Knocking on the Ivory Tower WGS Seeks a Department

By Matthew T. Lowe and Kevin J. Wu, Crimson Staff Writers October 25, 2011

PART OF THE ACADEMIC COMMUNITY

Harvard would be among the first of its peers to host a department in WGS.

Within the Ivy League, only Brown has a department devoted to the field. Other Ivies, as well as most smaller liberal arts schools like Williams and Amherst, offer degree programs similar to Harvard’s that borrow faculty from other departments.

But, pointing to the growing popularity of WGS in the GenEd curriculum, Light wrote that WGS stands on the same level within academia as any other field.

“WGS is not a marginalized field, nor is it on the margins of FAS or academic discourse more generally,” she wrote. “Even the most established fields are continually developing and adapting to the changing needs of our community.”

But in addition to navigating through red tape to become a formal department, some students say WGS still faces challenges in gaining respect within the rest of the academic community for its unique form of scholarship.

“I think that because WGS is so rigorous, and it is about questioning the grand narrative of academia—about trying to insert this new voice—people sometimes see it as unnecessary or superfluous,” said Samantha A. Meier ’12. “Sometimes it can be frustrating to realize that there’s only a small segment of the academic world that wants to do that kind of scholarship.”

Ja-Yoon Choe ’12, a WGS concentrator, said that perceptions of the field vary.

“It really depends on how seriously someone takes the material,” Choe said. “WGS definitely challenges a lot of traditional academic fields and really tries to push against common ways of doing things.”

—Staff writer Kevin J. Wu can be reached at kwu@college.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Matthew T. Lowe can be reached at mlowe@college.harvard.edu.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction.

CORRECTION: OCT. 31, 2011

The Oct. 25 article "Knocking on the Ivory Tower WGS Seeks a Department" incorrectly stated that Ja-Yoon Choe '12 is pursuing a secondary in Women, Gender, and Sexuality. She is, in fact, a WGS concentrator.