Women’s Studies

Throughout the 1990s and unti l 2003, Women’s Studies at OSU produced a printed newslett er. We then shift ed to an

electronic version that was sent mainly to faculty and students at the University. This year, we decided to bring back the annual printed newslett er which also will be available electronically on the Department’s website (womens-studies.osu.edu). We thus hope to reach more of our colleagues, alumni and friends all over the country and internati onally.

It has been a privilege for me to chair the Department of Women’s Studies since autumn 2006. I have devoted over 30 years of my life to creati ng and building women’s studies programs. Thus, to head a department that off ers fully developed undergraduate and graduate programs, has 100% and joint appointments in Women’s Studies, full-ti me staff , and the unequivocal support of university administrati on is an enormously rewarding experience.

The past two years have gone by very quickly and have been full of exciti ng and transformati ve work. Women’s Studies went through an external review in winter 2007 which resulted in the development of an acti on plan and discussions about future directi ons for the Department. We are now in the process of implementi ng some changes that will strengthen our already excellent M.A. and Ph.D. programs and enhance our undergraduate major and minor.

Our Ph.D. program has been in existence since 2002 and this year, we graduated the fi rst four Women’s Studies doctoral students: Min Sook Heo, Lu Zhang, Richelle Schrock, and Lakesia Johnson. The Department is immensely proud of these students. The M.A. program has been in place since 1991 and we have had the honor to graduate about two hundred masters students during the last 17 years. The most recent group of M.A. graduates appears on page 4. And since the early 1980s, we have been graduati ng hundreds of Women’s Studies majors and minors. We include the accomplishments of some of our majors in this issue as well.

We are very fortunate to have several new faculty members join the Department in the last year or so. Guisela Latorre, Shannon Winnubst, Jennifer Suchland, and Judy Wu have brought signifi cant new dimensions to Women’s Studies and you can fi nd out about their work in the following pages. The accomplishments of other faculty members are included here as well.

During the recent academic year, the Department hosted several visitors whose presence helped to enliven the intellectual climate. Lynn Itagaki, Assistant Professor of English at University of Montana, was a Visiti ng Scholar in Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies during the 2008 spring quarter and is coming back for the autumn quarter. Professor Itagaki organized a fi lm series, “Asian/Pacifi c Islander Women: Acti vism and Art” and will be teaching a course on Asian American women’s writi ng in the fall. Srimati Basu, Associate Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies at University of Kentucky, Beverly Guy-Sheft all, Professor of Women’s Studies at Spelman College, and Sandra Harding, Professor in the Graduate School of Educati on and Informati on Studies at UCLA, each made two-day visits, gave lectures,

Message from theChair

at � e Ohio State University

Autumn 2008

First Women’s Studies Ph.D. GraduatesWinter 2008 commencement marked the graduati on of Min

Sook Heo, the Department of Women’s Studies fi rst Ph.D. graduate since the program began in 2002. Dr. Heo plans to re-turn to South Korea where she will contribute to the academic fi eld of women’s studies and to women’s human rights advocacy campaigns. Her dissertati on, enti tled “Globablly Agreed Upon, Locally Troubled: The Constructi on of Anti -Violence Legislati on, Human Rights Discourse, and Domesti c Violence in South Korea”, was based on fi eld work conduct-ed in 2006 on the 1993-2006 campaign in South Korea to develop and implement anti -domesti c violence legislati on. The dissertati on research was funded in part by a grant from the Coca-Cola Criti cal Diff erence for Women Research on Gen-der and Women program and a travel grant from the University’s Offi ce of Internati onal Aff airs. Dr. Heo received her Masters in Women’s Studies from Keimyung University, Dae-Gu, South Korea. Her committ ee members were Drs. Cathy A. Rakowski (advisor), Jill Bystydzien-ski, Cynthia Burack, and Christi ne Keati ng.

