by Jenée Wilde, PhD candidate, UO Department of English (Folklore)
1973—More than thirty University Feminists loudly take over the steps of Johnson Hall to demand services for women on campus. The Oregon State Board of Higher Education signs off on the state’s first women’s studies program at University of Oregon. A librarian searches out the papers of early feminist Jane C. Grant for UO Library’s Special Collections. And a small core of faculty creates the Center for the Sociological Study of Women (CSSW) to support feminist research on campus.
In the forty years following those pivotal events, several women’s advocacy groups came together to form the ASUO Women’s Center. Four years ago, the Women’s Studies Program achieved independent status as the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies. And the library not only received Grant’s papers but also discovered a benefactor for women’s research. With the Harris endowment of more than $3.5 million in 1983, CSSW blossomed into the Center for the Study of Women in Society.
This year, CSWS celebrates the legacy of feminist research, teaching, and activism at the University of Oregon with special 40th Anniversary events and exhibits. “The significance of this event lies in the research and leadership CSWS has provided on the UO campus for four decades,” said CSWS director Carol Stabile. “Since its beginnings as the Center for the Sociological Study of Women, CSWS has provided a home for interdisciplinary research on women and gender, supporting generations of graduate students, creating an environment on this campus that nurtures and provides a home for feminist research, and serving as a pool for leadership on issues of gender, race, and sexuality.”
In collaboration with the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies and ASUO Women’s Center, CSWS presents our 40th Anniversary Celebration, November 7-9, 2013, in UO’s Erb Memorial Union. The three days of events—free and open to the public (with advance registration)—offer multiple opportunities to witness the long reach of feminist thought and production through engaging narratives about our past, present, and possible futures.
On Thursday, Nov. 7, 3-6:30 p.m., the celebration kicks off with the premiere of Agents of Change, a documentary feature film that chronicles the development of the Center for the Study of Women in Society within the broader context of the women’s movement. Through a combination of archival footage, photographs, documents, and interviews, the film provides new insights into the efforts and challenges of creating a program for the study of women, and the struggle for amplifying discourse about women in academia. Eugene mayor Kitty Piercy will be a special guest speaker for the kick-off. Registered participants will also attend a catered reception.
On Friday, Nov. 8, 9 a.m.–5 p.m., the “Women’s Stories, Women’s Lives” Symposium explores four decades of feminist research and activism through the personal narratives, visual illustrations, and dialogue of more than twenty women activists, professionals, scholars, and community leaders. To help illuminate some of the local, cultural, and global issues at stake across forty years of feminism, speakers will weave together themes of women’s rights, violence against women, women’s health, activism and policy, and education and employment in four panel sessions, each focusing on a decade from the 1970s through the twenty-first century.
Among the panelists, local activist Kate Barkley will talk about domestic violence and the creation of Womenspace in the 1970s, sociologist Shannon Elizabeth Bell will discuss how women helped to shape the environmental justice movement in the 1980s, Eugene Weekly owner Anita Johnson will offer how changing legislation affected workplace equity in the 1990s, and Mobility International co-founder Susan Sygall will provide insight into women and the disability movement in the new millennium. Panelists also include Yvonne Braun, R. Charli Carpenter, Jan Eliot, Lynn Fujiwara, Shelley Grosjean, Margaret Hallock, Cheris Kramarae, Nichole Maher, Marion Malcolm, Gabriela Martínez, Sandra Morgen, Elizabeth Reis, and Barbara Pope (see csws.uoregon.edu for details).
In addition, “Women’s Stories, Women’s Lives” offers registered participants a catered luncheon and special reading by award-winning Oregon writer Molly Gloss, author of The Hearts of Horses, Wild Life, The Dazzle of Day, and The Jump-Off Creek. Tables for local women’s organizations, vendors, and books authored by guest speakers will also be available all day Friday and Saturday.
On the evening of Friday, Nov. 8, the celebration transitions into narratives about feminist futures. “The first half of our 40th Anniversary Celebration involves considering where CSWS has been,” Stabile said. “We wanted to end on a more speculative note.” Set for 6:30–9 p.m. in the EMU Ballroom, “A Conversation with Ursula K. Le Guin” sets the stage for feminist speculations of future worlds.
Popular and widely known both inside and outside the science fiction genre, Le Guin started publishing science fiction and fantasy in the 1960s and has won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy awards, each more than once. Her work has often depicted futuristic or imaginary alternative worlds in politics, natural environment, gender, religion, sexuality, and ethnography, such as her well-known novel The Left Hand of Darkness. Le Guin will read and discuss her work with the hosts and will conclude the evening, along with Gloss, by signing books for registered participants.
The celebration continues on Saturday, Nov. 9, 9 a.m.–6 p.m., with the Sally Miller Gearhart “Worlds Beyond World” Symposium, featuring several major figures in the field of feminist science fiction: Vonda N. McIntyre, author of Dreamsnake, Superluminal, and The Moon and the Sun, which is being adapted for film; Suzy McKee Charnas, author of Motherlines and Walk to the End of the World; Andrea Hairston, author of the Redwood and Wildfire; Kate Wilhelm, who lives in Eugene and is the author of the science fiction classic Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang; L. Timmel Duchamp, author and editor with independent feminist science fiction publisher Aqueduct Press; as well as author Gloss and feminist science fiction scholars Grace Dillon from Portland State University, Alexis Lothian from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Joan Haran from University of Cardiff (Wales), and Michael Hames-García and Margaret McBride from UO.
During Saturday’s symposium sessions, authors Charnas, Duchamp, McIntyre, and Wilhelm—with Hames-García—will discuss how the science fiction genre has been used as a vehicle for exploring feminist political theory; Duchamp, Gloss, and Hairston—with McBride—will share their insights about feminist creativity and world building; and Hairston with scholars Dillon, Lothian, and Haran will offer directions in feminist science fiction research (see csws.uoregon.edu for details). Registered participants can also take part in an author book signing during the noon break. Wrapping up the celebration is a catered reception and viewing of the “Women’s Stories, Women’s Lives” photography installation, both at the Jordan-Schnitzer Museum of Art. Go to link: http://jsma.uoregon.edu/csws#sthash.Z3UUBWaw.dpuf.
Stabile said the idea for the feminist science fiction symposium grew out of two impulses. “The first was to take advantage of feminist science fiction’s ability to theorize—to rehearse—alternate universes and possible futures,” she said, “to consider in very sophisticated philosophical terms what might happen or be if circumstances were different, particularly regarding gender and race.”
The second impulse, Stabile said, was “the richness of the Knight Library’s special collections in this area.” Special Collections and University Archives houses the papers of authors Ursula K. Le Guin, Joanna Russ, Kate Wilhelm, Suzette Haden Elgin, Sally Miller Gearhart, Kate Elliot, Molly Gloss, Laurie Marks, Jessica Salmonson, and Damon Knight. To help draw attention to these important collections, the “Worlds Beyond World” symposium also includes presentations of archival research projects by UO Clark Honors College students, as well as announcing the recipient of the first annual Le Guin Feminist Science Fiction Fellowship for short-term research in these special collections.
Because the faces of feminism are so diverse, we must traverse wide ground in order to grasp what has been accomplished and what challenges still lie ahead. The three-day 40th Anniversary Celebration brings those faces and stories and lives together to give participants a sense of our trajectory and how far we've come—and have yet to go.
To register for any or all of the 40th Anniversary Celebration events, go to http://guestli.st/164928. Additional event information is available at csws.uoregon.edu.
—Jenée Wilde is a PhD candidate in English (Folklore) and Development GTF for the Center for the Study of Women in Society.