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Chair's Greeting

This has been another exciting year for Feminist Studies, especially as we mark several important transitions for the faculty. As Feminist Studies approaches its 35th anniversary, we face the inevitable departure of some of our most beloved faculty. Emily Honig, who joined the department in 1991, will next year move to UCSC's History Department to work with an already distinguished group of faculty in Asian studies. Feminist Studies is pleased to acknowledge her tremendous service and teaching over these last many years, as well as her stewardship over so many critical periods for the department. Luckily, she will still be close by, and students will continue to have the opportunity to work with her in co-sponsored courses offered by History and Feminist Studies.

We also honor the careers of three prominent faculty who are retiring this year and who have been so significant to the project of feminist studies: Literature and Feminist Studies Professor Helene Moglen, who helped to establish the Women's Studies Program in the '70s and became founding Director of the Institute for Advanced Feminist Research in 2001; History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies Professor Angela Davis, who served as the department chair from 2003-2005 and has been faculty sponsor to the Research Cluster for the Study of Women of Color in Collaboration and Conflict since her arrival in 1991; and History of Consciousness Professor Teresa de Lauretis, whose presence on the campus has inspired generations of feminist scholarship. As we anticipate the future, our current students will be pleased to know that Bettina Aptheker will offer her Introduction to Feminisms course one more time in her career this coming fall. Those of us no longer able to enroll in courses can, however, enjoy her lectures at home. This year we celebrated the conclusion of the Introduction to Feminisms Taping Project and the release of the DVD set of course lectures in an event at the campus bookstore in April.

With all of these transitions, we are fortunate to have wonderful new faculty arriving to bring fresh energy and to represent emerging fields of interest in transnational feminisms. We welcome Neda Atanasoski, who will join the Feminist Studies faculty this July and works in film and media, U.S. imperialism since the Cold War, and Eastern European studies. And we congratulate our no-longer-newest faculty member, Felicity Schaeffer-Grabiel, who received a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship for 2008-09 and will be on sabbatical next year working on her book Cyberbrides across the Americas: Transnational Imaginaries, Marriage and Migration. The department received a special honor this year and will welcome a distinguished visitor, Dr. Susan Stryker, as Regents'Lecturer in Feminist Studies for winter 2009. We thank Visiting Assistant Professor Michelle Erai for her work this year and congratulate her on having received the UC President's Postdoctoral Fellowship, which will take her to UC Riverside in the fall. And we are pleased to be welcoming Megan Moodie back to UCSC again as Visiting Assistant Professor and look forward to Visiting Fellows Terese Anving, from the University of Lund, Sweden and Mercy Romero, who received a Ph.D. from Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley and has been awarded the UC President's Postdoctoral Fellowship in the department for 2008-09.

We continue, of course, to benefit from our extraordinary staff. Breana George ably completed her first year as Department Manager, having joined Feminist Studies in January 2007. And much gratitude to Nicolette Czarrunchick, who moved last year into the position of Academic Advisor fulltime and was honored this year for her 25 years of extraordinary service to UCSC.

Another year of exciting events included a lecture by University of Sydney Professor Catherine Waldby on "The Biopolitics of Reproduction: Post-Fordist Biotechnology and Women's Clinical Labour" and, as part of the Feminism and Transnationalism Seminar Series, a visit from UC Berkeley Professor Saba Mahmood, culminating with her talk, "Religious Signs and Secular Reason: ThinkingAcross the Incommensurable?"

As we prepare for the future, we are also mindful of the need to find creative ways to ensure the continuity of our programming and to build toward our coming doctoral degree. Toward that end, we are launching a major fundraising campaign with the goal of providing an endowment to support graduate student fellowships, undergraduate awards and grants, and our seminar series and faculty visitors. We look forward to working with all of you as we move forward.

There were many other achievements and events this year, as you may see in this year's edition of our newsletter The Wave. I will note just one more. The Feminist Studies Library moved finally in spring to our new home in the Humanities Building. Those of you who find yourselves on campus are welcome to come and visit when it reopens in the fall. Special thanks go to the Humanities Division for supporting this effort and for outfitting our conference room to hold the collection.

And to all of you who continue to support the work of Feminist Studies, let me take this opportunity to thank you.

Sincerely,
Gina Dent
Associate Professor of Feminist Studies, History of Consciousness and Legal Studies