Spring quarter saw two more Women’s Studies Ph.D. graduates receive their degrees: Richelle Schrock and Lu Zhang. Dr. Richelle Schrock earned her M.A. at Ohio State and her B.A. at Miami

University in Oxford, Ohio. The ti tle of her dissertati on is “Cultural Divides, Cultural Tran-siti ons: The Role of Gendered and Racialized Narrati ve of Alienati on in the Lives of Somali Muslim Refugees in Columbus, Ohio”. Her committ ee members were Drs. Amy Shuman (advisor), Cathy Rakowski and Judy Tzu-Chun Wu (co-advisors). Dr. Schrock has accepted a positi on at Ohio Wesleyan University where

she is the Program Director and Assistant Pro-fessor of Women’s and Gender Studies.

Dr. Lu Zhang received her M.A. in Women’s Studies at Ohio State University, and her B.A. in English from Fudan University in China. Her dissertati on, “Transnati onal Feminisms in Translati on: The Making of a Women’s Anti -Domesti c Violence Movement in Chi-na,” provides a model of theorizing the intersecti on of the local, nati onal and global contexts of a domesti c violence movement. Her committ ee members were Drs. Cathy Rakowski (advisor), Jill Bystydzienski and Mytheli Sreenivas. Dr. Zhang is working on a paper and a book manuscript and will return to China to pursue job opportuniti es there.

Dr. Lakesia Johnson received her Ph.D. degree this summer. She earned her J.D. and M.A. from Ohio State University and her B.A. from Smith College. Her dissertati on, “The Iconography of the Black Female Revoluti onary and New Nar-rati ves of Justi ce,” examines the ways that the representati on of Black female revoluti onary acti vists during the 1970s produced images and narrati ves of justi ce that have informed the ar-ti sti c work of Black women over the past 30 years. Her Committ ee members were: Drs. Ju-dith Mayne (advisor), Valerie Lee, and Terry Moore. Dr. Johnson has begun a tenure-track positi on in Gender and Women’s Stud-ies at Grinnell College in Iowa.

Conti nued on page 2

Pictured: Lu Zhang and Richelle Schrock

Pictured: Min Sook Heo

Pictured: Lakesia Johnson and Judith Mayne

Message from the Chair (conti nued from Page 1)

2

Four new faculty with diverse academic interests recently joined Women’s Studies.

Guisela Latorre joined Women’s Studies in 2007 as an Assistant Professor. She is a spe-cialist in Chicana/o and Lati n American art with a parti cular emphasis on the work by women arti sts. Her recent publicati ons in-clude “Chicana Art and Scholarship on the Intersti ces of Our Disciplines,” (Chicana/Lati na Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Acti vas en Letras y Cambio Social, 2007), “Revisiti ng Agustí n Victor Casasola’s Sol-daderas: Malinchismo and the Chicana/o

Arti st” (Feminism, Nati on & Myth: La Malinche, Arte Público Press, 2005), and “Gender, Muralism and the Public Sphere: Chicana Muralism and Indigenist Aestheti cs” (Disciplines on the Line: Feminist Research on Spanish, Lati n American, and Lati na Women, Juan de la Cuesta Hispanic Monographs, 2003). Professor Latorre also has a forthcoming book enti tled, Walls of Empowerment: Chicana/o Indigenist Murals of California, with the University of Texas Press. In additi on, she has curated and co-curated numerous exhibiti ons featuring the work of Chicana arti sts such as Alma López, Maya González, and Yreina Cervántez, among others.

Jennifer Suchland joined the Depart-ment in Autumn 2008. She holds a joint appointment as an Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies and Slavic and East Euro-pean Languages and Literatures. She ob-tained her M.A. and Ph.D. in government and a Certi fi cate in Women’s and Gender Studies at University of Texas, Austi n. She works on issues of law, the state, gender and sexuality in the context of postsocial-isms. She has writt en on sexual harass-ment in Russia and feminist methodologies in the context of transnati onal politi cs and violence. She is currently working on a book manuscript enti tled, Unclaimed Rights: The Politi cs of Gender in Postsocialist Russia. Her future work will focus on AIDS and public health issues in Eurasia.

