Welcome

The Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research offers an interdisciplinary forum for the study of gender, its function in cultures and societies, and its intersection with race and class. Students may choose from three areas of concentration within the BA program: General Concentration, Concentration in Theories and Politics of Sexuality, Concentration in Gender and International Development. A minor in Women's Studies and a minor in Theories and Politics of Sexuality are also available. The Center offers master's and doctoral students the Graduate Certificate in Women's Studies in conjunction with (other) degree programs. Graduate students may choose a thesis or non-thesis Master of Arts degree.  For more information on specific programs, please refer to the Undergraduate or Graduate pages.

News and Announcements

Mary Wollstonecraft: Legacies

February 23rd and 24th, 2012
Ustler Hall 

The Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research will host a conference for February 23-24, 2012 to commemorate the 220th anniversary of the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman, a text that has had profound influence on political modernity and on continuing discussions about feminist thought.  This conference follows our inaugural conference on Simone de Beauvoir (February 10-11, 20111), and is the second in a series that will commemorate the re-reading of key feminist texts and the legacies of major feminist thinkers.  

Professor Janet Todd of Cambridge University will deliver the keynote address. Other presenters include Anne Mellor, UCLA, Kari Lokke, UC-Davis, Wendy Gunther-Canada, UA-Birmingham, and Dan O’Neill, Sheryl Kroen, and Danaya Wright from UF. Detailed information is available  by clicking on this link.

This event is sponsored by the Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research, the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere (Rothman Endowment), the Office of Research, the Levin College of Law, the Office of the Dean (CLAS), the Albert Brick Chair, and the Department of Political Science.

Does The Help help?

March 16, 2012 at noon
Ustler Hall 

The Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research and the Center for the Study of Race and Relations will host a panel discussion on Friday, March 16 at noon in the Atrium, Ustler Hall. Participants include  Paul Ortiz,  Amy Ongiri, Debra Walker King, Patricia Hilliard Nunn, Lousie Newman, and Moderator Zoharah Simmons.  

The popularity of Kathryn Stockett's novel, The Help and the movie, have been met with strong responses to the representations of African American domestic workers in particular and the struggle for civil rights in general.  Although some believe that the novel's intention was to reveal the stories of historically silenced perspectives, others have called for a more nuanced, informed, and critical perspective of the issues raised by The Help.

Just what are the implications of the novel and film—and the controversy generated about them—for our understanding of history, race, and the uses and abuses of domestic labor in the United States?  What can we learn from having a “difficult” conversation about The Help?   Does The Help help?

Panel: The Work of Ursula Le Guin

April 11, 2012 at 4:30 p.m.
Ustler Hall 

A panel discussion on the Legacy of Ursula  Le Guin's Work and Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy will be held at  UF's Center for Women's Studies & Gender Research featuring panelists Arwen Curry, Meredith Pierce, Stephanie Smith, and Tace Hedrick. Details to follow.

Judith Page Named Director

 Judith W. Page was appointed Director of the Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research in the spring of 2011 after serving as Interim Director since August 2009. Dr. Page is Professor of English, and was a Waldo W. Neikirk Term Professor of Arts and Sciences.  A PhD from the University of Chicago, she has been the recipient of several awards and fellowships from the NEH as well as a Skirball Fellowship at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies (2003), and, most recently, a Visiting Fellowship at the Chawton House Library in the UK (2008), a repository of texts and manuscripts pertaining to early British women writers.  

Dr. Page has had a long engagement with Women’s Studies, having served as founding director of the program at Millsaps College, where she taught and held several administrative positions before coming to the University of Florida.  She is the author of numerous articles and reviews, and her books include Wordsworth and the Cultivation of Women, Imperfect Sympathies: Jews and Judaism in British Romantic Literature and Culture, and Women, Literature, and the Domesticated Landscape: England’s Disciples of Flora, 1780-1870 (Cambridge UP, 2011) co-authored with art historian Elise L. Smith.  Analyzing women’s literature, botanical writings, and visual arts, as well as horticultural and educational texts, this book argues that gardens broadly defined provided women with a new language and authority to negotiate between domestic space and the larger world.

Kathryn Chicone Ustler Hall

Built in 1919, the structure fell into disuse in 1979 but was saved from demolition in 1988 when it was granted protection under the National Register of Historic Places. A generous donation from sociology alumna Kathryn Chicone Ustler in 2000 allowed for the vacant gym to be transformed into a 14,700 square-foot academic treasure. The restoration process began in 2004, and Women’s Studies moved into the facility in July, 2006.

Ustler Hall, a beautifully renovated, freestanding three-story building,  includes classrooms, seminar rooms, a two-story atrium, and faculty and administrative offices for the Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research. This building is the first one on the UF campus renamed to honor a woman.  To support the Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research, please click on this link.

For more information on renting the Atrium at Ustler Hall please contact  Donna Tuckey or call 273-0382.  To review the rules and rates, click on this link.