Dedicated to Preserving the Academic and Operational Autonomy of USF's Women's Studies Department: Letter Accompanying Petition to Retain Departmental Autonomy & The Petition

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Letter Accompanying Petition to Retain Departmental Autonomy & The Petition

Dear Friends of Women's and Gender Studies:

These are hard times for Higher Education in the state of Florida ingeneral, and for the University of South Florida in particular.We write on behalf of the faculty, students, and members of theUniversity community concerned with preserving the Department of Women's Studies.

Due to a severe budget crisis, the Department of Women's Studies faces the potential loss of its status as an autonomous department. As theonly free-standing Department of Women's Studies in the state ofFlorida, and among the oldest in the nation, we believe that curtailing our autonomy will have a negative impact on our discipline and on ouruniversity as a whole.We ask you to lend your support to us by agreeing to sign the letter below urging the University to maintain the integrity and independentstatus of the Department of Women's Studies.

Please sign at the Petition Website http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/autonomy. We will compile all names and present them to the Administration.

Thanks!

Sincerely,

The Department of Women's Studies, University of South Florida

Kim Vaz, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Chair
Marilyn Myerson, Ph.D., Associate Professor
Gurleen Grewal, Ph.D., Associate Professor
Carolyn J. Eichner, Ph.D., Associate Professor
Sara Crawley, Ph.D., Assistant Professor
Nagwa Dajani, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor
Linda Lucas, Ph.D., Visiting Professor

March 6, 2008Dear President Genshaft and Provost Wilcox,

We are scholars, students, activists, and community members. We express our deep concern at the planned restructuring of Women's Studies at USF and integration of the Department faculty into other disciplines or themerging of the Department as a subdivision of another disciplinary unit.

USF has been a leader in Women's Studies; the Department of Women'sStudies at USF is among the oldest in the nation, celebrating its 36thanniversary this Spring semester, and it is the only Department ofWomen's Studies in the state of Florida.

We stress the value of Women's Studies as a discipline: In 1991, theAmerican Association of Colleges identified Women's Studies as "one oftwelve learned disciplines most conducive to the promotion ofundergraduate liberal learning."We are concerned that the University might consider closing or mergingthe Department. This would effectively undermine a discipline thataccording to the AAC report, has "transformed knowledge in thehumanities, social sciences and life sciences, challenginglong-established beliefs, contesting dominant paradigms, identifying newareas of research, and introducing new strategies of analysis.

"According to the AAC report, "the strength of the women's studies majorlies in its commitment to criticize existing theories and methodologiesand to formulate new paradigms and organizing concepts across academicfields, its adoption of a complex matrix of gender, class, race, age,ethnicity, and nationality as fundamental categories of social,cultural, and historical analysis, its reliance upon interdisciplinaryinquiry in structuring a sequence of coherently interrelated courses,its unrelenting attention to pedagogy designed to create an equitablelearning opportunity for all students, and its ability to foster thestudent's critical and analytical skills."

We urge the University not to entertain any drastic plan to eliminateWomen's Studies as an autonomous Department at the University of South Florida.

Yours Sincerely,

Please sign in support by going to Petition Website http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/autonomy

Listen to Marilyn Myerson, Ph.D. founding faculty member of the Department of Women’s Studies, Susan Northcutt, Ph.D., Chair, Women’s Studies Department Advisory Board (Professor Emeritus of International Relations at USF) and two Women’s Studies graduate students Melissa Albee and Julie Dumois Sands discuss role of Women’s Studies in their research and the impact that on the Department of the budget cuts. Go to www.wmnf.org. Click on Daily Schedule/weekly. Click on Women's Show. Scroll down to archives and select March 1, 2008.

Why Have a Women’s Studies Department?

“A place to form community; a place to meet other liked minded scholars who through their commitment to feminist theory debate ideas openly among themselves; a place to gain analytic tools to understand their place in the world and to understand power dynamics in society and organizations and how to make change” Marilyn Myerson

“AFA/WST has offered me a different way of thinking about the world (e.g., how power and oppression operate and possible paths to liberation). Both have taught me how to shape my commitment to social justice to make a more equitable society. I am taking AFA/WST into classrooms and community groups including to women in jail.” Julie Dumois-Sands

A Listerner Comment!!!!

Hi Alene, I heard your show with Marylin Myerson and Susan Northcutt who contributed to my education along time ago. I just wanted to comment on the usefulness of Women's studies. I graduated in 1987 with a BA at a time when only a minor in women's studies was available. It was liberating for me to hear a college professor quote research which normalized my girlhood dreams to be more than just a "caretaker". I say this not to berate the role, but to express how important it was to know it was "ok " to want to also serve my community in other productive, professional ways. I later went on to obtain a master's degree, much to mother's chagrin. !!! I appreciate all the women who stood up to make my feminist education possible. I commend the grad student who is bringing the notion of equality to the playgrounds. It's been a long time coming. Thanks, V.K

Sphere: Related Content

What Scholars at AAU-Member Schools are Saying (Among Others):

Dear Colleagues,

I would like to share this letter of support for maintaining the operational and academic autonomy of the Department of Women's Studies at the University of South Florida from the faculty of the Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus.

What is significant about this letter is that it is written by the highly regarded femininst philosopher, Naomi Scheman. Dr. Sheman is a Professor of both Philosophy and Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies and has served as the Associate Dean of the Graduate School at the University of Minnesota.

Dr. Scheman reviewed the Department of Women's Studies at the University of South Florida, seven years ago when the number of tenured and tenure-earning faculty in the Department of Women's Studies was just under the critical mass of 10.

She notes in her letter that then “the Department was strong and poised to make a central contribution to USF’s goals of being a well-regarded Research 1 university and of especially contributing to the cultural, social, and economic well-being of the Tampa Bay area.”

Most importantly she notes “the MA program was especially impressive: more and more of the applicants to our PhD program have master’s degrees, and the USF program was then providing exactly the sort of preparatory work we look for in PhD applications. . . it was clear to me that they were receiving a first-rated education.”