Shannon Winnubst joined the faculty in 2008 as an Associate Professor. She re-ceived her M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from The Pennsylvania State Univer-sity and her B.A. from The University of Notre Dame. From 1994-2008, she was at Southwestern University, where she was named the McManis Chair of Phi-losophy, as well as serving as chair of the philosophy program (2001-08) and chair of Women’s Studies (1999-2001). In ad-

diti on to 20th century French philosophy, she also specializes in queer theory, race theory, feminist theory, and psychoanaly-sis. Her research interests focus on the intersecti ons of race and sexuality, parti cularly through normati ve frameworks of space, ti me, and pleasure. Her recent book, Queering Free-dom (Indiana University Press, 2006), approached these ques-ti ons through frameworks of excess, scarcity, pleasure, uti lity, and fear. Her current work excavates race and sexuality in the intersecti ng concepts of animality, feti shism, and nati onalism. She has writt en on fi gures from 19th and 20th century Euro-pean philosophy ranging from Foucault, Bataille and Irigaray to Hegel, Lacan and Deleuze. In additi on to publishing in journals such as Hypati a: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy and Philoso-phy and Social Criti cism, she also edited a recent anthology, Reading Bataille Now (Indiana University Press, 2006).

Judy Wu, Associate Professor in the His-tory Department at Ohio State, moved 50% of her appointment to Women’s Studies beginning Autumn 2008. Her teaching and research interests include U.S. women’s, gender, and sexuality his-tory, racial formati on, immigrati on and citi zenship, social acti vism, and Asian American Studies. Her fi rst book, enti tled “Doctor Mom” Chung of the Fair-Haired Bastards: The Life of a Warti me Celeb-rity (University of California Press, 2005), is a biography of the fi rst American-born Chinese female physician. It examines Dr. Margaret Chung’s professional career, politi cal acti vism, and surrogate kinship network as a window onto the shift ing racial, gender, and sexual norms of U.S. society from the late Victo-rian era to the early Cold War period. Prof. Wu’s current book project, tentati vely ti tled Radicals on the Road: American Ori-entalism and Third World Radicalism during the Viet Nam Era (under contract with the U.S. and the World Series published by Cornell University Press) analyzes the internati onal travels of American anti war acti vists during the U.S. War in Viet Nam. Prof. Wu has received the OSU Alumni Disti nguished Teaching Award as well as the OSU Disti nguished Diversity Enhancement Award.

New Faculty Broaden the Department

2

conducted seminars, and met informally with small groups of students and faculty. Such acti viti es, combined with our very fi rst Graduate Student Conference (see p. 5), have kept us energized by parti cipati ng in dialogue about signifi cant issues with some of the pivotal thinkers and acti vists in our fi eld.

Women’s Studies at OSU conti nues to be a vibrant, engaged, and forward looking department and I am delighted to be part of its ongoing dynamic development. - Jill Bystydzienski

Jill Bystydzienski joined the Department of Women’s Studies at The Ohio State University as Professor and Chair in 2006. She has a B.A. and M.A. in sociology from McGill University in Canada, and a Ph.D. from SUNY Albany. Her research interests include women, gender and politi cs in internati onal and global perspecti ve. Her most recent research in this area deals with women’s movements and feminisms in post-socialist Eastern Europe. She also does research on women and gender in cross-cultural perspecti ve, parti cularly the phenomenon of crossing cultures and cultural barriers, and building coaliti ons across diff erence. Her current research focuses on women and gender in the sciences, examining the barriers to women in STEM fi elds. She is a co-principal investi gator on a Nati onal Science Foundati on grant that focuses on young (high school) women exploring engineering for possible study and careers.

For the latest news, events andannouncements, visit us online at:women-studies.osu.edu

av·a·tar. noun This term refers to an interacti ve representati on of a human in a virtual reality environment.

In January, the Department of Women’s Studies off ered its fi rst distance learning course, taught in the virtual world Sec-

ond Life. Taught by Dr. Sharon Collingwood, Women’s Studies 110D combines the freedom of online studies with the social atmosphere of the traditi onal classroom; students meet twice a week on the Department’s online research and teaching space, Minerva Island, where they parti cipate in classroom dis-cussions, group work, and even take “fi eld trips” to places of interest in Second Life.

