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

Spring Newsletter 

Please click on this link to find the latest issue of  "News and Views of the Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research."

Gender Conversation Series Continues

Intersections of Gender, Sexuality, and Evangelical Christianity
Sean O'Neil,  Doctoral Student
Department of Religion
Monday, March 29th
11:45 a.m. -  12:45p.m.
Ustler Hall Third Floor Reading Room

The popular Gender Conversation Brown Bag Lecture Series continues again this 2009-2010 academic year.  The series, an open forum for research discussion,  aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue within the UF community about the scholarly and political issues surrounding gender and sexuality by creating an informal setting for sharing insights drawn from research, activism, and pedagogy, both inside the university and beyond. Everyone is welcome - local community members as well as UF faculty, staff, and students. So bring your friends, students, classmates - and bring a brown bag lunch!

Don't miss this month's Gender Conversation, on Monday, March 29th at 11:30 a.m.  in the third floor Reading Room in Ustler Hall,  featuring Department of Religion Doctoral Student Sean O'Neil, discussing Intersections of Gender, Sexuality, and Evangelical Christianity.  For a copy of the abstract for this conversation, please click on this link.

The Gender Conversations Series is commonly held in the third floor reading room of Ustler Hall.  Please click on this link for a spring 2010  schedule  or for more information, please contact Donna Tuckey at tuckey@ufl.edu or call the Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research at 352-392-3365. 

“Activists Among Us” Event Planned

Thursday, April 8th
6:30p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Matheson Museum

"Activists Among Us: the Gainesville Women's Movement Across Generations" will take place on Thursday, April 8, 2010 from 6:30-8:30 pm at the Matheson Museum. Sponsored by the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, the panel discussion will bring together local activists from the 1950s through the present to discuss the ongoing struggle for social justice, gender equality, and human rights. The panel will also serve as a springboard for the collection and preservation of historical materials on the history of women's activism in Gainesville. For more information please click on this link.

Co-sponsors include: the University of Florida Department of History, the UF Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research, George Smathers Libraries,  UF Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere (Yavitz Fund), the Women's Studies Graduate Student Association, the History Graduate Society, The Gainesville Women's Commission, The Emily Dickinson Society, and the Civic Media Center.

Trysh Travis publishes The Language of the Heart

In December, UNC Press published Women's Studies Assistant Professor  Trysh Travis' new book, The Language of the Heart: A Cultural History of the Recovery Movement from Alcoholics Anonymous to Oprah Winfrey (UNC Press, 2009). 

In The Language of the Heart Trysh Travis explores the rich cultural history of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and its offshoots and the larger "recovery movement" that has grown out of them. Moving from AA's beginnings in the mid-1930s as a men's fellowship that met in church basements to the thoroughly commercialized addiction treatment centers of today, Travis chronicles the development of recovery and examines its relationship to the broad American tradition of self-help, highlighting the roles that gender, mysticism, and print culture have played in that development.  For more information, please click on this link.

Stephanie Evans co-edits African Americans and Community Engagement in Higher Education

Associate Professor Stephanie Evans has co-edited an exciting collection, African Americans and Community Engagement in Higher Education (SUNY, 2009).  The book  discusses race and its roles in university-community partnerships. It allows students, agency staff, community constituents, faculty, and campus administrators an opportunity to reflect and redefine what impact African American identity--in the academy and in the community--has on various forms of community engagement. Contributors discuss race and engagement from many different geographic, disciplinary, and cultural positions. Authors discuss urban, rural, and suburban environments and include perspectives from the following states: California, Colorado, Oklahoma, Illinois, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Please click on this link for more information.

Anita Anantharam Nominated for International Educator

Congratulations to Women's Studies Assistant Professor Dr. Anita Anatharam for being nominated for International Educator of the Year.  Dr. Anatharam's  nomination came  from her support of UF's strategic goal of internationalizing the campus and curriculum. 

Dr. Anantharam's research focuses on gender and nationalism in South Asia (India and Pakistan). She has two books forthcoming, an edited volume, Mahadevi Varma: Political Essays on Women, Nation, and Culture and a scholarly monograph, Bodies that Remember: Women’s Indigenous Knowledge and Cosmopolitanism in South Asia. 

In 2007, she won an Internationalizing the Curriculum grant to enhance her Transnational Feminism course. In addition, Dr. Anantharam taught a course on food and globalization for the 2009 UF in Paris Spring Break program. Together with her colleague Travis Smith (Religion), she launched the first UF in India study abroad program in CLAS.

Judith Page Named New Director

A message from Dean Paul D'Anieri: 

"I am pleased to announce that Judith Page, Professor of English, has agreed to become Interim Director of the Center for Women’s Studies.   Please join me in congratulating and thanking Judith for taking this important role. "

Judith W. Page was appointed Interim Director of Women’s Studies in August.  She is Professor of English and Waldo W. Neikirk Term Professor of Arts and Sciences, 2009-10, and has been an affiliate faculty with the Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research and the Center for Jewish Studies.  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 her books include Wordsworth and the Cultivation of Women, Imperfect Sympathies: Jews and Judaism in British Romantic Literature and Culture, and Disciples of Flora: Women and the Domesticated Landscape of England 1780-1870 (forthcoming), 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 is the only freestanding campus building in the United States devoted solely to Women’s Studies. The renovated three-story hall includes classrooms, seminar rooms, 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.