Director (Continued from page 1) was the highlight of their college experience. Well, living on the Grand Canal made us all euphoric in the first few weeks, and although I was initially nervous about sharing the house with twenty students, I had the opportunity to get to know them very well, and I soon felt like a mother to them all, worrying about them and guiding them in the Italian ways and in the Italian language that is my (m)other tongue. While in Venice, I developed an international section of WGS 101: Window on Women’s and Gender Studies, team taught with Dr. Mary Gerardy. At the same time as Dr. Gerardy ran the class with students in Winston-Salem, I ran the class with my students in Venice: it was a successful venture, and a very rewarding one. I hosted an array of cultural events, where students learned about the history of Italian feminism, or about the marginalization of immigrant women in contemporary Italy, and about the Italian women of the Renaissance. We enjoyed a field trip to a unique exhibition on the work of Rosalba Carriera—the most celebrated Italian artist in the eighteenth century. Poet Bianca Tarozzi came to Casa Artom to give us a reading of her celebrated work. In conjunction with the Center of Women’s Studies at the University of Venice, Ca’ Foscari, we held a public seminar on the place of feminism today in the wider sphere of academic discourse. It was followed by an energizing panel discussion, where much was brought to the table. Linda Mecum, our indispensable coordinator who this year worked under taxing circumstances in a very busy year, came to visit me in Casa Artom. It was a true pleasure to have her there. With parents, students and friends, we watched the population in the area of Dorsoduro almost glitter in gold and black, as a good number of Wake Foresters walked around its calli or narrow streets. It was great fun. In the picture above we are standing on Casa Artom’s own dock, on a very cold morning, next to the Guggenheim museum (on the left). It would not have been possible for me to go to Casa Artom, were it not for the willingness of Professor Mary DeShazer to act as Women’s and Gender Studies Director during my absence. Both on my behalf and on behalf of the program, I thank her for her generosity and for her expert leadership. Professor DeShazer hosted Sheila Kohler’s reading from her novel, Bluebird, or the Invention of Happiness, as well as a dialogue on breast-cancer experiences between prize-winning Israeli composer Ella Milch-Sheriff and Winston-Salem physician Annette Pashayan. “Songs From the Edge” was also performed; these are Dr. Pashayan’s poems on her personal battle with cancer, set to music and played by composer Milch-Sheriff. During the fall we were all saddened by news of the sudden death of woodwork artist and philanthropist Sylva Billue, a long-time friend of Women’s and Gender Studies. Sylva Billue devoted a great deal of her work and time to champion the cause of emancipation of women and girls; she worked especially hard in those areas where there was a lack of opportunities. She generously contributed to several organizations (including the Women’s Fund of WinstonSalem and Lillian’s List of North Carolina) and also to our program. I still remember her excitement at Eve Ensler’s presentation “The Good Body,” which she had attended with her friend Nancy Cotton—a former English Professor at WFU, to whom the Women’s and Gender Studies Program is
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also indebted. On that occasion, as in many others previously, she wrote to me offering to pay for all the minors who would attend Ensler’s performance. She was that kind of an activist—always in action, always working hard and large-heartedly behind many projects. She also endowed the Phyllis Trible Lecture Series at the Divinity School and, in honor of her mother, she established the Syvenna Foundation, which paid for a writer’s colony for women writers in Linden, Texas. Sylva Billue’s other passion was woodworking. She had decided to make a table and other pieces of furniture for our lounge in Tribble Hall, and she had been working on a conference table at the time of her death. Her artist friend, Wayne Raab, generously offered to finish the table for us. Included in this issue we feature Professor DeShazer’s remarks at the memorial service for Sylva Billue. We will greatly miss Sylva, with her buoyant personality, her generous spirit and distinctive sense of humor. In the fall we will host a gathering to rename the Women’s and Gender Studies lounge in her honor. When I came back from Venice, in the spring semester, the job search for a new program director was underway. Thanks to Dean Deborah Best, a permanent director was to be named after a national search for the position had been conducted. The search committee, led by Professor Mary Foskett (Religion), worked with much alacrity and professionalism, conducting a number of interviews. In the end, I was selected to be the permanent Women’s and Gender Studies Director. Of course I am delighted with the outcome and wish to thank Dean Deborah Best and Provost Jill Tiefenthaler for making this position a permanent one that will give strength to our program. In the spring we also had with us our new Visiting Professor, Associate Professor Penny Weiss. She came to our program from the Political Science Department of Purdue University. Professor Weiss is a very accomplished scholar and is the author of several important publications in the field of women’s and gender studies. Her books range from Gendered Community: Rousseau, Sex, and Politics (New York University Press, 1993) to Feminism and Community, edited with Marilyn Friedman (Temple University Press, 1995); from Conversations with Feminism: Political Theory and Practice (Rowman & Littlefield, 1998) to Feminist Interpretations of Emma Goldman, recently edited with Loretta Kensinger (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007). Her seminar on the “History of Feminist Theory” had a particularly high enrollment and was also very successful. We enjoyed attending her colloquium in May, where she talked about “The Canon Gatekeepers and Gatecrushers,” an account of women political thinkers’ relationship with the canon, which is going to appear soon in book form. There were also so many other stimulating events in the spring: from the poetry reading with Pulitzer Prize Winner Natasha Tretheway to the colloquium on “Literature after Feminism” with Rita Felski (Professor of English and Chair of Comparative Literature at the University of Virginia); from the Phyllis Trible Lecture Series on Interfaith Feminisms to Dr. Mary Lou Voytko’s colloquium on “Monkey Models of Menopause;” from the 16th Annual American Men’s Studies Association Conference on “Masculinities and Institutions” at WFU (featuring Dr. Raewyn Connell as its main speaker) to the Southeastern Women’s Studies Association conference at UNCCharlotte; from the WGS Senior Colloquium and Director (Continued on page 8)