As Radcliffe President Linda S. Wilson this month begins the "National Outreach Tour" and appears in Vanity Fair magazine with the presidents of the Seven Sister colleges, professors and students of women's studies say there is a profound need to analyze the state of women at the close of the millennium--both around the world and at Harvard.

The campus will host two programs this fall exploring the situation for women. With last week's reading by Alice Walker, the Committee on Degrees in Women's Studies committee kicked off an ambitious series titled "Gender at the Millennium," to inquire into the issues affecting women and men as the millennium approaches.

This series--along with a conference currently being organized by Phillips Professor of Early American History Laurel Thatcher Ulrich titled "Gender at the Gates"--shows an increased interest in the state of women in the world and at Harvard.

"Amidst the apocalyptic clamor surrounding the millennium, this six-week series represents a modest attempt to slow the pace of celebration and anxiety," said Ann Pellegrini '86, assistant professor of English. "En route to the 21st century, we ask how women and gender might help us to think and enact the future with a feminist critical difference."

According to Pellegrini, who is also director of studies in the women's studies department, the series will address a variety of topics including how to write history, welfare reform, gender and race politics of family values and the global resurgence of religion.

"We are addressing the history of gender issues at Harvard-Radcliffe," said Ulrich, who is also a professor of women's studies. "I think it is important because there is a tremendous amount of misinformation and the issue is hot and heavy at the moment."

"Gender at the Millennium" is co-sponsored by the Women in Public Policy program at the Kennedy School and by Radcliffe College, and funding for the events if being provided by a variety of organizations. Pellegrini says she sees this cooperation as an indication of progress.

"This suggests that there are now a range of sites, across the university, where women's issues and the study of gender have been institutionalized," she says. "This wonderful array of programs in women's and gender studies at Radcliffe College and Harvard University is a sign of how much has been accomplished in the decade since Women's Studies became an undergraduate program."

Yet she cautions that there is still much progress to be made.

"The series--ambitious in scope, organization and funding--is not a call to self-congratulation but to do more programming and reaching out across the University," she says.

Broad Range of Topics

Last week, Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Color Purple and several other novels, kicked-off the series with a call for fathers and daughters to reconnect. She also read from her latest novel, By the Light of My Father's Eyes.

"Fathers must teach us from birth," Walker told the crowd of 900 in Sanders Theatre. "There has to be discussion. There has to be solidarity, and it has to start really early. Fathers have to be friends to their daughters."

Walker also emphasized the need for female sexuality to be explored and expressed.

"We have to insist that sexuality is part of what makes us spiritual beings," she said.