The Janet Jacobs Honors Colloquium is an annual event, hosted by the department of Women and Gender Studies (WGST) and the Arts and Sciences Honors Program, to celebrate students whose honors theses, in any discipline, thematically address the fields of WGST and LGBTQ studies. Each spring 3-7 students from across the University will be selected to present their work in a colloquium setting for an audience of mentors, friends, family, and interested students, faculty, and staff. Each year, WGST and the Arts and Science Honors Program will select a guest speaker to deliver a keynote address.
The Janet Jacobs Honors Colloquium is named after Professor Janet Jacobs in honor of her more than thirty-five years as an esteemed member of the WGST department and her 8 years as Program Director for the Arts and Science Honors Program. Professor Janet Jacobs is Professor of Distinction in Women and Gender Studies. Her research focuses on ethnic and religious violence, gender, mass trauma, and collective memory. She is author of numerous books and journal articles, including Divine Disenchantment: Deconverting from New Religions (1989), Victimized Daughters: Incest and the Development of the Female Self (1994), Hidden Heritage: The Legacy of the Crypto-Jews (2002), Memorializing the Holocaust: Gender, Genocide and Collective Memory (2010), and The Holocaust Across Generations: Trauma and Its Inheritance Among Descendants of Survivors (2016). Her current work is on genocide, collective memory, and counter memorialization. She is the recipient of numerous book awards and in 2005 she received the Hazel Barnes Prize, the most prestigious single faculty award granted by the University of Colorado Boulder.