{"id":211019,"date":"2024-03-19T07:15:12","date_gmt":"2024-03-19T11:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=211019"},"modified":"2024-03-19T15:45:11","modified_gmt":"2024-03-19T19:45:11","slug":"a-look-back-a-look-forward-with-wgss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2024\/03\/a-look-back-a-look-forward-with-wgss\/","title":{"rendered":"A Look Back, A Look Forward With WGSS"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the uninitiated: WGSS, the acronym for Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at UConn<\/a>, is affectionately pronounced \u201cwigs\u201d by the students. Housed in Beach Hall, where a cozy lounge offers students a place to connect and recharge, the program is beloved by hundreds of students majoring or minoring in WGSS, as well as its faculty.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Thursday, March 21, and Friday, March 22, will see a celebration marking 50 years<\/a> since the program\u2019s inception in 1974 \u2014 the first formal women\u2019s studies program in the state. <\/span><\/p>\n

And, true to form, this celebration will foreground complex thought, <\/span>conversation, and coalition-building.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Scholars from institutions across the country will speak on panels addressing the significance of WGSS for the social and political issues facing the world today. <\/span><\/p>\n

Alexis De Veaux, a<\/span> multi-award-winning writer, activist, scholar, and biographer of Audre Lorde, will open the celebration. Later in the day, <\/span>Beverly Guy-Sheftall, the Anna Julia Cooper professor of women\u2019s studies at Spelman College, and M. Jacqui Alexander, <\/span>professor emeritus<\/span> of the University of Toronto’s women and gender studies department,<\/span> will deliver the keynote conversation. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The event will be titled \u201cThe Uses of Anger: WGSS at 50,\u201d in a nod to another significant event in UConn WGSS history.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Uses of Anger\u201d Then and Now<\/h3>\n
\"A
Audre Lorde (Elsa Dorfman \/ Wikimedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1981, the National Women\u2019s Studies Association (NWSA) chose UConn as the host site for its annual conference, bringing together scholars from across the then-emerging discipline of women\u2019s and gender studies. The NWSA organized the conference around the theme of \u201cWomen Respond to Racism\u201d <\/span>and invited Audre Lorde<\/a>, along with Adrienne Rich, to be the keynote speaker.<\/span> \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Behind the podium at Jorgensen Auditorium, Lorde delivered her famous speech \u201cThe Uses of Anger<\/a>.\u201d In it, she argued for the <\/span>resignification<\/span> of anger <\/span>as an appropriate and human response to racism \u2014 and as a source of energy for altering the societal conditions that produce it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnger expressed and translated into action in the service of our vision and our future is a liberating and strengthening act of clarification,\u201d Lorde said.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2023, sitting in the lounge beneath a painting of Lorde, a WGSS organizing committee brainstormed a theme for the upcoming celebration. Associate professor in residence and WGSS interim director Sherry Zane, WGSS and English assistant professor Briona Simone Jones, and professor of political science and WGSS affiliate Jane Gordon <\/span>concluded that learning from “The Uses of Anger,” looking back and looking forward, would make a generative focus. <\/span><\/p>\n

It was an especially apt choice given Jones’s research specialization \u2014 she <\/span>has worked extensively with Lorde\u2019s oeuvre throughout her career, as a scholar of Black Lesbian thought.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to conceive a conference around this particular essay to really scrutinize all of our efforts and be honest about whether we see Audre\u2019s teachings as sort of litanies, or as instruction for how to achieve liberation in the here and now, or if it\u2019s just sort of a conceptual piece of writing and we don\u2019t feel as though we have to be committed to her practices,\u201d Jones says.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jones\u2019s point is especially relevant given the context of Lorde\u2019s original speech. The NWSA conference had been criticized for refusing to waive fees for low-income attendees, meaning attendance was essentially restricted to middle- and upper-class women. The conference was also predominantly white.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Additionally, while white women could choose from various affinity groups (Jewish women, lesbian women, etc.), Black women and women of color at the conference were all grouped together. The conference organizers encouraged them to all \u201csit together under a tree and talk about race together,\u201d Zane says. Among them were Lorde, Guy-Sheftall, and bell hooks. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Lorde\u2019s powerful speech was in part motivated by anger over the conference\u2019s treatment of women of color. Speaking to the NWSA, she was acutely aware of how the discipline of women\u2019s studies \u201chas historically been violent against women of color, and Black women specifically,\u201d as Jones notes.\u00a0 In the essay, Lorde emphasized the importance of building coalitions for radical change based on honesty and love for one another.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Background:
Students in Sherry Zane’s Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies senior seminar chat during class in Beach Building on Feb. 5, 2024. (Sydney Herdle\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Imagining Anew<\/h3>\n

