2020-21 Isom Report

The Isom Report 2020-2021

REPORT TO CHANCELLOR PORTER L. FORTUNE, JR. FROM THE COMMITTEE APPOINTED TO STUDY PROGRAMS AND SERVICES FOR WOMEN JULY 1979

Building a Legacy 1981-2021

FOREWORD As we looked forward to the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Isom Center in 2021, we knew that we needed to pause and look backwards first. In the pages that follow, we will explore the history of women at UM and some of the women who forever changed it.

For this Isom Report, we have broken up the issue into four main sections: the first 130+ years of the university, the founding and early years of the Center, thirty years of survival, and the evolution of the Center to meet the needs of a new era. The first section includes an overview of the history of women at UM, including from its founding, and a reflection on Black women’s activism dating back to the earliest days of integration. The second section focuses heavily on Dr. Joanne “Jan” Hawks’ work to get the Center up and running and her battles to keep the Center open. The third section focuses on the changing world of academia —both nationally in regards to women’s studies and locally with the increases in women’s leadership at the university—during a thirty-year period from 1984-2014. Lastly, we explore how we have resisted the university’s long-standing policy of benign neglect to increase the visibility of Center, taking up Hawk’s mantle of education, research, and advocacy for women to be “a bulwark against the kind of ‘in-ness’” that has so long plagued the University.

No amount of pages, however, can tell the complete story. Therefore, we will be sharing additional written stories, photographic collections, and visual narratives through our website and social media channels. We invite you to visit our site at www.sarahisomcenter.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

Together, we are building a legacy for the next forty years.

Jaime Harker, Ph.D., Director and Professor of English Theresa Starkey, Ph.D., Associate Director and Instructional Associate Professor of Gender Studies Kevin Cozart, M.A., Operations Coordinator

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Women at UM The University of Mississippi Carriage House and an (assumed) domestic servant, collodion glass plate negative by Edward C. Boynton, a professor of chemistry, minerology, and geology from 1856–1861. Courtesy of the University of Mississippi Department of Archives and Special Collections.

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By Hilary Coulson omen were not always allowed to attend the University of Mississippi, but that doesn’t mean women were not present on the campus. When the university opened in 1848, faculty, administrators, and some students brought along enslaved people to work as domestics on campus. We do not know all of their names, we do not know all of their roles, and we certainly do not have detailed records of their lives, but we do know women were working on campus. Records of enslaved people can be scant, but desire to pursue stories of their lives has only recently been a part of historical inquiry.

In one photograph from 1860, researchers from the Slavery Research Group at the University of Mississippi highlight the presence of an African American woman tending to a baby. The

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baby was likely 4-month-old Florence, the daughter of the new Chemistry, Mineralogy, and Geology professor on campus, Professor Edward C, Boynton. We know little about this woman who was only listed on the 1860 Federal Slave Schedule records for the Boynton family as “slave,” “45,” “female,” and “black.” What we do know is this woman was very much at the University of Mississippi and being forced to labor for the benefit of a university employee. Women have always been allowed to be at the University of Mississippi—but only if it was in service to wealthy white men.

Most narratives about women at the University of Mississippi begin with a discussion of the first full time female employee of the University, Julia Wilcox, the first librarian and the woman responsible for expanding the university’s holdings by over 12,000 volumes. Following a discussion of the pioneering Ms.

Wilcox, is always a mention of the first female faculty member, the woman for whom our center is named—Ms. Sarah McGehee Isom—who was hired as an elocution instructor for the Uuniversity in 1885. Undoubtedly these women were both towering and important figures in the history of the university, but certainly not the first women to work for the school. Rarely mentioned in a history of women at the university is an enslaved woman known only as Jane. We know Jane’s story as an offshoot of the narrative of Chancellor Barnard and his time at UM. Early histories of the University tend to cover what is known as “The Branham Affair” at length— not to discuss the crime against Jane, but to highlight some of the early fractures and scandal at the University as well as to chart Barnard’s tribulations while chancellor.

In 1859, Chancellor Barnard went out of town with his wife to attend

SARAH MCGEHEE ISOM speaking. She then went on to train under some of the most prominent elocutionists of the era in larger cities like Boston and Philadelphia. Isom was highly educated, well trained, and could have pursued a career in the theater and lived a life of fame on the stage. Instead, she chose to return to her hometown where she had a twenty-year career as the first female faculty member at the University of Mississippi.

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arah McGehee Isom was born in 1850 in Oxford, Mississippi. She was the daughter of a prominent Oxford physician, Thomas Dudley Isom and his wife, Sarah McGehee.

Local folklore describes the Isom couple as pioneers to the frontier of Oxford. The Isom Family lived at 1003 Jefferson Avenue and their home still stands adjacent to the town square.

When Sarah “Sallie” Isom was born in the early 1850’s, education for women was still not widely accepted or available in Mississippi so Isom’s parents sent her to the Augusta Seminary in Virginia where she studied theater and public

a convention. He left behind enslaved people to tend to his home on campus. Records indicate this included two Black women. When he returned, he learned that two male students, J.P. Furniss and Samuel B. Humphreys broke into his home, raped Jane, and beat her mercilessly when she tried to protect herself. During an investigation, Jane identified her attackers to Barnard who expelled one of the assailants, Samuel Humphreys.

Details of Jane’s life prior to

and leaders and often encouraged students to pursue public speaking endeavors to improve their form and delivery.

Her own fiery personality and flare for drama contributed to her skill as an instructor for budding public speakers.

The students’ respect for her is evidenced by the dedication of the 1905 yearbook in her honor.

Isom was appointed to her post in 1885, after considerable debate amongst administrators and the board of trustees. She worked as the only instructor of elocution at the university until she died in 1905. Allen Cabiness, one of the early historians of the University wrote about Isom in his 1949 A History of the University of Mississippi with condescension.

His disdain for her contributions and role at the university seem to stem from his reading of her course descriptions which he described as “pretentious.” Though written a half century after her career, the attitude toward women at the University of Mississippi still seemed to be stagnant.

Sarah Isom spent her life teaching students how to express themselves with poise and grace.

She trained future politicians

Chancellor F. A. P. Barnard

the attack have never been uncovered and information about her in the wake of the incident center on Barnard’s response and the eventual fallout of his decision to expel the student in favor of a female slave’s testimony. Jane’s story is often recorded in histories of the University, but never in the section about women at the University. Jane’s story is told in order to

propel the narrative of a white man. Her life is boiled down to her victimhood and her role at the University is reduced to an incident that led to the eventual departure of Chancellor Barnard. Jane is one woman who worked at the University of Mississippi, well before the appointment of Julia Wilcox or Sarah Isom.

Women Become Students, Staff, & Faculty It was not until the late 19th century that women were considered for admission to attend the University or work there as recognized employees. Of course, at that time, only white women were considered THE ISOM REPORT

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Women were finally allowed to attend the University of Mississippi in 1882, but not without considerable debate.

Sometimes, discussions about co-education would touch on the danger of admitting women because they could be distractions to their male colleagues, but more often there were discussions about innate infeTau Delta Theta “Fraternity” in UM ‘s inaugural yearbook (1897) riority of women’s minds that for admission. Moreover, the white wommade them unfit for higher en who were admitted to the University were often daughters of faculty members learning. Indeed, one issue of the University Magazine from or other privileged and high-status community members. This is not to diminish early 1876 argued that women could not be students at the their accomplishments or disparage the university because of their lack hills they had to climb to blaze the trail of “reasoning powers” or their for others, but a reminder that higher ability to “sustain long and intrieducation, like all institutions in the cate trains of thought.” This, of United States, has been a closed-off course, was all ignorant rhetoric. and purposefully inaccessible privilege reserved only for the benefit of the white In the first class that included female graduates (1885), the upper class. In Mississippi, this meant highest academic honors were slave owners (or former slave owners) awarded to Sallie Vick Hill. Matand their children. In the wake of the tie James Smythe was the valeCivil War, the white upper echelon was dictorian for the class of 1888. In outlawed from owning slaves, but many actively worked to continue the subjuga- the class of 1890, close to half of tion, disenfranchisement, and brutaliza- the women who graduated from the University of Mississippi tion of Black Americans in Mississippi went on to be college professors. and beyond.

Ruth White & Eleanor Ham - Women’s Athletic Association - 1940 Ole Miss Yearbook

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The history of women at the University of Mississippi requires more exploration by historians and researchers.

Many have written about the struggle to admit women and recounted the history of those first women to graduate and teach at the university, but many women’s accomplishments and contributions to the campus and university culture are overshadowed by discussions of their physical attributes. In the widely accepted and popular monograph, The

University of Mississippi: A Sesquicentennial History, David Sansing writes in response to the last efforts to exclude women from UM that “after that effort failed, there was no other major challenge to coeducation, and pretty women became an Ole Miss tradition.” Sansing devotes a chapter to the “pretty women” at the University and highlights the beauty contests, prizes awarded for good looks in yearbooks, and even shares a poem written

by William Faulkner about how beautiful female students at the University were.

