Women's Center: 25 Years and Counting
"Remembering Audre Lorde: In Celebration
of Black Women Writers, Scholars,
Artists and Activists"
A Symposium in Celebration of the Women's Research & Resource Center's 25th Anniversary
October 27-29, 2006
“Our goal is to teach women of color how to use analytical, organizing and creative tools in the never-ending struggle for equality and justice” Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall (2006)
During a year when Spelman College is commemorating 125 years as a nationally and internationally recognized site of Black women’s intellectual and artistic achievements and accomplishments, the Women’s Research and Resource Center is concurrently celebrating 25 years of outstanding feminist intellectual and activist acclaim.
The record speaks for itself. From the year of its inception in July 1981, to the successful initiation of a minor in Women’s Studies in 1996, and the eventual establishment of a multidisciplinary major in Comparative Women’s Studies; from publishing a feminist journal SAGE for thirteen years (1983 -1995), and accomplishing a plethora of activist/intellectual and academic goals, the WRRC has excelled both as a space of radical feminist scholarship and activism within this community and the wider national context.
In terms of international feminist activism and academic excellence, the Spelman College Women’s Research and Resource Center has been a consistently vibrant site for transnational African feminist intellectual exchange and activist networking. Over the past twenty-three years, the Women’s Center has engaged the internationalism of African women’s lives, knowledge production and liberation struggles through a variety of modalities: for example, curricular offerings and course content; community-based organization partnerships; hosting and engaging in national/international women’s conferences and gatherings; involvement with guest scholar-activists through invited lectures, papers and supported research, and faculty development on global feminisms.
The Women’s Center was represented at the Fourth World Conference on women in Beijing, china (1995), the women of Africa and the African Diaspora (WAAD) Conference in Madagascar (2001), and the 8 th International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women in Uganda (2002). The Center has also hosted invited African descendent women scholars and women-led organizations, across the disciplines, from around the world, including Trinidad, Jamaica, South Africa, Nigeria, Swaziland, Canada and India. Most recently, the Women’s Center and SisterLove, Inc. collaboratively organized an International Conference on Women, Girls and HIV/AIDS in Africa and the African Diaspora (June 2004) themed “Learning From Our Lives, For Our Lives.”
At this point, the Women’s Center is poised to move to another developmental level in its engagement with transnational(izing) African feminisms. The most recent initiative in this regard – “Globalizing African Diasporan Women’s Studies”-- is a three-year Ford Foundation funded project aimed at engaging and strengthening the direct links between/with African and African diasporan women’s studies scholars, programs, departments, centers and projects through five main strategic components:
- Faculty/scholar exchange and development
- Research and lecture collaborations
- Pedagogical and curricular development
- Transnational student exchanges and internship/practicums
- A working papers series.
As a continuing expression of this magnificent feminist intellectual and activist tradition, the idea of a Planning Meeting arose which was imagined as an opportunity to:
- Reassess and explore the past quarter century of scholarship and activism
- Reflect upon the successes and the achievements of all who have contributed in myriad ways to making the WRRC the special place that it has become
- Consider the current challenges and future possibilities that lie ahead
The Planning Meeting is to be held as part of a larger Celebratory Moment, which recognizes, in particular, the signal contribution of Audre Lorde in the crafting of the WRRC as a radical feminist site. It will draw together only a few of the numerous sister-feminists whose insights and experiences are deemed critical to the future success and sustainability of the WRRC.
