The University’s Center for the Study of Women in Society will host a seminar titled “Transforming Feminisms” Thursday. The event, billed for faculty, will explore developments in women’s and gender studies programs.
The featured guest speaker will be Gina Dent, a professor at UC Santa Cruz’ feminist studies department and the director of the Institute for Advanced Feminist Research.
University women’s and gender studies professor Lynn Fujiwara said Dent had coordinated and reworked the women’s studies department at UCSC.
The University invited Dent to speak about “the challenges of institutionalizing the intersections of race and gender in the women’s and gender studies departments and feminist research institutions, facilitating a discussion about how to do that work (at the University of Oregon),” according to the Center for the Study of Women in Society’s Web site.
“The CSWS is under new directorship by Carol Stabile, and she has been working very hard to establish her reign of leadership by institutionalizing diversity,” Fujiwara said.
She added that a part of this institutionalization of diversity includes the program she is coordinating, called the “Women of Color Projects.”
The project is designed to “promote the leadership of women of color from historically under-represented groups,” according to the Center for the Study of Women in Society’s Web site. It is currently in its developmental stages. Officials said they hope Dent’s experience will help guide the project and spread awareness of it throughout the University.
The seminar will take place in the Knight Library Browsing Room on Thursday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Although the seminar is reserved for the faculty, students will be permitted upon request through the department.