Aesthetically pleasing or not, there must be more to say about the women who attended and worked for this University.

Mary Ann Mobley, UM’s first Miss America (1959)

For further reading: University of Mississippi Slavery Research Group: slaveryresearchgroup.olemiss.edu A broader history of the University, see: Sansing, David. The University of Mississippi: A Sesquicentennial History (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999).

JUDGE LUCY SOMERVILLE HOWORTH

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hen she was asked about her life, her work, and how she managed to accomplish so much, Lucy Somerville Howorth responded that she never thought she was extraordinary—she figured everyone could make a difference if they felt motivated.

Howorth was born in 1895 and lived over one hundred years of remarkable life.

Born to the noted national suffrage and temperance trailblazer Nellie Nugent Somerville, Howorth was exposed to the women’s suffrage movement from infancy when her mother would carry her into social reform meetings. Sometimes described as the real-life Forrest Gump, she seemed to be present for and working behind the scenes at several pivotal moments in U.S. history. She witnessed the 19th amendment become national law shortly before graduating from law school and later served multiple presidents. She worked diligently into her old age to advance the cause of women.

Howorth once famously said, “The idea that women can’t do something just because we’re women…phooey!” This quote encapsulates some of her most treasured qualities: humor and ambition. Howorth was a torchbearer. She was one of only two women in her law school class at the University of Mississippi and after she graduated, she went on to launch a successful law practice, was appointed a commissioner of a federal district and was then affectionately known as “Judge Lucy.” Judge Lucy sought work in administrative law during the depression era and New Deal. Noticing her talent and drive, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed her to serve on the board of appeals of the Veterans Administration.

Following her stint in the role, she moved forward with work after the Second World War on the War Claims Commission in 1949. In this position, Howorth was the first woman to be appointed as general counsel for an executive commission. She went on to work for President Eisenhower as a legal researcher

for the President’s Commission on Government Security. Her final role in government came when she worked for President Kennedy on the Commission on the Status of Women.

Not only was Howorth invested in social movements to advance the rights of white women, she was also known for her efforts in supporting and working toward Civil Rights and equality for Black women. In 1949, well before the height of the Civil Rights movement, Howorth insisted the American Association of University Women (AAUW) open membership to Black women. Throughout her life, Howorth challenged ideas about southern womanhood.

Lucy Somerville Howorth retired from public service, moved back to Mississippi, and enjoyed more than forty years of retired life where she remained an active advocate for women’s advancement. A strong supporter of the University of Mississippi, Howorth was friends with the first director and founder of the Isom Center, Dr. Joanne Hawks and was a strong advocate for women’s studies programs. Each year, the Sarah Isom Center honors the memory and legacy of Lucy Somerville Howorth during the lecture series held in her name each spring.

Following are excerpts from Howorth’s law school graduation speech from 1922: In the troublous time of the middle ages, the first uni­versities and colleges were founded by men ... “who had dedicated themselves to the pursuit of wisdom and understanding.”

They were “seekers in the realm of the spirit,” they had the passion to seek and to impart.

These first colleges were poor and small, but those who attended them wore lovers of books and meditation, and curious inquiry. In time

came endowments and buildings and organization and power, and a lessening of initiative and imagination. ... But one feature needs to be remembered: the teacher was master of his sub­ject, and no committee either of bankers or of bricklayers told him how it should be taught...

When the head of an institution of learning requests the students on going home to apologize and explain because an lecturer in one of the sciences teaches that science according to the best of his knowledge, I, for one, refuse to betray the ideal of education. Are students to be fed bits of information as a baby is given its milk? Are they never to learn to discriminate the true from the false? Are they to get no sense of value? Will they always be taught that life and its problems are absolute and not relative? That is the way students are treated at present, and then some wonder that college graduates in a community fall for the first smooth talking demagogue that appears. Why not? They have never had a choice between ideas in their lives. We Americans are becoming the most bigoted and intolerant people on the globe. That is bad, but what makes it worse is that we stand in the market place and pray the pharisee’s prayer, “Lord we thank ‘l’hee that we are not as other Nations are.”

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Agents of Change 50 YEARS OF BLACK WOMEN’S ACTIVISM AT UM

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By Kristin Teston

Pictured above (l-r) Kenneth Mayfield, Theron Evans Jr., Henrieese Roberts, Linnie Williams, and Donald Cole; five of the eight students who were expelled in 1970. Photo by Billy Schuerman, the Daily Mississippian.

innie Liggins Willis transferred to the University of Mississippi in 1967 with the intention to begin her legacy by being the first member of her family to graduate college. Even though she was an Oxford native, Willis never really considered attending the University of Mississippi. Although the University had been integrated a few years earlier by James Meredith, Willis viewed it as an elusive institution and as a space that would be less than welcoming to a Black woman. She started her college journey at Tougaloo College, but after encouragement from her grandmother, she transferred.

A native of Shannon, MS, Majorie Crawford was the daughter and granddaughter of female teachers, and therefore earning a college degree was the expected trajectory for her family. Ole Miss

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had always been her first choice, and she said those who chose to attend the University needed no encouragement in their determination to flourish. “You have to realize that an African American in Mississippi in 1967 who made a decision to come to Ole Miss was a self-starter,” Crawford said.

By 1970, there were fewer than two hundred Black students enrolled at Ole Miss compared to an overall enrollment of about 6,600 students. Additionally, many of the Black employees of the university were working in menial, low-paying jobs. Because of this, a chapter of the Black Student Union (BSU) was formed to create a social network and to advocate for better learning, living, and working conditions for Black members of the UM community.

Both Willis and Crawford would join the Black Student Union and be arrested for their involvement in a series of protests for Black inclusivity on campus.

On February 25, 1970, Willis and other students marched to Fulton Chapel and took the stage during a performance by Up With People, a non-profit organization that focuses on fostering intercultural communication and bettering communities. Some gave the Black Power salute on stage, and when the group exited 15 minutes later they were met with pointed guns and arrested by the State Highway Patrol.

Days before the protest, the Black Student Union had presented then-Chancellor Porter L. Fortune, Jr. with a list of twenty-seven demands to better their condition on the campus and for future Black students. Willis was serving as secretary for the BSU when these demands were drafted, and Crawford was an active member.

Because of a knee injury, Crawford was unable to attend the protest, but news of the arrests moved quickly across campus.

Students gathered at the old Y Building (where Croft is now located) to discuss plans for helping those who had been arrested at Fulton Chapel. However, before they could get the meeting underway, law enforcement entered the building and arrested these students. Others who were protesting at the Chancellor’s residence were also detained.

In total, eighty-nine students were arrested and taken to either Lafayette County Jail or to the state prison at Parchman. Authorities later dropped the charges, but the students were still subject to disciplinary hearings for violating the Ole Miss Code of Conduct.

Eighty-one of the students were suspended for one day and placed on academic probation, without hearings. The remaining eight students, the Ole Miss Eight. were marked as the ring leaders, because of photographic evidence capturing them onstage at Fulton Chapel: Cole, Evans, Mayfield, John Donald, Paul Jackson, Alva Peyton, Henrieese Roberts, and Linnie Willis Liggins.

Even after their hearing and the reiteration that their protest was nonviolent, the eight were ultimately expelled from the University. Willis, who had completed all of the credits needed to graduate, was not given her diploma.

It would be fifty years before Willis would receive her degree from the University.

Five of the Ole Miss Eight returned to campus for the 50th anniversary of the

a committee to improve race relations; a campus minister was appointed for black students; and Coolidge Ball enrolled as the first Black student athlete.

“You have to realize that an African American in Mississippi in 1967 who made a decision to come to Ole Miss was a self-starter,” event earlier this year. During an interview, Willis reflected on the hardships she and others faced: The sacrifice that we made at that time was for a reason, and so, at this point, I just want to make sure that the University is embracing the things that we talked about, that we asked for. Black students, African American students, are given a fair chance, a fair opportunity here; that this university’s going to be more supportive, more inclusive. And some of those things have happened, but there’s probably still some work to be done.

Indeed the 1970 events sparked a number of significant progressions in the years that followed: Constance Slaughter-Harvey became the first Black woman to graduate from the law school; the University hired its first full-time Black faculty member, Jeanette Jennings (Social Work); the University created an African American studies program and

However, Willis is correct in her assumption that there is still work to be done, and Black women remain in the vanguard of those efforts. Recently, these conversations have centered on removing Confederate iconography from the campus, a demand that was also made by those protesting in 1970.

A New Generation

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n 2015, students Tysianna Marino and Dominique Scott were moved to action by the massacre at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC, and pushed for the university to stop flying the Mississippi state flag, the only state flag that still incorporated the Confederate battle flag. As members of the UM chapter of the NAACP, Scott and Marino organized an open forum, which brought together students, faculty, staff, and community members. The next day the student senate began drafting a resolution urging for the administration to remove the state flag from all campuses.

As support for their efforts mounted, Marino and Scott planned a rally meant to bring visibility to the campaign and to increase the pressure on both the student government and campus administration.

