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A Time to Celebrate: Departmental Status & Name Change!
We are pleased to announce that SU's Women's Studies Program is to become the Department of Women's and Gender Studies. Our proposal for departmental status as well as for a change in name has been approved unanimously by Dean Cathryn Newton (Arts & Sciences), the Senate Academic Affairs Committee, the University Senate, the College of Arts & Sciences Curriculum Committee, and the College of Arts & Sciences Faculty: approval by the Vice Chancellor & Provost Eric Spina will constitute the final stage of this process.
Thanks to the efforts of a wide alliance of dedicated faculty and staff from across the university, WSP has grown tremendously since its inception on campus in the 1970s as a series of courses, our approval by the Senate in 1977 as a non-degree granting program of study, our subsequent development of a Minor in the 1980s as well as a graduate Certificate of Advanced Study (CAS), and then our offering a Major beginning in the early 1990s.
This newest step to departmental status is truly a watershed moment: we know that the wider Women's Studies community at SU--comprised of feminist faculty, administrators, staff, students, and alumni--are delighted to hear of this transition, particularly as your collective endeavors have helped to make this a reality. Without such sustained, collaborative efforts, each stage in our growth and development on campus would not have been possible: our vision is to build on this important legacy of coalition as we grow as a Department.
Some have wanted to know, why these changes at this time? We sought Departmental status because it better reflects our role in the College and University as well as the fact that we hold both full-time and joint tenure-track faculty lines: in these and in a myriad of other ways, we "walk and talk" like a Department, as former Director Diane Lyden Murphy always used to assert! The shift to Women's & Gender Studies connects to epistemological and political changes in the field at large, both locally and at the national and international levels. Much of our work, whether in research or teaching, entails a feminist analysis of masculinity, for instance, or gender and transgender politics, and the interplay of race, gender, sexuality, nation, social class, and disability. The "object of study" has shifted over the past thirty years toward a more complex understanding of gender justice and the lived realities of gender transnationally.
Consequently, it is essential that our departmental name reflect this wider scope of comparative analysis, theoretical inquiry, and politics informing our interdisciplinary practice as feminist scholars. In marking this milestone of departmental status, the Women's and Gender Studies faculty want to celebrate the wider feminist community at SU: we look forward to the next three decades of continuing to work together with you in solidarity!
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READ ALL ABOUT IT!
The Fall 2007 Issue of the Women's Studies Program Newsletter "Dawnings" can be viewed here.
Back Issues - The Spring 2006, Fall 2006 Newletters can be found here.
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BUSY WEEK!!!!
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
4:00-6:00pm
Peter Graham Commons, E.S. Bird Library
“From the Margins of Latin American Feminisms”
Ixkic Angela Duarte Bastian, a Future of Minority Studies PostDoctoral Fellow, will speak as part of the Feminist Scholarship at SU Speakers’ Series.
Feminism in Latin America has been the start of a cultural revolution, questioning gender inequalities in contexts where it seemed impossible to do it; however, it is necessary to acknowledge that there is still a strong resistance in the face of the idea to include the demands of those who are “different.” Dr. Bastian will share some reflections on the political genealogies of three feminisms at the margins in Latin America: indigenous, lesbian and trans (transsexual, transvestites and transgender) in the context of their dialogues and alliances with other social movements, including feminism. The idea is to understand the contributions made by feminism and from these specific margins that are being formulated; to point out the contradictions, both theoretical and political uncovered due to the presence of these new discourses. She will also seek to reflect about the possibilities for joint construction and action.
Friday, April 11, 2008
4:00-6:00pm
112 Shaffer Art Building
“We Want Our Men Back!: The Endangered Black Male and Black Cultural Pathology in the production of Contemporary Nationalist Politics”
The Future of Minority Studies and the Women’s and Gender Studies Department presents Nikol Alexander Floyd, an interdisciplinary scholar whose work and teaching integrates the study of politics, law, women's studies, and Black studies. Trained as a lawyer and political scientist, she is currently an Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and a member of the Political Graduate faculty at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.
Cosponsored by the Department of African American Studies and the Political Science Department.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
6:00-8:00pm
Peter Graham Commons, E.S. Bird Library
“Birthing Racial Difference: Conversations with My Mother and Others”
The Future of Minority Studies and the Women’s and Gender Studies Department presents Gail Lewis is a Reader in Identities, faculty of Social Science at Open University in the UK. Her research is interdisciplinary in orientation and stands at the intersection of feminist, critical race, postcolonial and social policy scholarship. It draws upon the intellectual and methodological themes and approaches developed in these fields to consider the changing configurations and contingent relation among modalities of social difference and the relations of domination and subordination inscribed in such difference, with special emphasis on discourses and practices of citizenship, social welfare and organizational cultures.
Cosponsored by the Department of African American Studies and the Sociology Department.
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