Arlene Avakian Retires, National Search for Chair

In 2010, Arlene Avakian announced that she would retire the next year. Despite financial hardship at the university level and beyond, strong support from Dean of the College, Julie Hayes, helped the secure approval for an external search to replace Avakian as chair of the department. Thirty-five scholars applied for the position and, after a difficult process of whittling down the list, four were chosen to visit campus for interviews and job talks. Professor Laura Briggs, an historian, was chosen as the new chair. Briggs joined the WGSS faculty from the University of Arizona, where she was head of Gender and Women’s Studies and Associate Dean. Her scholarly work explores reproductive politics in a transnational context, with particular emphasis on the U.S. and Latin America.

Concurrent with the chair search, WGSS conducted a search for a Five College Feminist Science Studies position. The job went to Angela Willey, who received her PhD in Women’s Studies from Emory University in 2010. She will teach at UMass and Hampshire College in the fall of 2011, and Mount Holyoke College in the spring [of 2012]. Willey’s work looks at the production of normal and abnormal bodies in discourses on the nature of monogamy. Discussion has been underway in WGSS about the prospect of developing a feminist science studies institute within the department; Willey’s presence makes this goal all the more palpable.

In the spring of 2011, friends and colleagues worked to come up with a fitting farewell for Arlene Avakian that would serve to honor the vastness of her contributions and celebrate her retirement. In April scores of people gathered at a reception and dinner and had the opportunity to hear speakers reflect on Avakian’s commitment to teaching about racism, whiteness, and white privilege; her pivotal impact on the field of feminist food studies; her brilliance in the kitchen; and her fiery and uncompromising approach to personal, political, and professional matters. Colleagues, university administrators, a local state representative, friends, and former students spoke about the inspiration Avakian provided throughout her three and a half decades at UMass and the critical ways she had shaped Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at UMass and beyond.