University of Southern Maine

Celebrating 25 Years

USM Women’s Studies Program

Keep your eyes on Women's Studies as the program prepares to celebrate its 25th anniversary this month. The Women's Studies program, always on the forefront of diversity issues, has exciting plans for 2005, which include bringing another Fulbright Scholar to USM this fall. Because of the growing Islamic population at USM and in Maine and the role Islam is playing in the world, Fulbright Scholar Dr. Perween Hasan, an expert in Islamic art, was selected to spend eight weeks at USM next fall. The program also is in the planning phase of adding a graduate program for students interested in studying gender issues at the advanced degree level.

Susan Feiner, the current director of the program, and Wendy Chapkis, chair of programming, explain why the need for women's studies departments is as critical today as it was 25 years ago, despite an explosion of feminist scholarship. “The traditional canon,” says Feiner, “continues to ignore the work of women and people of color—as demonstrated by the recent comments about women by Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers.” Founding director Nancy Gish puts the need for continuing research on women's and gender issues more succinctly by saying, “Men have been studying themselves for over two thousand years, and don't think that subject is exhausted.”

Chapkis says 20 years ago she could buy and read a bookshop's entire inventory of feminist books, whereas today she couldn't possibly read all the offerings in the feminist departments of bookstores. Chapkis currently has a grant funding her research on the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, which will be released as a book by New York University Press in 2006.

“The social battles fought in the 70s have returned with a vengeance,” explains Chapkis, “reproductive rights, disenfranchised minorities, and lack of economic progress for women, all tell us that women's studies is a needed, important field of study.”

Gish explains that in 1980, then USM President Robert L. Woodbury formed a committee to look at future programming for women at USM. Gish points out that the 80s were a time of debate in American academia as to whether women's issues should be infused into the curriculum or studied separately in specific programs. “USM wanted both,” Gish says, “and our Women's Studies program became the first major of its kind in Maine during the 1984-85 academic year. We wanted a place, both physical and intellectual, where the contributions and thoughts of women could be studied.”

Gish also served as the first Convocation Scholar during the 1982-83 academic year, bringing Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman to campus as the keynote speaker of the “Convocation on the Changing Roles of Women and Men.”

“Women's Studies' legacy is its history of programming for diversity,” said Gish. “The program has been a consistent leader in the exploration of not only gender issues, but of issues of race and ethnicity.”

The program continues that legacy with receipt of a Faculty Senate Technology and Enhancement Grant written with the History Department, to purchase the database “Women and Social Movements in the U.S., 1600-2000.” Work with USM's library on an information literacy project will enable the database to be integrated into course work for the College of Nursing and Health Professions, Muskie School of Public Service, Women's Studies, history, and art courses.

An interdisciplinary program, Women's Studies is governed by the Women's Studies Council, which currently has 22 members drawn from across the University who teach courses for the program. Program directors serve three-year terms and are recommended by the Council and appointed by USM's provost.

Members of the Women's Studies Council have a wide spectrum of research interests as demonstrated at a February reception celebrating books recently released by Council members. Among the authors were Gish, who co-edited and contributed to “Gender, Desire, and Sexuality in T. S. Eliot” (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004); Eve Allegra Raimon, who wrote “The 'Tragic Mulatta' Revisited: Race and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Antislavery Fiction” (Rutgers University Press, 2004); Feiner, who co-authored “Liberating Economics: Feminist Perspectives on Families, Work, and Globalization” (University of Michigan Press); Assunta Kent, who wrote the preface for “At Play: An Anthology of Maine Drama” (Levant Heritage Press); Desi Larson, who co-authored “Child Labor: A Global View” (Greenwood Press, 2004); and Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Luisa S. Deprez, co-editor of “Shut Out: Low Income Mothers and Higher Education in Post-Welfare America” (State University of New York Press).

USM Women's Studies graduates often go on to graduate school or public policy careers that deal with issues that impact women. Alumna Nancy Foss '87 is a fairly typical graduate. Since receiving her degree, she has managed a variety of advocacy and education projects focused on women's health issues and continues to research and write about the role of abortion in women's lives. Currently she provides consulting services to the New Abortion Provider Training Initiative, Cambridge, Mass., provides training for the Gynecological Teaching Associates program at Maine Medical Center, and works in a private gynecological practice in Portland.

Another bright note for the program is the creation of the Friends of Women's Studies Fund, established in support of program development and student scholarships. Contributions to the fund can be sent to USM Advancement and Donor Services.

—Judie O'Malley

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