Brianna Birkel
The year of overcommitment
aka "oh god what is going on"
Women's Health and Reproduction
This class was probably the most important and impactful class I took in my time at UW. Taught by Professor Rachel Chapman in the Anthropology Department, this class taught me new ways of thinking about radical feminism and the ways in which our society has been historically and intentionally structured to keep women (especially women of color) as second-class citizens physically, financially, emotionally and within family structures. This class influenced not just how I approach school and learning, but how I approach my own thinking and the entire world around me.
The following is my final paper for this class, which I wrote as a way of connecting my final project to the course materials. My final project was to put together a playlist of radical feminist poetry, which can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/radicalfeministpoetry
A side note: I took six classes this quarter (this class, Quantum Mechanics, Electromagnetism, an Optics Laboratory class, a Global Health seminar AND choir). I DO NOT recommend taking this many classes at a time!
Optics Laboratory
This class was really interesting; we got to do all sorts of different hands-on labs to understand and manipulate light. Below is a few pictures and a report from my favorite lab we did, in which we created a hologram. This lab was pretty challenging, but the results were really cool!
Set-up: our hologram was based on these objects
Successful hologram! As it should be, the hologram is the same as the set-up objects, but flipped backward (similar to how photographic film works).
UW RESIST Teach-In
I started working with various activist groups and in different movements my freshman year, but this was the year that things got really serious. After the 2016 election, a number of activists decided to host a teach-in to educate students on campus about their rights, justice movements and community healing. We held this event on January 20th, the day of the presidential inauguration.
As some may know, this was the same day that a rally was held on campus to protest the appearance of a racist, alt-right speaker at our school. A street medic, who we had worked with earlier in the day, was shot by an alt-right sympathizer during this rally. He survived, but soon after, several activists who had worked on the same teach-in began getting hang-up calls and death threats from alt-right groups around the Pacific Northwest.
As it did for many activists, this event marked a huge change in my approach to activism. In the years before this, most of my activism had been about rallies, demonstrations, sit-ins, and other ways of very vocal and outward change. While I continue to use these methods, after this experience, activism also became about community care and healing. We focused much more on doing events that brought us together as a community while also educating and bringing others into the movement.
Palestine Awareness Week
While there was a ton of action that happened that year, one thing that I am especially proud of is the mock apartheid wall that we put together with MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlán) UW. This wall represents both the US-Mexico Border and the apartheid wall that separates the West Bank from the rest of Palestine. Here are some pictures of the wall:
This project was a huge labor of love from SUPER and MEChA. It was used at UW and Western Washington University for the third time this year!
This is a poster I helped make for this year's Palestine Awareness Week. In addition to displaying the Mock Apartheid Wall in Red Square, we also had a whole week of amazing events!