It is taken as axiomatic at The University of Minnesota that "Women’s Studies has taken its legitimate place in the classrooms, laboratories, textbooks, and journals of the academy."

They have not allowed their Department to lapse and instead have nurtured feminist scholarship to the point that the Department is now recognized as being among the most distinguished in the world.

What this signals is that academic prominence is best served by a distinct and operationally autonomous Women’s Studies Department.

Sincerely,

Kim Vaz, Ph.D.Chair,
Department of Women's Studies

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On behalf of my colleagues in Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota, I would like to strenuously urge you to reconsider the decision to end the autonomy of the Women’s Studies department at the University of South Florida. Some years ago I was an external reviewer for that department, and consequently know it more closely than do my colleagues. But I have shared my impressions with them and they share my concern, especially since the decisions about that department reflect larger issues. As a reviewer, I was impressed by USF’s Women’s Studies Department’s breadth, the cliber of its faculty and students, and its attention to issues of diversity. The MA program was especially impressive: more and more of the applicants to our PhD program have masters degrees, and the USF program was then providing exactly the sort of preparatory work we look for in PhD applicants. The students I met and spoke with were superb and, whether they went on for PhD’s or used their masters as preparation for careers, it was clear to me that they were receiving a fist-rate education.

The Department was a strong one then, and poised to make a central contribution to USF’s goals of being a well-regarded Research 1 universtity and of contributing especially to the cultural, social, and economic well-being of the Tampa Bay area. I am dismayed to learn that the subsequent treatment of the Department has eroded, rathere than built upon, that strength, to the point that it is now being regarded too small to autonomously exist. Such loss of autonomy flies in the face of the vibrancy and growth of Women’s studies as a field nationally and internationally and reflects poorly on the University’s commitment not only to diversity but also to scholarly excellence.

The proposal to merge women’s studies together with Africana Studies and perhaps Latin American Studies is a particularly bad one, and it is especially here that broader considerations come into play. The intellectual and strategic alliances that frequently exist among these fields is, in fact, an argument against merging them. The alliances recognize the stake each of them has in the others’ thriving, with the autonomy necessary to develop in the complementary, by no means identical, ways characteristic of each. Any merger sends the clear message that these fields are seen as marginal: no-one is proposing, for example, that sociology and economics be merged on the grounds that they study inter-related aspects of contemporary society.

It is clear that the potential loss of autonomy for Women’s Studies is being driven by budgetary concerns, with which are sympathetic. But it is precisely at such times, when hard decisions have to be made, that institutions reveal their core commitments.

The Idea that more recently created departments and programs should be more vulnerable reflects a profoundly anti-intellectual form of conservatism, since it is in precisely those fields that the research and teaching missions of an institution are most clearly moving forward. A university concerned with its reputation needs to be especially attentive to the areas of new growth, especially concerned not to cut back at those places where transformation is occurring, seriously aware of the long-term effects of creating a chilly climate for critique and innovation.

We urge you to maintain the autonomy and the rebuild the strength of
Women’s Studies and Africana Studies at USF.

Sincerely,

For the core Faculty in Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies

Susan Craddock
Jigna Desai
Amy Kaminsky
Regina Kunzel
Richa Nagar
Naomi Scheman
Eden Torres
Jaquelyn Zita

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Educational Administrational retrenchment as a budgetary issue should not sacrifice the most significant and fruitful interdisciplinary areas of the last 25 years. Any encouragement to slight African Studies or Women's Studies at this juncture of history will have repercussions for global affairs, as Africa takes its place at the table and as women's issues affect more of the world's political landscape in every arena from economics to war and peace. This step backwards is backward.

William L. Conwill, Asst Prof, U of Florida

A great university makes a commitment to the intellectual life and to critical work, not just to cutting budgetary corners. Although all public education institutions in the US are suffering from under-funding, consolidating Women's Studies, Africana Studies, and Latin American and Caribbean Studies is not the solution to this problem; it only sends the message that the work done in these fields is not as important as that done in more lucrative, business-oriented ones. USF deserves better as it continues to grow.

Ananya Mukherjea, Assistant Professor, CUNY College of Staten Island

March 31, 2008

Dear President Genshaft and Provost Wilcox:

In this era of increasing limitation of public venues for social and political critique, the university bears a special responsibility to affirm and support a space for those activities.

Thus, we hear with dismay of your planned elimination of the autonomous structure of the historic Department of Women's Studies at your university.

The message of this demotion from departmental status signals to future, current and past students and faculty that USF no longer values the intellectual discipline, decades of work, and the lives andcontributions of the women who are at the center of Women's Studies.

Even though women are more than half of all people, our lives, interests, expertises, achievements, creations, and scholarship werecompletely ignored or severely marginalized in all academic disciplines until as recently as a few decades ago, when women scholars, teachers, and students (if admitted to study at all) did not have a solid home inacademia from which to struggle for our rightful inclusion in all theuniversity disciplines.

Your dissolution of the Women's Studies Department creates a real risk that you will lose all the intellectual power and contributions that Women's Studies has given to your university over the last three decades. It would be a shame to permit the University of South Florida to lose its academic prestige because of this move. We urge you to reconsider.

Budget constraints are always real, and always with us. But you know, as well as we, that it is the needs of programs and people who embody the critique of mainstream power that are usually the first penalized in budget cuts.

We write as representatives of a women's studies program that has just been elevated to departmental status by our home university, whichstaunchly affirmed the need for independent work on gender and women's issues.