With this history in mind, the organizing committee composed of Gordon, Jones, Elva Orozco Mendoza, and Zane, believe that the WGSS 50<\/span>th<\/span>\u00a0anniversary should ask, \u201cHow does\u00a0Women\u2019s,\u00a0Gender and Sexuality\u00a0studies,\u00a0as a discipline,\u00a0continue to perpetuate those issues \u2013 and how can\u00a0we\u00a0revive and reVision\u00a0our praxis?\u201d <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

WGSS 50\u2019s \u201cLooking Back\u201d panel will include attendees from the 1981 NWSA conference, including Judith Plaskow, professor emerita of religious studies at Manhattan College; Chela Sandoval, associate professor of Chicana Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara; and Holly Smith, archivist at Spelman College.<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

In the \u201cLooking Forward\u201d panel, Zane says, intergenerational and\u00a0transdisciplinary\u00a0scholars\u00a0V Varun Chaudhry, PJ Di Pietro, Evren Savci, endawnis Spears, and Jaimee Swift\u00a0will consider how the discipline can continue to evolve.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to bear witness to that past, so we can move toward a new vision, not just for WGSS program, but for the BIPOC students, faculty, and staff who work and live here,\u201d Zane says. <\/span>\u201cTransformation <\/span>is<\/span><\/i> our future, and we’re open to all of the possibilities that brings.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For the organizing committee, planning the 50th anniversary celebration has offered an opportunity to reflect critically about Lorde’s legacy and how future generations of UConn WGSS scholars can continue to strengthen that legacy.<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

In the future, Jones\u00a0says, \u201c<\/span>I\u2019m hoping that we won\u2019t need these separate disciplines\u201d \u2014 like WGSS, Africana Studies, and other social justice-oriented programs \u2014 \u201cthat the disciplines will actually be able to coalesce around differences. We had to create our own separate disciplines because we were excised from knowledge systems that were dominant.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She would also like to see \u201cthe university not be heralded as the ultimate place where learning is done.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe can imagine something anew,\u201d Jones says.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The two-day events are listed on the <\/span>WGSS website<\/span><\/a> and include several powerhouse speakers; a co-curated art exhibit by graduate and undergraduate students Nikki Blumenfeld, Ruba Bouzan, Urvi Kaul, Anh Le, Alejandra Leos, Georgia Poirot, and Christina Young, and Professors Orozco Mendoza, Gordon, and Zane at the <\/span>Benton Museum of Art;<\/span><\/a> a career roundtable with WGSS alumni; and a concert on Friday featuring American-Peruvian two-spirit, transgender poet, musician, model, and painter Bobby Sanchez.<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Zane invites everyone to continue the celebration through the weekend: the Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) program is hosting <\/span>IndigiPalooza events, culminating on Sunday with a powwow, also listed on the WGSS @ 50 <\/a><\/span>website<\/span>.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UConn Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies marks 50 years of curiosity and change<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":175,"featured_media":211020,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226,2460,2473,2076,2235,2225,2306,2227,2458,2234],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2413],"class_list":["post-211019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clas","category-faculty","category-human-rights","category-research","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-storrs","category-uconn-voices","category-uconn-edu-homepage","category-undergraduates","category-university-life"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 18:14:16","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211019"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":211354,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211019\/revisions\/211354"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/211020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211019"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=211019"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=211019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}