Our new chair, Dr. Amanda Lock Swarr, delivered these remarks at our 2025 Fall Reception, a time students, faculty, and alumni come together to welcome in the new year.
Welcome to the 2025/26 academic year in the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies. This is my first time addressing you as the incoming chair of the department, and I want to begin by thanking our outgoing chair Sasha Su-Ling Welland. Sasha's organization and vision were nothing short of remarkable. Our department owes a debt of gratitude for her leadership and advocacy, and we all have great appreciation for her hard work on behalf of GWSS over the past four years.
We are starting the school year facing what Provost Trish Sterio has recently referred to as “volatile times.” Challenges to higher education and especially to the work that is at the center of GWSS are in the news on a daily basis. Teaching about the basic premises of our field—including the complex ways that gender works and the scientific realities of sexed bodies—is under assault. Racist and xenophobic attacks on individuals and cities pepper our news feeds and inboxes. Free speech, including the ability to openly discuss trans and nonbinary realities in the classroom, is subjected to fights and contests.
But instead of deterring me, these conflicts give me strength in pushing forward in our collective feminist mission. Over the past half century, GWSS has successfully created space in academic contexts for intellectually rigorous and politically integral learning. We are a field and a department that centers transgender and queer studies, grounds our praxis in deep critiques of racism, and supports undocumented students and critical analyses of citizenship and constructed borders.
I recently read an article about the history of Women's Studies at Berkeley In which the authors argued that conflict is essential to the history of feminism, to the history of the university, and to the history of democracy. They point out that, “authoritarianism, by contrast, perpetuates itself through manufactured consensus.” With this history and our contemporary political climate in mind, one of the best ways to resist authoritarianism is by leaning into conflict as a site of feminist strength.
Our department’s long history of conflict in fighting for our place in the university and our embeddedness in social movements gives us strength in this moment as we draw together around our collective goals. Our department arose from years of struggle throughout the 1960s led by UW students, staff, and faculty and by activists in Seattle. These founders pushed the university to offer courses focused on women's experiences and knowledge and centered in local and global social movements. The GWSS oral histories project and website, launched last year, is an important resource to remind us the ways that conflict and solidarity toward common goals were not only essential, they were effective in creating our community.
This is a milestone year for our department, and we must mark that milestone. GWSS at the University of Washington was founded in 1970 and we are here celebrating our 55th year. This is a significant accomplishment. Let’s take a moment to emphasize the weight of 55 years because in this moment of unpredictability and tenuousness, I want our longevity as a department to give you confidence in our future. GWSS is not going anywhere!
While these are daunting times, they are also times when our department is needed more than ever for the work that we have been doing all along. We celebrate our students and the work that you all do, as well as the possibilities for systemic change that you are committed to, as the core of our GWSS. Gender, Women, & Sexuality Studies has been engaged in fights for our place in the university for decades, and as new chair I am approaching this moment with energy and enthusiasm. I am advocating for our department and seeking ways to create supportive and enriching experiences for our students, staff, and faculty, and campus and local communities.
As we move through this school year, I ask you to shift your frustration and worry about these volatile times into proactive engagement with our department and community. Be inspired by the present moment to become more involved with GWSS. We are strong through our collectivity. If you're a faculty member, reach out to me to become an adjunct in our department, to talk about cross listing classes, or to become engaged in collaborative research. If you're a graduate student, consider enrolling in our Feminist Studies or Sexuality and Queer Studies graduate certificate programs. If you're an undergrad, take GWSS classes or check out our brand new student organization—the UW GWSS RSO—which is amazingly active and planning fun and thought-provoking community events.
I mentioned to our faculty a few weeks ago that I am starting the new year and my term as chair with a “try me” attitude. I am ready to take on any challenges that come our way on our collective behalf. If you are excited about GWSS and want to try out new ideas to create community and support, come talk to me. My energy is high and I'm eager to advocate for you and for the department.