Although WS 110D covers the same mate-rial as other secti ons of 110, the Second Life platf orm allows a diff erent approach to the material. Members select a unique name and are able to customize a digital persona, or avatar, choosing height, size, gender, race, and a host of other variables. Avatars become the symbolic representati on of the member’s identi ty, and as such are very useful in classroom exercises involving role play, identi ty play and even historical reenactment.

Communicati on in Second Life takes place in text chat, voice chat and through private instant messaging; this promotes a unique method of classroom communicati on which oft en re-sults in a two- or three-ti ered discussion, vocal discussions of class material are accompanied by more personal commentar-ies in the text chat panel, and student-to-student comments may be carried on privately in the background. Backchat en-

WS Enters the Virtual World of Second Life

the material. Members select a unique name and are able to

In Print: New Faculty Publications burack final

black, pms 108image is final high-res

cynthia burack

A N T I G A Y R H E T O R I C A N D T H E C H R I S T I A N R I G H T

sin, sex, and democracy

Sin, Sex, and Democracy: Anti gay Rhetoric and the Christi an Right, by Women’s Studies Asso-ciate Professor Cynthia Burack has been pub-lished the year by State University of NY Press. Dr. Burack argues that as the Christi an Right has become a more sophisti cated interest group, leaders have become adept at tailoring diff erent messages for mainstream audiences and for the internal peda-gogical processes of Christi an conservati ves. Burack claims that understanding the rhetoric and theological convicti ons that lie behind them is essenti al to bett er understand how American politi cs work and how to eff ecti vely respond to exclusionary forms of politi cal thought and practi ce.

Mytheli Sreenivas’ book, Wives, Widows, and Con-cubines: The Conjugal Family Ideal in Colonial Indiawas recently published by Indiana University Press. It is the winner of the Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social Sciences, and was published in asso-ciati on with the American Insti tute of Indian Stud-ies. The family was at the center of intense debates

about identi ty, community, and nati on in colonial Tamil Nadu, India. Emerging ideas about love, marriage, and desire were linked to caste politi cs, the colonial economy, and nati onalist agitati on. In the fi rst detailed historical study of Tamil fami-lies, Wives, Widows, and Concubines maps changes in the late colonial family in relati on to the region’s culture, politi cs, and economy. Dr. Sreenivas is an Assistant Professor of History and Women’s Studies.

Before coming to OSU Women’s Studies, Lynn Itagaki has taught at the University of Montana in Missoula and fi n-

ished her master’s degree in Asian American Studies and doc-toral program in English at UCLA. Her research looks at femi-nist theory and comparati ve race studies in the cultural politi cs of the post-civil rights era.

As the visiti ng scholar in the spring and fall quarters, she de-veloped a fi lm series, “Asian/Pacifi c Islander Women, Acti vism and Art,” that highlights a broad range of current issues fac-ing API women and their communiti es today. The series com-plements the work of Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies on campus, rallies student organizati ons and college insti tuti ons on campus, and connects these groups and insti tu-ti ons to nati onal Asian/Pacifi c Islander networks of academ-ics, arti sts, and acti vists. The fi lms were shown at the inaugu-ral 2008 Women’s Studies Graduate Student Conference and in Professor Judy Wu’s undergraduate course on history and documentary fi lm. A screening of director Joy Dietrich’s Tie A Yellow Ribbon, an award-winning independent fi lm about a Korean adoptee’s struggles for self-identi ty aft er growing up in the Midwest, was followed by a recepti on and panel featur-ing the director, Rebecca Nel-son, Assistant Vice President of Student Aff airs and Director of the Multi cultural Center and Mo-Yee Lee, Professor of Social Welfare. The event was att end-ed by ninety people from on and off -campus communiti es, including local parents of trans-nati onal adoptees. The series will culminate this fall quarter with a talk about media representati ons of Asian Americans by acti vist, scholar, and director Celine Parreñas Shimizu from UC Santa Barbara and a fi lm screening of her documentary “The Fact of Asian Women” on October 27. Please contact Lynn Itagaki at itagaki.5@osu.edu for more details about the fi lm series.

Visiting Scholar to Host Asian American Film Series

3

larges and enriches the conversati on, and allows even the most reti cent students to choose a comfortable level of par-ti cipati on.

