The NC State Women’s Center recently began Feminist Theory Thursday, an extension of the Center’s Feminist Friday Collective, to help students analyze and apply theory to their own lives and to social justice issues on campus.

Angela Gay, assistant director of the NC State Women’s Center, explained that Feminist Theory Thursday is essentially a response to a student need on campus.

“What we realized is that students wanted to get more in-depth with theory,” Gay said. “Asking ‘What is theory? How does it work? How do I utilize it for my own benefit? How do I see social justice issues through a theoretical lens? What is the application of that theory?”

Gay said that the Women’s Center is working through this initiative to expose students to a wide variety of theory that they can use to analyze different topics.

“It’s not just feminist theory; it’s critical theories as well,” Gay said. “Theories that really help challenge and unpack different things.”

Gay explained how facilitators of Feminist Theory Thursday are identified.

“We had a long list of faculty and staff and administrators who we know work with theory and who do it in ways that make sense for them, for their work, for the things they do outside of this campus, and even based on lived experience,” Gay said.

According to Gay, the center left the topic of discussion open to those invited to facilitate Feminist Theory Thursday, allowing them to choose a theory and discuss how they put it into action.

Though the Women’s Center has only held one Feminist Theory Thursday due to weather cancellations, Gay said she was encouraged by the attendance at the event.

“Turnout was larger than I expected,” Gay said. “[At the last meeting], there were 20 or 25 people who were here because they wanted to be.”

Gay said that attendees at the previous meeting were engaged and eager to apply theory to local situations, such as the removal of Silent Sam.

“There’s a lot of really awesome things coming out of those conversations,” Gay said. “When we start talking about theory and what it looks like for everyday lived experience, then people start applying it to research, and other ways of being and making sure they’re looking at the world in critical ways.”

Charlee Sherrill, a first-year studying computer science, hopes to see the conversations that grow from Feminist Theory Thursday to eventually impact gender relations on campus.

“Sometimes as a woman in engineering, I feel outnumbered,” Sherrill said. “I believe having a day dedicated to exploring feminist theory would help bring awareness to the gender distribution on campus, especially in male-dominated fields.”

Gay described her goal for the Feminist Theory Thursday Initiative, saying that she hopes students will learn about theory then bring it back on Feminist Friday to have a conversation about its applications.

“What I hope this looks like is people coming to Theory Thursday, learning about some theory, then taking that theory and facilitating a conversation around it,” Gay said. “It’s finding a theory that works for them and looking at an issue, whether it’s differently-abled folks and how they access resources on campus, or whether it’s how we talk about race disparities, or how we talk about the wage gap. They take this theory, and they’re able to facilitate a Feminist Friday around it.”

Gay explained how Feminist Theory Thursday fits into the Women’s Center’s goal of transformative learning.

“What this looks like is students engaging in discourse,” Gay said. “They’re having conversations that challenge, question and unpack. They are reflecting on themselves and their own experiences, so that we end the problematic things in our everyday society. If we don’t talk about it, we’re not going to change it. The Women’s Center is a space for that.”

Feminist Theory Thursdays are held on Thursdays once a month from 1-2 p.m. in the Women’s Center Lounge, room 5210 in Talley Student Union.