We hope that you will act as staunchly in maintaining the autonomy ofthe USF Department of Women's Studies.
Sincerely,

The Advocacy and Political Action CommitteeWomen's and Gender Studies Department
Syracuse University

Leslie Bender, Professor, School of Law
Minnie Bruce Pratt, Professor, Writing and Women's and Gender Studies, Arts & Sciences
Jennifer Hyndman, Professor of Geography,
MaxwellLori A. Brown, Associate Professor, School of Architecture
Dalia Rodriguez, Assistant Professor, Cultural Foundations of Education

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Dr. John D’Emilio was trained as a historian and spent most of his academic career in History Departments. In 1999, he became primary faculty in a Department of Gender and Women's Studies and learned that in addition to the intellectual invigoration experienced in GWS, since joining GWS, he writes that

the real discovery – a shocker if you will – has been seeing the importance of programs like GWS [and, on our campus, Latin American and Latino Studies, and African American Studies, too] for a significant number of undergraduates. I can’t tell you how many students have come to me and described their experience of GWS courses, as well as the literal physical space that GWS occupies, as a “coming home.” The phrase as well as the metaphor of home more generally have come up too frequently to ignore. It’s taught me about the profound alienation that many undergraduates still experience on a college campus and in many college classrooms, and the way this alienation impacts negatively on their school performance, career possibilities, and college retention prospects. Supporting rigorous academic programs in fields like Women’s Studies and African American Studies has the capacity not only to sustain exciting intellectual work on a campus, but also to improve the campus climate in subtle, hard-to-measure, but still significant ways, for many undergraduates.

Dr. D’Emilio is a Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies (GWS) and History and Former Director of GWS at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

I am a Women's Studies major because it is the only degree program that offers the opportunity to deconstruct the dominant societal paradigms, systems of oppression, and discriminatory practices and traditions in academia and academic disciplines. I feel strongly that I am more challenged through the USF Women's Studies Department and coursework than the USF Honors Program. I strongly urge USF to continue its much publicized commitment to diversity by adequately funding and developing a strong Women's Studies Department, including but not limited to WST major, Master's, and Doctoral programs.

Ms. Gretchen Margarita Garcia, USF WST Major

Dear President Genshaft and Provost Wilcox,

As members of the National Organization for Women, Tampa Chapter, we are greatly concerned about the possibility of restructuring the Women’s Studies Department at USF, with the possibility of merging it with other departments or integrating the current faculty into related disciplines.

The USF Women’s Studies Department is one of the oldest in the United States and indeed the only department level program in the state of Florida. The Department achieved this status through hard work and political acumen over many years. To lose the status of Department at this time would be ill-advised as there is little likelihood of reinstatement when the budget permits. This is not a process done lightly.

As an organization concerned with women’s issues and social justice, we view the possibility of doing away with the Department as an unmitigated tragedy. There is no other department or program that focuses on the use of gender, along with race and class, as categories of analysis, to facilitate the investigation of the role of gender in culture, family, health, politics and education.

To relegate the Women’s Studies Department to the status of a Program or Center is unacceptable. This change would not allow the faculty to be peers with faculty of other departments, and they would be marginalized, without a voice, and excluded from decision making; the very shortcomings this Department was developed to mitigate.

As an organization, the National Organization for Women has sought inclusion and equality for women for decades. Demotion of the Women’s Studies Department at University of South Florida would be a severe blow to our struggle. The situation is one being followed closely by the local, state and national organization.

Sincerely,

Tampa Chapter of the National Organization for Women

Provost Wilcox,

As a parent of an amazing young lady that recently graduated from "Cornell University's Law School" and now practices law in Los Angeles, California and of which pursued her undergraduate studies through "USF," of where she obtained two majors, one being in "Women's Studies" and the other in "Political Science" and knowing that of all her degrees, that her "Women's Studies" degree ranks as one of her proudest accomplishments, I find it imperative that I express my great concern over "USF's" possible decision to restructure or totally eliminate it from the curriculum! This program helps build strong and independent women of which our society is in great need, especially in the legal and political realm, so PLEASE for the sake of our future female leaders and great contributors to society, do not cut or restructure such a meaningful program!

Sincerely,

Lynda Purifoy
Alumni Mother

Women's Studies must be maintained. Such departments serve to focus our study of gender and women of diverse backgrounds and experiences. Continue to be a world leader by sustaining this important department.

Nicole Allen, Ph.D., Assisant Professor, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign

Having an autonomous Women's Studies Department should be seen and treated as the source of pride and indication of forward-looking administration that it is. I urge the University of South Florida to keep the Department and find another method for addressing the needs articulated by the Provost's budget report.

Nancy Chi Cantalupo, Assistant Dean for Clinical Programs, Georgetown University Law Center; Adjunct Professor, Women's and Gender Studies Program, Georgetown University

These disciplines are invaluable to USF. Of course, we all know the effects that budget cuts are having across the state of Florida. However, treated Women's and Africana Studies are expendables further marginalizes the status of women and minorities in academia. What kind of a message is USF sending to it's female and minority students?

Sabrina Jamil, Professor, Miami Dade college

I was born in Florida, attend USF from 1970-1974, participated in founding the USF Women's Center, and took a class from Juanita Williams. The time I spent at USF was the start of my career in Women's Studies. The existence of Women's Studies as a department at USF is indicative of the early importance of Florida as a center of second-wave feminist organizing and of women's studies' development as a discipline. Don't sqander this important and vital legacy because of a short-term budget problem. It would be extremely short-sighted to do so.

Eileen Bresnahan, Associate Professor of Feminist and Gender Studies, Colorado College

USF's Women's Studies is a excellent example of academically strong program that services its students, the university and the community at large way beyond its capacity. In the past I have encouraged our BA students to go to USF for their MA in Women's Studies knowing that they will be in a place where scholarship and activist work is valued. In turn, we look for USF students in our applicant pool for doctoral work here in Maryland. I support this program, my colleagues affiliated with it and hope that Florida will continue to be a state with a excellent Women's Stds program.

Lynn Bolles, Univ Maryland College Park

I am a 1998 graduate of the Women's Studies Program at USF. I was outraged to hear today on the WMNF's Women's Show that there is a possibility that the WSP at USF might not continue. I am now an educator. Nothing informs my teaching practice more than my degree in Women's Studies not even my MA in Education. Women's Studies taught me how to THINK, how to deconstruct the world around me and gave me a new perspective on history. I consider my degree in Women's Studies one of the jewels in my crown. Don't deprive other students the meaningful and wonderful experience that is Women's Studies at USF.

