WGSSNewsWomen’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program • SUNY New Paltz • June 2012

Greetings from Southside! It’s been a veryexciting year for us here at WGSS, full of chal-lenges and rewards. The program ultimatelyadopted a new name this year (Women’s, Gen-der, and Sexuality Studies) and hosted a What’sin a Name? evening in March to celebrate the

change, and allow cur-rent majors and minors

an opportunity to change their major name tothe new one (or remain the last of the cohort of

Women’s Studies major/mi-nors). Professors HeatherHewett and Karl Bryant ex-plained to students the processby which the Steering Commit-tee had come to the decision tochange the name, to better re-flect who we are today, and

what we do, all while respecting where we camefrom. As a result of the change, the program“retired” the Women’s Studies major code (590)and all future students will register as WGSS

majors (591). Additionally, thanks to our repre-sentatives in the student senate and affiliates allover the faculty governance system, a resolutionsupporting a change from a program to a de-partment was approved at the final facultymeeting, May 10, 2013 by a vote of 88 in favorto 8 opposed. While non-binding on the deci-sions of the president and provost, the resolu-tion demonstrates the broad faculty and studentsupport for the greater autonomy (particularlyin hiring) that such a change in status wouldallow the WGSS program. I look forward thissummer and over the next semester to workingwith the administration on furthering this pro-posed change. And finally, but not lastly, weheld our 30th Women’s Studies conference hereat New Paltz on Saturday, April 27 on Repro-ductive Justice 40 Years After Roe vs. Wade.Read on to hear about program highlights, andview photos of the event.Kathleen M. Dowley, Associate Professor andCoordinator of the WGSS Program

From the Coordinator

By Amy KesselmanSuzanne Kelly, who has taught in the

Women’s Studies Program for 11 years, will bemoving on this summer to explore her other in-terests. Suzanne received her PhD in ComparativeStudies from Florida Atlantic University, hastaught “Women: Images and Realities,” “Femi-nist Theory” and two courses that she designed:“Women and Popular Culture” and “Women,Love and Sex.” Teaching both as a lecturer andadjunct over the years, she received the 2008 Lib-eral Arts and Sciences part-time teacher awardfor excellence in teaching. Kathy Sarno, whoworked with her in Women: Images and Reali-ties, described her as “a great colleague who wasa pleasure to work with.”

Students appreciated her passionate engage-ment with the material she teaches and her abil-ity to explain complex ideas clearly. I have

found her a delight to work with: insightful, col-laborative and funny.

Suzanne has made enormous contributions tothe Program. She organized a panel on “Gender,Sexuality and EvolutionaryPsychology,” played a cen-tral role in organizing our2011 conference “GreenFeminisms: Women, Sustain-ability and EnvironmentalJustice” and coordinatedthis year’s conference on Re-productive Justice.

Two major projects liein Suzanne’s immediate fu-ture: continued work on her book on green bur-ial practices and the development of a garlic busi-ness. I know that she will be sorely missed by thestudents and faculty of WGSS.

Life After Women’s Studies –Suzanne Kelly leaves SUNY New Paltz

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A resolution calling for the Women’s, Genderand Sexuality Studies Program to be recognizedas a full department in the College of LiberalArts and Sciences was adopted by the faculty atits final meeting of the year by a vote of 88-8.Student Senator Mary Bacorn and Academic Af-fairs Chair Janice Anderson share their thoughtsabout the achievement.

Mary: As a Black Studies major, Dr. KaranjaCarroll taught me in the Black Studies introduc-tory course that departmental status is what hasallowed the discipline to flourish. For me, thisbecame a lesson in learning from the past.

Janice: As a faculty member who once suedNew York State for equal pay, I too have learnedfrom my experiences. After being denied promo-tion to full professor twice, I have seen howthreatening it can be to some academics to ex-plore the intersections of race, gender, sexualityand class in your research and socialactivism. Such activities speak directly to issues

of power and powerlessness. We both saw thatthe WGSS “program” at New Paltz lacked legiti-macy and autonomy. The “reasons” why WGSSwas not a department did not add up. Sexual anddomestic violence, transphobia, queerphobia,sexism and discrimination are alive and well inthe United States and at New Paltz. As a newstudent senator and as a long-term survivor ofthe gender wars at New Paltz, we were thrilled tomake change. We recognized that by working to-gether we had the the ability to be catalysts in a40-year struggle to strengthen the program bypushing for departmental status.

Mary Bacorn best conveys the feelings afterthe vote: “Cheers rang, tears fell and a weightwas lifted that afternoon.” Now the entire fac-ulty, along with the student body, has voted infavor of the change. Although the Provost,Phillip Maurceri, will make the final decision, the2013 spring semester at SUNY New Paltz was agiant success.

Department status for WGSS gains momentum

Over 150 students, faculty and communitymembers attended the 30th Women’s StudiesConference at SUNY New Paltz on April 27. The

conference committee selected Repro-ductive Justice as the theme, in part tocommemorate the 30th anniversary ofthe Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court deci-sion, and in part as a response to re-cent state legislative attacks on theprotections offered by it. The keynotepanel included Loretta Ross, founderof SisterSong; Katherine Cross of theSylvia Rivera Law Project; and Angela

Hooten, State Policy & Advocacy Director ofThe Center for Reproduc-tive Rights in New YorkCity.

