ENVISIONING A FEMINIST AND QUEER SOUTH

The Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies at the University of Mississippi is pleased to host the 2019 SEWSA Annual Conference. The theme considers the distinctive role of gender studies programs in the South in fostering interdisciplinary scholarship, social change, and the creation of inclusive spaces. 

Gender studies has always challenged the status quo, questioned conventional wisdom, and combined theory and practice.  We are coming up on the fiftieth anniversary of the first women’s studies program; women’s studies, from its inception, ranged across the disciplines, moving from theory to practice to theory, and insisting on truly interdisciplinary inquiry that allows questions of gender and sexuality to disrupt our assumptions. Gender studies, at its best, has always queered the boundaries—of region, of discipline, of identity, of nation.

Gender studies’ distinctive integration of teaching, scholarship, programs, and advocacy has never been more essential, particularly in the South in the current historical moment.  Unprecedented interest in feminism and a resurgence of activism exists in the same space as increased anti-gay, anti-immigrant, and anti-choice legislation. In such a climate, this year’s SEWSA takes the opportunity to draw insight and inspiration from the past and chart a course for a South that is more equitable, more feminist, more queer.