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Connections 2016 FALL 2016 Department of Women & Gender Studies Greetings from the new Chair I am delighted to take on the role of Chair and tools for confronting and remedying the greater interdisciplinary, inter-college, and of the Department of Women and Gender problems of inequality and social injustice. I community-based ties with a wide range Studies. In the 11 years that Monika can only hope to fill Dr. Shafi’s shoes as the of scholars, teachers, and advocates. As Shafi served as Chair, WOMS became Department continues to grow and thrive. an anthropologist of corporate life and one of the key sites on campus and in the capitalism in Southeast Asia, I have a special community for exploring gender-based bias, As Chair, one of my primary objectives interest in the intersections of money, power, supporting advocacy for women and other will be to further broaden the impact and and gender, and study social and economic underrepresented groups, and examining profile of the Department and build even bias in the Asian and Muslim workplace. theories of agency, resistance, The courses I teach concern women oppression, and violence. in the global workforce, Islam and The Department is today an gender, and transformations in intellectual and interdisciplinary Asian women’s lives in times of rapid home to excellent faculty who economic development and social provide opportunities for majors, change. non-majors, and minors alike to engage in open and critical One of my primary curricular inquiry and explore multiple goals for WOMS is to continue to points of view. WOMS provides ensure that both the intellectual UD students with methodologies and practical applications of for analyzing some of today’s the Department’s academic most pressing social, political, opportunities—and the value of a and economic issues concerning major, minor, or even one course in women, gender, and sexuality, Farwell to Dr. Shafi (left) and welcome to Dr. Sloane-White Continued on page 4 Farewell from the outgoing Chair Dear Alumni and Friends, to their assessment of our operation. I am and national leadership in this area. We My 11-year tenure as Chair of the delighted to share that the outside evaluators, also awarded the inaugural Mae and Robert Department of Women and Gender Studies all highly respected WOMS professors and Carter Endowment Women’s Studies Faculty ended in August, and I return to my other administrators, were most impressed by how Research Award to Dr. Amanda Bullough, home, the Department of Literatures, much our faculty and staff have accomplished Assistant Professor of Management at UD Languages, and Cultures. Naturally, this is a over the past decade. and President of Women in the Academy time of reflection and of taking stock, and it Another terrific development has been of International Business, who examines dovetails with our Academic Program Review hiring two new WOMS faculty members. the particular obstacles faced by women (APR), an academic evaluation all university In Fall 2016, Dr. Emerald Christopher, entrepreneurs in developing countries. departments routinely must undergo. Assistant Professor, joins us on a three-year Am I saddened to leave WOMS? Of course, Our APR involved preparing an extensive appointment, and in September 2017, Dr. I am! I will miss my colleagues and friends, document listing all major developments, Chiara Sabrina will arrive as Associate miss the excitement and enthusiasm, the initiatives, and events since 2005, the year Professor. Both will significantly strengthen atmosphere in our house at 34 West Delaware of our last APR, then meeting with an our expertise in Domestic Violence and Continued on page 4 outside team of evaluators and responding Prevention, and our potential for growth Thanking Dr. Monika Shafi for Outstanding Leadership ’ve always seen myself as task-oriented,” oversaw the expansion of the curriculum, Act and the Path Ahead”; create a new Isays Monika Shafi, Elias Ahuja Professor as well as growth in the number of majors capstone seminar for graduating WOMS of German, adding, “I like to get things enrolled. majors that has produced significant student done.” As she steps down in August 2016 research projects, some of which have gone as Chair of the Department of Women Thanks to her visionary leadership, on to be published; and, because of the and Gender Studies, she leaves behind an Women’s Studies—which went on to continuing generosity of Mae and Robert extraordinary legacy. Not only has she become the Women and Gender Studies Carter, oversee the awarding of grants for spearheaded numerous academic projects, Department during her second five-year both teaching and research that have given but she used her eloquence and tactful term—was able to implement a popular graduate