B R I D G I N G

Unive rs i t y o f Maryl and

Fall 2006/Spring 2007

Inside this issue:

Special Feature:

Celebrating Thirty

Years of Women’s Stud-

ies at Maryland

1

An Interview with As-

sistant Professor Mi-

chelle Rowley

2

Two new awards avail-

able for WMST stu-

dents

3

On-line women’s health

course to be offered in

Spring 2007

5

Grad conference held in

May 2006 a success

5

Faculty and grad stu-

dents out and about

6

Department of Women’s Studies

The academic field of Women’s Studies is, relatively speaking, a fairly new one, and the University of Maryland’s Women’s Studies Department, officially established in 1976, is one of the oldest in the United States. It is also widely acknowledged to be one of the best. With three degree options for under-graduates, a Ph.D.-granting graduate program, nine full-time faculty mem-bers, and a research agenda at the cutting edge of feminist and Women’s Studies scholarship, our department has built an international reputation for excellence. So, on the auspicious occasion of our thirtieth birthday, and as we embark on a major fundraising effort designed to en-sure that Maryland Women’s Studies continues to grow and expand over the course of its next thirty years, let us look back, to see where we’ve been and where we’re going.

Where we’ve been

In the mid-1970s, the Women’s Studies Program’s first permanent director, Carol Pearson, brought the then-brand new National Women’s Studies Associa-tion and the scholarly journal, Feminist Studies, to campus. As a result, although Maryland’s program was in its first year and Pearson was its only faculty mem-ber, the program became immediately integral to the development of women’s studies nationally.

Pearson then brought Claire Moses to manage the affairs and business of Feminist Studies and teach the two brand new women’s studies courses, introduc-tion to Women’s Studies and theories of

feminism. Moses continues to teach in the department and is still editorial director of Feminist Studies.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s Carol Pearson stepped down, and Art History Professor Josephine Withers was brought in to serve as interim director. Withers’ charge was to look at the program’s structural weaknesses and fix them, which re-sulted in the decision to move the pro-gram to the College of Arts and Hu-manities rather than have it straddle ARHU and the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, as had previously been the case.

At the same time, Claire Moses became the first professor to be tenured in Women’s Studies, and two addi-tional tenure lines were added. During the mid-1980s, Professor Emeritus Evelyn Torton Beck arrived at Mary-land to become the program’s perma-nent director, and Professor Katie King was hired to replace Carol Pearson. That brought the total number of ten-ured and tenure-track faculty to three.

(Continued on page 4)

Join us as we celebrate

THIRTY YEARS

of Women’s Studies at Maryland!

Keep an eye out for activities and events during Spring 2007.

Women’s Studies Celebrates Thirty

Years at Maryland

A look back at where we’ve been

B R I D G I N G Page 2

Gender and development scholar Michelle Rowley

joins the Women’s Studies faculty

Michelle Rowley, who earned her Ph.D. in Women’s Studies from Clark University in 2003, is the Women’s Studies De-partment’s newest faculty member. We had the chance re-cently to ask her about her research, her teaching, and the future of Women’s Studies. What follows are excerpts from that interview. The full text is available at www.womensstudies.umd.edu. Q: Please discuss your journey toward women’s/gender studies as a field. A: I was one of the first students at the Uni-versity of the West Indies to take the sole Women’s Studies course offered back in the early 1990s. I didn’t think of going on to do graduate work until one of my professors called me into his office and pointed me in the direction of the Consortium Graduate School of Social Sciences on the Mona Campus of UWI. With great financial uncer-tainty and tremendous faith, I went off to this program with only enough money for one semester and a loan pending! On the day before the loan came through, I learned that I’d done well enough at the end of my first semester to secure a scholarship for the rest of the year. I did an area specialization in Gender and Development and then decided to go on to do doctoral work. Of course, I needed funding, so I applied for a Fulbright-LASPAU fellowship. I submitted my application for WMST programs [and] was also applying to other doctoral programs to read for a Comparative Litera-ture Degree. Believe it or not, the Fulbright liaison officer told me that I would not be granted an interview because the place-ment officer couldn’t find any WMST programs! So I asked for an interview anyway and I did my homework: I found every WMST program that existed in the U.S. at that point and I took him my folder of information.

