Still Here: The Evolution and Momentum of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland
Still Here: The Evolution and Momentum of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland
The Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies is excited to announce our 50th Anniversary celebration Still Here: The Evolution and Moment of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. This event will take place in person on October 22, 2025 from 3 - 7 PM at the Adele H. Stamp Student Union at the University of Maryland College Park.
There are many ways to count the history of Women’s Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies here at the University of Maryland. We’ve chosen to recognize 2025 as our 50th because 1975 was the very first time the University hired someone specifically dedicated to Women’s Studies. Dr. Bernice Carroll came from the University of Illinois as Interim Director of Women’s Studies and worked with the Women’s Studies Program Planning Committee to get the Program and a permanent director position approved. The efforts of this dedicated group working in the early 1970’s put us on the map and we’ve been growing, changing, and leading the way ever since.
The event will include an informational session on the opening of the WGSS Archiving Project, Lightning Reflections from alums, and a roundtable discussion with some of the founding women who contributed their time and scholarship to developing the University’s first Women’s Studies program and evolving them into the department we are today. A detailed agenda will be shared on this page soon.
Agenda
3:00 PM Doors Open
3:30 PM Opening Words and Welcome
Dr. Neda Atanasoski, Professor and Chair, Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
3:40 PM The Evolving Lineage of WGSS - A Leadership Roundtable
Carol S. Pearson, Director, Women's Studies Program 1976-1981
Evelyn "Evi" Torton Beck, Director, Women's Studies Program 1984-1993
Claire G. Moses, Director and Chair, Women's Studies Department 1993-2003
Bonnie Thornton Dill, Chair, Women's Studies Department (2003-2012) & Dean Emerita, College of Arts and Humanities (2012-2022)
Ruth Enid Zambrana, Interim Chair, Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 2018-2021
Moderated by Dr. Neda Atanasoski
4:40 PM The WGSS Archive Project
Shelbi Nahwilet Meissner, Assistant Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Britney Bibeault, Doctoral Candidate in Community Archives, College of Information
5:00 PM Dinner
5:30 PM Highlighting Our Lasting Impacts: Lightning Reflections
6:30 PM Dean's Remarks
Stephanie Shonekan, Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities
7:00 PM Program closes
Featured Guests
Carol S. Pearson, Ph.D., a scholar, author, and former higher education administrator whose work focuses on women, gender, human development, and the power of archetypal narratives, was the first tenured Director of the Women’s Studies Program at UMD and later returned as a Professor of Leadership Studies and Director of the James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership in the School of Public Policy. Her other administrative roles have included: Academic Vice President of Goucher College; founding Director of the Transformational Leadership Certificate Program at Georgetown University; and Executive Vice President/Provost and then President of Pacifica Graduate Institute.
Her published works, many of which have been translated into numerous languages, include The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By; Awakening the Heroes Within: Twelve Archetypes To Help Us Find Ourselves and Transform Our World; The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes (co-author Margaret Mark); The Transforming Leader: New Approaches to Leadership for the Twenty-First Century; Persephone Rising: Awakening the Heroine Within; and What Stories Are You Living? Discover Your Archetypes—Transform Your
Life. In collaboration with psychologist Hugh Marr, she developed the Pearson-Marr Archetype Indicator™ (PMAI™), a scientifically validated instrument, along with several supporting publications.
Evelyn (“Evi”) Torton Beck, Professor Emerita, University of Maryland, holds Ph.D.s in both Comparative Literature and Clinical Psychology. She also received an Honorary Doctorate in Vienna, Austria from The University for Music and Performing Arts for her life’s work in the creation of interdisciplinary Women’s Studies and her continuing fight against anti-Semitism, homophobia, and all other “isms” that divide us.
Her writings include ground-breaking research on Franz Kafka, Frida Kahlo, Jewish Women’s Studies, Lesbian Studies, as well as feminist transformations of knowledge. She also works with the Fielding Graduate University’s “Creative Longevity and Wisdom” and “Somatics and Phenomenology” projects. Most recently, she has published research on the phenomenology of transformation through Sacred Circle Dance, which she continues to teach in the Washington DC area and abroad to this day.
www.evibeck.com
Claire G. Moses was the first faculty hired in Women’s Studies (in 1977) and offered the program’s first interdisciplinary courses. Over the course of her career, including as chair (1993-2003), she oversaw the program’s reorganization into a department along with the approval of the BA, MA, and PhD. Her work in building the field of Women’s Studies extended beyond the university to the level of the national (Program Directors and Administrators of the National Women’s Studies Association) and the international (the 53-country Worldwide Association of Women’s Studies/WOWS; and the Feminist Knowledge Network of women’s studies journals from more than 20 countries). From 1977-2011, she also served as Editorial Director of Feminist Studies, the pioneering interdisciplinary women’s studies journal. In 2003, she was recognized as the university’s Outstanding Woman of the Year. Dr. Moses’s research and teaching interests focus on feminist theory and histories of feminist organizing (U.S., French, international, transnational) and on the history of European women. Her publications include U.S. Women in Collective Struggle, ed. with Hartmann (1995); Feminism, Socialism, and French Romanticism, with Rabine (1993); French Feminism in the Nineteenth Century (1984), winner of the Joan Kelly Prize for the year’s best book in women’s history; and “Made in America: ‘French Feminism’ in the Academy,” Feminist Studies (Summer 1998), which also appeared in Australian Feminist Studies (1996), Nouvelles Questions Feministes (in translation, 1996), Cinquantenaire du Deuxième Sexe, ed. Delphy and Chaperon (in translation, 2002), and Beyond French Feminisms: Debates on Women, Politics, and Culture in France, 1981-2001, ed. Cèlestin, DalMolin, and Courtivron (2003).
