Research and Sponsored Programs
ANNUAL REPORT OF RESEARCH CENTERS AND INSTITUTES

For the period July 1, 2014 — June 30 2015 (FY15)

Center/Institute: Center for the Study of Women and Society
Director: Linda Martin Alcoff

Phone: 212-817-8896

Email: lalcoff@gc.cuny.edu

Office space: Room 5116

A. ACTIVITIES

LECTURES: We organized a monthly lecture series, the Gender and Sexuality Lecture Series,
which ran for the 6" year in a row and was very well-attended, with some standing room only
events. Funding for the events came from our tax levy funds and our own Director’s Fund.

Speakers for the Fall included Rutgers Professor Zakia Salime on “Gender and Sexuality in the
Arab Uprising,” Barnard Professor Kim Hall and NYU Professor Jennifer Morgan on “Slavery and
the Sweet Taste of Empire,” and Columbia Professor Lila Abu-Lughod on women and Islam.
There were two large events on gender issues in prison with leading activists and theorists in the
New York area, and a packed house event for the Fight for $15 with SEIU President Mary Kay
Henry in the Proshansky Auditorium.

Speakers for the Spring included Brooklyn College Professor and holder of the Jay Neuman
Chair, Serene Khader, on Religious Identities and Feminist Concepts of Freedom, Michigan State
University Professor Kristie Dotson on Decolonial Black Feminism, and CUNY Professor Barbara
Winslow on Shirley Chisholm.

We have begun organizing a regular semester event together with the Women’s Studies
Quarterly to launch new issues. At these events co-editors as well as contributors can speak
about their work on the special topic. In the Spring we hosted an event on “Child,” the WSQ
latest issue, that was co-edited by Hunter College Professor Sarah Chinn.


B.

COSPONSORSHIP: We also co-organized more than a dozen others events at the GC, providing
funding and logistical support, advertising, and sometimes more. We gave support to a range of
GC-affiliated institutions, including CLAGS, Society for the Study of Women in the Renaissance,
the New York Society for Women in Philosophy, Writing Women’s Lives, Leon Levy Center for
Biography, Center for the Humanities, Middle Eastern Studies, MALS, IRADAC, French
Department, English Department, History Department, The Poetics Group, Committee for the
Interdisciplinary Study of Science, and the Postcolonial Group. We also helped to host several
conferences: the “New Maternalisms” (The Annual Academic MOMS Conference), “Queers and
Comics” (CLAGS), and on “Risking Vulnerability” (Political Science and French Departments).

Visiting Scholars: CSWS hosts Visiting Scholars who collaborate with our students and faculty,
give talks on their research, and partake in the intellectual life of the Graduate Center.

For 2014/15 we hosted two visiting scholars: Ingrid Cyfer, Professor of Political Theory at the
Federal University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and funded by FAPESP (A Brazilian Foundation), who
works in the area of feminist critical theory, and Dr. Dirk Reynders, a Belgian Professor of visual
communication theory who worked with Professor Paulicelli.

Outreach: We published two calendars (Fall 2014 and Spring 2015) which were mailed to
approximately 3,000 individuals. We also published a newsletter (Fall of 2014), and this year for
the first time we put it on the website so it could be accessed entirely electronically. We also
host a Facebook page and Twitter account. We updated our website, especially to update our
extensive 50+ Faculty list.

On December 12 and May 8 we held receptions to honor our graduate students who won CSWS
prizes and affiliated faculty who have published books in this AY.

We also hosted a meeting of the CUNY wide ‘Discipline Council,’ with directors of Women’s
Studies majors, minors, and programs of interest from all CUNY campuses. We have started a
listserv to share information in this group about events.

ACTIVITIES ASSESSMENT: This past AY we made progress in developing stronger ties with CLAGS,
to cosponsor events and to help us develop the Gender and Sexuality Track for the upcoming
MA in Women’s and Gender Studies (see below). We also secured good cooperation with other
Graduate Center departments and programs of special interest for our MA Program, such as the
Middle Eastern Studies program and the Political Science Department.

Yet we did not have funds for a conference of our own, and our ability to sustain a healthy speakers
series is inhibited by the absence of support funds. This is a concern as we prepare to launch the
new MA in Women’s and Gender Studies.


C. PLANS FOR THE FUTURE

The Center for the Study of Women and Society will be an important resource for the new M.A.
in Women’s and Gender Studies, providing a steady stream of programming on the latest and
best scholarship as well as policy and advocacy work in the field.

M.A. Program:

On March 2, 2015, CUNY’s Board of Trustees approved our proposal for an MA program, and sent it
on to NY State Education Department for approval. We have been advised to expect approval in
time for a launch date of Fall 2016, which means that the AY 15/16 will be spent preparing
advertising materials, a new website, and getting our curriculum, thesis and internship guidelines,
Admissions Committee, Advising procedures, and so forth, into place. The Center for the Study of
Women and Society will be a critical support site for our New MA students, providing intellectual
resources, programming, and opportunities. Organizing all of this will be a major undertaking for the
new Coordinator.

Appointment of new Faculty:

The Graduate Center has now made it possible for interdisciplinary programs to appoint CUNY
faculty directly as regular members of their faculty. This is crucially important for us so that we can
staff our core courses with the most appropriate professors. CUNY Professors not appointed at the
Graduate Center can teach for us but only for 1-2 times in total without getting an appointment
here. Our core course, Global Feminism, for example, had only one main faculty member at the
Graduate Center—Professor of Geography Rupal Oza---qualified to teach it. Since she is about to
take a 2-year sabbatical, we nominated two outstanding CUNY faculty to be appointed into the
Women’s Studies Certificate Program faculty: Saadia Toor, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology
at College of Staten Island, and Serene Khader, Jay Neuman Chair in the Philosophy of Culture and
Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College. Both were appointed and are now on our faculty, and
set to teach core courses for our program over the next two years.

Advisory Board:

Our currently elected faculty on the Advisory Board will continue until 2016; in Spring of 2015 we
elected a new slate of student representatives, who typically serve one year:


ARTS AND HUMANITIES FACULTY:
Meena Alexander

Blanche Wiesen Cook

Nancy K. Miller

Domna Stanton

SOCIAL SCIENCES FACULTY:
Hester Eisenstein

Michelle Fine

Dagmar Herzog

Cindi Katz

Leith Mullings (alternate)

STUDENT MEMBERS:
Meredith Benjamin
Christin Bowman

Melina Moore

Jennifer Chmielewski
Heather Denyer (alternate)
Rachel Liebert (alternate)

Change in leadership:
Linda Martin Alcoff, head of women’s studies at the Graduate Center since January 1 2014, will

begin a sabbatical in the Fall of 2015. She is replaced by Professor of Sociology Hester Eisenstein,
who has been appointed to serve a_ two year term as Director of the Center for the Study of
Women and Society and Coordinator of the Women’s Studies Certificate Program. She will also
direct the new M.A. Program.