2024-25 Theme: Earth is a Relationship

Earth is a Relationship: Feminist Ecologies of Survival

In her new work of nonfiction, Black Feminist Poet Alexis Pauline Gumbs describes fellow Black Feminist Poet Audre Lorde’s references to the natural world, “not as a metaphor for human relations but as a map for how to understand our lives as part of every manifestation of Earth.”  

The invocation of a covenant is a powerful one, not unlike the “Promise” Gumbs takes as the title of her book. In her  new work of biography, Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde Gumbs pulls forth another quote by Lorde in which an oath is taken. During our summer Women’s Center staff retreat we wondered aloud and together if we were meant to take this title as a guarantee (your survival is foretold) or as something adjacent to what Mariame Kaba means when she writes that “hope is a discipline,” a commitment. Are we destined to survive? Or is it an oath that we keep—a promise not for us but by us—survival as a commitment to our own legacies, a keeping of the covenant? 

The artwork for our annual theme was created by Chi Nwosu. Chi is a Black, nonbinary, queer Nigerian artist in Chicago. Their work weaves elemental, political, and spiritual symbols, centering marginalized experiences. Chi's art is a portal to imagine a world grounded in love, curiosity, interconnectedness, and collective liberation. 

Additionally, this year the Women’s Center will welcome its first ever poet to serve as our Feminist in Residence: the incredible Kemi Alabi. Please look to our newsletter and Instagram for more news of their project.  

“Poetry is not a Luxury,” Lorde wrote, it “is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.”2 We are fortunate to have the work of three Eternal Black Feminist Queer Poets keeping this light on as we dream of survival, as we form those dreams into actions.  

This year we are diving head-first (courageously) and heart-forward (empathetically) into the ecologies of feminist practice to question how we learn from nature beyond extraction and metaphor. Together we are asking what being in harmony with all living things would mean for our politics and our commitments to justice, for life within and well beyond our institutions. We will be seeking partners around and beyond campus similarly interested in an ecology of feminist practice, with bonds already forged to The Block, NU Feminists, Gender and Sexuality Studies and perhaps most essentially in the ways in which we employ this year’s learning as a means to accept the invitation that has gone out to us all: to join Northwestern on a Jumaan Journey toward Indigenous Self Determination.  

Come with us.  

*taken from Lorde's personal archives, quoted within Survival Is A Promise by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Theme Artist

Meet the artist who designed our annual theme artwork "Earth is a Relationship"

Chi Nwosu is a Black, nonbinary, queer Nigerian artist based in Chicago, the traditional homelands of the Anishinaabe. Chi's current medium is primarily digital illustration, traditional painting and writing. Their spirit-led markings are an alchemy of personal explorations and collective memory focusing on marginalized experiences through weaving potent elemental, political, and spiritual symbols. Chi's art invites viewers to imagine a world rooted in love, curiosity, and care. Their art calls us to remember our interconnectedness and that each of us is a seed of change toward our collective liberation.

Past Themes

• 2023 - 2024: Collective Hope is a Radical Practice
• 2022 - 2023: Lessons from Harm Reduction
• 2021 - 2022 Disability Justice As Feminist Practice
• 2020-2021: Mutual Aid & Community Engagement
• 2019-2020: By Degrees: Gender. Education. And Progress.
• 2018-2019: Gender. Labor. And Power.
• 2017-2018: Critical Intersections