Teresa Carlton

As Chair and Professor of the Department of Women's Studies at the University of Maryland -- home of one of approximately 12 PhD programs in the field, I am saddened and disturbed to learn of the potential loss of autonomy of this program. At a time when women's and gender studies programs are growing nationally and we are producing PhD's with excellent job placements, the need and demand for strong undergraduate and masters is increasing. This is a time to build and support women's studies, not reduce its visibility, autonomy and impact. I encourage reconsideration of this recommendation. Investment in women's studies can and will strengthen the curriculum and you have a strong faculty at USF which is capable and deserving of the opportunities to grow. Finally, a commitment to diversity is more than counting the number of students and faculty, it requires investment in academic programs that generate the diversity curricula. I am saddened and disappointed to learn that the fate of women's studies is being extending to Africana studies as well -- a move that sends a message that the University's commitment to diversity is weak.

Bonnie Thornton Dill, Ph.D.

I am a USF PhD graduate 2001. I engaged with the Women's Studies department during my 6 years at USF taking classes and working for HYPATIA. The department always epitomized excellence.

Miguel Martinez-Saenz, Assistant Provost and Associate Professor of Philosophy, Witenberg University Graduate

While I recognize that USF and the State University System are operating under nearly impossible budgetary constraints and that extremely painful decisions have to be made, I hope that a solution can be reached that does not involve the loss of departments like Women's Studies and Africana Studies - both of which have played pivotal roles in meeting the needs of USF's diverse student body.

Sara Green, Ph.D. University of South Florida

I wish to support most strongly maintaining Women's S tudies as an autonomous discipline. It most certainly is at many institutions, and even gives a PhD degree. Yes, these are terrible budgetary times, especially for public universities. However, public universities should take the lead in maintaining the integrity of programs such as Women's Studies.

Rachel G. Fuchs
Distinguished Foundation Professor of History Arizona State University

You have my support on your petition and I will circulate it toothers. Good luck in your struggle.

Ellen Carol DuBoisProfessor of History UCLA

I write to strongly support the existence of the Women's Studies programas an autonomous unit. The Women's Movement and Women 's Studiesscholars and activists have struggled and fought for academic programsthat explicitly address issues of women's experiences and gender -- inways that these and related matters are central and not peripheral todisciplinary and interdisciplinary studies. Loss of autonomy as aprogram would be an unfortunate step backwards, signaling the loss ofground and legitimacy.

Sandra Jackson, Professor Women's and Gender Studies ProgramDePaul University

I am pleased to lend my name to this letter and petition.

Susan Englander, Associate Director
Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project Stanford University

I was shocked and surprised to learn about the plan toeliminate the Department of Women's Studies at theUniversity of South Florida. In contemplating the mergingof the women's studies department into other units or theabsorption of its faculty into other departments, theadministration is moving in opposition to a national trendwhich recognizes the growth of the discipline of women'sstudies by converting programs into departments andgenerating graduate programs. Universities that recognizethe importance of emerging disciplines support autonomouswomen's studies departments which allow students to majorand minor in women's studies and serve as a resource forfeminist scholarship.

Amy Kesselman Professor or Women's Studies SUNY New Paltz

Please add my name to your letter of protest about ending the autonomousstatus of Women's Studies and Africana Studies at U.S.F. The threatened changes are an abrogation of academic freedom.

Professor Bonnie B. Spanier, Women's Studies Department, University at Albany, Albany, NY (State University of New York)

I am writing in support of the Women's Studies Deparment at USF. As aresearcher whose work is located at the nexus of Black women and HIV/AIDS Iwould like to state that any loss of an entity that includes focused attentionto the lives of women would be a loss not only to the university, but also tothe knowledge base of other fields such as public health. The lack of supportfor minority oriented departments such as women's studies, and particularly oneas unique as USFs that is also chaired by a minority faculty member causes someconcern as to the applicability of the requirements that USF is using to correctits budget shortfall.

Arlene E. Edwards, Ph. D. Career MPH Program Rollins School of Public Health Emory University

I fully support the request by the Women's Studies Department to stand as an independent academic unit at the University of South Florida. Let me add, that having experienced a process of regrouping of academic units with the intention of saving costs, proved to be a very foolish and a short-sighted decision that in the end had the opposite effect!

Dr. Peter Höyng
Associate Professor & Chair
Department of German Studies
Emory University

As a member of the community and as a member of the Women's Studies Advisory Board, I am astonished that the Provost of the University of South Florida would even think of dissolving the Women’s Studies Department. Teaching and fostering critical thinking is one of the most important values of a university. Women’s Studies and Africana Studies are two of the most valuable assets to any University and especially in Florida as it is the shining example for the entire state. The fact that three of the departments have chairs that are African Americans also smacks of racism as well as sexism. Please know that the world is watching.

Edith Daly, Student and Women's Studies Advisory Board Member, Retired Registered Nurse

Women's Studies is one of the cutting-edge interdisciplinary fields in the Humanities. It should be given more funding, not less.

Dr. Deborah Sweeney, Senior Lecturer, Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures, Tel Aviv University

Please do not lower the status of your women's studies department at a crucial time in our nation's history when this work is so important.

Dr. Juli Parker, Director Women's Resource Center, UMass Dartmouth

I support the Women's Studies Program and recognize the critical value of such programs in our University. As a Master's student in 1975 I completed an Independent Study with Dr. Judith Ochshorn. It remains the most meaningful course experience I have ever had. Without a freestanding department we devalue the programs, the outreach, the critical theory and perspectives of Women's Studies. I wonder if we would even consider such a n assault if it were Men's Studies?

Janet Scaglione, Associate Professor, University of South Florida

I realize the state of Florida is having financial problems, but the savings from cutting departments such as Women's Studies or Africana Studies is negligible and certain not going to solve any fiscal problems. Try cutting high paid administrators first before axing entire departments.

Steve Striffler, Associate Professor, University of Arkansas

Why get rid of a department on Women's Studies? We need to have places for scholars to learn and teach in this area.

