Iris Berger
A decade ago, I came to the University at Albany to succeed Chris Bose as Director of the Women's Studies Program. When I agreed to take over the directorship of IROW after her term expired, the parallel did not occur to me. But there are also differences in the two situations. Then I came from outside the University, not fully realizing the strength of the program I was inheriting. Now, however, I am fully aware of what IROW has achieved during the past four years, and feel daunted by the task of continuing its tradition of excellence and of maintaining and extending the Institute's commitment to international and multicultural gender issues.
As a first step in working toward these goals, I have asked Sucheta Mazumdar, also of the History Department, to join me as IROW's Associate Director. With our joint interests and expertise on African, Asian, and Asian-American women, and our ties to the Africana Studies and East Asian Studies Departments and to the Asian Studies program, we will be able to broaden the scope of IROW's activities. We also hope to expand the international ties already established with women's studies programs and centers in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Many of our more specific plans are still tentative. But we have received funding from the Dean of Social and Behavioral Sciences to institute a regularly scheduled lecture / seminar series that will bring together scholars from the University at Albany, from other area colleges and universities, and from the wider Capital District community as well as guest speakers from elsewhere. Our hope is to create an ongoing intellectual community that will involve both graduate students and faculty. The seminar presentations will be published and distributed as IROW Working Papers.
In the effort to facilitate research in women's studies, we will continue the popular workshops led by representatives of major funding agencies and the mentoring system that has assisted IROW members in preparing grant proposals.
Following the model set during the past four years, we are planning to sponsor a conference that will focus on some aspect of women's history in global perspective. The major issues we have discussed are sexuality and reproduction and the gendered aspects of militarism and violence. Our aim in conceptualizing these issues on an international scale is to break down artificial divisions between the experiences of "first" and "third" world women. We are also thinking about holding a smaller curriculum-centered workshop on gender and historical scholarship with a focus on Africa and Asia. Our main concern will be to deepen and make more explicit how a gendered perspective has transformed accepted historical narratives.
Since our plans for the next three years are still in the formative stages, we would like to encourage wide participation from all interested SUNY faculty members. Your ideas and energy will enable IROW to continue its tradition of excellence, and will make our task somewhat less daunting.