Welcome From the Director

Last fall, I wrote about the Women’s Studies program’s new offices in Sage Hall, and mentioned that I could now sit at my computer and watch the Fox River flow by.  It turns out that the river is still flowing in February, an uncommon winter occurrence, to be sure. Given how busy the spring 2012 semester promises to be, I for one am glad for the milder temperatures that make it a bit easier to get around.

First off, there is still time to submit a proposal for the WS/LGBTQ conference that Liz Cannon and I are hosting on campus October 5th and 6th.  The deadline for submissions is March 1st.  The conference website is up and running here; we’ll be adding registration and travel info soon.

Spring semester means Women’s History Month is fast approaching, and as always, there are lots of exciting events to attend.  I am perhaps most excited about Stephanie Coontz’s lecture, “Mad Men and Desperate Housewives: How Far Have We Come Since the 1960s?” scheduled for March 15th at 5 p.m. in the Reeve Theater.  If you’d like to hear her answer to this question, please join us!  In the meantime, check out her 2011 appearance on The Colbert Report.

Spring semester, for me, also means teaching the Women’s Studies Senior Seminar, and we have a particularly large crop of students this year, 18 in all.  Please mark your calendars now for our end-of-year celebration, to be held on Tuesday, May 8th at 3pm (location TBA), at which we’ll recognize our graduating minors and majors.  We’ll also be trying something new this year, inspired by our class reading of Michele Berger and Cheryl Radeloff’s new book, Transforming Scholarship: Why Women’s and Gender Studies Students are Changing Themselves and the World.  In their book, Berger and Radeloff offer tips and strategies for talking about Women’s and Gender Studies anytime, anywhere, and to anyone.  They encourage students to develop a so-called elevator speech that anticipates and answers the kinds of questions they’re likely to get from family, friends, and prospective employers (questions like “So, what is Women’s Studies, exactly?” and “So, how does your degree in WS prepare you for the job market?”).  Students in the Senior Seminar will be preparing elevator speeches, and we plan to set aside some time at our end-of-year gathering to try them out on everyone in attendance.  We’ll need lots of people in attendance so that students get practiced at talking about all of the amazing things they can do with their backgrounds in Women’s Studies!

As always, we have an exciting line-up of courses this semester, but one in particular stands out for its innovation.  Justine Stokes, Director of Television Services on campus, is teaching a new course called Feminist Media Production.  For one of their course assignments, students will work with the Girl Scouts of the Northwestern Great Lakes to put on a two-day video production workshop for Girl Scout Cadets.  The cadets will work with students to write, shoot, and edit their own video productions.  With any luck, we’ll be able to schedule a screening of the resulting projects.

I wish you all a great semester!

Christie