The Gender and Women’s Studies Department is proud to spotlight Eve Potvin (they/she). They are from Warwick, RI, majoring in English. They chose to take GWS classes because she feels it is important to their academic education, and she wants to someday teach at a college or university. They enjoy reading and learning about queer and transgender literature and politics. 

Eve is particularly happy with the overlap of GWS and English, as they enjoy reading and writing about queer and transgender theories and politics. They wrote a few essays she is particularly excited about. The first, an analysis of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte titled “The Dame, the Crossdresser, and Rochester: Deception and Trans Perception in Jane Eyre.” In the second piece, they are focusing on trans allegories in Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. 

“When I came to URI and started taking classes in English, I found a need to identify a queer subtext to the literature I was reading. Finding any sense of queerness or transness in a text is empowering and taking a focus in GWS and reading further about trans theory has allowed me to keep searching through literature and dig up representation that I’m happy with.” Before she came to URI, Eve spent a year reading queer literature. Their favorite class is a tie between GWS/ENG 383: Queer Lit, Queer Cultures and GWS 350: Transgender Activism. Queer Lit, Queer Cultures was the first class she took that centered on any queer representation, and they love the focus that Professor Ellison has in Transgender Activism. 

We here at the GWS department appreciate the work you all do, and today we focused on Eve. If you have someone you would like to nominate for a Student Spotlight, email kat_sheridan@uri.edu or rosariapisa@uri.edu.