“The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free,” said the poet Maya Angelou. In Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, we dedicate ourselves to this struggle, one that acknowledges the complex intersections of different forms of oppression. Always present and pressing, the struggle has seemed especially critical this year in the midst of the covid pandemic and its harsh effects on marginalized populations, police violence and racism, discrimination against LGBT people, and prolonged and unnecessary detention of immigrants seeking asylum.
Across our scholarship and teaching, FGSS addresses many of these issues. This year, for example, FGSS and Africana Professor Tao Goffe received a grant from the Rural Humanities Initiative to develop an exciting project called the Dark Laboratory through which participants will explore black and indigenous storytelling, beginning here in upstate New York.
In addition, we are continuing the work we began last year with the help of a grant from Engaged Cornell, partnering with the Buffalo group Justice for Migrant Families to advocate for immigrants being held at the federal detention center outside Buffalo. Through this grant, Professor Jane Juffer has been taking groups of students to visit people being detained, and since, covid halted visitation, to stay in touch via phone and video. This past semester, students from Professor Juffer’s class on detention launched a campaign demanding the release of a Salvadoran woman with an LGBTQ asylum claim who has been held at Buffalo for more than two years.
Our program is thriving at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Undergraduate students from nearly every department in the university take our courses, ranging from the introductory course to upper-level theory courses, and we now have about 35 majors and minors. At the graduate level, we now have 50 graduate minors, thanks largely to the program-building work of our current graduate director, Professor Lucinda Ramberg.
We are especially excited to be approaching, in spring 2022, our 50th anniversary as an FGSS program. In 1972, the Program in Women’s Studies was established in the College of Arts and Sciences and became the first such program to offer a major and minor in women’s studies in the Ivy League.
The covid pandemic has made budgets tight across the university, and we are experiencing some cutbacks. Please consider donating. Your gift to FGSS will help us:
- Maintain alumni connections
- Support the FGSS graduate research colloquium
- Sponsor guest speakers
- Provide graduation stoles for commencement
- Help fund our 50th year anniversary celebrations
- Sustain the important work of our Community Engagement Programs
