Dear Friends of GWSS,
As we head into our 55th year of existence at the University of Washington, Seattle, amid political attack on higher education and our field in particular, it bears remembering that the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies wouldn’t exist today if it weren’t for the protest of previous generations of students, activists, and community members who insisted on building a program committed to centralizing, examining, and acting upon ways of knowing too long ignored. We were founded in 1970 and offered our first course in 1971. We are proud to be one of the earliest programs in the United States and a leading example of community-informed public education that foregrounds intersectional and transnational analyses of social formations such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality. And it bears repeating that we have no intention of going anywhere but onward in the struggle, strengthened by generations of students who have moved what they learned in the classroom into the transformative work they enact daily in their lives and careers.
Although the current moment of crisis, including federal policy changes and budget cuts at UW, looms large, GWSS has consistently resisted despair, upholding a shared mission of education as a pathway to social justice and change. In addition to the stories featured in this newsletter, highlights from this past academic year include:
- “Learning with Shirley J. Yee: A Celebration of Her Storied Career,” retirement party featuring faculty and alum panelists
- Silky Shah, Stice Feminist Scholar of Social Justice, who gave the public lecture “Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition” to a packed house
- Martha Gonzalez (GWSS PhD ’13, Grammy Awardee & MacArthur Fellow), who returned to Seattle to perform with her band Quetzal and speak about her work as a Chicana artivista in the UW Public Lecture Series
- Sean Saifa Wall, Earl and Edna Stice Lecturer in Social Science, who presented on “Fighting Fascism with Intersex Justice” and joined a panel discussion with local activists on “Power and Politics Beyond the Binary: Toward Intersex Futures”
- Margo Okazawa-Rey, whose UW Public Lecture “Transnational Feminist Non-aligned Movement for Genuine Security and a Culture of Life” GWSS co-sponsored
- GWSS faculty speakers at the spring UW teach-in “How We Got Here: Critical Reflections on Racism, Deportation, and Transphobia”
- A record number of 80 declared GWSS undergraduate majors, in addition to the hundreds of undergraduates who take courses offered by our department
It has been an honor to serve as department chair over the past four years, helping foster a community where students, faculty, staff, and alums learn and work together—drawing and building upon the deep reservoirs and repertoires of feminist scholarship kept alive in our classrooms—to challenge, support, and celebrate one another. On July 1, I passed the helm to Professor Amanda Lock Swarr, scholar of queer, trans, and intersex studies, medical inequities, and feminist politics whose research explores the incoherence of sex and gender through critiques of colonialism, racism, and power. As the first faculty member with a PhD in Feminist Studies to join our department, she has long been a leader in the field at the national and international levels. GWSS at UW is in excellent hands!
May summer bring you warmth and respite. I hope to see you soon at a future GWSS gathering.
Sincerely yours,
Sasha Su-Ling Welland
Professor, GWSS