Overview

Welcome USM Students, Faculty, and Friends,

Women and Gender Studies (WGS) at USM is the longest standing feminist studies program in northern New England and it continues to be one of the most vibrant.  With a faculty drawn from across the university WGS engages in transformative teaching, scholarship, and social change on campus and in the community. WGS not only contributes many courses to the university’s general education curriculum, it also offers a socially-engaged and academically rigorous major and minor.  This semester, in addition to courses such as “Contemporary Feminist Theories” required for the major, the program is also offering eight advanced electives including “Gender and Crime,” “European Women’s History,” “Oscar Wilde and the Fin de Siecle Culture”.

During the fall, WGS will also be contributing to the cultural, intellectual, and political life of the campus and the surrounding community through the presentation of films, lectures and performances; many of the WGS programming events are free and all of them are open to the public. The full list of fall programs, including times, locations and admission charges (if any), can be found inside this newsletter.  But I would like to highlight three of our upcoming events: on Saturday September 29th WGS joins the Maine Humanities Council and Choral Art Society in presenting a screening of the 1928 silent film “The Passion of Joan of Arc” accompanied by the choral group Camerata performing the opera/oratorio "Voices of Light.”  About a week later, on Thursday October 4th, WGS will be co-sponsoring a US Senate Candidates’ Forum on issues affecting women and girls.  And on Thursday November 8th, WGS and USM’s Office of Multicultural Student Affairs are partnering with the University of New England’s Maine Women’s Writers Collection on the 2012 Donna M. Loring Lecture given this year by acclaimed Anishinaabe activist and author Winona LaDuke speaking about "Environmental Justice from a Native Perspective.”
 
If you have any questions about upcoming events, specific WGS courses, or majoring or minoring in the program, please drop us an email <wgs@usm.maine.edu>, call the office 780-4289, or come by WGS (94 Bedford St. on the Portland campus, Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.).  We look forward to meeting you.

Warm regards,
Wendy Chapkis
Director of Women and Gender Studies and Professor of Sociology