I guess he followed through with the material I pro-vided, because I eventually received a phone call indicating that Clark University (the placement officer’s alma mater) was a possibility: tuition remission, stipend etc! [I] went off to Clark to get my Ph.D. in Women’s Studies. So, in a way, it was a combination of serendipity, persistence, and previ-ous undergraduate/graduate whetting of my feminist appe-tite. Q: On what projects are you currently working? A: I’m presently working on my manuscript, The Politics of (M)Othering: Maternal Centrality and Afro-Trinidadian

Women’s Subjectivities. My work examines the emergence of a set of rhetoric and politics about Afro-Trinidadian women and their maternal identities. While in the disserta-tion I conducted a discursive analysis through three water-shed periods to examine the circulation and consolidation of

a politics of (m)othering which both celebrated and casti-gated Afro-Trinidadian women, I have continued to work on this project through an examination of feminist attempts to decriminalize abortion in the Anglophone Caribbean.

To this end, I have recently completed a paper which is presently under review for publication. In this piece,

“Reproducing Citizenship: A 20/20 Vision of Women’s Reproductive Rights and Equity in the Anglophone Caribbean,” I connect my teaching in Gender and Development and my research by discussing the representa-tions of Trinidadian women’s maternal iden-tities via an analysis of the ongoing debates around reproductive health and sexuality. I further outline why existing developmental models that are now so very popular in the Anglophone Caribbean are unable to lay an adequate infrastructure for the realization of Caribbean women’s self-determination, agency, autonomy and well being. Q: Why have you chosen to come to the University of Maryland? A: As competitive as the market is pres-ently, it might be more accurate to ask why I chose to apply for the job. Suffice it to say

that UMD’s Women’s Studies department appeals to me because it shows evidence of an ongoing commitment to recruiting students of color, international students, non-heterosexual sexual orientation, etc.

If we’re to change the “face” of the discipline, then those considerations at the doctoral level is something that I look for. I’ve always been impressed with UMD’s stu-dent representation at national and international confer-ences, which, again, is evidence of on-going grooming and preparation of students for the profession. But, in addition to that, it goes without saying that I want tenure, and this is always easier in an environment where mentoring respon-sibilities are clearly delineated and where there has been an on-going interest in your work and scholarship. Outside of my dissertation committee, I think that the people who have most read my work in its formative stages have been faculty members right here at the University of Maryland, and I’m eager for that kind of ongoing scholarly exchange and dialogue. Q: Where do you see women’s/gender studies heading in the future, both here at Maryland and more broadly? A: I think that with the increasing number of WMST doc-toral programs that have become available, schools will have to find niche markets and strengthen and consciously develop those areas of expertise. One of the things I would like to see to enable the sustainability of individual pro-grams is a forum where programs with Ph.D. and Master programs come together to discuss their areas of expertise

(Continued on page 8)

The Future of Maryland Women’s Studies: Assistant Professor Michelle Rowley is Maryland’s newest Women’s Studies faculty member.

Page 3 Department

Prompted by an anonymous gift, the department

embarks on sustained fundraising effort the world, we consider this gift a building block to work toward even greater excellence.” Based on current esti-mates, Dill plans to sustain both these projects over the course of the next three years, but additional funds are needed to endow the initiatives and make them permanent features of a women’s studies education at the University of Maryland. “We’ll need to raise several hundred thou-sand dollars so we can continue offering these exciting opportunities for our students,” says Dill.

To that end, the department is embarking upon a three-year fundraising effort with the new monies at its founda-tion. “We’re using this money to develop new program-ming that will contribute to the growth of women’s studies scholarship and feminist politics,” says Women’s Studies advisor Laura Nichols, “and we’re now at a crossroads: Do we stay where we are and watch our sister programs, UCLA, Rutgers, Emory and Ohio State, grow and expand, or do we take advantage of this unexpected opportunity?” �

With $50,000 comes new opportunities

� The feminist policy/activist-in-residence program will take advantage of the University’s geographical

location in the Washington, DC metropolitan area by drawing on the area’s stellar research facilities and

intellectual and artistic talent to bring to campus outstanding feminist policy makers, artists, writers, and

activists who have worked on issues of related import to women’s studies. The very first policy/activist-in-

residence program is planned for fall 2007, depending on the schedule of the prospective scholar/artist, Rho-

dessa Jones.

