Julie Shayne presents at the National Women’s Studies Association annual conference

50 years of gwss

In honor of her new book, Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies, IAS faculty member Julie Shayne organized a session titled “50 Years of GWSS: The Story Across Borders, Ranks, and Institutions via an Open-Access Book.” On the (zoom) panel, she presented her paper titled “Expanding the Narrative: An Open Access Book Celebrating 50 Years of GWSS.”

Shayne’s paper was about her new open-access book Persistence is Resistance: Celebrating 50 Years of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies. She discussed the content of the book, editorial decisions, and feminist implications. Shayne argued that Persistence is Resistance captures much that is cutting edge and pioneering about GWSS while also telling the field’s history in real time. As a result, there are many feminist implications from the book: it can alter the way we think about promotion and tenure for GWSS scholars; it gives us new models for publishing; it reminds us of the centrality of mentoring to a feminist university; and it raised key questions about feminism in the academy.

Authors of three other essays presented their chapters as well: “GWSS Pedagogies of Empowerment in the Age of Trump,” based on “Why GWSS Still Matters” by Carrie Baker; “Disrupting Systems of Oppression by Re-centering Indigenous Feminisms” by Luhui Whitebear, and “No One is Disposable: Feminist Media Studies and Climate Crisis,” based on “No One is Disposable: Ecofeminism and Climate Crisis,” by Nicole Erin Morse and Daniella Orias.