Facilitating Connections
In 1970, San Diego State University launched the first Women's Studies program and since its establishment, "there are more than nine hundred programs in the US, boasting well over ten thousand courses and an enrollment larger than that of any other interdisciplinary field" (Guy-Sheftall, 2020).
The Association is always anchored by and transformed through the work happening to resist erasure and create new (and sometimes reclaimed) ways of being/thinking in postsecondary classrooms. We strive to move beyond assumed diametric oppositions, such as the idea that feminist transformations happen only in academia or in grassroots organizing, in order to hold space for the multivocality of the field. Our Annual MA/PhD Meet & Greet is an invitation to learn, feel invigorated, and nurture the relationships that sustain student engagement and faculty innovation.
As Past President, Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall (2020) notes:
"In the fifty years since its inception, Women’s Studies has revamped and revitalized major disciplines in the academy. It has challenged curricular and pedagogical practice. It has disrupted the male-centered canon. It has altered or blurred the boundaries between disciplines. It has introduced the social construction of gender and its intersections with race, class, ethnicity, and sexuality as a major focus of inquiry. And it has experienced phenomenal and unanticipated growth, becoming institutionalized on college and university campuses, spurring the hiring of feminist faculty, adding graduate courses of groundbreaking content, generating a large body of educational resources and providing the impetus for the establishment of feminist research centers. It has stimulated the development of other academic fields as well: queer studies, cultural studies, gender studies, men’s and masculinity studies, disability studies, peace studies, and more."
The Association therefore invests in the MA/PhD Meet & Greet as one way of honoring the breadth and depth of the field, as well as amplifying the reach of WGSS departments and programs to prospective students.
Read More About the Legacy of Women's Studies