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The first courses in the University of Delaware’s Department of Women and Gender Studies were taught in 1973, making it the second oldest program of its kind in the United States. Throughout the 2022-2023 academic year the department has held a series of events to celebrate 50 years of teaching about, studying, and advocating for the rights of women and justice for all marginalized people.
To kick off the momentous anniversary, students in the spring 2022 capstone course, taken by all majors during their senior year, curated the materials that captured the remarkable journey of the field during the last 50 years. With help from UD staff and others, they created a website that documents the past, present, and future of the department. The site is organized by decade and by theme, including social justice, racial justice, LGBTQ+ issues, reproductive justice, and curriculum.
The department would like to thank UD staff Lisa Gensel, coordinator of the UD Archives; Rebecca Johnson Melvin, coordinator of Special Projects, Manuscripts Librarian and curator of the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. Senatorial Papers, Special Collections and Museums; Kayla Abner, senior assistant librarian and digital scholarship librarian; and Jessica Barth, assistant librarian and emerging multimedia technologies librarian, for their help with this important project. Thanks also to Maya Jable from Carleton College, who organized the materials into an interactive website.
More information about the department’s 50th anniversary can be found here