When the class has become familiar with the workings of the Second Life program, they spend some ti me on “fi eld trips” to other educati onal installati ons, as well as to sites run by chari-table and acti vist organizati ons. In the past, students have vis-ited the American Cancer Society’s virtual clinic to learn about breast cancer, they have studied presentati ons built on Bett er World Island to publicize the tragedy of Darfur, and they have dropped by the Code Pink offi ces to learn about women’s an-ti war acti vism.

Students have also had the opportunity to interview the av-atars who create these installati ons. One woman went to Wheelies Cafe, a clubhouse for people with disabiliti es, where she interviewed an avatar who deals with disability in real life, and learned about atti tudes to the disabled in a profound and immediate way.

The internati onal nature of Second Life makes it a rich resource for student research. In the spring of 2008, WS 110D coop-erated in a joint project with Dr. Jumana Samara’s technology class at Dubai Women’s College, United Arab Emirates. Stu-dents used a course management system to discuss women’s issues according to their own cultural perspecti ves, then each class hosted a meeti ng on its home island.

Pictured: Lynn Itagaki and Joy Dietrich

Are you a Women’s Studies Alum? We’d love to hear from you!

Please email Jill Bystydzienski at bystydzienski.1@osu.edu or call 292-1021.

As the new Faculty and Teaching Assistant Development (FTAD) Graduate Teaching Fellow for Women’s Studies this

year, we are excited about the opportuniti es Kati e Linder will bring as she works closely with new and senior GTAs. Aft er tak-ing FTAD’s course on teaching development this past summer, she has several new ideas for programs this year that will off er GTAs a chance to dialogue about teaching ideas and strategies, provide teaching support in and outside of the classroom, and assist with professional development. She has already had some wonderful conversati ons with new GTAs about their ex-periences in the classroom.

Kati e would also like to express grati tude to all the new and senior GTAs who att ended the WS Teaching Acti viti es Fair on October 10 and shared their teaching strategies.

New Graduate TeachingFellow

Six outstanding M.A. students received their diplomas this spring. Some have decided to pursue advanced degrees, while others are accepti ng positi ons as instructors or working in ar-eas with direct community involvement. There are currently 13 M.A. students in the program. The graduates along with their specializati ons are:

Tahirah Akbar-Williams Race, class, gender sexuality issues, black feminists politi cs, enhancing and maintaining African American feminist and sexuality collecti ons. Kelly Ball Feminist epistemological approaches to studying how social identi ti es are constructed, experienced and interpreted—specifi cally as knowledge formati ons inform and infl uence sexuality and gender, agency and community building.Alina Bennett Disability, health, whiteness, prison industrial complex, black feminist theory.Lindsay Bernhagen Representati on (aural) in popular and folk music, music movements, feminist fi lm/fi lm music analysis.Jennifer Lang Domesti c sex work populati ons, street sex work organizing. Working class feminism(s), gay and lesbian holocaust histories.Melissa Wiser Women in sport, specifi cally the role of gender in creati ng and implementi ng sport rules and the eff ect on the act of offi ciati ng.

Graduate and undergraduate Women’s Studies students re-ceived awards this past spring. Congratulati ons to all. Special thanks go to the sponsors of these awards for making these opportuniti es to excel available to students.

Adriane Brown (Ph.D. student) and Jennifer Cunningham(undergraduate) won the Common Diff erences Award. Alina Bennett (M.A. graduate) and Elizabeth Minot (un-dergraduate) received the Joellen Thomas Award. Un-dergraduate Jessica Ziegenfuss won the Robin Wiehmn Award. Two awards went to undergraduate Tracie Sin-sheimer: the Mildred Munday Scholarship and the Rob-ert and Mary Reusche Scholarship for Study Abroad.

Six Master’s Students Graduate

Recent Awards & Grants

The following story was featured in OSU’s College of Arts & Humaniti es FOCUS (Vol I, Issue 2). Katherine Clonan-Roy is a Women’s Studies Honors Student and serves as the Treasurer of Iota, Iota, Iota (aka Triota), Women’s Studies Honor Society.

