NWSA Releases New Tenure and Promotion
Guidelines for Women's Studies
NWSA has just released new guidelines for tenure and promotion in women's and gender studies.

The statement notes that:

too often terms like 'rigor' and 'excellence' mask narrowly conceived evaluative measures tied to systems of power that have and continue to exclude white women and people of color from the tenured or full professor ranks.

With these guidelines, The National Women's Studies Association Field Leadership Working Group intends to both aid candidates in navigating these barriers while calling for change in institutional practices.

NWSA Releases Inaugural Annual Report for 2012
The National Women's Studies Association releases its inaugural Annual Report detailing the key activities, programs and accomplishments of the Association in 2012.

Letter from the President and Executive Director Excerpt
As President and Executive Director of the National Women’s Studies Association,
we are pleased to provide this inaugural report on the key activities, programs, and accomplishments of the Association over the past year. During this period NWSA has taken important steps at creating new professional development resources, being a voice for the field to wider audiences, and strengthening and expanding our signature Women of Color Leadership Project program.

We responded to our members’ requests for field statements that would strengthen and support
their work in women’s studies. Our forthcoming statement on tenure and promotion builds on theAssociation’s early efforts in this area and will offer a broad, field-level view of how to assess research,
teaching, and service in women’s and gender studies that can be used in conjunction with specific
institutional requirements.

Negotiating Points of Encounter
November 7-10, 2013

Keynote Speaker: Elizabeth Alexander Elizabeth Alexander is a poet, essayist, playwright, and teacher born in New York City and raised in Washington, DC. Alexander has degrees from Yale University and Boston University and completed her Ph.D. in English at the University of Pennsylvania. Most recently, she composed and delivered “Praise Song for the Day” for the inauguration of President Barack Obama. The poem has recently been published as a small book from Graywolf Press. In addition, she has published five books of poems: The Venus Hottentot (1990), Body of Life (1996), Antebellum Dream Book (2001), American Sublime (2005), which was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and was one of the American Library Association’s “Notable Books of the Year;” and her first young adult collection (co-authored with Marilyn Nelson), Miss Crandall’s School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color (2008 Connecticut Book Award). Her two collections of essays are The Black Interior (2004) and Power and Possibility (2007), and her play, “Diva Studies,” was produced at the Yale School of Drama. Professor Alexander is the first recipient of the Alphonse Fletcher, Sr. Fellowship for work that “contributes to improving race relations in American society and furthers the broad social goals of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954.” She is the 2007 winner of the first Jackson Prize for Poetry, awarded by Poets & Writers, Inc. Other awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, the George Kent Award, given by Gwendolyn Brooks, a Guggenheim fellowship as well as the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at University of Chicago. She is currently chair of the African American Studies Department at Yale University.