It attracted some 200 attendees, including nearly a dozen vocal representatives of the League of the South and the Ku Klux Klan.

Despite dealing with harassment and threats of physical violence both on and off campus, Marino and Scott moved forward with their plans for organizing a march. Shortly after the rally, each of the four major governing bodies voted in support of the resolution to cease flying the state flag. Early in the morning on October 26, the flag came down.

In an interview with Brian Foster, Marino reflected on the events. “Our being THE ISOM REPORT

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ROSE JACKSON FLENORL

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ithin five years of the expulsion of the Ole Miss Eight, the University undertook an active campaign to recruit Black students by inviting them to sit in on a class of their choice. One of the first recruits was Rose Jackson Flenorl, who would later become the University’s first Black female to be inducted into the student Hall of Fame.

Although her parents were worried, she said they shouldn’t have been surprised by her choice. She credits her father for instilling in her the principles that led her to Ole Miss: courage, self-respect, open-mindedness, and the insistence on excellence no matter how difficult the circumstances. For three and a half decades, she has lived and modeled this philosophy for her peers and thousands of UM students of all backgrounds who came after her.

A soon-to-be graduate of Clarksdale High School, During her time Flenorl not at UM, Fleonly served norl not only as the editor survived what of the school many viewed newspaper as a hostile but was also Copyright: UM Digital Imaging Services environment, the school’s but thrived.

She was elected as campus first Black valedictorian. Because of her favorite and a member of the homecomrole with the newspaper, she decided to ing court. She was also inducted into visit a journalism class where her inOmicron Delta Kappa, Mortar Board, and structions were to sit and listen. She sat, but she did more than just listen. Instead Phi Kappa Phi, and served on 23 camshe asked questions, and this experience pus-wide committees. solidified her decision that the University Flenorl excelled through servant leadof Mississippi was the place she wanted ership. She served as president of the to attend.

Association of Women Students, and she served on the committee that recomThe riots resulting from James Meremended the creation of the Isom Center. dith’s enrollment and the expulsion of eight students in 1970 were still fresh in Flenorl’s leadership was recognized by the memory of many Black Mississippifootball’s head coach, Steve Sloan, who ans, including Flenorl’s parents. asked her to assist with their recruitment of Black players. She agreed, but dehere and being Black and being the best at everything we do is probably the only memorial [those Black folks] will ever get. We say their names, we remove the symbols. … For us it was the flag. For someone else it’ll be the statue. That is how we memorialize them.”

has stood at the entrance to the University Circle since 1906. Following a unanimous vote by the Associated Student Body and support by the other campus governing organizations, the University leadership and IHL formally began the process to relocate the monument.

In 2019, Leah Davis and Arielle Hudson were among six students who worked to build campus-wide support for a proposal to relocate the Confederate statue that

This February, exactly 50 years after the Ole Miss Eight took the stage in Fulton Chapel, dozens of UM students, escorted by police officers and University officials,

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manded that Athletics value Black players not only as athletes but as learners, and support them on their path to graduation. As a result, Athletics created what is now known as the FedEx Student-Athlete Success Center, which provides academic mentoring and tutoring for all student-athletes.

Because of her dedication to Black students’ success, Chancellor Porter L. Fortune, Jr. asked Flenorl to return to the university in the fall of 1979 as assistant director of student services to identify needs of minority students, create intercultural awareness programs, and to counsel students and organizations.

Since graduating and leaving the University, Flenorl has continued her career of servant leadership. At the University, she has served as a founding member of the Ole Miss Women’s Council for Philanthropy, national president of the Ole Miss Alumni Association (2008-2009), and chair of the University of Mississippi Foundation Board of Directors (2015-2016), and two terms on the Ole Miss Athletics Committee. Outside of the University, she serves as FedEx Global Citizenship Manager, board secretary for the National Civil Rights Museum, and a member of the board of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Business Civic Leadership Center.

Today, Flenorl continues to be a force on campus. She can often be found guest lecturing, mentoring students, and participating in other forms of volunteer service. marched from Lamar Hall to the Confederate monument to commemorate Black History Month.

At this march, Freshman Jada Broughton echoed the assertion made by Black students across the decades during an interview with The Daily Mississippian: “Saying that we are Ole Miss, too, and doing this march—it’s showing that we’re not just tagging along, but we are incorporated in this school.”

Pictured (l-r) are Leah Davis (‘20), Tysianna Marino (‘17), Dominique Scott (‘17), and Arielle Hudson (20). Image copyrights: Thomas Wells, the Daily Journal; Andrea Morales, Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown; and Billy Schuerman, the Daily Mississippian

Less than six months after that march, plans were approved to finally relocate the Confederate statue to the cemetery.

However, Hudson, Davis, and numerous others spoke out about the details of those relocation plans, which many feared were just another form of reification. Because of their response, Chancellor Boyce announced a reconsideration the details of those plans. Although this relocation presents a new set of challenges, it nonetheless signals the hardwon progress and tireless dedication of the Black women who seek to make this University a more inclusive space.

The University has a troubled record of listening to and learning from Black students, but for the last fifty years, students have been teaching them how to listen.

“A lot of people know the history of the University and a lot of African American people have a negative stereotype of the University, which is definitely warranted, but I do know there are successful African American students at the university,” Davis said in a interview with The Daily Journal . “I think it’s really important that our stories are heard and our stories are shared.”

Note: As a Center, we want to share those stores and ensure that these voices are both heard and recognized. We encourage you to learn more about these events by listening to Black Power at Ole Miss oral histories at https:// egrove.olemiss.edu/blkpower/. We also want to acknowledge and thank those researchers and writers who have worked to share these stories, including Jasmine Stansberry, Brittany Brown, Ralph Eubanks, Nick Judin, Nigel Dent, Brian Foster, Danny McArthur, and Garrett Felber.

Makayla Scott, Arielle Hudson, and Jailen Grant lead a Black History Month march from Lamar Hall to the Circle. Photo by Billy Schuerman, the Daily Mississippian.

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Vigilant Persistence DR. JOANNE “JAN” HAWKS AND THE FOUNDING OF THE SARAH ISOM CENTER

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By Jaime Harker oanne Varner, who would become Dr. Joanne “Jan” Hawks, didn’t set out to become a pioneer. She came to the University of Mississippi in 1960 out of love—for history and for her students. In that time and place, however, simply wanting a Ph.D. and a career in university research and teaching was still a revolutionary desire for a woman. Making a broad array of choices for women available, visible, and eventually commonplace is one of the greatest achievements of second wave feminism, and Jan Hawks embodies this shift in

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her evolution at the University of Mississippi, culminating in the founding of the Sarah Isom Center in 1981.

Born in 1932, Jan Hawks graduated with her B.A. from Agnes Scott College, a women’s college in Georgia known for both its high educational standards and its successful grooming of Southern ladies. She taught history at Blue Mountain College while earning her master’s (1962) and doctoral (1970) degrees at UM. Jan Hawks was, as so many colleagues and students attest, an extraordinary teacher—challenging, nurturing, empathetic, and demanding in the best sense of the word.

In 1972, she was hired at the University of Mississippi as the Dean of Women.

That the University of Mississippi still had a dean of women in the 1970s says a lot about the role of women at UM. It suggests an institution stuck in the past, nostalgically looking to a time before Black liberation, women’s liberation, and gay liberation. Ironically, the University of Mississippi had once been a leader on women’s issues. UM was one of the first colleges in the US South to admit women in 1882. It hired a woman instructor, Sarah Isom, in 1885. From those groundbreaking beginnings, however, the University

of Mississippi had fallen behind. There were no women working as administrators except the Dean of Women, whose job it was to “protect” women students (or “coeds,” as they were frequently called). “Protecting” could frequently slide into “policing,” including curfews and clothing regulations. Jan Hawks was a different kind of dean of women, interested more in fostering the dreams, ambitions, and well-being of women students at the University of Mississippi than in guarding their virtue or grooming them for marriage.

By the time Jan Hawks became the Dean of Women, things were beginning to change at the University of Mississippi.

In the 1970’s and 1980’s, a small group of women professors, staff members, and community members began meeting. Gloria Kellum, who would later go on to become the inaugural Vice Chancellor of University Relations under Chancellor Robert Khayat, was a young assistant professor when she started attending a series of lunches with women at the University of Mississippi, including Jan Hawks. This group of women called themselves “the Non Rotary Club,” a wry commentary on their exclusion from male institutions of networking and influence. They made their own networks of influence; women from this group would serve on and inform the task force that would become the Commission on the Status of Women and that would prompt the creation of the Sarah Isom Center for Women’s Studies. Dr. Kellum credits that group, and Jan Hawks’ friendship and mentorship, with creating a generation of women leaders at the University of Mississippi that would have influence for decades. Jan Hawks’ network of friends extended beyond the University to alumnae and friends across the US South. This network would be crucial in the precarious first years of the Center.

