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

Special Lecture: Feminism in Jalisco, Mexico

Beatriz Bustos, Ph.D.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Ustler Hall Third Floor Reading Room

The state of Jalisco in northern Mexico has had a great Catholic tradition since colonial times. Even though there is a secular government, Catholic ideology is inserted in high political spheres, and contributes to the reproduction of patriarchal social relations among men and women. Feminism has been hidden between shadows, even there are radical groups fighting for women’s’ rights. Currently Feminism in Jalisco has a “coin” effect: two different faces/ideologies, struggling to improve women's status in society.  Beatriz Bustos will present a short historical description of feminism in Mexico, in Jalisco, and will discuss the current politics of gender. For more information, please click on this link.      

Gender Conversation Series Continues

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 our next Gender Conversation on  Monday, November 2nd at 11:45a.m.  in the third floor Reading Room in Ustler Hall, featuring Caleb Simmons, a doctoral student in the Department of Religion discussing "Intersections of Gender and Development: Muscles and (Mal)development: Hypermasculinity and the Legacy of the Domination of Nature in India" 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 complete 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. 

Flora Zárate & the Art of the Andean Arpillera

Flora Zárate and Dr. Elayne Zorn
Friday, October 30, noon-1:30p.m.
Ustler Hall Atrium

The Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research is proud to announce a reception and demonstration by Flora Zárate, Peru’s foremost arpillera artist, with a presentation by Dr. Elayne Zorn of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Central Florida,  on Friday, October 30, 2009 from noon-1:30pm in the Ustler Hall Atrium.  Refreshments will be served.  This reception and demonstration is co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies. For more information about this event, please click on this link or contact the Center for Women's Studies. 

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.