Julie Shayne attends the winter Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS) meeting

IAS faculty member Julie Shayne traveled to San Diego, CA to participate in the SWS’s annual winter meeting. This year’s theme was “Feminist Futures in the Global South: Research, Activism and Creativity.” Shayne presented a paper about her new research project titled “My Scholarly Return to the Global North: A History of U.S. Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies.” In it, Shayne discussed her own Women’s Studies career, rooted in Black Feminist theory and Central American solidarity activism, and how she was working to connect those early parts of her scholarly/activist path to her new research project.

Shayne, presently on sabbatical, is working on a project celebrating fifty years of GWSS in the U.S., in honor of the anniversary of the first women’s studies program, San Diego State (SDSU). The project is in the very early stages but while at the conference and in San Diego she recruited collaborators from Ghana and Colombia, interviewed Women’s Studies faculty and students from SDSU, looked through SDSU’s special collection’s extensive archives on the founding of the department, and admired the exquisite exhibit just launched in honor of the upcoming 50 year celebration.