The Task Force and Founding

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n 1978, a task force was created by Chancellor Porter Fortune to consider how to improve the position of women at the University of Mississippi. The committee was chaired by Jan Hawks and included Dr. Ann Abadie and Dr. Carolyn Staton, both of whom went on to long careers at the University of Mississippi. The task force sent out a survey to women faculty, staff, and students, and the committee submitted a list of recommendations to the chancellor. One of the top recommendations was the creation of the Commission on the Status of Women. Another recommended creating child care options on campus (a goal which we still have not met). The report recommended the creation of the Sarah Isom Center to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the admission of women to the University of Mississippi.

Actually, the initial recommendation was for the creation of a women’s college within the University, the Sarah Isom College for women. They wrote:

We propose the establishment of a separate academic unit, preferably a college, which would correspond in structure with the other schools and colleges of the University. The college would be headed by a dean responsible directly to the Vice Chancellor. We feel the

unit might be appropriately called the Sara [sic] Isom College in honor of the first female professor. The use of a prestigious title should attract a favorable notice to the program.

Modeled, perhaps, after Radcliffe College for Women (which was incorporated, eventually into Harvard University), or Newnham College for Women at Cambridge University, or even Jan Hawks’ beloved Agnes Scott College, the Sarah Isom College would nurture women’s intellectual aspirations while providing access to the broader educational resources of the University of Mississippi.

It remains a grand idea and one that bears reconsideration as we celebrate our 40th anniversary.

The Sarah Isom Center for Women became the new goal because of that perennial complaint—a limited budget.

In the absence of new funds, the Center was created by reimagining an existing resource. The position of the Dean of Women would be converted into the director of the Sarah Isom Center. It was a creative solution. Most universities had eliminated the position of the Dean of Women by the late 1970s as an antiquated relic from coeducational programs as MRS degree.

But the need to mentor, nurture, and encourage women remained. The Sarah Isom Center, created to focus on the “changing roles of women at the university,” would carry on the most positive aspects of the dean of women into a new organization and a new academic discipline.

Not everyone saw it that way. Feminism was seen as antithetical to Southern ladyhood at the time, and a women’s THE ISOM REPORT 13

center was a threat to the status quo.

When it was housed in part of the women’s dorm, Isom Hall, with a director, an administrative assistant, and a student intern or two, the matron of the women’s dorm objected. Many members of the community refused to attend the dedication of the Center.

The dedication ceremony addressed these fears directly through its keynote speaker. Ellen Douglas was born in Natchez, Mississippi and attended the University of Mississippi; in fact, as she noted at the beginning of her speech, she lived at Isom Hall when she was a student. Douglas was also a well-known Mississippi novelist whose presence was a triumph for Jan Hawks. Douglas talked about her experience at the University of Mississippi and how social life was almost entirely defined by the sorority and fraternity system. You couldn’t go to pick up your mail unless you had a date at 10am; if you didn’t, you had to ask a friend to pick it up for you, for the shame of it. She continued: It’s unbelievable, really unbelievable, that you never went anywhere without a date at that time. Even after the building of the Union datelessness in the grill was not permissible. Parenthetically, I might add as Dr. Street has pointed it out, there were a great many men at Ole Miss--three to one in my time and therefore there were a great many men to have dates with so that most

people had a great many dates. You had a date at 10:00 for the mid-morning break, you had a date for lunch, you had a date after your 2:00 class, you had a date for supper to go to the cafeteria and you had a date at night to go down to Jim’s Cafe to drink beer which of course was not permissible but it was what everybody did. If there was a meeting, you always had a date for meetings, except the panhellenic council. There were two dances and sometimes three every weekend. Also, a tea dance. You not only had to worry about dates for the dances but also for the no-breaks and two specials. You had to have a date for all of those. Oh, it was hard, hard!

Estella Hefley - From the 1940 Ole Miss Yearbook.

Underneath this lighthearted narration was a more serious point, about the policing of women’s sexuality and the resistance to taking women seriously as students. Ms. Douglas mentioned the “45 degree angle.” The Dean of Women, Miss Hefley, made sure any woman sitting on the ground did not recline beyond a 45 degree angle; if you did you weren’t allowed to leave campus or go to dances. Women students were also not allowed to sleep anywhere overnight without a written invitation from the hostess (though women students became adept at writing invitations for each other). So there the double bind: go on roughly 5-6 dates a day, but never go all the way.

The Megaphone Club - From the 1940 Ole Miss Yearbook.

All this covered up a simple truth, which Ms. Douglas stated clearly: For upper middle class girls Ole Miss was the state marriage market. We were there whether we admitted it to ourselves, whether we knew it consciously or not, to get an upper class husband. We were joining the tribe. And any anthropologist can tell you that the ceremonies attendant on joining the tribe are serious. The rites of sorority membership, the requirements of dating, the strictures of chaperonage, and the 45 degree angle all had directly to do with delivering us unsullied to a prosperous husband inside the system.

Ellen Douglas learned how to master the system, but she understood both what she lost by her success and what happened to those who could not, or would not, master it. Some young men of her college class “went on to distinguished academic careers. We ‘could’ learn if we cared to, if we had the time and the inclination. But my recollection is that we women were not much encouraged either by our sisters or by the atmosphere in which we lived.” Though Douglas was interested in writing, and would go on to be a successful novelist, she was never a member of the Scribblers Club—because the club met in the fraternity house.

Douglas posited that not much had changed at the University of Mississippi in the past forty years—that, as she put it, “the stamp of ‘in-ness’ is going to ex-

14 2020-21

ELLEN DOUGLAS

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hen the Isom Center had its official dedication ceremony in 1981, its featured speaker was a renowned novelist and UM alumna.

and taught creative writing at the University from 1979-1983. She was the first author to ever give a reading at the newly opened Square Books in 1979. Richard Howorthy recounted the story:

Ellen Douglas was always an anomaly— an ambitious, fiercely intelligent woman born into a Delta family where beauty and grace was all that was required; a writer whose careful domestic exposes engaged with the weightiest of southern themes, “examining,” as her New York Times obituary put it, “vast, difficult subjects—race relations, tensions between the sexes, the conflict between the needs of the individual and those of the community—through the small, clear prism of domestic life.” She was a southerner who challenged myths, combined sympathy with incisive critique, and indulged a love of the Southern Gothic. She was celebrated as a “fluid stylist,” included among the most lauded southern writers of her day, like Walker Percy and Shelby Foote. She made her own way, at a time when women’s writerly ambitions were rarely respected or understood.

During plans to open the store I had learned that her novel, The Rock Cried Out, was to be published in the fall. I had not met her but knew that she had been a friend of my mother’s at Ole Miss, and I wrote to her to see if she might come to the store, as she was living in Jackson at the time. “I would like to do an autograph party for you, if you feel you can drum up enough trade to make it worth our while,” she responded. “I’ve done successful ones and miserable ones and I know it takes a lot of promotion to pull one off.” University of Mississippi English professor Doreen Fowler wrote a good review for the Memphis Commercial Appeal; we did our best to promote the event, and on October 20, 1979, we sold forty-nine copies of The Rock Cried Out -with one copy left for stock.

She was born Josephine Chamberlain Ayres in Natchez, MS. in 1921, and died in Jackson 91 years later. In between, she got married, had children, created the pseudonym “Ellen Douglas,” to protect the family she dissected in her writing, and published 11 books, over a nearly 50-year span. Her 1973 novel, Apostles of Light, was a National Book Award finalist.

Her roots in Oxford ran deep. She graduated with her B.A. in English from UM, ist.” For her, that was why the creation of the Isom Center was so important: I know that this Center as a reality will be a bulwark against the kind of “in-ness” and snobbery that I am talking about. It is deeply important in a university for its students to feel a strong network of support, the possibility of another social life exists for those who do not care to be or who are not included in the tribal rites of sororities and fraternities.

We need to give these students a sense of

Ellen Douglas would return many times to Oxford, including reading at the 25th anniversary of the founding of Square Books. She was, Howorth wrote, “a masterful storyteller who was unafraid to peer into the fragile fissures of society and the human heart and tell the reader what she found.”

All those qualities were on display at the dedication ceremony for the Isom Center in 1981. As a faculty member at UM and a lauded novelist, her address gave both gravitas and relevance to the event, at a time when the backlash against the Center was fierce and public. the richness and variety of the alternatives to the empty, exclusive social whirl. All of us parents, faculty, administrators have some complicity in any failure to provide for young women a vital world of comradeship in professionalism, a sense of the great variety of futures that may open out to them that have nothing whatever to do with this narrow, rigidly structured social scheme and the drastically limited life they will follow of mistress, mother, parent and nothing else.

The opening of the Sarah Isom Center for

Perhaps she remembered her own experience at the University, a beautiful young woman with dreams and talents and aspirations that none of her beaus seemed interested in discovering. And perhaps she was remembering those fellow students who couldn’t play the game as successfully as she did. Her speech reflects her humor, her insight, her generosity, and her commitment to those outside the privileged circle she inherited. The Sarah Isom Center continues to create “a vital world of comradeship in professionalism and a sense of the great variety of futures that may open out to them,” as Ellen Douglas foresaw that it would.

