Dear Alumnae/i and Friends:
I write to you from the Gender and Women’s Studies Chair’s Office in Sterling Hall, an office I have now occupied for not quite three months. Let me first introduce myself: my name is Nick Syrett and I am new both to being chair of GWS and to the University of Wisconsin. I come to UW-Madison from the University of Kansas, where I was chair of the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department for five years and then an associate dean in KU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences for three years. Before that I taught at the University of Northern Colorado for eleven years. I’m very excited to be joining the thriving community that is Gender and Women’s Studies here at UW-Madison!
It is a particularly momentous time to be joining the department, given that we just celebrated GWS’s fiftieth birthday two weeks ago. I am so grateful to the 50th Celebration organizing committee, led by Chris Garlough, Jamie Gratrix, Tracy Lemaster, and Stephanie Rytilahti. We had a wonderful day-and-a-half celebration here in Sterling and at Monona Terrace. I would be hard-pressed to think of a better introduction to the department than the program put on by faculty, alumni, students, emeriti, and staff. I was particularly moved by the panel dedicated to GWS 103, which we believe to be the longest continuously running women’s health class in the United States. Its founding instructors – Mariamne Whatley and Nancy Worcester – told us about the origins of the class and then seventeen (!!) former teaching assistants – including our very own Nina Valeo Cooke and Judy Houck – detailed the ways that teaching 103 had changed their lives. As Judy pointed out in her remarks, it was a history lesson in the ways that the feminist health movement and women’s studies as an academic discipline were interconnected from the beginning. On the second day, I was also fascinated to learn about the origins of our department on a panel of former chairs and professors. As we are privileged to go about our daily work, we all owe them a debt of gratitude. I hope that everyone who came back to celebrate with us had as much fun as I did.
We have other good news in the department! Professors Rachel Kuo and Kong Pheng Pha have very recently published books. Rachel’s Movement Media: In Pursuit of Solidarity was released by Oxford; her coedited We Are Each Other’s Liberation: Black & Asian Feminist Solidarities was published by Haymarket Books; and Kong’s Queering the Hmong Diaspora: Racial Subjectivity and the Myth of Hyperheterosexuality was published by the University of Washington Press – all in the month of October. Professor Emerita Pernille Ipsen also recently published the English translation of her prize-winning Danish book, My Seven Mothers: Making a Family in the Danish Women’s Movement (University of Minnesota Press). Congratulations to all three!
If you should find yourself on campus or in Sterling Hall, I invite you to stop in and say hello. My door is usually open and I would welcome the chance to meet department alums and learn about your experience in GWS. I look forward to connecting with you in the years to come.
All best,
Nick Syrett
Professor and Chair