Women's and Gender Studies Oral History Archive launches at UM-Dearborn
By Fatima El-Bedany
Kochoff Hall on Oct 27, generations of feminists crowded together to celebrate the launch of the Women and Gender Studies, LGBTQ studies, and Will+ oral history archive.
Building on the empowering work and warmth created by decades of the program's work, the event paid tribute to the directors of the Women and Gender Studies program on the University of Michigan-Dearborn campus and allowed them to preserve their histories and legacies in their own voices. In the audience were many alumni who were previous members of Will+, the student organization in which students applied their classes to practice.
A panel was held with the original creators of the Women and Gender Studies program and of Will+. The panel featured Suzanne Bergeron, Rashmi Luthra, Heather Simpson, a UM-Dearborn Women and Gender Studies and LGBTQ Studies alum who is now a family and marriage therapist, and the current director of Will+, Amny Shuraydi.
The panel was moderated by one of the student researchers who is a member of Will+. It ended with questions and comments from the audience where heartwarming anecdotes were presented by current and former students of the UM-Dearborn’s WGST program, and the change that the discipline had brought them.
The oral history archive, which was supported by the University of Michigan Inclusive History Project, was created following many retirements in the Women and Gender studies program. A majority of the people who created and nurtured the program at UM-Dearborn have left campus, so the oral history archive was a way to preserve the history, their experiences and institutional knowledge they built from the program.
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