students opportunities to practice persuasion to change the climate for minor in Sexualities and Gender Studies; feminist pedagogy and enabled faculty from women and encourage the importance of offer a groundbreaking Concentration around the university to engage in feminist feminist thinking. Winner of the 2011 in Domestic Violence Prevention and scholarship. E. Arthur Trabant Award for Women’s Services (DVPS), the first of its kind in Equity, Dr. Shafi has been honored across the nation; receive Faculty Senate approval From Dr. Shafi’s own perspective, however, the University for her tireless work in to develop a graduate certificate; stage a not the least of her achievements was advancing the cause of women’s education, 40th anniversary celebration in 2013 that moving the department to its present while raising both the institutional and the featured Dr. Marie Laberge’s oral history location—a charming three-story, early- national profile of our department, which project about the founding of Women’s twentieth-century house. As someone whose she has led for eleven years. Studies at UD; successfully complete its first scholarly publications examine women’s two searches for new tenure-track faculty work, issues of migration, and material After becoming Director in 2005 of and bring in its first Postdoctoral Fellow; culture in modern German literature, she what had been a program since 1973, she organize and host the nationally prominent has always been sensitive to the politics of immediately set out to secure departmental 2014 conference, “Powerful Partnerships: status for Women’s Studies. As Chair, she 20 Years of the Violence Against Women Continued on page 4 Pascha Bueno-Hansen Awarded Tenure he Department of Women and Gender Bueno-Hansen places the TRC, feminist which focuses on the TStudies is thrilled to announce that the and human rights movements, and related transitional justices University of Delaware awarded Dr. Pascha non-governmental organizations within an processes of Peru, Bueno-Hansen tenure and promotion to international and historical context to expose Colombia and Brazil. Associate Professor in May 2016, citing the difficulties in addressing gender-based This new project her excellence in research, teaching, and violence in Peru. Her innovative theoretical will use a queer service. Bueno-Hansen received her PhD and methodological framework, which brings decolonial framework in Politics, Feminist Studies, and Latin together decolonial feminism and a critical to analyze the cisheteronormativity of American & Latina/o Studies from the engagement with intersectionality, facilitates transitional justice mechanisms and the University of California at Santa Cruz in an in-depth analysis of the Peruvian variants of toxic masculinity among armed 2009, and she joined WOMS that Fall as transitional justice process. Bueno-Hansen actors in relation to the legacy of Spanish its first-ever tenure-track hire. In addition uncovers the colonial mappings and linear and Portuguese colonialism. The creative to directing the department’s Sexuality and temporality underlying transitional justice initiatives of activists, advocates, artists Gender Studies minor, Bueno-Hansen holds efforts and illustrates why such efforts must and documentarians to bring hidden and faculty affiliations with UD’s Department of address the societal roots of atrocities if taboo issues—such as violence against Political Science & International Relations they are to result in true and lasting social gender and sexual minorities—to light and the Latin American and Iberian Studies transformation. embody a decolonizing impulse that honors program. On November 4, 2015, Bueno-Hansen the precolonial Amazonian and Andean marked her book’s publication with a lecture multiplicity of gender and sexual expression. Bueno-Hansen’s promotion marked the in Bayard Sharp Hall sponsored by the Additionally, Dr. Bueno-Hansen will serve as culmination of an exciting and successful Department of Women and Gender Studies the faculty coordinator of the newly formed 2015-2016 academic year, especially with as part of its Fall Lecture series. She discussed LBGTQIA+ and Racial Justice Activism regard to her research. In August 2015, her how the state and civil society groups in Peru Living Learning Community for first-year first book,Feminist and Human Rights understood and addressed the impact of the students. With a focus on the intersection Struggles in Peru: Decolonizing Transitional Peruvian internal armed conflict on women of LGBTQIA+ and racial justice issues, this Justice was published by the University of and detailed the ways in which the working LLC will support and connect struggles Illinois Press. This book, resulting from seven of race, language and culture in
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