The Matrix Flip Book

Letter from the Director — 25 years and beyond It is my pleasure to once again reflect on the last year in Women & Gender Studies at George Mason. As many of you know, it has been a very difficult year filled with many challenges. Yet, with the incredible support of YOU, those of you who care about WGST, we have had a really terrific year. I won’t bore you with the details, as these are laid out in our beautiful newsletter so carefully designed by Tashia Harris, David Corwin (graduate student staff) and Jay Banks (undergraduate student staff). We hope you like our new electronic “flip book” format! I will say that this year, once again, we had a healthy number of new minors. We now have 45 or so. And, we had 100% growth in our graduate programs. We admitted 6 new students into MAIS and the certificate this past year alone and this year looks promising as well. This year Professor of History Jane Censer delivered the Scholar’s lecture and we welcomed spoken word artist and scholar Crystal Leigh Endsley as the Sojourner Truth Lecturer. We re-birthed the gender research conference this spring. The day long event was held at the Arlington campus and featured 3 sessions each with 2 concurrent sessions and two presentations at lunch, a keynote by Karen Sherman who worked for many years on gender in conflict zones, including Afghanistan, Bosnia and Congo, and a panel featuring women and gender studies alumni who shared the impact of their course work on their careers. More than a dozen students from Mason gave presentations, as well as another 25 faculty and students from around the region, including presentations from faculty and students from Old Dominion and Georgia Tech. We look forward to hosting the event again next spring. In March we held our first event marking 25 years of Women & Gender Studies at George Mason. We held a “founding mothers” luncheon featuring remarks by Deborah Bergoffen, Paula Ruth Gilbert, Rose Pascarell, and Anita Taylor (Karen Rosenblum was at Mason Korea). The event drew folks from all over campus and was a wonderful celebration of our founding. This coming year we will host several events celebrating our 25 th anniversary, including a series of brownbags (generously funded by a “friend” of WGST) and held, as often as possible on the “25 th ” of every month! Additionally, our scholar’s lecture, which we are pleased to announce, will be delivered by Professors Suzanne Scott Constantine and Lynne Scott Constantine, and our Sojourner Truth Lecture, to be delivered by Professor Dorothy Roberts (University of Pennsylvania), will be other avenues to celebrate 25 years and beyond. You will receive a calendar near the end of the summer with all of the dates and times for these events, so please mark your calendars to join us! As I pen this letter, I’m pleased to announce that the search for a new associate director is underway and we hope to have a full team in place by the beginning of the academic year. THANK YOU for all that you do to make Women & Gender Studies among the most successful units on campus (publications, lectures, installations, teaching awards) but also one of the most collegial and fun places to work. I hope you will enjoy seeing what we have all done together this year.