Women is a step in this direction and it is one to which we must all give our heartfelt support.

Those heady early days of the Isom Center show Jan Hawks’ extraordinary energy and focus, as she and a small band of supporters created an academic program from scratch. Hawks created a new core course, Women’s Studies 201, and created crosslisted courses with the departments of History and English.

THE ISOM REPORT 15

She participated in NEH seminars and Ford Foundation programs on Women’s Studies, driving to Atlanta with friends and building broad national network.

She researched women politicians in the South, collaborating with law professor Carolyn Ellis Staton, who would go on to become Provost of the University of Mississippi. Her brown bag lectures brought remarkable women to the University of Mississippi including Ellen Douglas, Ann Moody, Dean Faulkner Wells, Eudora Welty, and Lucy Somerville Howorth.

A Failed Attempt to Silence

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ut the backlash at UM wasn’t over.

Before the Isom Center was even a year old, its very existence was threatened by the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Dr. Peter Wagner. His report recommending either absorption by another unit or closure of the Center speaks volumes about the suspicion and lack of comprehension the Sarah Isom Center suffered on this campus. Dr. Wagner described the purpose of the Isom Center as “‘the development of scholarship about women, the dissemination of information about their expanding career opportunities and the establishment of mutual support networks for women of all ages and backgrounds. These goals largely comprehend the traditional functions of research, instruction, and service. There is some danger, however, that the last stated purpose could lapse into an advocacy function which does not appear to have been the University’s intent in creating the Center.” Where to start? Perhaps with Dr. Wagner’s understanding of the mission; as Dr. Hawks explained in her response, the mission was “(1) to coordinate efforts to include recent scholarship about women in the curriculum; (2) to offer noncredit programs and workshops on topics of interest to faculty, staff, students, and the Oxford community, especially women; (3) to maintain a resource collection containing timely materials of use especially to women; (4) to assist in the acquisition by the University of Mississippi of papers of private individuals, families, and organizations which would be useful to graduate and undergraduate students as well as established scholars for research on the experience and contribution of 16 2020-21

Dr. Jan Hawks, Dr. Judy Trott, and Rose Jackson Flenorl - Image supplied by Flenorl.

women.” Dr. Wagner not only condensed the mission but changed it, eliminating the development of archives, for example, limiting the resource collection to “information about their expanding career opportunities,” and adding two goals about creating scholarship (instead of integrating such scholarship into the curriculum) and creating “mutual support networks for women of all ages and backgrounds.” These two goals, invented

by Dr. Wagner, were used to advocate the elimination of the Isom Center, or absorption into another unit.

and an academic discipline was grounds enough, in the provost’s mind, for elimination. No such lapses could be allowed.

It is telling that Dr. Wagner faulted the Isom Center for not producing enough research in its year and a half of existence (something Dr. Hawks expertly disproved in her response), despite the fact that the Center, by his own estimation, funded only a director and a secretary. But his caution about “lapsing into an advocacy function,” as if advocacy and activism were akin to drug or alcohol addiction, is the most revelatory moment in this seemingly objective report. To discuss women, and the role of women at all was to abandon scholarship; that this new program questioned the very foundations of what constitutes knowledge

Letters came pouring into the University. The President of the AAUW, Kathie Gilbert, wrote Dr. Wager directly:

Jan Hawks wrote a thorough, measured, reasoned response to this report, detailing research, listing programs, even denying as such “lapse” into advocacy.

But she did more. In a colossal achievement of advocacy, she contacted her remarkable network of women across the University, the state of Mississippi, and the American Association of University Women (AAUW).

We are appalled that a University with a rich history of supporting women and women’s scholarship cannot find continued financial support for the Sarah Isom Center for Women’s Studies. Throughout the nation, disciplines are being totally restructured as the rich contributions of feminist scholars are being incorporated into traditional research.

Old puzzles are being decoded as women’s roles in culture and society are examined from a new and different perspective. The Sarah Isom Center provides an opportunity

for Mississippi to help lead the way for similar efforts in the state and region.

For men’s and women’s sake and for the sake of academic progress, we hope you will reconsider and maintain support for the Sarah Isom Center for Women’s Studies.

Ms. Gilbert wrote of cutting-edge research and the “progress” of the University. Outraged UM faculty wrote to Dr. Wager about the importance of the Isom Center in fostering research. As UM professor Barbara Ewell explained, “By far the most important is the intellectual stimulation of women’s studies interdisciplinary mode. Few academic programs on campus have attempted the profound re-vision of the traditional categorization of knowledge with its stifling of creative thought. Interdisciplinary insight—and especially from a new perspective—is one of the great resources of the future, and one that women’s studies deliberately nurtures.... I can only add, on a more personal note, that no new critical methodology has so enriched my own research and thinking as women’s studies.” And she concluded by pointing out how much the Isom Center accomplished with its modest budget: “I would urge you to look more closely at just what the Isom Center has been able to do with a relative pittance. If all university programs could foster as much intellectual excitement and activity with as few, Mississippi would be an amazing place indeed.” The Isom Center continues to do remarkable work with a “relative pittance.”

The most effective letter may have come from Lucy Somerville Howorth, a formidable UM graduate who voiced her displeasure directly to the chancellor.

Her initial letter has not been preserved, but its fire and effectiveness may be seen in the abject apology she received from Chancellor Porter Fortune: I have already received word from the American Association of University Women of your interest and that of other AAUW members across the state in the continuance of the Sarah Isom Center. I assure you that your support was a very positive factor in my decision to continue the Sarah Isom Center.... I share 100 percent your sentiments that it would be “supremely ironical to greet the end of the year’s

inspired celebration of the Centennial of the Admission of Women to the University of Mississippi with the announcement that the Isom Center would be closed and courses in the field of Women’s Studies terminated.

Chancellor Fortune’s “yes ma’am” is palpable through the letter.

“A basic orientation toward the needs and concerns of male administrators, faculty and students rather than those of the University’s female constituency”—forty years later, this sentence remains distressingly accurate. It speaks to the ongoing need for a robust Sarah Isom Center at the University of Mississippi.

It may seem surprising to us today Thanks to effective that the Universinetworks of women ty of Mississippi in 1982, the Isom was so quick to Center survived. abandon the Isom And Jan Hawks Center at the first used her distinctive sign of fiscal crisis. brand of leadership But it would not to guide the Sarah have surprised Isom Center for the women who the next seventeen founded the years. Dr. Kellum Center; they knew spoke fondly of the what a radical model of leadership departure it was Dr. Hawks provided; to place women’s she was “a person experiences at the who could be calm center of intellecand cool and collecttual life. As they ed but vigilantly perChancellor Fortune’s letter to Lucy wrote in their re- Somerville Howorth (1983) sistent.” That “vigport recommendilant persistence” ing the creation of the Isom Center: kept the Isom Center alive when many in the administration hoped it would expire Despite enthusiastic support from key people from benign neglect. Underestimating and willingness on the part of the advisory that soft-spoken lady from Agnes Scott board and others to work for the successful College was always a mistake. establishment of a women’s studies program, the University of Mississippi is a traJan Hawks’ unexpected death in 1998 dition-oriented university located in a very was mourned by all who knew and traditional state. The patriarchal nature of loved her, including former students, Southern institutions—government, religion, colleagues, and members of the Oxford and society—is both long-standing and firmly community. In her obituary, Carolyn Staentrenched. The university itself despite the ton called her a role model: “She was a inclusion of female students since 1882 and champion of women and women’s rights. the employment of the first female faculty She really helped create a good environmember in 1885 continues to be male-domiment for women here on campus. She nated and unconsciously sexist in many of its was the epitome of loyalty, commitment, practices. Conscious efforts to correct obvious and service—a truly wonderful person.” evidence of sexism have still not erased a baJan Hawks’ crucial role in the founding sic orientation toward the needs and concerns of the Center and in its continued exof male administrators, faculty and students istence needs to be widely shared with rather than those of the University’s female the Oxford community. We build on her constituency.” legacy every day.

THE ISOM REPORT 17

An Era of Change B

Pictured (l-r) are Dr. Morris Stocks, Dr. Carolyn Ellis Staton, Dr. Allice Clark, Dr. Gloria Kellum, and Mr. Larry Sparks.

By Kevin Cozart y 1984, the Isom Center was in a relatively safe position thanks to the letter writing campign spearheaded by the AAUW. For the next thirty years, the University was investing and growing other departments while ignoring the Center. As university space priorities changed, the Center was shuffled around campus to make way for other departments. The budget stayed rather stagnant

1986 Nancy H. Burke elected second female ASB president; first since WW2

1987 Tonya Flesher (Accountancy) becomes the first woman dean of a college or school

and the Center operated under the radar. Between Hawk’s passing in 1998 and 2014, five different women would serve as director of the Center with tenures ranging from 1 - 7 years.

the University experienced a golden era of student enrollment increases, record breaking fundraising, and an almost complete overhaul of facilities, but once again the Center was left behind.

