University of Massachusetts Amherst
Women's Studies News
Our faculty, staff and students are always active, doing things to make the world a better place, and sometimes getting noticed while they do. Here are some descriptions and links (when available) of the latest interesting projects they are doing. If one of our faculty, staff, student or graduate is getting recognized in the world and we have missed it, tell us about it. Email your news to: lindah@wost.umass.edu
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Women’s Studies is now Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies!
After years of discussion and a year of working through the channels, the women’s studies program has changed our name. We are one of the oldest programs in the country and in those days -- the 1970s -- most programs were called women's studies. It was exciting to put women in our name and in the center of our analysis. But we and the field have moved from an exclusive focus on women to one that embeds gender within a complex web of interlocking social formations including gender, race/nationality/ethnicity, class, and sexuality. Constructed in relation to each other, these social formations form binary oppositions, e.g., femininity is the opposite of masculinity, and understanding the construction of one necessitates the understanding the other as well as their relationship to each other, all within a global context. These constructions are also in flux, changing in response to both societal pressures and resistance to them. Gender, as we understand it, includes all of these complexities.
So, we are keeping women first, but making explicit that we understand gender to be in complex context of inextricable interconnections.
Please be patient as we slowly change the zillions of places our name appears—on official documents, on our literature, on our website, on other University sites, and more.
Miliann Kang Awarded Book Prize by National Women's Studies Association
Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies is pleased to announce that the National Women's Studies Association has awarded the Sara A. Whaley book prize to Miliann Kang for her forthcoming book: The Managed Hand: Race, Gender and the Body in Beauty Service Work. This prestigious award is given for a work that addresses women and labor, and includes recognition and a cash award. The selection committee noted that the book ". . .brings to life the world of the nail salon in a theoretically informed, self-reflective ethnography that places the labor of Korean women and their relationship with black and white customers in intersectional and transnational perspective. . .this book adds to the current sociological and feminist discussion on rethinking and rewriting the body." Congratulations!
The Ann Ferguson
Feminist Social Activist Award
in honor of the Thirty-Fifth Anniversary of
Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies
at UMass Amherst
Ann Ferguson will give two special social activism awards to honor the 35th anniversary of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Women’s Studies program. Ann Ferguson has been a longtime faculty member in Philosophy and Women’s Studies and was a Director of women’s studies from 1995 to 2001 and a founder of the graduate certificate in Advanced Feminist Studies in 1996. She is a feminist scholar and activist. Ann has written several books on feminist theory, is one of the co-founders of the local group Feminist Aid to Central America, and is involved in global solidarity projects in Central America, Mexico, Cuba, Spain, and the US.
When Ann retired in 2007, she established the Ann Ferguson Women and Gender Studies Scholarship through the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts. The Ferguson scholarship at the Community Foundation continues to raise funds to support needy students concentrating on women, gender and sexuality in their university studies, and will provide scholarships in years to come.
This year, in celebration of the women, gender and sexuality studies anniversary, the one-time Ferguson Social Activist Awards will make two $500 grants, one to an undergraduate major or minor in women, gender, sexuality studies and one to a graduate student in the certificate program in Advanced Feminist Studies. The awardees will show excellence in a feminist activist project for social change. Projects may include: 1) an internship in a social change project that benefits women, which may include international travel and work in another country; 2) participation in a conference that deals with issues relating to social justice; and/or 3) a research project on social movements. Projects with a transnational emphasis are particularly welcome, and the financial need of applicants will be taken into account.
Candidates applying to receive an award must send a 2 page resume and an application letter describing their project, and 2 letters of recommendation, by December 15, 2009 to: Ann Ferguson Social Activist Award, Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies, 208 Bartlett Hall, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003.
Hungry for more news? Take a look at our semi-annual newsletters from the current semester back until the beginning of the program. To see all of the past news items, click here.