Gender and Women's Studies (GWS) @ 50

The GWS @ 50 Oral History Project was created to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Department of Gender & Women’s Studies (GWS) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Read about the history of GWS and how it was founded in 1975, originally called the program of Women’s Studies.

The following interviews were conducted with GWS staff—most current professors and staff, some current graduate students, and some retired faculty. Narrators describe their initial interest in the field of gender studies, their role in the GWS department at UW-Madison, and how the department has evolved throughout their time in it. Note: if name is hyperlinked, one can click on it to access the full interview in MINDS@UW.

Acknowledgements

The Oral History Program would like to offer a special thanks to Edwin Elizabeth Thomas, PhD student at the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies (GWS), for conducting the interviews; Christine Garlough, Professor of GWS and Director of the Center for Research on Gender and Women (CRGW), for overall guidance; Naty Aguirre Villalobos, Operations Coordinator from UW-Madison’s Software Training for Students, for technical support; and Haleigh Mae Smith and Emily Scott Roemer, GWS Undergraduate students, for editing support. We would also like to recognize the contributions of Tracy Lemaster, Communications and Operations Coordinator and Lecturer in the GWS Department; Stephanie Rytilahti, Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Consortium; Jamie Gratrix, Department Administrator for GWS; as well as the rest of the GWS operations team, UW-Madison Libraries InfoLabs for equipment support, and The Center for Research on Gender and Women for venue and equipment support. We’d also like to thank OHP Staff, Natalie Nemes, Sydney Ziemniak, Oona McNally, and Troy Reeves for their work processing the interviews and creating this webpage. Finally, we would like to thank all of the narrators of this project for their generosity.