Undergraduate Katherine Clonan-Roy, a double major in Women’s Studies and Spanish, was selected in Septem-

ber for the Ohio State Board of Trustees Student Recogniti on Award. The award is given each month to a student in honor of that student’s achievements in his/her area of study, research achievements that have been a credit to the college or univer-sity, and/or service to the university and/or community. The award was conferred by the Board of Trustees on September 19.

An exemplary student, Clonan-Roy is also pursuing a minor in the interdisciplinary fi eld of neuroscience. While her academ-ic choices signal the ambiti ous diversity of her interests-with

Undergraduate Receives Prestigious Award

4

many challenging courses in aspects of behavioral psychology-her 3.89 GPA refl ects her high achievement. Not surprisingly, she is a member of the university’s Honors Collegium and was its junior class representati ve to the Student Advisory Commit-tee.

Extending her academic work beyond the classroom in several ways, in spring 2008 she was one of ten interns parti cipati ng in a Women in Politi cs internship course in Women’s Studies taught by Jill Bystydzienski that paired her with an elected woman offi cial at the Ohio State House (Rep. Tracy Heard). In additi on, during the past three summers, she has enhanced her educati on through study abroad: in 2006 with the London Honors Program; in 2007 in the Toledo Program at the Jose Or-tega y Gasset Foundati on in Spain; and in 2008 in San Cristobal, Chiapas, Mexico, doing fi eld work for her senior honors the-sis on indigenous women acti ve in the Zapati sta movement, a revoluti onary uprising led by the Zapati sta Nati onal Liberati on Army.

In additi on to her academic pursuits, Clonan-Roy is also in-volved in the community in many ways. Notably she is a vol-unteer with the Big Brothers and Big Sisters school-based men-toring program; and, as a member of the service organizati on Club Hispano, volunteers at a bilingual medical clinic in Colum-bus. She represents the combinati on of academic excellence, intellectual curiosity, and service both within and outside Ohio State.

5

Alina Bennett receives FTAD Enhancement GrantAlina Bennett , a 2008 graduate of our MA program, and cur-

rently an instructor for the WS 101 Women, Culture and Society introductory course, received a $10,000 seed grant from OSU Faculty & TA Development to support an expanded teaching orientati on and professional development program for Women’s Studies Graduate Assistants during the academic year 2008/09. This initi ati ve has already made possible a two-day orientati on in September for the GTAs. It involved prepara-ti on for teaching introductory classes and eff ecti ve strategies for surviving the fi rst year. Throughout the year, the grant will support programs focused on enhancing professional prepara-ti on of graduate students related to teaching and job seeking. Acti ng as a consultant, Bennett will be disseminati ng informa-ti on about teaching resources at OSU such as workshops and teaching-centered events. She also will be available to observe classes and provide feedback.

Pictured L to R: Jill Bystydzienski, Glennda Testone, Nancy Campbell, Olivera Brati ch, Andrea Cipriani, Cinnamon Reiheld, Deb Kuzawa, Julia Applegate, Donna Troka, Christi na Capellleti , Nancy Smith

On April 4 and 5, 2008, the Department of Women’s Studies held its fi rst Graduate Student Conference ti tled, The ‘F’

Words of Feminist Scholarship. The conference was hosted by the Speakers and Events Planning Committ ee headed by de-partment chair, Jill Bystydzienski, and was organized by second year M.A. students, Alina Bennett and Kelly Ball. The event be-gan with a pre-conference workshop, “Building Transnati onal Collaborati ons in Women’s and Gender Studies,” conducted by the conference keynote speaker Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheft all, fol-lowed by a full day of panel presentati ons with graduate and undergraduate students from universiti es across Ohio and In-diana. Dr. Sheft all, Professor of Women’s Studies and found-ing director of the Women’s Research and Resource Center at Spelman College in Atlanta, in her keynote address focused on future directi ons for the fi eld of women’s studies. Students presented papers on such topics as gender identi ty, African American women’s leadership, cultural memory and trauma, sexual boundaries in female pop music performance, representa-ti ons of sex work, feminist futures in politi cs, and feminist movements in global context. All together, over 20 student projects were presented with more than 100 people att end-ing the conference. The confer-ence ended with a fi lm about Asian American women’s poetry, Between the Lines, directed by Yunah Hong, and presented by Dr. Lynn Itagaki, a Visiti ng Scholar in Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies.

