WGSS Chair’s Letter

The WGSS Program at Yale is thriving in fall semester 2018, with new faculty, new courses, undergraduate majors hard at work taking classes and writing their senior essays, and a growing number of graduate students enrolling in the WGSS Graduate Certificate.

We are so grateful to the donors who have made possible many of our students’ summer research through the Solomon Research Fellowships in LGBT Studies, the Bruce L. Cohen Fund Research Awards, and the Shana Alexander Research Fellowship in WGSS. And the support provided by FLAGS (the Fund for Lesbian and Gay Studies) has enabled so much of the exciting research being conducted by faculty and graduate students.

Evren Savci has begun her assistant professorship this fall, teaching courses on feminist and queer theory and on sexuality in transnational contexts, and joining Eda Pepi and Joe Fischel as our brilliant and inspiring junior faculty. Joe is on leave to write his exciting third book on gender and sexuality in New Orleans, and while we miss him we are proud that his views on consent have become part of the public conversation on #MeToo and issues of sexual misconduct. Eda has started her second book project, on “reproductive borderwork” in contested areas of North Africa, and has launched this year’s WGSS Kempf-funded speaker series “Kinship in Times of Suspicious Citizenship.”

Thank you to Greta LaFleur as DGS and to Andrew Dowe as DUS for keeping our curriculum refreshed and our students on track; thank you to Moe Gardner, Ashley Lee-Desravines, Linda Relyea, and our student worker Kelly Tran for running the office so smoothly; thank you to Salonee Bhaman and Faye Wang who, as organizers of the Colloquium and Working Group for the second year in a row, have lined up a terrific series of talks by graduate students and faculty; and thank you to Katie Lofton, outgoing Deputy Dean of Diversity and Faculty Development and former chair of WGSS, who has done so much to address WGSS/LGBTS needs at the highest levels of the university.