

Learn more on Events@Brown: https://buff.ly/oOtdxHP