The world around the Center, however, did not stand still. The field of Women’s Studies began to expand and evolve rapidly. Members of the Not-Rotary Club began to fill senior administrative positions at the University and female students began to outnumber male students. From 1995-2015,

In the pages that follow, we will present a timeline of highlights of the Isom Center from 1984-2014, discuss some of the major changes in the field of Women’s Studies, and recognize some of the women who made their mark on the University.

1991 Lucy Somerville Howorth Lecture Series Endowment created

1998 Undergraduate Minor in Gender Studies created Dr. Joanne Hawks passes away Dr. Gloria Kellum (University Relations) becomes the first woman Vice Chancellor

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THE NOT-ROTARY CLUB LEADS: EMERGING WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP AT UM

Highlights of Women’s Leadership Firsts at UM

By Kevin Cozart

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To what? Type or take out the trash?

1975

his was Dr. Gloria Kellum’s joking response to Chancellor Robert Khayat’s invitation to work in the Lyceum in the mid-nineties. While given in jest, it hit home on a stark reality that after almost 150 years, few women had served in leadership roles at the University and even fewer had done anything but type or take out the trash within the chief administrative building.

First Woman Registrar

That conversation signaled a turning point for women in leadership. In 1998, Dr. Kellum would become the first woman to achieve the rank of vice chancellor and run a division of the University. Less than a year later, Dr. Carolyn Ellis Staton would be promoted to Provost and Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs, the chief academic officer and second in command of the Oxford campus. These and many others who would assume learship roles had been part of a group of women in the 1970’s and 80’s that called itself the Not-Rotary Club.

Today, women account for three of the eleven academic deans of the Oxford campus, four of six deans of the medical campus, and six of the fourteen members of the senior leadership team, including three women of color.

1999 Dr. Carolyn Ellis Staton (Law) becomes the first woman provost

2001

MAMIE FRANKS

BARBARA WELLS

First Woman Dean, Pharmacy

1982

MARY ANN CONNELL First Woman University Attorney

1984

2002

LINDA CHITWOOD

First Woman Dean, School of Applied Sciences

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JUDY TROTT

First Woman Dean of Students

ROSUSAN BARTEE

1987

BRANDI HEPHNER LABANC

TONYA FLESHER

First Woman Dean, Accountancy

LOUANN WOODWARD

ALICE CLARK

First Woman Director, National Center for Natural Products Research

1997

LYNNETTE JOHNSON

First Woman Head All Sports Athletic Trainer in the SEC

ELIZABETH PAYNE

First Woman Dean, Honors College

1998

First Woman Vice Chancellor of Health Affairs and Dean of the Medical School

CONNIE PRICE-SMITH

First Woman Head Coach of a Team with Male Athletes

201 7

KATRINA CALDWELL

First Black Woman Vice Chancellor, Diversity & Community Engagement

2018

GLORIA KELLUM

First Woman Vice Chancellor, University Relations

1999

CAROLYN ELLIS STATON

First Woman Provost & Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs

First Isom Student Gender Conference

First Woman Vice Chancellor, Student Affairs

2015

1995

2001

First Black Woman promoted to Professor

ERICA MCKINLEY

Black Woman Chief Legal Officer & General Counsel

2020

DEBORAH WENGER

Woman Interim Dean, Journalism & New Media

2004 Inaugural Sarahfest Joanne B. Hawks Endowment Created

2010 Violence Prevention Office created UM Women in STEM Series created with an AAUW grant

THE ISOM REPORT 19

THE GENDER REVOLUTION:

FROM WOMEN’S STUDIES TO GENDER STUDIES

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By Jaime Harker omen’s studies grew out of women’s liberation, which foregrounded a deceptively simple question: what happens when we place women at the center instead of the margin? How would that change our workplace, our literary canon, our government, our culture?

What assumptions have made us blind to our prejudices and to other, better possibilities? That movement, commonly termed second wave feminism, had an extraordinary effect on American culture, even as it provoked a backlash that made, and often still makes, “feminist” a bad word.

Women’s liberation, however, was never just about women. It was, at heart, about liberation from the restrictions of “wom-

2011 Creation of Graduate Certificate in Gender Studies

anhood” that limited women’s ambitions, their dreams, their intellect, their professions, their sexuality, and their aspirations. Early women’s liberationists were pushing back against narrow assumptions about women’s proper behavior. They were, in more contemporary language, resisting the gender roles they had inherited and insisting on the full range of their humanity. Their enemy was not men but the restrictive gender roles their culture forced on them. Patriarchy, the system that subordinated women as second-class citizens and foregrounded male authority and male experience, was what they wanted to smash.

As women’s liberation entered the university as women’s studies, it became increasingly clear that this gender power structure was more varied and more insidious than many of those early activists had imagined. Gender norms were different for women of different classes, different ethnicities, different nationalities. Women, oppressed by patriarchy, could also benefit from it, at the expense of people of color. Gender norms also, in different ways, confines men in their own prisons, privileged though

201 2 Dr. Theresa Starkey hired as Assistant Director and inaugural Instructor of Gender Studies Kimbrely Dandridge elected as first Black woman ASB President

20 2020-21

they might be. The enforcement of gender norms affects gender nonconforming people in especially toxic ways and it targets those of different sexual orientations and sexual practices.

The shift from women’s studies to Gender Studies, then, was a natural evolution; the academic discipline investigated how gender and sexuality relate to power and privilege, and the myriad ways these norms manifest across time, across region, across class and ethnicity, across discipline, and across national boundaries.

In the current moment, the younger generation is challenging the very notion of gender in direct and revolutionary ways.

Trans scholars and activists are rejecting notions that gender is fixed and innate, while embracing a wide range of gender nonconforming people under the trans umbrella. Many identify as non-binary, rejecting the gender binary as restrictive and oppressive. Gender Studies continues to expand its fields of inquiry as it considers political and social movements and their broader implications for scholarship. Gender Studies, as an interdisciplinary venture, elaborates, complicates, deconstructs, and advocates. In this, it builds on the foundation of those early pioneers of women’s studies, whose challenge to the status quo continues to resonate fifty years later.

2013 Name of Center is officially changed from Sarah Isom Center for Women’s Studies to Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies

201 4 Creation of Sexuality Emphasis in Undergraduate Minor Inaugural Queer Studies Lecture Inaugural Rethinking Mass Incarceration in the South Conference

THE RISE OF INTERSECTIONALITY: GENDER STUDIES METHODOLOGY IS INTERSECTIONAL

L

By Jaime Harker aw professor Kimberle Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” in 1989 to push back against singular understandings of identity and to highlight the ways that structural systems of oppression affect individuals in complex ways. It grew out of a specific ruling in which the judge ordered that Black women could only appeal to one identity category in their complaints—either as women, or as black. She argued that Black women face particular challenges that are not visible when one only allows one signifier of identity. Their experience of systemic racism and sexism is intersectional, and not reducible to either racism or sexism.

“Intersectionality,” she explains, “was a prism to bring to light dynamics within discrimination law that weren’t being appreciated by the courts. In particular, courts seem to think that race discrimination was what happened to all black people across gender and sex discrimination was what happened to all women, and if that is your framework, of course, what happens to black women and other women of color is going to be difficult to see.”

Intersectionality has since gone viral, expanding far beyond the precise circumstance Crenshaw carefully delineated. Intersectionality describes both

2015 Isom Visiting Artists Fund Created

Sarahfest Returns First Code Pink

the different ways people experience the world, based on complex intersecting identities, and it describes a hierarchy of oppression—how systems of power affect various intersectional identities unevenly and harmfully. Despite how the term has evolved and become a trigger of sorts for conservative pundits, that focus on the hierarchy of oppression is central. For Crenshaw, intersectional analysis has the ultimate goal of eliminating hierarchies of oppression.

Not inverting those hierarchies, as many fear, but abolishing them, to set all of us free.

Even before “intersectionality” was available as a term of analysis, Gender Studies made the study of race, class, gender, and sexuality central to its praxis. Early publications by feminist presses included iconic books like This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Feminists of Color, edited by Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua, and Home Girls: Black Feminist Writing, edited by Barbara Smith. These sometimes painful critiques made visible the complex ways that poverty, race, and sexism negatively affected communities of color, and they also enabled powerful coalitions between broader political movements. Anzaldua’s Borderlands/

2016 First Oxford Pride Week

Isom LGBTQ Arts, Culture, and Community Development Fund Created

La Frontera examined the complexity of national, ethnic and sexual identities and the fraught paradoxes of the border long before questions of borders, immigrants, and national identity dominated American politics as they do today.

Those early feminists didn’t have the same terminology we do today, but they remained committed to the same intersectional goals.