� Designed to defray the cost of research in preparation for the prospectus for dissertation work in Women’s

Studies, the Evelyn T. Beck Research Prizes will be offered for the first time in 2006-2007. Two prizes of

$1000.00 each will be awarded this year, two in 2007-2008, and two more in 2008-2009. Only students who

are working on their prospectus are eligible to apply.

� An Undergraduate Community Scholar Award in the amount of $500 will also be offered for the first time

this year to an outstanding Women’s Studies undergraduate student to support community program develop-

ment and partnerships, to provide internship stipends, and/or to support research and travel. Like the gradu-

ate Research Prize, the Community Scholar Award will be offered until the 2008-2009 school year.

We need your help to sustain these programs.

Please contribute generously to our efforts to build Women’s Studies at Maryland.

Eighteen months ago, the Women’s Studies Department received an unexpected and anonymous gift of $50,000. Since then, the faculty has used this surprising windfall as an opportunity to reflect upon the department’s mission and objectives and to envision new initiatives designed to meet them. Concerned with the achievement of intellectual free-dom and social justice as well as with developing a new gen-eration of feminist scholars and leaders, the faculty has ear-marked these monies to enhance opportunities for its stu-dents by initiating a feminist policy/activist-in-residence program and establishing two new student awards.

The University of Maryland’s Women’s Studies Depart-ment enjoys an international reputation for new methodolo-gies and cutting-edge research that expands the depth and reach of knowledge on women, gender, and sexuality. “We are one of the most dynamic women’s studies departments in the nation,” says department chairperson Bonnie Thornton Dill, “and because we view ourselves as a force for change in

B R I D G I N G Page 4

Thirty Years at Maryland, cont.

Where we’re going

in the field, the department’s leap into this project made it one of the first to offer a doctorate in Women’s Studies, and it remains, in 2006, one of less than fifteen such programs in the world.

Currently, the department offers three degree options for undergraduates: a B.A., a certificate in Women’s Studies, and a joint minor (with the Department of African American Studies) in Black Women’s Studies. We have nine faculty members and approximately eighty affiliate faculty in over twenty-five departments across campus.

In addition to these strengths, Women’s Studies faculty, staff, and graduate students play key roles in other depart-ments and programs across campus, serving as affiliate fac-ulty, graduate assistants and on various University commit-tees. We also work closely with the Asian American Studies Program, the Center for East Asian Studies, the Consortium on Race, Gender and Ethnicity, the Curriculum Transforma-tion Project, the International Consortium for Graduate Studies in Women and Gender, the LGBT Studies Program, and the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humani-ties.

And, thirty years after Pearson brought them to campus, the University is still home to Feminist Studies, now one of the leading women’s studies journals, and to the executive offices of the National Women’s Studies Association.

Where we’re going The recent addition to the Women’s Studies faculty of As-sistant Professor Michelle Rowley, who graduated with a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies from Clark University in 2003, signals a bright future for the field, both here at the Univer-sity of Maryland and more broadly. As a member of the first generation of feminist scholars to earn a Women’s Studies Ph.D., Rowley brings new perspectives and approaches to an already dynamic department. Her presence on campus demonstrates the institutional support afforded our depart-ment. The faculty, all of whom are tenured, believe that in order to sustain the excellence of Maryland Women’s Stud-ies and to remain in the vanguard as the field continues to grow and change, the department needs the knowledge, in-sights, experiences, and energy of newly-minted Ph.D.’s. Rowley’s presence here on campus is testament to the Uni-versity’s belief in the department. We also look forward to graduating and placing our first cohort of Ph.D. students in 2006-2007. They, like Rowley, are members of the first generation of scholars to earn Ph.D.s in Women’s Studies, and their contribution to the field through their research, teaching, and activism is highly anticipated.

Additionally, 2006-2007 marks the first year for several new initiatives intended to expand the educational and re-search opportunities for our undergraduate and graduate students. These include two student awards and a scholar/artist-in-residence program. Currently slated to be offered until 2009, we are embarking on a major fundraising effort to endow these programs in order that they may become a permanent feature of a Women’s Studies education at the University of Maryland. �

During the late 1980s, the program was able to capital-ize on a University-wide project designed to attract faculty of color to bring five more faculty members to Women’s Studies. This began the department’s focus on U.S. women of color and non-U.S. women., the two areas of women’s studies scholarship that are, today, not only two of the greatest areas of interest, but also considered the “cutting edge” areas of study.

