Sept. 25th & 26th 2026
(UMass Amherst) Campus Center, 10th Floor Amherst Room
1 Campus Center Way, Amherst, MA 01002
Registration for UMass Amherst’s Women’s, Gender, Sexuality Studies department’s 50th Anniversary Symposium: States of the Field on September 25th & 26th is officially live! The event is free and open to the public, but they ask that you register in advance as space will be limited. You can find the registration link and the symposium website address immediately below:
Symposium Registration Link
States of the Field Website
The Department of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at UMass Amherst was first established in 1974 as a three-year pilot program in Women’s Studies. Now, fifty years later, the interdisciplinary study of gender and sexuality has been solidly, if unevenly, institutionalized within the US university. At the same time, it is difficult not to feel that the field has been returned to temporary status as we collectively – as scholars, as workers, as people – face intensifying racialized/gendered scrutiny and surveillance; blatant attacks on our many minoritized communities; the fully corporatized university; rising global authoritarianism and the many horizons of thought it seeks to blot out.
Given this context, we invite you to mark and celebrate 50+ years of WGSS at UMass with us by doing what we do best – thinking together about danger and possibility. In addition to a keynote by Dr. Inderpal Grewal, this conference will bring together respected colleagues and collaborators from across the country for panel discussions on abolition, WGSS in the corporate/authoritarian university, the legacy of feminist science studies, and more. We hope that you will join us as we review and take in the current state of our field, reflecting upon what we learned during the early years, what we can learn in this present moment, and what lessons we may carry into the fight for the future of feminist/queer/trans world- and knowledge-building.
Please reach out to the symposium organizers, Cameron Awkward-Rich ([email protected]) and Jordan Sanderson ([email protected]), if you have any questions with respect to the symposium. We look forward to sharing in community with you come late September!