The term “intersectionality” has become a particularly powerful methodological tool in Gender Studies. It provides a means to assess what went wrong with versions of feminism that excluded women of color from the category of “woman” (as one popular internet meme puts it, “My feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullsh@t”). It allows us, with precision, to examine the complex ways gender intersects with race, with class, with sexuality, and with power. It provides powerful interdisciplinary links with African American Studies, ethnic studies, American Studies, queer studies, and more, including academic disciplines like sociology, history, and anthropology. For Gender Studies, intersectionality enables the complex analyses necessary for robust and illuminating scholarship.

201 7 Inaugural Radical South Lecture Series

2019 Hosted Southeastern Women’s Studies Association Annual Conference LGBTQ Lounge Dedicated Organized inaugural UM Trans Summit THE ISOM REPORT 21

Renewing a Legacy

A NEW ERA OF PARTNERSHIPS, VISIBILITY, AND EMPOWERMENT

By Kevin Cozart

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It began with a letter to a bookstore in Baltimore. he Center has always reflected the attitude of persistence so important to its founding and the struggles of the early years, but a culture of dreaming about what could be and working to make those dreams come true? That is relatively new.

Starting with the fall of 2014, our office mantra shifted to: anything is possible. This was a radical notion for a department that had suffered through decades of benign neglect. Because of our location in the basement of the Lyceum, we needed to increase our visibility, both literally and figuratively. The first major event to accomplish all of these aims was John Waters’s visit to Oxford the next spring.

22 2020-21

The summer before Dr. Harker’s interim year as director (2014-15), we held a listening session with a group of students to get their input on future programming for the Isom Center. One of the ideas that came out of that meeting was bringing John Waters, the legendary American filmmaker, writer, actor, and artist, to campus.

After a bit of internet sleuthing, we found out that Waters picks up his mail at an independent bookstore near his home in Baltimore. In early September, we sent a letter inviting him to come to campus in October 2015 and a few weeks later we got a call from Mr. Waters’ personal assistant following up on the letter. He was scheduled to be in New Orleans in the spring and could offer a discounted fee if we could schedule it for late March. The date was set and the clock was ticking.

How could one event change so much for the Center? Firstly, we realized that to make his visit

happen, we needed new partners and a lot of them. That year started a process of establishing (and in some cases reestablishing) on and off-campus relationships that have made much of our success possible.

Secondly, we decided that we needed to increase the visibility of the Center. To accomplish this, an overhaul of our marketing materials, specifically our newsletter, was needed. The first revamped issue of our newsletter, rebranded as The Isom Report, featured Waters. Since then we have created a logo for the center and modernized our marketing brochures and website.

Lastly, “can we?” became “how do we?” when approaching issues and programming ideas. After hosting the Isom Student Gender Conference, David Simon, and John Waters in one week, we knew that we could make dreams into reality as long as we worked collectively to achieve our and our students’ dreams.

Much of this mindset came from a feminist approach to office leadership and organization: skill sets would be valued over titles and everyone’s voices would be heard and appreciated equally.

This same spirit carried through to our strategic planning efforts in the fall of 2016, aided greatly by the expertise of Dr. Marie Barnard. The committee included

Dr. Minnie Bruce Pratt delivers a keynote address at the 2019 Southeastern Women’s Studies Association annual conference hosted by the Isom Center.

Isom staff, affiliated faculty, student affairs representatives, and students. After a series of meetings and discussions, the Center’s “new” strategic mission reflected much of the Center’s original mission: education, research, and advocacy.

Education One of the first issues facing Dr. Harker when she became director was how to expand course offerings. Since the early days of the Center, much of the teaching of classes had fallen upon the director and affiliates who could either get releases from their chairs to teach a course or create and teach a crosslisted class. This format had sometimes made it difficult for minors to get the courses they needed to complete the requirements for the degree. The solution was offering courses online. First we tested the waters by offering courses online using adjunct faculty. The response was immediate and positive. The Center went from offering 1 - 2 sections a semester to offering 6 - 8 sections of several different courses. We routinely offer more than 12 sections a semester now.

Provost Noel Wilkin (l) speaks at the inaugural Isom Fellows reception in September 2018.

The second part of the solution came from the success of the first part: work with Academic Outreach to hire instructional assistant professors (IAP). The first of these IAP’s, Dr. Elizabeth Venell, started in January 2018. Fall 2019 saw the addition of two split appointments with the Departments of African American Studies and Theatre & Film. The partnership with the College of Liberal Arts and Academic Outreach also allowed us to hire a graduate instructor for the first time in several years. With the combined efforts of the new and existing faculty, the Isom Center offered five undergraduate courses and 18 different sections this past spring.

Research Another issue facing the Center was how to promote research in the field of Gender Studies. While the Howorth Lecture Series was well established, we felt that the Center needed to sponsor a lecture that specifically focused on queer and sexuality studies. Since 2014, the Queer Studies Lecture Series welcomed noted scholars and writers such as Ernesto Martinez, T Cooper, Benjy Kahan, Charlie Jane Anders, Hilary Zaid, and Samantha Allen. Beginning with Cooper in 2014, the Lecture has been held in October as part of LGBTQ+ History Month.

In addition to supporting external research, we specifically wanted to support gender and sexuality-related research

by UM faculty members. This goal was THE ISOM REPORT 23

accomplished through the creation of the Isom Fellows Program. Dr. Carrie Smith (Psychology) was the inaugural fellow in 2017-2019. When almost ten applications were submitted for the 2018-2020 cohort, Dr. Harker procured funding from the Provost so that eight fellows could be named. Each successive cohort has five fellows on average.

Building on almost two decades of experience hosting the Isom Student Gender Conference, a final project to showcase research in gender and sexuality studies began in 2017 when the Isom Center was chosen to host the 2019 Southeastern Women’s Studies Association’s (SEWSA) annual conference. The theme selected for the conference was “Envisioning a Feminist and Queer South.”

We welcomed about 150 visiting scholars including faculty and students, both graduate and undergraduate, mainly from the southeastern United States.

The three-day conference featured an opening keynote and performance by Dr. E. Patrick Johnson and a keynote by Dr. Minnie Bruce Pratt, a founding member of SEWSA. Several UM students and faculty presented their own scholarship during the conference.

Advocacy The last major part of the Center’s mission was advocacy through outreach and programming. One of the first projects discussed was the rebirth of Sarahfest, a student-led arts and music festival from the early 2000’s. Sarahfest 2.0 would build on the original to focus on women’s contributions to art, literature, music, and film. The first of the new Sarahfests were bookended by the first recording of Thacker Mountain Radio at Rowan Oak featuring Kelly Hogan, Amy Ray, Jon Langford, and Tenement Halls and a benefit concert by Neko Case. In the fall of 2019, Sarahfest celebrated its fifth anniversary with many more to come.

Another area of focus was creating spaces for queer members of our community.

The need for these spaces was evident when a drag show was held after a screening and discussion of Small Town Gay Bar as part of the 2015 Isom Student Gender Conference. Lamar Lounge was 24 2020-21

packed with almost as many outside wanting to get in.

Because of the overwhelming response to this event, Matt Kessler (a graduate student in English who had suggested the screening and drag show), Dr. Theresa Starkey, and several other students meet and discussed having a queer dance party at one of the local bars.

Through Theresa’s connections with Proud Larry’s, Code Pink dance parties were born. Today, Code Pinks are planned and hosted by OutOxford under the leadership of Blake Summers and Nathan Adams and are one of Oxford’s most popular and visible LGBTQ+ events.

But Matt wasn’t done. In the spring of 2016, he again reached out to us with an idea: a pride parade. With our support, Matt procured a permit in late March for a parade the first weekend of May. With only six weeks to plan what was originally billed as LOU Pride Weekend, we (along with Matt and other students) started forming plans for the event. What was originally created to be a celebration of pride and acceptance took on an air of protest when the Mississippi Legislature passed anti-LGBTQ legislation known as HB 1523 in April of that year. Ultimately, however, the weekend was about creating queer spaces in Oxford and showing that the LGBTQ community is part of Oxford and that we have a place here. Since the first year, Oxford Pride has expanded to a full week of activities both on and off campus and in nearby Water Valley. With Oxford and the Isom Center leading the way in North Mississippi, pride events have been held in Starkville, Tupelo, and at Delta State University in Cleveland.

It is safe to say that the last five years have seen the greatest expansion of the Center in its history. From a full-time director and a part-time secretary, the Center now has a full-time director, associate director, and operations co-

Copyright: UM Digital Imaging Services.

ordinator, three instructional assistant professors, a visiting assistant professor, a graduate instructor, and two graduate assistants. We have more than doubled the number of undergraduate minors for the past several years. The 2017 move to Lamar Hall not only allowed for a larger physical space, but it also helped to dramatically increase the visibility of the Center and strengthen our bonds with campus partners such as the departments of Writing & Rhetoric and Sociology & Anthropology and the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement.

As we look forward to the next forty years, we are committed to continuously renewing the legacy of education, research, and advocacy first created by Dr. Jan Hawks almost forty years ago.

