top women’s colleges confer at scripps Trustee Diana Ho ’71 facilitates discussion among conference participants.
“The conference brought leaders from our sister colleges to help Scripps faculty, students, and staff better understand the current challenges and future directions for gender and women’s studies. It was enlightening and exhilarating by turns.” nancy y. bekavac President
On the closing evening of the conference, Clare Dalton, professor at Northeastern School of Law, performed selections from Virginia Woolf ’s A Room Of One’s Own. As well as a superb actor, Dalton is a recognized legal scholar in the areas of domestic violence and feminist legal thought. Susan Seizer, associate professor of anthropology and gender and women’s studies, commented: “It was really wonderful to learn about the trajectory of development of women’s studies programs across these comparable liberal arts women’s colleges.These programs began as women’s studies in the 70s and 80s, and have now further clarified their commitments to gender studies, feminist studies, and queer studies.The Smith College model of multiple tracks—one that centralizes women of color, and another queer studies—was particularly welcomed by our students. We in the Scripps GWS program are excited that the newly endowed Backstrand Chair in Gender and Women’s Studies will allow us the opportunity to expand our curriculum and coverage of new directions in this area.”
magazine, fall 2003
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