As an extension of his Brace Fellowship, Max Berkenblit ’24 presented a discussion-based preview of a class exploring “So, What is Gender?” In the talk, on February 15, Berkenblit focused on designing a curriculum for gender studies, discussing the importance of understanding gender theory intersectionality in everyday interactions and the deconstruction of patriarchy and other power systems.
Berkenblit discussed his inspirations behind the project and the process of planning the event. He expressed how Love Better Week seemed like the right time to provide this educational opportunity, due to the emphasis on healthy relationships.
“[The talk] was kind of an extension of my Brace project. Dr. [Patricia] Har [’95, Director of the Brace Center for Gender Studies], reached out to me and thought it might be a good idea to include [the presentation] during Love Better week as an educational opportunity, because Love Better week [focused on] self care, but [to have] something specific about gender and how it relates to the theme of relationships, [Dr. Har] thought it would be interesting. And, I agreed, absolutely,” said Berkenblit.
Berkenblit continued by describing why it is important to discuss these topics about gender, and how being aware and educated ties into the grand scheme of life.
“It’s really important to me to think about gender theory intersectionality, including feminism, race, class, [and] all these ideas within the scope. So I think branching into that idea, having the discussion about femininity and what’s considered good or bad femininity and how that ties to other social constructs and social systems of oppression in America, that was interesting,” said Berkenblit.
Hana Young ’26 spoke on how the group setting of the talk brought about a sense of community. Specifically, she explained how talking with other people at the event helped her further develop and ponder on some of her pre-existing thoughts on gender.
“His presentation… was really interesting and it had me think[ing] about a lot of things that I had in the back of my mind, but weren’t fully developed thoughts. The group conversations and just talking about people in the room was really helpful. These are things that I already was thinking about… in the back of my head, but this really helped me to think about them more,” said Young.
Nadia/Aidan Wilkins ’24 remarked on the benefits of having a presentation centered around community and discussion, rather than formatting the talk as a research paper. They expressed appreciation for the accessibility of the talk to all students, regardless of their background knowledge on gender studies.
“It was really interesting to me to see the way that he formatted his talk, because most of these papers are very research oriented… but Max’s project was more community-oriented… That was really exciting to me because I haven’t really seen it done that way before… everybody kind of comes in with this huge variety of experience and I think it was important to Max that he create a curriculum that would have a variety of things to approach from, like, ‘I’ve never interacted with this before’ to ‘I already know most of what you’re trying to teach me, what do I do now?’ So that felt considerate to me,” said Wilkens.
Brigitte Leschhorn, Berkenblit’s Brace Advisor, talked about her role in supporting Berkenblit through the long process of organizing this talk. She touched on the various aspects that come into preparing for an educational event.
“Because I’m a curriculum expert, Max chose me as his advisor to help guide him through the different, pedagogical obstacles that he might face as he was thinking of putting the lessons together. He wanted to focus on not just researching gender, but [also] how to teach about gender, how to scaffold that teaching. We talked a lot about what would make sense, his approach, what should come first, what should come next, [and] what it means to shape a lesson,” said Leschhorn.
Leschhorn also described future plans to incorporate topics from Berkenblit’s talk into the EBI curriculum. She emphasized the importance of being able to discuss topics such as gender more in depth in a setting like EBI.
“I’m really hoping to make EBI more of a student-derived student-driven thing. So providing the proper credit, I’m hoping to continue further collaboration so those introductory conversations can be more fruitful and students can be more excited to then go out into the community and be like, ‘What if I want to talk more about gender,’ ‘what if I want to talk more about how… neuro-spicy I am,’ ‘what if I want to talk more about how stressed out I am,’ that there are places on campus where the EBI conversation has felt more student derived and meaningful to them. I’m really really grateful that Max is willing to share that,” said Leschhorn.