Starting in the fall of 2021, graduate students will be able to receive a master’s in Interdisciplinary Studies and a PhD/EdD in Higher Education and Student Personal, both with an emphasis in Gender Studies. We are also working with several other departments to offer similar Ph.D.’s in the future. We look forward to the completion of the LGBTQ Lounge on the fourth floor of Lamar Hall that was dedicated on Oct 21, 2019. Lastly, we will continue to bring in lecturers, artists, musicians, filmmakers, and writers to educate on gender and sexuality and their intersections with race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, health, and many more.

THE DIRECTORS:

WOMEN WHO HAVE LEAD THE ISOM CENTER SINCE 1998

SHELIA SKEMP

DEBORAH BARKER

JENNIFER NELSON

1998~2000

2000~2003

2003~2004

Established Isom Steering Committee

Gender Studies Program Director (2003-2004)

First production of the Vagina Monologues

Established Isom Student Advisory Board

Assistant Director (2002-2003)

Pioneered efforts to create a violence prevention office

MARY CARRUTH 2004~2011 Forged relationship with Honors College Brought in notable lecturers like Sarah Weddington, Wilma Mankiller, bell hooks, Peggy McIntosh, Avis A. Jones-DeWeever, and Kate Bornstein

SUSAN GRAYZEL 2011~201 4 2015~2016

Created first full-time instructor of Gender Studies position Formed the Rethinking Mass Incarcetration in the South Conference Planning Committee Advocated for working mothers

JAIME HARKER 201 4-2015 2016-

Forged partnerships to create an online minor and greatly expand course offerings Created three new faculty positions (one full and two joint)

THE ISOM REPORT 25

CREATING QUEER SPACES:

LGBTQ INCLUSIVITY BECOMES A PRIORITY

Code Pink: Mermaid Party (August 2019). Copyright: Paul Gandy Photography

By Jaime Harker

S

ince 2014, the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies has made fostering and sustaining queer spaces in the Oxford community a priority. It began, as all of our best ideas do, with students. When I started at the University in 2003, the Gay-Straight Alliance (later renamed UM PRIDE Network) was the only student group on campus, and only the Allies program addressed gender and sexuality as a university program. I taught the newly created Gay and Lesbian literature class—one of the very few queer-affirming spaces on campus. This meant that, for many years, LGBTQ+ students would come by my office. They told me their fears, asked for advice, frequently shared gossip. They felt isolated. They felt invisible. They wanted to know: is there a place for me? Will it be okay? Most of them made their way, somehow, and left as soon as they could. I saw their confusion, their anxiety, but I could see something that they couldn’t: their charm, their resilience, and their beauty.

It was clear to me that we were failing these students as a university communi26 2020-21

ty—failing to respect the dignity of each LGBTQ+ student, failing to give them the support they needed, failing to help them see how fortunate they were to belong to the hilarious, resourceful, and brave LGBTQ+ community in Mississippi. Failing to make them see how lucky we are, as a community, for the queer students, faculty, and staff who make this place better just by being here.

When I became the interim director of the Center, I wanted to do better for our LGBTQ+ students. Luckily, the university was starting to pay attention to LGBTQ+ students by 2013, thanks to the leadership of Vice Chancellor for Students Affairs Brandi Hepner-Lebanc and Chancellor Dan Jones, who established the Chancellor’s Committee on LGBTQ+ issues. With my co-conspirators, Theresa Starkey and Kevin Cozart, we have made creating inclusive spaces on campus and in the community a central priority at the Center. It has always been students who provided the vision. When Gender Studies students wanted to bring John Waters to campus, we figured out how to bring him. When Matt Kessler suggested we have a drag show, we organized one. When Matt wanted to create

queer-friendly events on the Square, we helped him start Code Pink. When a coalition of students came up with the idea to organize a Pride parade, we jumped in to help.

Now, we have many partners on campus and in the community: the Center for Inclusion and Cross Cultural Engagement, the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, the Division of Student Affairs, Living Music Resource, the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council, the Oxford Film Festival, and many more. Together, we have created the annual Queer Studies Lecture, Code Pink, Oxford Pride Week, Lavender Graduation, Pride Camp, and a permanent LGBTQ+ lounge in Lamar Hall. As a center, we have created queerthemed courses and an optional queer studies emphasis in our Gender Studies undergraduate minor.

For all the students who came before, the students here now, and the many to come: these queer spaces are for you, and that glorious joyful tribe of queer southerners you represent. On behalf of all of us, welcome home.

SARAHFEST REBORN:

AFTER MORE THAN A DECADE HIATUS, THE CENTER’S ARTS. MUSIC, AND LITERATURE FESTIVAL HAS A REBIRTH

S

By Theresa Starkey ince its relaunch in 2015, Sarahfest continues to rock the community with its diverse array of artists, writers, and musicians.

The festival’s origin can be traced back to 2004, when a group of Gender Studies students set out to put theory into practice by hosting a one-night event on the Square that celebrated women in the arts. The event was a source of inspiration for a new generation of students in 2014, who were determined to reignite that festival torch. They wanted to create more inclusive spaces on campus and in the larger Oxford community. Their determination, ambition, and dreaming put the planning wheel in motion.

They presented the Center with a challenge. As an office we had to figure out how to make their reborn Sarahfest a reality. We looked back to the feminists who came before us from the 60s and 70’s, whose DIY ethos made women’s

KELLY HOGAN 2015

music and art festivals happen across the country. They were our teachers.

We build upon their legacy, just as our bright students traced the footsteps of their fierce peers. When people ask what can you do with Gender Studies—this is a solid example.

ments, our Gender Studies students, affiliates, and individual members of the Oxford community form its sturdy, supportive spokes, which meet at its hub, the Sarah Isom Center.

Thanks to our Gender Studies students, the Center forged new relationships that year with invaluable community partners including the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council, the Lyric Oxford, and the Thacker Mountain Radio Show, and campus ones such as Living Music Resource, the Student Union, and the UM Museum and Historic Houses (Rowan Oak). By working together, we created a week-long festival that first year.

In the 2015 fall edition of The Isom Report Dr. Starkey wrote: Sarahfest is a wheel in motion. Musicians, local nonprofits, small businesses, campus and student organizations, academic depart-

CLAUDIA DEMONTE 2016

SHARDE THOMAS 201 7

Sarahfest rolls on this fall for a sixth year.

Its motion is different, because Covid-19 has transformed the rhythm of our everyday lives. The pandemic has fractured our points of connection, which were once so familiar and seemingly solid. It has forced us to rethink spaces, how we move and occupy them, and to recognize that the thought of crossing thresholds can be fraught. It has made us reimagine what an arts and musical festival can be and look like when we dream of new possibilities.

This fall we are still committed to bringing communities together through the arts, even if the points of connection and media have changed. As we reinvent ourselves with remote events and new forms, we invite you to once again re-envision Sarahfest with us.

EFFIE BURT 2018

KAREN TONGSON 2019 THE ISOM REPORT 27

GOOD TROUBLE:

A

CREATING A FEMINIST LEGACY s part of their work recommending the creation of a Sarah Isom Center (or “Sarah Isom College”) at the University of Mississippi, the task force sent out a survey to women faculty, staff, and students to learn about priorities for their work.

Two issues were foregrounded: guaranteeing equal pay and providing child care at the University of Mississippi. This was in 1979.

As we contemplate the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies, we find much to celebrate, even more to improve, and one depressing reality: we are no closer to closing the gender wage gap and providing affordable child care than we were back in 1979, when even the creation of a women’s center provoked hostility and protest at the University.

It isn’t for lack of trying. Both were priorities when the first Commission on the Status of Women was created. At least two major reports on the Gender Wage Gap have been produced by the commission—the first in 2007, the second in 2017. Multiple reports have been commissioned on child care, most recently with the hiring of Laura Antonow to research options and make recommendations. The Provost hosted a very public

forum on the gender wage gap in 2018, in which he publicly committed to hiring a firm to audit wages at the University every year and make adjustments as needed. And yet, as of this writing, in 2020, we have no report, no child care center, and no plan to eradicate the gender wage gap.

Iconic Civil Rights leader John Lewis, who passed away this summer, talked about the importance of getting into

“good trouble,” and insisted, when he spoke at the dedication of the James Meredith memorial on campus, that to make positive change, one needs to “get in the way.” Inspired by representative Lewis, and in memory of the groundbreaking work of Lewis and so many other activists, from women’s liberation to gay liberation to Black Lives Matter, I commit to getting into good trouble over the next year. The Sarah Isom Center will host a series of panels, talks, sit-ins, protests, and roundtables about the ongoing deleterious effects that the gender wage gap and the lack of affordable child care has on our faculty, staff, and students.

We will invite UM administrators to live up to their commitments, and we will hold them accountable, publicly, if they fail to do so. That is how the Isom Center demonstrates our loyalty to the University of Mississippi, by insisting that we live up to our ideals and become a place that, finally, nurtures and supports all of its constituents. That will be our feminist legacy as we look forward to the next forty years of the Sarah Isom Center.

Jaime Harker, Ph.D. Director and Professor of English Photo Credit: USWNT Player’s Association.