In the spring of 2025, we launched a digital archive of our continuously growing GWSS Oral History Collection, a website designed by Sunaina Butler and Micaela Duran for their iSchool Capstone Project, with guidance from consultant Eileen Jerrett.
In the years leading up to the 50th anniversary of GWSS in 2021, faculty members identified the importance of documenting the department’s history. Who better to narrate that history than the students and activists, faculty and alumni who have built and sustained GWSS over the decades! With that in mind, we launched GWSS 460: Feminist Oral History Research Methodology. Students in this course, as part of their training, have recorded stories of key GWSS figures. The new website provides a platform for exploring this rich and growing archive.
As the ”About the Project” pages states…
The goal of this project is not only to preserve the department’s remarkable history but to do so in a way that reflects its ongoing intellectual and political commitments. Archives like this are built in layers: in meetings, in drafts, and in moments of negotiation. From the students who conducted the original interviews to the many faculty members who shared their time and stories, this has been a collective effort in the truest sense. Each person involved contributed a piece, sometimes visible and sometimes not, to the whole.
This digital archive is a living record of feminist scholarship—sustained by collaboration, built with care, and designed to serve future generations of researchers, students, and community members who will engage with this history.
The GWSS Oral History project is made possible by generous support from the James Simmons and Karen Rudolf Fund.