1:08 p.m., June 28, 2007--"Hooray for Middle-aged Spread: Expanding and Extending a 34-Year-Old Women's Studies Program," is the topic of a presentation five UD women's studies faculty will make Friday, June 29, at the annual conference of the National Women's Studies Association in St. Charles, Ill.

Participants include Marie Laberge, assistant professor, who will present, “Home Wasn't Built in a Day: Institutional Challenges in an Expanding Program;” Suzanne Cherrin, assistant professor, who will address, “Becoming Worldly;” Carolyn Bitzer, adjunct professor, who will discuss “Travel and Technology at Thirty Something,” and Margaret Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Womens' Studies, who will present, “Never Too Old For Dressing Up: New Material and New Studies.” Also, Alvina Quintana, associate professor, will serve as moderator of the panel.

The session will analyze the case of a "middle aged" program that has not only endured but in recent years has grown more successful in terms of larger student enrollments, broader faculty participation, greater funding and access to physical resources and increased recognition at the highest level of university governance. The moderator and four panelists, who represent both full-time and part-time faculty, will discuss the reasons for these positive developments, draw lessons from them and also address challenges that lie immediately ahead for this program and for many others, especially those based in large public institutions.

Panelists will offer concrete illustrations and practical suggestions for expanding the reach and extending the influence of feminist pedagogy, feminist political and intellectual concerns, and feminist administrative practices. They also will talk about their own attempts to work in challenging new areas. Each of the four presenters comes from a different disciplinary background: history, sociology, public policy and literature, while the moderator is an expert in Latina/o studies. All agree, however, that Women's Studies must be open to dynamic and creative evolution in order to flourish, not merely survive. There will be time for audience discussion and sharing of strategies for positive change.

Laberge's presentation will discuss the UD program's recent move into its own building. She will explore the structural basis that laid the groundwork for the current stability of the program and focus on the challenges that Women's Studies programs within large state institutions face. Drawing upon experience at UD, she will address how women's studies might respond productively to a variety of new issues in higher education, including the growing commercialization and push to "sell" education as a product in the marketplace; increased demands for accountability and for "assessment" of measurable outcomes of student learning; the push toward general education; the impact of corporate technology on the visibility of women's studies; and the pressure to develop direct funding sources.

Cherrin will discuss the UD program's successful attempts to internationalize its curriculum. She will discuss the 15-year journey that has taken the department from one fledgling study abroad course to an exciting network of interrelated courses, which, when taken together, offer students an area concentration called, "Women in Global Perspective." Cherrin will provide a brief overview of UD courses with a transnational and cross-cultural focus, while describing courses that have proved transformative and might be equally valuable elsewhere.

As a specialist in public policy and in economic and social issues involving South Asian women, Bitzer will discuss how she has extended UD's curriculum by developing a course on Indian women and recently offering a six-week course in India. While visiting there, students listened to feminist academicians and activists and witnessed the women's movement there. The course also included visits to urban and rural areas, mosques and temples, slums and cosmopolitan centers and the act of listening to diverse women's experiences. Bitzer will offer practical advice about how to make study abroad beneficial to women's studies, by shaping it into a pedagogical experience that requires the students to work collaboratively, to examine their ideologies critically and to apply new technology (especially "blogging"), both during and after the trip, in order to spread feminist learning outward.

Stetz will discuss how women's studies' curriculum can embrace the study of material culture. She will look at how programs can ensure that material cultural studies will be places where gendered analyses and feminist perspectives are valued, so that students will see "things" through a feminist lens. She will discuss two new women's studies courses in gender and clothing ("Dressing Women" and "Cross-Dressing Women") at UD and will use them as examples of how feminist faculty can engage with material culture in a way that expands a program's offerings and draws in populations of students who might not otherwise be attracted to the women's studies major or minor.

She will give an overview of subjects that an instructor might explore, including dress and issues of nationalism, religion, and globalization, to questions of gender identity and sexual self-display. She also will also talk about how courses such as these can contributed to new concentrations within a Women's Studies program such as the recently approved minor in sexualities and gender studies at UD.