Ellen Levine, Ph.D., M.P.H., Senior Scientist, San Francisco State University

The Women's Studies Department at USF is one of the oldest and most well-respected in the nation. If you seek ways to build a distinctive, national reputation, then surely cutting out one of your best programs is not the way to do so.

Julie Buckner Armstrong, Associate Professor, USF St. Petersburg

Women's and Africana studies have a deeper impact on life choices of students than almost any other college courses. USF has a long and distinguished national reputation in WMS; what a terrible shame to lose that!

Kathryn Quina, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology & Women's Studies, University of Rhode Island

Women's Studies programs are struggling all over the state, and USF has been a role model for those of us who have dared to imagine achieving the legitimacy of department status. Why is it that Women's Studies continues to be seen as unimportant, a "low priority"? Given the number of students who take WMS courses across the state's campuses and the continued failure of many disciplines in integrating the work and experiences of women into their curriculum, the work of Women's Studies is far from over. In fact, the notion that efforts to educate our college students about the achievements and experiences of women - more than half our population - is 'low priority' speaks volumes about why Women's Studies continues to be important and relevant.

Rhonda Ovist, Associate Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies, Rollins College

It is very important that Women's Studies Programs and Departments retain their autonomy and I strongly support the effort by the WS Department at University of South Florida to do so. This department is the only one of its kind in the state. Women's Studies is now a mature field of study, over thirty years old and having made significant contributions to academia. These contributions have been both disciplinary and interdisciplinary in curriculum and research and valuable to students' understanding of the relationship between their learning in the classroom and contributions to their communities and society at large. Students will lose a great deal if such a well-established department is decimated by being unable to retain its independent status, diminishing the potential richness of a truly liberal arts education to which schools like USF are dedicated. I, therefore, urge you to reconsider what would be a poor decision for the both your university, in terms of current and potential attraction of students to your school, as well as the larger community that you serve.

Barbara Scott Winkler, Director of Women's Studies, Southern Oregon

USF's Women's Studies is a excellent example of academically strong program that services its students, the university and the community at large way beyond its capacity. In the past I have encouraged our BA students to go to USF for their MA in Women's Studies knowing that they will be in a place where scholarship and activist work is valued. In turn, we look for USF students in our applicant pool for doctoral work here in Maryland. I support this program, my colleagues affiliated with it and hope that Florida will continue to be a state with a excellent Women's Studies program.

Lynn Bolles, Univ Maryland College Park

The University of South Florida in Tampa demonstrated guts and moral fiber when it established one of the first Women's Studies in the country. Please continue to lead the way -- don't go backwards now. How demoralising that these two departments might lose their autonomy in the very year that a woman and an African-American are making history in the current presidential race.

Molly Sackler, Independent Scholar

Women's Studies and Africana Studies produce the kinds of critical thinkers essential to a strong democracy. To eliminate these programs would be to consent to the homogenization of society around the corporate philosophy that has been responsible for the environmental degradation and meaningless work-and-spend habits adopted by so many Americans (who, by the way, will tell you that they aren't particularly happy living this lifestyle). We need people who think differently and these are two programs that train people to think differently.

Laurel Graham, Assoc Prof, Sociology, USF-Tampa

The WST Faculty and Department has done a great deal for me (I graduated from USF WST undergrad and earned a grad certificate in 2003) .... I'm actually a teacher at PACE Center for Girls, Inc. in Pasco County (a feminist, non-profit alternative school for at-risk teens).

In the last month, when I was specifically teaching a lesson about the evolution of Women's Studies and Feminisms, my girls were so excited to hear about a Women's Studies Department that was so geographically close to them. They were also excited to recognize that their "Spirited Girls!" class -- an elective that I teach every student, every day they're enrolled at PACE -- is a middle/high school version of Women's Studies.

I utilize implement what I've learned from Women's Studies and my professors everyday and have taught it to many courageous teens in the 4 years I've taught at PACE. I can't imagine what my life or my students' lives would be like without the impact of the Women's Studies Department at USF.

Rebecca H. Russell

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Women's Studies Departments Aren't Dying Nationally, Only Locally at USF!

After the current crop of seniors graduates this spring, women's studies will no longer exist as an autonomous field in Britain, says Angela McRobbie in today's Guardian. She thinks women's studies has disappeared for two main reasons: One, the mercenary job market, where a women's studies degree is not immediately applicable to a high paying job (though the same could be said of philosophy, comparative literature, or any other liberal arts degree). McRobbie's second reason is that women, in what she describes as a largely post-feminist England, "fear being seen as critical of men."

Whether or not McRobbie's supposition about English women holds water, I wondered how American women's studies departments are faring these days. I called Barbara Howe, director of the women's studies department at West Virginia University and president of the National Women's Studies Association to find out.

"As far as I know," Professor Howe said in a phone interview, women's studies departments in the States "are not declining. The only one that I know of that's under some threat right now is at the University of South Florida. There's been budget cuts and the dean wants to take away their autonomous status."

Otherwise, Howe notes, the enrollment for her women's studies classes at WVU is strong, and they retain popularity because word of mouth is so potent. "What i see at West Virginia, is that people will get really excited about material and then they will recruit their friends. We can encourage them as teachers only so much," but it's the enthusiasm of the students that keeps 'em coming back.

