"Celebrating 20 Years of Women's Studies"

During March 2002—also Women’s History Month—the Women’s Studies Program has much to celebrate as it marks its 20^th anniversary at UMBC. The program is now supported by two full-time faculty members and an engaged community of 26 affiliated faculty and staff who teach in the program and/or serve on the coordinating committee.

“This diverse group of active scholars/teachers and campus leaders sustains a rich model of a multi-disciplinary learning community, in which students can become active participants,” says Carole McCann, director of the Women’s Studies Program and associate professor of American studies.

The Women’s Studies Coordinating Committee is working with the Office of Student Affairs to develop WILL: Women in Leadership and Learning, which will include a residence hall community and a strong component of co-curricular learning. By participating in student organizations, assisting in the management and programming of a women’s studies lecture series and enrolling in special classes, students will not only gain a minor in women’s studies but valuable leadership skills and real-world experience.

Women’s studies offers a growing and diverse list of courses as well as a minor and an undergraduate certificate. A post-baccalaureate certificate is in the works.

McCann assumed leadership of women’s studies in 1998, when founding director Joan Korenman became director of the Center for Women & Information Technology. McCann is known for her scholarly contributions to the history of American reproductive politics in the 20^th century, and her book Birth Control Politics in the United States, 1916-1945 (Cornell University Press, 1994), was the first to place the birth control debate in the wider political context of the period. McCann is working on a follow-up, Birth Control, Eugenics and the Foundations of Demography, under contract with the University of Pennsylvania Press, which examines gender and race in international population politics after 1945. This year, Routledge will publish McCann’s Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives, co-edited with Seung-kyung Kim of the University of Maryland College Park.