Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Authors

Alisa Solomon, CUNY Graduate Center

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Winter 2001

Abstract

Vivien Ng said something at a roundtable discussion CLAGS hosted in October that has been ringing in my ears ever since. The roundtable had brought together a range of Women's Studies and LGTBQ Studies scholars, writers and teachers, to consider what lessons LGTBQ Studies might draw from its older sister as the younger field becomes further institutionalized at universities and colleges across the country. Was feminism still a motive force? we wondered. Did that field somehow speak to and from a vibrant movement, or at least to and from women's communities? Was it still accountable to them in some way? Was it ever? And how could LGTBQ Studies replicate what worked and avoid what went amiss? Ng, a long-time professor of Women's Studies, summed up the situation on her SUNY-Albany campus, and in general: "Women's Studies is no longer a center of change because the kind of feminism we came out of is no longer relevant."

Comments

This article was originally published in CLAGSNews, vol. 11, no. 1.