She then told this anecdote about a student she had a few years ago. "She must have been 18 or 19 at the time. We were talking about Title IX in class, and this student asked 'Why hasn't anyone told me about this before?' She was furious that no one had told her about Title IX. But Title IX was her birthright, and she had been reaping the benefits of it without knowing its name. It's our obligation as women's studies scholars to point out the benefits, but also to point out that they need to protect them."

http://jezebel.com/372032/are-womens-studies-departments-dying

Complexity Theorists at USF Discuss the Importance of Women's Studies Professionally and Personally

How has women's studies impacted your sense of self, scholarship, work, and/or community? Collected by WST Graduate Student, Heather Curry

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Dear friends and colleagues:

As many of you know, severe budget cuts at USF are imminent, and it seems a strong possibility they will have a deleterious effect on my home department, Women's Studies. With a foot in the respective camps of Women's Studies and the Complexity and Community Sustainability Initiative, I have found the boundaries of those two systems remarkably permeable. Complexity helped me clarify gender as a mutable and shifting system, one central to our organization of social, political and historical dynamics. Feminism and feminist theory have amplified my attunement to power dynamics as they order and operate in CAS and how they inform the cultivation of relationship in research practices and methodologies, as well as in community involvement.While reviewing the community analysis reports for Hillsborough County and beginning to identify inter-relationships among them, the complex web of identity practices and constructs that is powerfully shaping and shaped by our local landscapes is becoming more visible. Additionally, self-reflexivity and accountability is central to feminist research methodologies, and I have found resonance in complexity theory. Do you also see ways in which the feminist perspective contributes to complexity approaches & community efforts? I am posing this question with a certain sense of urgency. This Thursday, at the gala for the 35th Anniversary of the USF Women's Studies Department held at Embassy Suites Hotel, there will be an opportunity to present a case for the relevance and importance of the department's presence within the university and local community(s). Along with several colleagues, I am collecting brief, thoughtful responses to the question: how has women's studies impacted your sense of self, scholarship, work, and/or community? If you could take a moment to respond to this question, I will be able to incorporate your perspective into the case we make on Thursday. There are still seats available at the gala, and we welcome and encourage everyone who is able to give a show of support by attending and sharing your perspective in person, but if you are unable, I will be sure to report back and let you know how the sharing of diverse perspectives on the value of women's studies itself seems to affect the CAS of USF and our local communities! My heartfelt thanks for your support.

Respectfully,

Heather Curry,
GA Complexity and Community Sustainability Initiative
MA Student, Department of Women's Studies
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Heather:

There are several points that can be made regarding how women's studies has changed scholarship, teaching, etc. as it relates to the study of political life and of a liberal education in general.First, feminist approaches to politics have often uncovered the ways in which mainstream political science, including that political science conducted by women, but using conventional empirical techniques, have actually misinterpreted and misrepresented data. It is not unlike the Sandra Harding example of how naturalists, first looking through a microscope, confirmed the existence of homunculi in sperm. Needless to say, the misrepresentations (presumably not intentional), denied or diminished the influence of women in the political process or in political socialization. In a second point of influence, feminists began to challenge not just the "bad science" that was being done in relation to women, but challenged one of the primary preconceptions of the apolitical woman. By moving to replace history with methodological virtuosity, empirical political science was able to ignore a long history of political activity on the part of women because they simply relegated women's political movements to concerns with "domestic" issues. Feminist, in part by challenging the public/private presuppositions that influences much mainstream social science , were able to bring greater focus on women's political activity . A third development not only showed that women were engaged in traditional political activity (e.g. much of the progressive movement, etc.) but how their political activity often challenged prevailing accounts of what counts as a political problem. Moreover, as feminism has evolved, attention to that evolution has come about only because of the presence of women's studies programs. Second, and alluded to above, feminist scholarship has been at the forefront of challenging traditional accounts of the split between the public and the private spheres and between the public and the personal spheres. This is a theme that has been picked up by those looking to challenge the traditional liberal account of society, including contemporary scholars influenced by Tocqueville. The challenge to the public/private/personal trichotomy has opened up Western scholarship to a better understanding of other cultures where these divisions are not prominent. Third, feminists have joined both Wittgenstein and Heidegger in arguing that knowledge of the world is already situated in that it builds upon a linguistic tradition and set of practices that help constitute the background that is the foundation of contemporary understanding, including contemporary scientific understanding. This has resonated throughout the humanities and the social sciences.Fourth, feminist legal scholarship has challenged the myth of gender neutral jurisprudence, a myth that still informs too much of law school education (which is another reason why Shakespeare was right). The courses on Women and Law in the Women's Studies Program use to cover this material extremely well. If there is no Women's Studies Department, who will offer those courses? Fifth, it is part of the historical record that until women's studies programs came along, and until they were treated with the same respect as programs with much less sch productivity, research and courses focusing on gender, sexuality, and women didn't exist. Even now we no longer have anyone in GIA who teaches courses in women and politics. Without a Women's Studies Program/Department, we would be relying on the institution to continue to treat questions of gender and sexuality as important. The historical record is that it doesn't happen. There must be a voice for these issues. Women's Studies Programs have provided that voice, that memory and the trust that such issues will be addressed.Hope this helps.mtg Posted Mar 4, 2008 2:40 pm

From Doug Uzzell: I see feminist studies as sharing, along with complexity, post modernism, quantum dynamics, and cybernetics, a part of the great intellectual ferment that is driving the more hopeful aspects of cultural change in this fledgling 21st century. All that has had a major impact on my main arenas of activity: ethnography/ethnicity, psychotherapy, pedagogy, and literature. To cut any of them at this stage risks knocking USF out of its new and still tenuous place at the intellectual table. If one goes, all of us will share the loss. Our leaders tend to overlook that capital short-falls are usually temporary, while our reactions to them can be much more negative and longer lasting. Ask Chicken Little.Doug Uzzell Posted Mar 4, 2008 2:41 pm

Heather—On the most basic level, Women’s Studies’ contributions to other academic disciplines forces disciplines to acknowledge what Women’s Studies uncovers. It has so altered what academic disciplines present as “truth” that it -- along with disciplines such as Black and Latin-American studies – force disciplines to examine what they present as “truth”, scholarship, convention, etc., and engage in healthy, broader dialogue over meaning. Evidence of this can be found in “mainstream” textbooks on a wide range of topics – the way “truth” is presented is different than it was before Women’s, Multicultural, or Black Studies. Now, as a result, world-views, perspectives, perceptions, contributions, sustainability, deconstruction, paradigm shifts, have become and continue to be part of the lexicon. Now, more than ever, Women’s Studies, Africana Studies, Latin American Studies, Sociology, artistic expression, all need to inform the national and global dialogue over how we’re going to survive and prosper. I think that we now see, in this country, the consequences of marginalizing these voices.Rod Rod HaleCoordinator Multicultural Graduate ProgramsUSF Graduate School Posted Mar 4, 2008 2:42 pm

