Lana Cuthbertson
As of Jan. 1, Women's and Gender Studies officially became a department in the Faculty of Arts-a move its chair says makes sense for what was previously the Women's Studies program.
"We operated like a department-we had our own budget, we had our own teaching plan, we had a chair who's appointed through university procedures," said Lise Gotell, chair of the new department.
Gotell said Women's Studies started as a program because of its interdisciplinary nature.
"The program depended on cross-listed courses and the goodwill of feminist faculty members in departments."
Most other universities in Canada have women's studies centres, institutes or departments, so the U of A's unit was a bit of an anomaly in remaining a program, she said.
The move to becoming a department isn't so much an administrative change, she said, as a symbolic one.
"The name change is important in terms of signifying that we are an excellent unit with research strengths, and we're an excellent teaching unit. That name 'department' signals to potential students and to assessors that we have a certain status."
Every women's studies unit in Canada debated adding the word "gender" to the name of the department, Gotell said. Some argued for leaving the word "women" out altogether; others argued that the name should have stayed as it was.
But the discipline as a whole, as well as the U of A program, began to move beyond just women's studies and toward a broader analysis of gender and sexuality studies. For example, the U of A's program offers a course on masculinity studies, and the department has research strength in gender and sexuality studies. So the final name is a compromise that continues to include "women," but also incorporates "gender," Gotell said.
As for the department's next steps, Gotell said she's working on offering the Prairies' first MA degree in women's and gender studies. The new graduate program will also be the first in Canada to include a mandatory community service-learning component.
The department also hosts an undergraduate student research conference, which is happening March 8. It includes students from various disciplines across the university to present on research and topics related to women's and gender studies.
See original story here.