Calling Walker "a real visionary--a person whose political and moral imagination is so much needed as the [21st] century looms," Pellegrini said the author's message was an important one to have at the beginning of the series.

Today's event, which is the next event in the series, will be a panel discussion titled "History's End: Historicizing the Millennium." Led by Katherine A. Park, Stone Radcliffe professor of history of science and professor of women's studies, it will include Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza of the Divinity School and Deborah Valenze, an associate professor of history at Barnard College. According to Park, the panelists will "look back in time to the ways in which men and women have imagined what they saw as their own impending millennial moments."

"We'll be thinking and talking with the audience both about the general nature and value of these kinds of utopian speculations, and about the role that women have played in such millennial movements--and why historians of these movements have been so slow to acknowledge the importance of female leadership in them," she said.

Looking Forward

Though the speakers and organizers of the event stressed the importance of opening a dialogue on all issues as the millennium approaches, they all said it is particularly vital to explore gender issues at this point in history.

"Instead of acceding to either `all good' or `all bad,' we wanted to slow the pace of celebration and panic and by identifying some issues we believe to be critical for the 21st century, offer more thoughtful and historically-minded--and feminist--perspectives," Pellegrini said.

"There has been so much conversation about the millennium and it seems an obvious introduction to be made of gender at the millennium," added Afsaneh Najmabadi, a professor of women's studies at Barnard College, who will address feminism in Islamic movements at the final panel. "Yet it is a reminder that we continue even at the millennium to bring gender as an after-thought into the discussion."

Calling the commencement of the 21st century a "crucial time to re-think," other professors echoed Pellegrini's and Najmabadi's call for the need to discuss these issues now.

"The millennium has traditionally been a time to reconsider what is happening socially," said Jakobsen, who will discuss gender and religion in the last panel. "[It] is a crucial time."

"In the U.S., it is the case that gender is one of the things most people regularly associate with religion," she said. "Gender and sexuality are assumed to be in the venue of religion. I want to point out that there are other ways to think about both gender and religion."

Park noted the need to bring about a change in the way the millennium is viewed as a central reason for discussing gender issues at the current historical moment.

"One of the central issues for me is how best to work to bring about change," she said. "Envisaging a new millenarian order involves identifying what is wrong with this world and imagining a better one. This is something that feminists and others working for a more just and social order think about all the time, and when feminists think about it, gender issues are often at the fore."

Pellegrini said the confusion of the millennial moment makes this both a frightening and exciting time.

"From weapons of unparalleled destructive capacities to biological reordering that touch down to the microlevels of organic substance to transnational capitalism and the international monetary fund: the last half of the century in particular has undone many old certainties," she said. "Some in the U.S. are nostalgic for a time before, a nostalgia epitomized in the cry for family values."

The cry for a return to the old ways makes this a time to "intervene in the fancy prognostications about life in the 21st century--predictions that are filled with celebratory notice or doomsday," she said.