Additionally, the University recognized a need to broadly transform curricula across campus to include the perspectives of traditionally marginalized peoples, and Pro-fessor Deborah Rosenfelt was hired to direct the Univer-sity’s Curriculum Transformation Project as well as to teach courses in Women’s Studies.

“One of the reasons our department is so highly regarded nationwide, and even internationally,” posits Claire Moses, “is that so many of our hires were at the senior level, with faculty who were highly regarded in their respective fields before even coming to Maryland. We built a faculty – a small faculty – but a faculty of stars.” These “stars” in-cluded Bonnie Thornton Dill, Ruth Zambrana, Deborah Rosenfelt, A. Lynn Bolles, and Elsa Barkley Brown, all of whom remain vital members of a thriving intellectual com-munity of scholars.

Where we are

By the early 1990s, with the undergrad programs going strong and more and more students enrolling in the re-cently-established graduate certificate program, the faculty focused its energies on creating a Ph.D. program in Women’s Studies. Always at the forefront of developments

(Continued from page 1)

Support the next 30 years

of Women’s Studies at Maryland!

Contributions in support of Women’s Studies are always welcome.

Your donation will help extend programming and opportunities

for staff and students.

All contributions are tax deductible.

Please make checks payable to: UM College Park Foundation

Mail to: Annie Carter, Business Manager Department of Women’s Studies, Woods Hall 2101

University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742

Page 5 Department

The Women’s Studies Department was recently awarded a DRIF grant from the College of Arts and Humanities to offer a course on transnational perspectives in women’s health and well-being dur-ing Spring 2007, the cul-mination of which will be a one-day videoconference featuring specialists in the field. Developed in col-laboration with the Cur-riculum Transformation Project, and the Interna-tional Consortium for Graduate Studies in Women and Gender, the course and videoconfer-ence will bring together scholars and students working on issues in women’s health at five separate institutions in five countries. Entitled “Women’s Health and Well Being: Transna-tional Perspectives,” the course will be taught by Women’s Studies Ph.D. student Kimberlee Staking. She will team up with four other faculty members and students from the five institutions who will collaborate in an online setting. To-gether, faculty and students will consider critical questions

about women’s health and well-being first widely articu-lated in the transnational arena at the 1995 United Na-tion’s Fourth World Confer-ence on Women in Beijing. The course will end with a one-day transnational videoconference cosponsored by the College of Health and Human Performance and the Health Center. It will explore the research being done by the course’s five professors. It will highlight the ways schol-arly research across national boundaries generates knowl-edge that lead to the develop-ment of critical policy initia-tives in the international and transnational arena. The final presentation will be a panel of graduate

students from participating institutions whose dissertation work addresses transnational issues in women’s health. This course, with its transnational framework and its focus on the most vital health issues affecting women around the globe today, serves as a forum to teach about the health needs of women that transcend local, regional, and national locations�

“Transnational Issues in Women’s Health” will be team-taught

across national boundaries and four times zones by (from l to r):

Grace Bantebya-Kyomuhendo from Makerere University in Uganda,

Yasmeen Yusuf-Khalil from Jamaica’s University of the West Indies,

Rivka Tuval-Mashiach from Bar-Ilan University in Israel, Vivienne

Bozalek from South Africa’s University of the Western Cape, and

Ph.D. student Kimberlee Staking from the University of Maryland.

Scholars and students from five countries to participate in

on-line women’s health course

Interdisciplinary conference brings together

grad students and senior scholars

This past May, the Women’s Studies Graduate Student Organization hosted the first-ever graduate interdisciplinary studies conference. Entitled Dangerous Places, Potential Spaces: Emerging Feminist Connections and Activisms in

Local and Global Contexts, the three-day conference brought together graduate students and established scholars working in interdisciplinary academic locations at the University of Maryland, across the D.C. metro area and at institutions in the northeast, Puerto Rico, and Canada. Plenary addresses and conference seminar workshops featured feminist educa-tor Dr. Peggy McIntosh, feminist postcolonial theorist Dr. Sangeeta Ray, Black feminist scholar Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall, and feminist sociologist Dr. Karen Rosenblum.