From Sharon Joy Kleitsch:

Heather: The reason complexity studies fit so easily with those within Women’s Studies is that they are the same thing in different languages.I was working on a master’s thesis comparing the stories and language of modern science with that of the wisdom traditions, when a number of synchronicities lighted a path of great discovery. Western civilization is based on a tradition that veers way off the laws of nature, science and the guidance of those living in harmony with Earth. The popular Da Vinci Code picked up some of the facts and less of the scholarly research of hieros gamos or sacred union/fusion. This spring ritual was enacted at the Vernal Equinox back through time including Jesus and Mary Magdalene, renewing life for another year. The story changed to one of hierarchy rather than partnership in the First Century for a number of reasons. Tragically, this imbalance is the very core of our modern beliefs and practices, including our lack of respect for our mother Gaia, each other and our community. Margaret Starbird was here last weekend to talk about the lost bride at the heart of the story of life, told in her book The Woman with the Alabaster Jar and others. A Fulbright scholar and student of Medieval Art, she showed resounding evidence that the ancient story had to go underground to escape the power of the Church.Until each of us claims our lost female, dysfunction will continue to manifest within ourselves and permeate throughout the culture. Symbols. science and mathematics still carry clues in their languages. Most don’t notice. Sadly, academic and university programs are more often perpetuating a model of hierarchy, separation and exclusivity that is not part of natural living systems or the ancient stories.My thesis, Dancing with the Dark Ladies: Mary Magdalene, Black Madonnas and the Divine Female, tied some of the lost stories with our life on Earth, eco-feminism and eco-psychology.Same stories: Different languages. It’s time we bring them together and shine the light on the magnitude of the message.Good luck with your gala and your endeavors.Sharon Joy KleitschThe Connection Partners, Inc. Posted Mar 4, 2008 6:27 pm

From Tim Dutton:

Heather,

First, the two areas that are in jeopardy are voices and perspectives that are critical to the diversity we know to matter. Even from a practical side, the absence of these voices alters public policy. Having said that, I do have a couple questions and they are borne from really not knowing.Have the two departments demonstrated their own adaptability over the years?What is it about the work of these two that is critical to be maintained? That I suspect the bureaucracy or hierarchy is not what you value as much as something else. There may be other better and bigger questions that I’ll hope others will offer. I applaud your “agency,” Heather. Who else might care about this that is not copied on this email?My best.Tim

From Heather: Thanks, Tim! Various requests have gone out from other WST students. There is a petition drafted by two undergrad students that will be more widely circulated, and we have sent a more general email out to "allies" of the department across disciplines, as well as alumni and current students (we have grad, undergad, and certificate programs). With Allison's assistance, we also sent out the request to the Children's Board, though it hasn't elicited any response so far. I'm still brainstorming, but I think I'm tapped out right now. Your questions are critical in how we approach this situation, and, to the best of my knowledge, have weighed heavily in recent discussions between students and faculty, though I'm not privy to how they were handled or in what fashion they were addressed in the faculty meeting.1) Excellent question, though I wouldn't presume to speak for Africana studies. I do know that the women's studies department at USF is 35 years old, and has weathered the storms of previous budget cuts, shifts in political climate, and 1980s and 90s backlash, among, I'm sure, a good many other gales for which I haven't been present. It seems to me that previous decades indicate a fair amount of adaptability. As for the past five years, we have seen faculty lines lost with no hope of renewal, which means, of course that the existing faculty and our limited (but immensely competent) staff end up taking on greater and greater responsibilities with fewer and fewer budgetary, time, and human resources. I note those issues because they obviously have a dire impact on what sort of adaptation has been viewed as possible. As a student, my answer to your question is notably limited by my access to how the faculty are handling this situation, and by my ignorance as to what the provost is actually considering. But I think this is THE question we need to be considering as a department in its totality, including the students.2.) My answer is difficult to sum up with any brevity, but I'll give it a shot. Within the ivory tower, Women's Studies has, since its inception, presented a radically different pedagogical philosophy, one that blurs the lines between student and teacher, and one in which the student takes ownership of her education and finds her experience to be a valid and desired teaching tool in the classroom. Additionally, we articulate and embody an epistemological shift--there is a recognition that knowledge is co-generated, for one, and that a dissemination model of knowledge maintains heirarchical (and gendered) power structures. (This clearly resonates with complexity theory). Moreover, because it is apparent, through interaction with those from other disciplines and beyond the walls of the academy, that not simply discrete identity practices, but the intersectionality of those practices goes unexamined and unchecked unless it is explicitly attended to--in other words, the ways in which the forces of race, class, gender, able-bodiedness, sexuality, age, however constructed, have real consequences, and combine to create a location from which one is granted or denied access (or some macabre dance atop the gate) to everything from the most basic provisions for survival to more subtle privileges.I believe there are myriad other contributions, but they are far too numerous to include here. I've spent my undergraduate and graduate careers enumerating them, and am stymied by the project of culling them all down to something digestible or bullet-point-able. Suffice it to say the few I've listed only skim the surface. I do have, however, a number of student and alumni responses that better embody what WST has meant to the larger USF student community and I'm happy to pass those along if the students feel comfortable.Finally, I know I can't speak for Africana studies, and I wish I had a greater knowledge of the department and the theories. I have a working knowledge of Black feminist thought, but I don't believe it sufficient to craft a response. Tim, thanks so much for prompting me to think more deeply about this. We hope to arrange a meeting with the provost before the 14th, and I know any and all questions will help prepare us for that meeting.