Additional panels in-cluded conversations andpresentations on Histori-cal Perspectives on Re-productive Justice, Pro-tecting Pregnant and Par-enting Women, Repro-ductive Justice andYOUth, Bridging Faith

and Reproductive Jus-tice, Organizing for Re-productive Justice,Global Dimensions ofReproductive Justice,and the Economics ofReproductive Choices.

The conferenceclosed with a call to ac-tion from M. TraceyBrooks, President andCEO of Family Plan-ning Advocates of New York State, asking partic-ipants to help support Governor Cuomo’s Equal-ity Agenda, followed by a reception and photog-raphy display, titled “Beggarsand Choosers: Motherhood isNot a Class Privilege in Amer-ica,” curated by historian andauthor Rickie Solinger.

For additional images andinformation about the confer-ence and upcoming events,please visit our Facebook page,www.facebook.com/SunyNew-PaltzWomensStudiesProgram.

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30th Women’s Studies Conference: The status of reproductive justice, 40 years after Roe v. Wade

Loretta Ross

Alison Nash

Ashley Dryzmala

Rickie Solinger

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Karl Bryant (Assistant Prof. of WGSS/Sociology)published “William’s Doll and Me” in When WeWere Free To Be (U. of North Carolina Press), acollection of essays commemorating the 40th an-niversary of the children’s classic Free to Be…Youand Me. He also published a book review inGLQ, and gave presentations at the AmericanSociological Association and Eastern SociologicalSociety meetings. Professor Bryant will be teachinga new course in the fall on “Transgender Studies.”

Giordana Grossi (Associate Prof. of Psychology)gave a presentation for Women’s History Monthat SUNY Fredonia this March. Entitled“Hardwired Sex Differences: Analysis of aPersistent Claim,” her talk critiqued the conceptof hardwiring and the evidence said to support it.Her analysis revealed that the term “hard-wiring” is mainly used in writings for a generalaudience, where it assumes a variety of meaningsthat are vague and scientifically unjustified.

Heather Hewett (Associate Prof. of WGSS/English)enjoyed teaching the WGSS senior seminar for thefirst time this spring. She published a review ofAfrican women’s fiction in the July/August 2012issue of the Women’s Review of Books, a review ofthe novel White Dog Fell from the Sky in the May15 issue of The Washington Post, an essay,“Toward a Feminist Analysis of Motherhood,Family, and Food Allergies,” in the anthologyWhat Do Mothers Need? (Demeter Press 2012)and an opinion essay on public schools and nut al-lergies in the summer 2012 issue of Brain, Child:The Magazine for Thinking Mothers.

Edith Kuiper (Assistant Prof. of WGSS/Economics)has two forthcoming publications.“InvisibleHands: Adam Smith and the Women in His Life,”(Adam Smith Review, June 2013) claims thatSmith’s dependence on the women in his house-hold affected his ethics and economics. Professor

Kuiper edited and wrote an introduction forWomen’s Economic Thought in the EighteenthCentury (Routledge, December 2013). This seriesof three volumes contains 43 texts of 18th-cen-tury women authors who wrote on economic is-sues. Most of the texts are unknown in the his-tory of economic thought, which has focused onthe writing of men.

Susan Lewis (Associate Prof. of History) and herco-author, Emily Hamilton-Honey from SUNYCanton, presented “Running the Gamut and theGauntlet: Mixed Messages in World War I Girls’Series Fiction,” at the Honors Center, inFebruary, as part of the WGSS WinterColloquium Series.

Meg Devlin O’Sullivan (Assistant Prof. of WGSS/History) gave two presentations this year, one atthe Women’s Studies Conference at SUNY NewPaltz (“Desired Control and Coercive Tool:Sterilization and Activism in the United Statesduring the Twentieth Century”), and one forWomen’s History Month at Dutchess CommunityCollege (“In the ‘Best Interests of the Child’:Adoption, Native American Women, and theSolution of Sovereignty”). She will be teaching anew course this fall on the History ofReproductive Justice in the United States.

Anne Roschelle (Prof. of Sociology) published“Why Do you Think We Don’t Get Married?Homeless Mothers in San Francisco Speak OutAbout Having Children Outside Marriage,” inAdvances in Gender Research, vol. 17: 89-111.

Eve Tuck (Assistant Prof., Educational Studies andNative American Studies) and her co-authors,Maile Arvin and Angie Morrill published“Decolonizing Feminism: ChallengingConnections between Settler Colonialism andHeteropatriarchy,” in Feminist Formations,Spring 2013.

———————————— Faculty News ————————————

The Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studiesprogram congratulates all of its graduates and ac-knowledges some of this year’s award recipients.The Alice Fix award, to recognize feminist activism,was jointly awarded to Petra Vega and Cody Hill.The 2013 WGSS “Outstanding Graduate” awardswere presented to Kaitlin Montelione and JasmineShovlin by SUNY New Paltz President DonaldChristian. Women’s Studies minors Hilary Horowitzand Cinthia Pimentel were honored at the FirstWorld Graduation Ceremony on May 18.

WGSS minor Arianna Cember went toAlbany for a week this summer to attendthe NEW Leadership New York SummerInstitute on the SUNY Albany campus. Sheis one of 20 young women from around thestate chosen to participate in this program.

Ruth M. Lindner (2010) finished herMaster’s in Women’s History at SarahLawrence College this May and works as the Devel-opment and Executive Director Assistant at the Em-pire State Pride Agenda.

————————— Student & Alumni News ——————————

Arianna Cember