The conference featured interactive working sessions co-facilitated by senior scholars and graduate students. In addi-tion, a working luncheon addressed the latest scholarship on

learning communities, including the use of dialogue and interactive technology, to build engaged classroom spaces attuned to challenging local, institutional, and systemic systems of oppression.

The conference was sponsored by the College of Arts and Humanities, the Department of Women's Studies, the Center for Teaching Excellence, and the Women's Studies Graduate Student Organization at University of Maryland. WMST Ph.D. and graduate certificate students Robyn Ep-stein, Clare Jen, Laura Logie, Angel Miles, Vrushali Patil, Kimberlee Staking, Nikki Stewart, Kimberly Williams, and Kristen Williams served on the conference planning com-mittee. The conference website, designed and maintained by Clare Jen, remains available at www.freewebs.com/ wsgo2006conference. �

B R I D G I N G Page 6

Faculty and grad students keeping busy with

conferences, publications and other activities

Jane Donawerth (English), with her co-translator, WMST grad certificate student Julie Strongson, won the 2005 award for Best Translation from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women for their Selected Letters, Orations, and Rhetorical Dialogues of Madeleine de

Scudéry (University of Chicago Press, 2004). In addition, Jane has helped to found a new feminist journal, Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal, supported by WMST as well as ARHU and English. Judith N. Freidenberg (Anthropology) published Memorias de Villa Clara in 2005 based on research on the social memory of international immigrations to northeastern Ar-gentina. In January 2006, Evelyn Tor-

ton Beck (WMST Professor Emerita) was named an Alum Fel-low at the Creative Longevity and Wisdom Initiative of the Fielding Graduate Institute, where she earned her (second) doctorate in Clinical Psychology in 2004. In April 2006, she offered a work-shop at the annual meeting of the National Poetry Therapy Associa-tion focusing on “Integration of Mind, Body and Spirit through Movement and Words.” Her cur-rent study focuses on “Creative Aging and the Wisdom of the Body: Women’s Development and Sacred Circle Dance.” For this project she is interviewing women aged 60 to 90 who have participated in sacred cir-cle dance for several years. Recent publications include: “Kahlo’s World Split Open,” Feminist Studies (Spring 2006) and “Juifemme,” in Life Writing, Writing Death: In Memory of Elaine Marks (University of Wisconsin Press, forthcoming). In April, Virginia Beauchamp gave the keynote ad-dress, “Reading Between the Lines to Uncover Women's History,” at a Baltimore conference on women in 19th Century Baltimore. She also contributed a chapter to the UMCP history celebration volume, Maryland: Reflections on 150 Years, in which she focused on Women’s Studies. Lillian E. Doherty (Classics) recently had an abstract, “World Atlas: Jeanette Winterson's Account of the Atlas Myth in Weight,” accepted for the January 2007 meeting of the American Philological Association. She remains the coordinator of the mentoring initiative sponsored by the Women's Classical Caucus, which pairs younger scholars with more experienced people in the field. In March, WMST grad student Amy Washburn pre-sented a paper on Black Panther Party member Assata

Shakur, entitled “Power to the ‘Most [Un]wanted Woman’ in Amerika,” at Howard University’s Revisiting the Black Arts Movement Conference in Washington, DC. Several WMST grad students presented their work at the National Women’s Studies Association’s annual conference this past June in Oakland, CA. Clare C. Jen, Ryan

Shanahan and Bianca Laureano organized a panel entitled “Feminist Critical Theories on Racism” in which they ex-plored the ways in which critical race theory travels with and may even parallel feminist theories. Laureano also joined Anaya McMurray and Rachelle Williams on the panel

“Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: Hip Hop and the Politics of Power and Gen-der,” which examined the multiple ways in which Women’s Studies and Hip Hop scholarship can com-bine to facilitate complex discus-sions of power and gender. Bettina

Judd was a member of a roundtable discussion entitled “Shading the Ground on Which We Walk” that highlighted how Spelman women’s studies alumna are forging new ground in their graduate disciplines by challenging the hegemony of a variety of academic fields. Robyn Epstein, Kimberly A.