In gratitude, Heather Posted Mar 5, 2008 8:03 pm

From Allison Pinto:

Here are the comments I shared at the Celebration of the 35th Anniversary of Women’s Studies at USF (with a few edits to facilitate coherence!):I appreciate this opportunity to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Women’s Studies at USF, recognizing that, as Paul Sweeney said, an “anniversary is the celebration of love, trust, partnership, tolerance and tenacity. The order varies for any given year.” Many of the comments and stories shared tonight have illustrated the Department’s tenacity; I hope to contribute to this celebration with respect to partnership as well. I offer my perspective as a woman who is middle-aged, just like this Department, and who is:
• the Principal Investigator of the Complexity & Community Sustainability Initiative
• a Faculty member of the Florida Mental Health Institute• a Staff member of the Children’s Board of Hillsborough County • a Tampa resident &
• the Wife of a Military Officer, which means I am a member of the MacDill AFB community as wellThe Complexity & Community Sustainability Initiative was created in this region of Florida in 2007 to facilitate local, naturally emerging university-community, inter-disciplinary, cross-sector collaborations regarding today’s “new” theory and science of complexity, as it relates to community well-being.

This Initiative started among individuals affiliated with five institutions in the region:
• Children’s Board of Hillsborough County
• MacDill Air Force Base Family Advocacy and Outreach
• SCOPE (a community engagement organization)
• Sarasota County Government, &
• University of South Florida (including the departments of Management, Communication, Mental Health Studies, Government / International Affairs, Anthropology, Architecture/Urban Design, and Public Health, as well as Women’s Studies). This Initiative is an earnest exploration of authentic community engagement, defining quality not through a narrow set of performance indicators specific to the University only, but through a continually evolving, contextually relevant process emerging out of the whole community, itself.

Through the participation of Heather Curry, the graduate assistant with this Initiative, I’ve had an opportunity to learn more about the academic discipline of Women’s Studies, and to reflect on the ways in which Women’s Studies contributes to the evolution of communities as self-organizing, Complex Adaptive Systems.

As I see it, Women’s Studies is not simply an irritant, as it was described earlier this evening. Women’s Studies is a rigorous, high quality, and profoundly relevant field of scholarship that is powerfully and uniquely informing both complexity and community.

• Women’s Studies enriches the diversity of perspectives within the Academy, the University, and the local Community. From a complexity perspective, it is the continual interaction among a full diversity of perspectives that enables any system to thrive.

• Women’s Studies has long explored notions of agency, facilitating the capability of women to make decisions and take action in systems and communities. It also explores the mutual influence of individuals on one another and the social and political environment, paying close attention to dynamics relating to gender. From a complexity perspective, it is the pattern of interactions among all, as mutually influencing agents, that reveals the well-being of the system as a whole.

• Women’s Studies contributes a nuanced understanding of relationship and its relevance to the healthy functioning of social systems and communities, a core concept in the theory and science of Complexity.

• Women’s Studies calls us to pay attention to flows of information and resources that historically have been unrecognized or devalued. From a complexity perspective, these must be brought into collective consciousness if we are to recognize those flows of energy that will optimally cultivate the well-being of a community. • Women’s Studies has developed reflexive approaches to pedagogy and praxis that enable people to grow more optimally attentive, attuned and responsive – a dynamic process emphasized within the theory and science of Complexity.

• Women’s Studies recognizes the importance of claiming space and intentionally organizing for the health of both the individual and the community as a whole.

• Finally, Women’s Studies offers a valuable perspective to inform the growing awareness in our society that change is constant, recognizing that each of us can only participate in and affect change from our particular location in a community or a phenomenon. Shifting perspectives now, I also recognize that as I have opportunities to learn together with Heather and other feminist scholars through a multi-disciplinary Initiative, I am developing a more sophisticated perspective on children’s mental health, my “home field” of research and practice. While it is true that both men and women serve as the primary caregivers of babies and children, and motherhood is not an essential quality, it is still the case in most of the world that primary caregivers are most often women. By paying closer attention to the woman’s perspective, in addition to the child’s perspective, I am becoming a better clinical child psychologist and children’s mental health researcher. This is just one example of how education provided within the USF Women’s Studies Department is flowing through students to affect and enrich faculty in departments beyond the College of Arts and Sciences. Deep thinking and learning is always happening in the community beyond the University as well. Through my work at the Children’s Board I have become aware of numerous community-initiated efforts over the past decade to better understand and respond to a variety of concerns associated with women’s well-being, as related to the well-being of children and families. In the past few years, Community Learning Initiatives have been conducted in Hillsborough County relating to women and substance use, homelessness and incarceration, to name just a few. Women’s Studies has the potential to richly inform each of these community efforts. Finally, I’ll speak for just a moment to what Women’s Studies has meant to me as a woman living in this local community in today’s world. Last year, my husband was deployed for six months to Afghanistan. I discovered during that period that all of my studies, training and experience as a mental health professional, and as a complex systems thinker, could not prepare me for the emotional toll of the deployment. I felt fear and rage in ways I had not experienced before, and simultaneously sensed that within my own local academic, faith, and neighborhood communities there was little appreciation for, or even tolerance of, this experience. I found myself living the experience of being silenced, and struggled to find and express my voice. At this point it was not my education or training in mental health or systems theories that I drew upon, but rather that which I had learned years earlier, in Women’s Studies, to begin articulating my experience and taking action, not only to restore my own well-being, but to contribute to my community as a whole. It was then that I came to recognize the value of Women’s Studies, and it is these moments that we need to be paying attention to if we are to meaningfully assess the value of Women’s Studies in our own lives and in our world. So this is what each of us can do right now: We can notice how Women’s Studies is enabling the contributions we are making in the world, and then articulate this assessment, especially in conversations with others who we anticipate are not yet aware of our particular perspective. In this way, we might begin to facilitate a process of collective sensemaking, so that USF is able to re-organize in ways that best support the thriving of the whole community.

Thank you. Allison Pinto, Ph.D.March 6, 2008 Posted Mar 7, 2008 2:28 pm

Dedicated to Preserving the Academic and Operational Autonomy of USF's Women's Studies Department

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Letter Accompanying Petition to Retain Departmental Autonomy & The Petition

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Complexity Theorists at USF Discuss the Importance of Women's Studies Professionally and Personally