WS Celebrates 20 Years in 2010: the Guerrilla Girls Come to NMSU
A Short History of the Women's Studies Program
Women's Studies emerged through conversations among women scholars at NMSU as the third wave of the feminist movement in the United States rose in the late 1980s. Many of these scholars had begun their academic careers during the second wave of the feminist movement in the 1970s. Their lived experience in the academy and their identification with movements for change during the 60's and 70's informed these early conversations.
After attending a national Women's Studies conference in 1988, Dr. Joan Jensen returned to NMSU determined to work with others to form a Women's Studies Program here. She organized an ad hoc committee to create the proposal to form the Women's Studies Program. On February 3, 1989 the committee presented their proposal to then Dean Thomas Gale. The proposal was accepted and approved later that month and Dr. Jensen became the first Women's Studies Program Director.
The Women's Studies Program was home first to a minor and eventually an interdisciplinary supplementary major. A committee of faculty from across several disciplines created the proposal for a Bachelor of Arts degree in Women's Studies in 2004. The first majors in Women's Studies were welcomed in 2005.
Under the leadership of Dr. Lisa Bond-Maupin, Director of the Women's Studies Program until fall 2010, Mary Benanti became the first regular faculty member in Women's Studies at NMSU in 2007. She was joined in 2008 and 2009 by the first tenure track faculty members in Women's Studies, Manal Hamzeh and M. Catherine Jonet. In 2009, the Women's Studies Program became institutionally afiliated with the newly formed Department of Sociology, opening up additional opportunities for collaboration and growth.
*This history is based primarily on the paper, "Gaining a Voice: The Formation of the Women's Studies Program at New Mexico State University" by Maria Woodard (2008).*
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NMSU Goes Bananas for the Guerrilla Girls while Borrowing a Little Help from Le Tigre