Williams and Na Young Lee teamed up to present their work on the structural oppressions that lead to violence against women in vari-

ous forms. Entitled “State and Structural Violence in Women’s Lives,” their panel addressed and examined the ideologies, policies, and acts that create the platforms on which to both justify and (re)create that violence. Robyn

Epstein also offered a WMST summer course, “Women, Violence and Resistance,” concerned with issues of domestic violence, intersectionality, and methods of resistance as or-ganized and individual acts, while Na Young Lee had sev-eral articles published on military prostitution in Korea. Also at NWSA, Nikki Stewart and Kimberlee Staking

led a workshop entitled “Visualizing Women’s Studies: Fa-cilitating Visual Learning in the Feminist Classroom.” Both Staking and Stewart were awarded MITH Travel Grants to support this workshop. Additionally, Kimberlee Staking continues her com-mitment to critical pedagogies and teaching visual literacy via various workshops and presentations both on campus and off. Most recently, with co-organizers WMST professor Elsa

Barkley Brown and academic technology specialist Cath-

erine Hays Zabriskie, she facilitated a workshop for ARHU faculty entitled “The Visual Literacy Toolbox: A Resource

(Continued on page 7)

At the National Women’s Studies Association’s

annual conference in Oakland, CA (from l to r):

WMST Graduate Director A. Lynn Bolles with Ph.D.

students Clare Jen and Na Young Lee.

Page 7 Department

for Faculty and Students.” In April, she led a workshop, “Enabling Learners to Engage Diversity in the Classroom,” at the Lilly-East Conference on College and University Teaching at the University of Delaware, and this coming November, she will present a paper at the International Soci-

ety for Teaching and Learning Conference in Washington, DC.

J o h n F u e g i (Comparative Studies) has been appointed for three years as a Non-Resident Research Fellow of Stan-ford University's Clayman Institute for Gender Re-search. He is currently co-directing a documentary entitled Out of the Chrysa-

lis: A Portrait of Maria Sib-

ylla Merian, which will be shot during the coming year

in the US, South America and in Europe and Russia. During March 2006, Maxine Grossman (Center for Jewish Studies) offered a course to area teachers through the “Teachers as Scholars” program. Entitled “Religions of America, Religions of the World,” the course focused on the diversity of contemporary American religious culture. Addi-tionally, she received a GRB to continue her work on relig-ion and contemporary American popular culture. Judith P. Hallett (Classics) recently lectured at Whit-man College, Indiana University, Purdue University, St. Mary's College, Wesleyan University in addition to giving papers at conferences in Gainesville, Florida and Lausanne, Switzerland. Among her forthcoming publications is a spe-cial issue of the classics journal Helios on "Roman Mothers.” Seung-kyung Kim (Women’s Studies) received a So-cial Science Research Council's fellowship (2006-7) to carry out a research project entitled “Global Citizens in the Mak-ing: Transnational Migration and Education in Kirogi Fami-lies.” She also published several articles, including: “Family, Gender and Sexual Inequality,” a chapter in Modern Korean Society (University of California Press, 2006); “Martyrs, Victims, and Warriors: Mapping Women Workers on South Korean Labor History,” and Review Essay, InternationalRe-view of Social History (2005). In addition to being awarded a 2006-2007 CTE-Lilly Fellowship, Yelena Luckert (Librarian for History, Jewish, Slavic and Women's Studies) presented her paper, “Creating Judaica Library: A Case of the University of Maryland,” at the European Association for Jewish Studies conference in Moscow this past July. She also presented a paper, “Building Collections through Gifts in Kind,” at the Association for Jewish Libraries conference in Boston this past June. In addi-tion, she helped to bring Israeli author A.B. Yehoshua to campus in May 2006. She is currently serving her second term as President of the Capital Area Chapter of the Associa-tion for Jewish Libraries.

(Continued from page 6) Mady W. Segal’s (Sociology) chapter, “Military Family Research,” was published in Psychology in the Service of National Security (American Psychological As-sociation, 2006), while Laurie F. DeRose (Sociology) has several forthcoming publications, including “Marriage Type and Relative Spousal Power in Ghana: Changing Effects of Monogamy During Early Fertility Decline,” which will appear in the Journal of Comparative Family Studies during Winter 2007, and “Women's Work and Breastfeeding Simultaneously Rise in Ghana,” a chapter in Economic Development and Cultural Change to be pub-lished in April 2007. Harriet Presser (Sociology) recently returned from an international meeting of the Society for the Advance-ment of Socio-Economics, held in Trier, Germany, June 30-July 2, 2006. With co-authors Janet Gornick and San-geeta Parashar, she presented a paper on "Nonstandard Work Schedules in 14 European Countries: A Gender Perspec-tive". Her book, Working in a 24/7