The Speakers and Events Planning Committ ee will be scheduling this conference bi-annually in spring quarters with a Career Cafe event being hosted in alternate years. The Career Café is a luncheon sponsored by the department that provides an opportunity for Women’s Studies students to interact with 6-8 local com-munity professionals who are graduates of our programs. The Career Cafe and Graduate Student Conference demonstrate the department’s conti nued commitment to the professional development of its students.

Women’s Studies Summer Reunion

Graduate Student Conference

Along with record high temperatures, July brought Ohio State University’s Women’s Studies alumni together in Co-

lumbus, Ohio for the fourth annual Women’s Studies reunion. More than fi ft y alumni, their families and friends, as well as faculty and staff , descended upon Columbus from July 18 – 20 to celebrate, reconnect, and network. The reunion also created opportuniti es for alums to once again experience some of the intellectual life of the Women’s Studies Department.

While past reunions only brought together masters students from the class of 1997 or aft er, this reunion welcomed gradu-ates of the undergraduate, masters, and doctoral programs from the 1980’s through present day. These alums came from as far away as Sedona, Arizona and as close as Ohio State’s own backyard. Their work is equally as far ranging, spanning the academic, art, business, entertainment, and non-profi t fi elds. And, through their professional and personal advocacy, alums are addressing issues including HIV/AIDS, the criminal justi ce system, disability, racism, and women in the media. The broad range of experiences, backgrounds, and interests of al-ums created connecti ons and discussions far richer than past reunions.

The weekend, generously supported by the Department of Women’s Studies, was fi lled with a range of events, with some-thing for everyone who att ended. It began on Friday night with a meet and greet at Nancy Smith’s (Class of 2001) house. The (veggie and meat) grills were roaring and kids were scurrying everywhere, while old friends were getti ng reacquainted and new friendships were being forged.

Saturday started off with a pool party, thanks to Julie Applegate (Class of 1997), followed by a networking happy hour which provided a space for att endees to discuss how they were using their Women’s Studies degrees and what projects they were working on. It became apparent very quickly that Ohio State Women’s Studies alums, faculty, and staff are doing amazing work in a variety of fi elds. The fi nal event on Saturday was a

party at Sile Singleton (class of 1997) and Erin Tarr’s house. Among the glow of citronella candles att endees raised their glasses to toast Women’s Studies and the weekend of fun.

The weekend was rounded out with a Sunday brunch at the home of Kim Swensen’s (class of 1999) in-laws. Here, over coff ee, soysage, plenty of bacon, and Kim’s divine fritt ata, re-union att endees told their last stories, exchanged informati on, and posed for one more picture.

When asked what they liked most about the reunion, att endees talked about the importance of re-connecti ng with old friends, making new ones, and

building a lasti ng and dynamic network of Women’s Studies alums, faculty, and staff . They look forward to working closely with the Women’s Studies Department to formalize this net-work to share their knowledge and connecti ons with other al-ums and current students on a regular basis.

DEPARTMENTAL PROGRAMSWomen’s Studies Professional Development Fund (627690)Women’s Studies Department (306738)

WOMEN’S STUDIES RESEARCH PROJECTSElizabeth D. Gee Small Grants Endowment (602449)Elizabeth D. Gee Small Grants Current Use (308449)

FELLOWSHIPS FOR GRADUATE STUDYGraduate Student Support (311584)

SCHOLARSHIPS FOR UNDERGRADUATE STUDYMildred Munday Scholarship (645073)

Department of Women’s Studies� e Ohio State University286 University Hall230 N. Oval MallColumbus, OH 43210

Sharethe Vision!NAMEADDRESS

PHONE EMAIL

Amount Enclosed

Please contact me about my donati on.

$ .

Department of Women’s StudiesThe Ohio State University286 University Hall230 N. Oval MallColumbus, OH 43210

Return to: