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Welcome to WGSI
Welcome message from Shahrzad Mojab, WGSI Director
Summer, 2006
The past two academic years have seen a combination of growth, transition, and stability. Each was achieved in both increments and leaps. The priorities set up by the University of Toronto's Stepping Up Academic Plan in 2003 have shaped the directions and initiatives of the Institute. We achieved our first priority on July 1, 2005 when the Institute became an autonomous unit within the Faculty of Arts and Science. This shift confers on us the full privileges and powers of a department, including a change in the reporting structure, the right to acquire faculty members with majority appointments in the Institute, and the responsibility to manage the budget. To mark our new status, we have changed our name from the Institute for Women's Studies and Gender Studies (IWSGS) to the Women and Gender Studies Institute (WGSI), hence the new logo and visual identity. As Director, I am now reporting to the Dean of Arts and Science, we have completed our first majority appointment hiring process, and we are now managing the full budget.
Our next priority was the approval of the stand-alone MA program. The year was spent finalizing the MA proposal document and moving it through the requisite governance bodies of the University of Toronto and the Ontario Council of Graduate Studies (OCGS). Having just received an encouraging and affirming external appraisal, I am pleased to report that the proposal is currently in its very last stage - that is, awaiting final approval from OCGS. This innovative and unique MA degree will give further coherence to interdisciplinary, graduate-level Women and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto and consolidate our flourishing community of graduate students.
This new institutional autonomy has solidified the infrastructural basis for building the research capacity of the WGSI. We have worked hard in the last two years to develop an internally collective and externally consultative process for imagining and cultivating research initiatives that are interdisciplinary, intellectually cutting-edge and collaborative with units in and beyond the University of Toronto. An Academic Planning Committee, chaired by Jacqui Alexander, has been working over this past year to translate the visions set out in the Stepping Up prospectus into specific research plans and proposals. The defining of strategies for developing the WGSI as a major research site in our field is the objective of an upcoming workshop Rethinking Women and Gender Studies: Conditions and Possibilities. A generous fund from the Dean of Faculty of Arts and Science has made planning this event possible. The defining thematic of Gender and Transnationality that frames the Institute's undergraduate and proposed MA programs, has been pursued in various settings. In December 2004 a small group of faculty members from the Institute and other universities in Ontario participated in a workshop on Theorizing Gender and Transnationality, co-organised by myself and Martina Rieker, Acting Director of the Institute for Gender and Women's Studies at the American University in Cairo. Bringing together select scholars from diverse disciplines from across the Middle Eastern region made for an exciting set of discussions and hopes for further collaborations. Another event that drew together scholars from this region in particular, was a short conference on Women, War and Learning, a critical theme of transnational feminism that we organised at the University of Toronto in April 2006.
We have continued the workshops in the Theorizing Transnationality, Gender and Citizenship series with ongoing success. In the fall of 2005, we collaborated with East Asian Studies to bring Tani Barlow, scholar of Chinese feminism, to present a public lecture in that series. Taking advantage of Barlow's experience in innovative, transnational East Asian scholar-ship, we organised a Roundtable session on Area Studies in Transnational Times. This was an opportunity to discuss, with colleagues in the various area studies programs and in Diaspora and Transnational Studies (DTS), the implications of contemporary reconfigurations of knowledge. This topic was developed further when WGSI participated in the International Colloquium on Area Studies, Diaspora Studies and Critical Pedagogies organised by DTS in March 2006. We have taken seriously our commitment and responsibility to assert a feminist and gender analysis in this university-wide conversation about interdisciplinarity and emergent geographies of scholarship.
Events addressing the theme of gender and transnationality will continue in this upcoming academic year, as will discussions that elaborate appropriate pedagogy for the pending MA program. In addition, and as part of our overall research and intellectual development, we are planning each year to organise events around a particular interdisciplinary sub-theme, one that highlights the work of clusters of faculty within Women and Gen- der Studies and involves collaborations with other departments and programs. This year a series of talks and workshops on the transnational theme of Biopolitics and Technosciences is being planned under the direction of Michelle Murphy (History and WGSI).
To promote university-wide engagement with our field of scholarship and to strengthen ties amongst Women and Gender Studies and the various academic units and research centres across the three campuses of the University of Toronto, we have reconceived the role of the Advisory Board and renamed it the Tri-campus Women and Gender Studies Network. The Network provides a space for intellectual exchange on curriculum transformation and opportunity for creating research alliances across diverse units and disciplines. Over the past couple of years we have also supported various events that have built links between community organisations and the Institute through our WGSI Community Knowledge Alliance Fund.
As clearly evident in the following pages, these two years were full of success stories. Our colleagues' scholarly contributions were outstanding; they included SSHRC-funded awards, book publications, and excellence in teaching. We have continued our commitment to improving the experience of students in both the Undergraduate and the Graduate Collaborative Programs, finding ways to foster their participation in the intellectual and political life of the Institute
It is gratifying to reflect back on the challenges and witness the achievements of these past two years. The WGSI is now one of the most sought-after units on campus for collaboration and participation in new programs or initiatives. This speaks to the quality of our slowly expanding faculty complement, the Institute's growing profile as an innovative and enterprising academic body, and the recognition of the significance of feminist scholarship more generally.
The WGSI currently holds enormous potential for further growth as an exemplary interdisciplinary unit with strong research and teaching collaborations with community and university bodies. Managing our current status is a challenge and we recognise that the expansion of our graduate teaching and research capacity will require both more of us and additional institutional support. We are fortunate, therefore, in having in place a team of strong and dedicated staff who manage the busy day-to-day life of the Institute with precision and commitment, making it a welcoming environment for students, faculty members, and community members.
Also, we are delighted to welcome, as a new member of faculty, Dr. Ashwini Tambe, who is joining us from Georgetown University. Her interdisciplinary research in South Asian studies, on such issues as sex-trafficking in colonial Bombay and legal definitions of Indian girlhood and sexual consent, is innovative and multifaceted. Her work complements and will contribute to the Women and Gender Studies Undergraduate and Graduate Programs, and the Department of History and the Sexual Diversity Studies where she is cross-appointed.
In closing, I would like to add a few words of deep gratitude to all of our colleagues and friends at New College, in particular Principal David Clandfield. New College has been, since its inception in 1999, and until this past year, the academic and administrative home for the Institute. The expansion of the Institute was made possible under the visionary leadership of David who generously committed resources to the Institute and courageously supported our ideas for a stronger and more imaginative academic unit. The Institute, though independent from New College, will remain as one of the active partners of the College and will work collaboratively with all other programs in advancing the academic values of social justice, equity and diversity. We are anticipating the continuation of this mutually enriching relationship under the leadership of in-coming Principal, Professor Rick Halpern.
- Professor Shahrzad Mojab
Director, WGSI
University of Toronto