Bonnie Thornton Dill is Professor Emerita of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Dean Emerita of the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland. She served as Chair of WGSS for eight years. During her eleven-year tenure as dean, she increased faculty diversity, led development and launch of the campus-wide Arts for All initiative; increased external support for research and scholarship by 50%, raised $80 Million in gifts, and introduced an integrated career-curriculum program for student learning. Her pioneering research on the intersections of race and gender led to the publication of three books and numerous articles and inspired her to found two nationally renowned research centers that developed and disseminated the scholarship known as intersectionality. She has served as Vice President of the American Sociological Association, President of the National Women’s Studies Association, chair of the Advisory Board of Scholars for Ms. Magazine and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Feminist Majority Foundation. Currently she is co-principal investigator on two Mellon Foundation funded projects: “Breaking the M.O.L.D. a leadership development initiative for historically underrepresented arts and humanities faculty at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD), the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), and Morgan State University and HuMetricsHSS, a national initiative that creates and supports values-enacted frameworks for understanding, evaluating and nurturing scholarly life. She has received many awards, most recently, the 2025 UMD President’s Medal, “the highest honor bestowed upon a member of the university community.”
Ruth Enid Zambrana, MSW, Ph.D., is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Co-Founding Director of the Consortium on Race, Gender, and Ethnicity, and has a secondary appointment as Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, School of Medicine. As a medical sociologist, her scholarship applies a critical intersectional lens to structural racial, Hispanic ethnicity, and gender inequities in population health and higher education trajectories. She has published widely on health inequity in her major field concentrations: women’s health, maternal and child health, socioeconomic life course impacts on health, and mental well-being of historically underrepresented minorities. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including most recently the 2021 APHA Lyndon Haviland Public Health Mentoring Award, and the 2023 John P. McGovern Endowed Lecturer Award, University of Houston College of Liberal Arts (CLASS) and Social Sciences.
The Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies is excited to announce our 50th Anniversary celebration Still Here: The Evolution and Moment of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. This event will take place in person on October 22, 2025 from 3 - 7 PM at the Adele H. Stamp Student Union at the University of Maryland College Park.
There are many ways to count the history of Women’s Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies here at the University of Maryland. We’ve chosen to recognize 2025 as our 50th because 1975 was the very first time the University hired someone specifically dedicated to Women’s Studies. Dr. Bernice Carroll came from the University of Illinois as Interim Director of Women’s Studies and worked with the Women’s Studies Program Planning Committee to get the Program and a permanent director position approved. The efforts of this dedicated group working in the early 1970’s put us on the map and we’ve been growing, changing, and leading the way ever since.
The event will include an informational session on the opening of the WGSS Archiving Project, Lightning Reflections from alums, and a roundtable discussion with some of the founding women who contributed their time and scholarship to developing the University’s first Women’s Studies program and evolving them into the department we are today. A detailed agenda will be shared on this page soon.
Agenda
3:00 PM Doors Open
3:30 PM Opening Words and Welcome
Dr. Neda Atanasoski, Professor and Chair, Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
3:40 PM The Evolving Lineage of WGSS - A Leadership Roundtable
Carol S. Pearson, Director, Women's Studies Program 1976-1981
Evelyn "Evi" Torton Beck, Director, Women's Studies Program 1984-1993
Claire G. Moses, Director and Chair, Women's Studies Department 1993-2003
Bonnie Thornton Dill, Chair, Women's Studies Department (2003-2012) & Dean Emerita, College of Arts and Humanities (2012-2022)
Ruth Enid Zambrana, Interim Chair, Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 2018-2021
Moderated by Dr. Neda Atanasoski
4:40 PM The WGSS Archive Project
Shelbi Nahwilet Meissner, Assistant Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Britney Bibeault, Doctoral Candidate in Community Archives, College of Information
5:00 PM Dinner
5:30 PM Highlighting Our Lasting Impacts: Lightning Reflections
6:30 PM Dean's Remarks
Stephanie Shonekan, Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities
7:00 PM Program closes
Featured Guests
Carol S. Pearson, Ph.D., a scholar, author, and former higher education administrator whose work focuses on women, gender, human development, and the power of archetypal narratives, was the first tenured Director of the Women’s Studies Program at UMD and later returned as a Professor of Leadership Studies and Director of the James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership in the School of Public Policy. Her other administrative roles have included: Academic Vice President of Goucher College; founding Director of the Transformational Leadership Certificate Program at Georgetown University; and Executive Vice President/Provost and then President of Pacifica Graduate Institute.
