“Trans*Forming the Future: 50 Years of Feminist and LGBT Studies at Cornell”
This year, we have been celebrating our 50th anniversary as a program, with the theme “Trans*forming the Future.” 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. We are the second oldest program in the country! In 2002, we changed our name to Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and we are still the only program in the Ivy League with the word “feminist” in the title.
To mark the anniversary, students have been working on oral histories and an updated timeline of the program’s developments. Also, two major events livestreamed by e-Cornell have enabled us to reach more than 1,000 people, foregrounding the work our faculty and students do on crucial social justice issues. On September 16, in the panel “Trans-generational,” an inter-generational panel discussed the evolving meanings of gender and sexuality, featuring former Cornell provost Biddy Martin, law school professor Ezra Young, FGSS alum Naiara Bezarra-Gastesi, and current FGSS minor Ximena Sanchez. On February 3, another livestreamed panel, “Refuge, Asylum, Detention,” featured FGSS Professor Saida Hodzic, graduate alum Elif Sari, and undergraduate major Prameela Kottapalli discussing how to bring a feminist and queer lens to these timely issues.
On December 4, we hosted an exciting party for alumni and others at the Cornell Club in New York City. This event also marked the initial discussions of a formal FGSS alumni group as well as the launch of Director Jane Juffer’s edited book, Millennial Feminism at Work: Bridging Theory and Practice. This collection was inspired by the FGSS alumni panel of March 2019 and includes essays by three Cornell alumni as well as 14 other millennial feminists discussing how they have brought together feminism and work.
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 40 majors and minors. At the graduate level, we now have 55 graduate minors.
The 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
• Sustain the important work of our Community Engagement Programs
Support FGSS on March 16.
