Departments

Poster designed by Professor Fredrica Wachsberger, Department of Art, and coordinator of the Women's Studies Program, 1975–79.

Women and Gender Studies

Origins and Organization

The Women's Studies program, founded in 1974 and redesigned as the Women's and Gender Studies (WGST) Program in 2012, is one of eight interdisciplinary programs that finds its home in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS). Since the program's inception, 24 members of the Brooklyn College faculty, including some from departments outside of HSS, have served as program coordinators. Assistant Professor Prudence Cumberbatch of the Africana Studies Department has served as program coordinator for the past five years and is now in her final year in this position.

The Brooklyn College WGST program has offered a minor in LGBTQ studies since 2011, the first to do so of all the CUNY colleges.

Since receiving an anonymous gift of $2 million in 2005, the WGST program has supported an endowed chair. Professor Premilla Nadasen, of Queens College (CUNY) and an expert on African American feminism, was the first to serve in the role. Nadasen's 2005 book, Welfare Warriors: The Welfare Rights Movement in the United States, won the John Hope Franklin Publication Prize awarded by the American Studies Association for best book in American studies that same year. Associate Professor Swapna Banerjee, of the Brooklyn College History Department, currently serves as the endowed chair, in a tenure that runs from 2016 to 2018. Her research examines the intersection of gender, class, race, and ethnicity, with respect to women, children, servants, and other marginalized groups in South Asia. She was awarded the Ethyle R. Wolfe Fellowship in Humanities (2013–14) and the Whiting Fellowship (2008) for excellence in teaching from Brooklyn College.

A Proud Past, an Accomplished Present

Did you know….

As of fall 2017, the WGST program includes 42 student majors, 13 WGST minors, and 3 LGBTQ minors

The original founders of the Women's Studies Program include Tucker Pamella Farley of English, Pat Lander of Anthropology and Archaeology, Renate Bridenthal of History, Lilia Melani of English, and Fredrica Wachsberger of Art History. Check out the oral history interview with Renate Bridenthal in the CUNY Digital History Archive.

Assistant Professor Zinga Fraser, the cirector of the Shirley Chisholm Project, was selected as an American Association of University Women, American Fellowships Postdoctoral Fellow, 2017–18, and has been interviewed extensively on Representative Chisholm in the media.

Assistant Professor Prudence Cumberbatch, coordinator of Women's and Gender Studies.

Upcoming Events

WGST has always maintained a busy calendar of speakers and events. This coming academic year, we can look forward to hearing Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand's Sekhar Bandyopadhyay talk, "Situating Women in the History of Partition in South Asia," Bonnie Anderson, emerita professor of history, Brooklyn College speaking about "Ernestine Rose: International Feminist Pioneer: The Rabbi's Atheist Daughter," Rebecca Karl, History Department, New York University, on "Labor in the Family: Theoretical Perspectives From Early Chinese Feminism," and Barbara Winslow, emerita professor of the School of Education, who will launch her book, A Century of Struggles in New York: Class, Race, Gender, and Women's Suffrage.

We can also look forward to the fifth annual Women's Leadership/Mentor Luncheon in October 2017 and the first LGBTQ Leadership/Mentor Luncheon in April 2017.

Department of History

The Department of History has a proud history of its own. John Hope Franklin came as chair in 1956 and was the first African American scholar to head a history department at a non-historically black college. According to Gunja SenGupta, the current department chair, Franklin's book From Slavery to Freedom "transformed and pluralized the prisms through which historians read the nation's past forever." Brooklyn College trustee, former dean, and noted historian Kimberley Phillips Boehm made a generous donation to enable the History Department, in collaboration with Africana Studies and Women's Studies, to establish John Franklin Day in February 2017.

Currently the department's 17 distinguished scholars specialize in a range of fields covering ancient Jewish history, medieval Europe, Russia, France, science and philosophy in Islam, histories of India, the modern Middle East, Latin America, and the United States from the colonial era through the present in all its aspects: from the presidency, Congress, foreign policy, labor, economic, environmental, African American and women's history, to popular culture and public health, and the Americas in transnational and comparative perspective.

Recent scholarly output from the department includes four books:

• Bonnie S. Anderson, Ernestine Rose: The Rabbi’s Atheist Daughter (New York; Oxford University Press, 2016)
• K.C. Johnson (with Stuart Taylor), The Campus Rape Frenzy (Encounter Books, 2017)
• Steve Remy, The Malmedy Massacre: The War Crimes Trial Controversy (Harvard University Press, 2017)
• Jocelyn Wills, Tug of War: Surveillance Capitalism, Military Contracting, and the Rise of the Security State (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2017)

The department is particularly proud of how it brings scholarship to the public and engages with the community. Phil Napoli served as a consultant to the New York Historical Society's upcoming exhibition on Vietnam, Lauren Macia has lectured on medieval art at the Cloisters, and Benjamin Carp delivered a talk on New York and the Revolution at the New York Historical Society.

Also of note, Assistant Professor Bilal Ibrahim is one of the recipients of the CUNY Academy for the Humanities and Sciences Henry Wasser Awards for 2017.

History majors also contribute to the vital life of the department. They run events through the Brooklyn College Historical Society, and published their first journal, Clio, in spring 2017.