Economy: Chal-

lenges for Ameri-

can Families (Russell Sage F o u n d a t i o n , 2003), will be the focus of a special “author -meets-critics” session at the annual meet-ing of the Ameri-can Sociological Society, held in Montreal, in Au-gust 2006. Psyche Williams-Forson (American Studies) was awarded a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship for 2005-2006 and a Lord Baltimore Fellowship from the Maryland Historical Society in 2006. She recently pub-lished her first book, Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food, and Power (University of North Carolina Press, 2006).

WMST grad students Laura Logie and Ryan

Shanahan earned a Distinguished Teaching Assistant award from the Center for Teaching Excellence for the 2005-2006 academic year, and Ph.D. candidate Nikki

Stewart was awarded a Mary Savage Snouffer Disserta-tion Fellowship for the 2006-2007 academic year for her dissertation-in-progress, “Visual Resistance: Vision, Power, and the Black Girl Mediascape.” Ph.D. candidates Na Young Lee and Heather Rellihan are the first Mary-land Women’s Studies grad students to accept full-time academic appointments. Lee is teaching intro to women’s studies in the Department of Women’s Studies at George Mason University, while Rellihan is at Anne Arundel Community College. �

Logie’s teaching honored by CTE: Ph.D. student Laura Logie and WMST Department Chairperson Bonnie Thorton Dill attended the awards reception.

The Kims at NWSA: Kimberly Williams and Kimberlee Staking hanging out in Oakland.

and align strategically to enhance and focus solely on this area of expertise so that we don’t find ourselves going after the same students.

WMST scholars face strong competition from discipli-nary scholars who have produced doctoral work with a WMST focus and, as a result, the things that maintain our distinctive edge are our disciplinary uniqueness in the areas of feminist theory, epistemology and methodology. These are key areas of a strong Women’s Studies program. WMST programs must provide doctoral candidates with a strong methodological grounding to off-set any potential compara-tive advantage that a disciplinary scholar might have. In other words, you must be conversant in a wide range of re-search approaches. It is this breadth of knowledge that really makes WMST quite an intriguing, but at times onerous, area of study. Q: What sorts of undergrad and graduate courses do you hope to offer? A: At the undergraduate level, I would also like to offer a comparative black feminisms course. I’ve been trying to fine tune this course for the past two years. It’s a difficult course, because it starts with a premise that might not necessarily be so: the conversation that black women must have with each other despite their geo-political location. I pose this ques-tion, but I’m not convinced that it is true. Nonetheless, it’s

(Continued from page 2)

Department of Women’s Studies

University Of Maryland

2101 Woods Hall

College Park, MD 20742

Phone: 301-405-6877

Fax: 301-314-9190

E-mail: womensstudies@umd.edu

Visit us on the web at

www.womensstudies.umd.edu

BRIDGING is a publication of the Department of Women’s Studies at the University of Maryland and was designed by Anaya McMurray and Patrick Grzanka and written by Kimberly A. Williams.

Rowley interview, cont. an interesting brain teaser to have students consider while walking through a range of thematic issues that are pertinent to women within the Diaspora (e.g. health, sexuality etc.). I also would like to offer a graduate course on postcolonial feminisms and at some point in time. I would like to see us challenge the technology so that we can teach in real time in classes in different countries. I think that kind of cross insti-tutional/cultural learning experience will be an invaluable experience for all involved. Q: Talk a bit about the courses you’re teaching this semes-ter. A: I’m teaching Women, Art and Culture and Gender and Development. In the latter we will take on three large ques-tions: 1) How has the idea of “development” served as an instituting force of global inequity? 2) To what extent have women stood as the invisible and unknown quantity within the terms and frames of different planning models used in the Caribbean region? 3) How do transnational institutions and policies such as UNDP, CEDAW, UNIFEM incorporate ideas about women and development in their agendas?

In WMST 250, we will question the very idea of what constitutes art and examine the ways in which women have used creative and artistic expression to make feminist state-ments. I really want this course to be a fun, hands-on learn-ing experience for students, so as part of their course work I want them to explore a photo voice experience which en-courages them to capture and discuss their understanding of gender and feminism using photography. �