Her published works, many of which have been translated into numerous languages, include The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By; Awakening the Heroes Within: Twelve Archetypes To Help Us Find Ourselves and Transform Our World; The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes (co-author Margaret Mark); The Transforming Leader: New Approaches to Leadership for the Twenty-First Century; Persephone Rising: Awakening the Heroine Within; and What Stories Are You Living? Discover Your Archetypes—Transform Your
Life. In collaboration with psychologist Hugh Marr, she developed the Pearson-Marr Archetype Indicator™ (PMAI™), a scientifically validated instrument, along with several supporting publications.
Evelyn (“Evi”) Torton Beck, Professor Emerita, University of Maryland, holds Ph.D.s in both Comparative Literature and Clinical Psychology. She also received an Honorary Doctorate in Vienna, Austria from The University for Music and Performing Arts for her life’s work in the creation of interdisciplinary Women’s Studies and her continuing fight against anti-Semitism, homophobia, and all other “isms” that divide us.
Her writings include ground-breaking research on Franz Kafka, Frida Kahlo, Jewish Women’s Studies, Lesbian Studies, as well as feminist transformations of knowledge. She also works with the Fielding Graduate University’s “Creative Longevity and Wisdom” and “Somatics and Phenomenology” projects. Most recently, she has published research on the phenomenology of transformation through Sacred Circle Dance, which she continues to teach in the Washington DC area and abroad to this day.
www.evibeck.com
Claire G. Moses was the first faculty hired in Women’s Studies (in 1977) and offered the program’s first interdisciplinary courses. Over the course of her career, including as chair (1993-2003), she oversaw the program’s reorganization into a department along with the approval of the BA, MA, and PhD. Her work in building the field of Women’s Studies extended beyond the university to the level of the national (Program Directors and Administrators of the National Women’s Studies Association) and the international (the 53-country Worldwide Association of Women’s Studies/WOWS; and the Feminist Knowledge Network of women’s studies journals from more than 20 countries). From 1977-2011, she also served as Editorial Director of Feminist Studies, the pioneering interdisciplinary women’s studies journal. In 2003, she was recognized as the university’s Outstanding Woman of the Year. Dr. Moses’s research and teaching interests focus on feminist theory and histories of feminist organizing (U.S., French, international, transnational) and on the history of European women. Her publications include U.S. Women in Collective Struggle, ed. with Hartmann (1995); Feminism, Socialism, and French Romanticism, with Rabine (1993); French Feminism in the Nineteenth Century (1984), winner of the Joan Kelly Prize for the year’s best book in women’s history; and “Made in America: ‘French Feminism’ in the Academy,” Feminist Studies (Summer 1998), which also appeared in Australian Feminist Studies (1996), Nouvelles Questions Feministes (in translation, 1996), Cinquantenaire du Deuxième Sexe, ed. Delphy and Chaperon (in translation, 2002), and Beyond French Feminisms: Debates on Women, Politics, and Culture in France, 1981-2001, ed. Cèlestin, DalMolin, and Courtivron (2003).
Bonnie Thornton Dill is Professor Emerita of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Dean Emerita of the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland. She served as Chair of WGSS for eight years. During her eleven-year tenure as dean, she increased faculty diversity, led development and launch of the campus-wide Arts for All initiative; increased external support for research and scholarship by 50%, raised $80 Million in gifts, and introduced an integrated career-curriculum program for student learning. Her pioneering research on the intersections of race and gender led to the publication of three books and numerous articles and inspired her to found two nationally renowned research centers that developed and disseminated the scholarship known as intersectionality. She has served as Vice President of the American Sociological Association, President of the National Women’s Studies Association, chair of the Advisory Board of Scholars for Ms. Magazine and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Feminist Majority Foundation. Currently she is co-principal investigator on two Mellon Foundation funded projects: “Breaking the M.O.L.D. a leadership development initiative for historically underrepresented arts and humanities faculty at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD), the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), and Morgan State University and HuMetricsHSS, a national initiative that creates and supports values-enacted frameworks for understanding, evaluating and nurturing scholarly life. She has received many awards, most recently, the 2025 UMD President’s Medal, “the highest honor bestowed upon a member of the university community.”
Ruth Enid Zambrana, MSW, Ph.D., is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Co-Founding Director of the Consortium on Race, Gender, and Ethnicity, and has a secondary appointment as Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, School of Medicine. As a medical sociologist, her scholarship applies a critical intersectional lens to structural racial, Hispanic ethnicity, and gender inequities in population health and higher education trajectories. She has published widely on health inequity in her major field concentrations: women’s health, maternal and child health, socioeconomic life course impacts on health, and mental well-being of historically underrepresented minorities. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including most recently the 2021 APHA Lyndon Haviland Public Health Mentoring Award, and the 2023 John P. McGovern Endowed Lecturer Award, University of Houston College of Liberal Arts (CLASS) and Social Sciences.
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