Women's and Gender Studies Program
Date of this Version
Fall 2001
Citation
Women' Studies University of Nebraska-Lincoln NEWSLETTER FALL 2001
Abstract
This has been a busy and energizing semester, with several new Women's Studies majors and faculty adding to the vitality of our program. The faculty began the semester reaffirming and redefining our identities and goals. Twenty-seven Women's Studies faculty members attended a Saturday retreat at the Pioneer's Park Nature Center. Julia McQuillan and Barbara DiBernard led focus groups that launched us into a vigorous morning of discussion, problem-solving and planning. We left with several resolves: to build on our commonalties and our enormous expertise as teachers, scholars, editors, writers, translators, rhetoricians, and organizers; to nurture the social and professional relationships among us in order to create opportunities for interdisciplinary work; to mentor each other; to continue to be inclusive of all women on campus and to create coalitions with other groups and within departments and colleges to empower women faculty and students to resist and address institutional sexism, racism, and homophobia and to promote institutional change; to strengthen our connections with women in the community, in order to ensure connections between our academic work and activism. As one of the focus groups said: We have all it takes: vast expertise, poetry, soul, and strategies for working the margin and the center.
Comments
Used by permission.