Director's Note

Weston
Photo by Dan Addison

One of the first phrases that people learn when they cross a border into another language translates into English as “thank you.” Parents from all sorts of backgrounds try to school their children in the deep appreciation that such phrases are meant to convey. Yet too often what remains hidden at the moment of crediting all that is created and shared are the sacrifices that shadow the gift. I want to acknowledge the many contributions that my colleagues have made to the program—most recently Rina Williams by stepping in as Interim Director—as well as the things they have elected not to do, at what I imagine to be considerable expense. They could have spent the time they devoted to SWAG conducting new research, learning the butterfly stroke, or publishing an extra book, but instead they decided that the survival and growth of this program was worth leaving a few other things undone. And so it is with a sense of tremendous appreciation that I have accepted the responsibility of guiding the Studies in Women and Gender program at U.Va. into its near future.

In the year to come, a key task will be to focus the growth that the program has experienced in recent years. Even as we seek to raise the program’s profile and build bridges to other parts of the university, even as we pursue new faculty hires in areas that are currently underrepresented, it will be important to recognize strengths that are already in place. Transnationalism is one such strength. In recent years many women’s studies programs in the U.S. have attempted to diversify by hiring new faculty who can offer perspectives on gender that link developments in one part of the globe to developments in another. While they went in hot pursuit of transnationalism, SWAG was in the enviable position of drawing upon its existing expertise to shape a curriculum that locates international perspectives and border-crossing at its heart.

Another strength waiting for me when I stepped into the director’s office was interdisciplinarity. You might think that a program like SWAG is interdisciplinary by nature, since its students can study topics that range from history and literature to politics and sociology, but in my view interdisciplinarity doesn’t come “naturally.” Like so many things in life, it has to be cultivated. Interdisciplinarity is not some uneasy coexistence of fields brought together under the sign of gender studies. Interdisciplinarity means the integration that flourishes when people work hard to make sense of the insights and occasionally mystifying conversations that occur when ideas, like people, travel. Having learned to say “thank you,” there’s always a next step. As we move to build SWAG in a way that focuses our efforts and consolidates our gains, it’s time to move on to “de nada,” “koi bad nahin,” “dō itashimashite,” “you’re welcome.”