Scholarship and Organizing

In October, 1983 Women’s Studies, along with the department of African American Studies and the Social Thought and Political Economy Program, organized yet another innovative conference, “The Sixties Speak to the Eighties.” The gathering was intended to bring together activists and scholars involved in the Civil Rights movement, the New Left, and the women’s movement to show the foundational importance of the Civil Rights movement to the subsequent movements for social change. Students, faculty, and community members attended workshops and speeches by activist and journalist Ann Braden, CORE founder James Farmer, Sue Thrasher of the Highlander Center, and SNCC activist Jim Forman, among others.

Since the beginning of the program, Women’s Studies faculty and staff have managed to balance their responsibilities on campus with scholarly and political engagements throughout the country and internationally. They made their marks in the field and carried the UMass Women’s Studies name with them to conferences, meetings, and demonstrations all over the world. In 1984 alone, Leila Ahmed presented a paper on the “History of the Women’s Movement in the Middle East: 19th Century to the Present” at the UNESCO Conference; Cathy Portuges presented two papers at the MLA Conference on Simone de Beauvoir; and Jan Raymond attended the Feminist International Network on the New Reproductive Technologies in Sweden.³⁰ Students earned a disproportionate percentage of university honors. Faculty were also regularly nominated for and won the distinguished teaching award. Women’s Studies newsletters throughout the eighties and nineties reported proudly on faculty, and staff’s wide travels and broad accomplishments.

³⁰ WOST newsletter Feb 1985.