Though it drew attention last year when a lawsuit accused Columbia of showing preference to women’s studies by calling feminism a religion, the Institute for Research on Women and Gender has only a limited reach.
The institute doesn’t have its own faculty, but rather allows students to take an interdisciplinary approach to gender studies with professors in other departments. This status, some say, has kept the institute from satisfying the full scope of student interest. The institute oversees the women’s and gender studies undergraduate major at Columbia.
Despite an extended network of faculty involvement with the institute—the Web site boasts 75 Columbia and Barnard instructors—only a handful of students get degrees in the major each year.
Since only departments are allowed to independently tenure professors, all professors in IRWaG are jointly appointed through the Institute and other Columbia departments—meaning that all appointments are already tenured. IRWaG fall director Katherine Biers, for example, is also an assistant professor of English and comparative literature. Biers said the joint appointment system has been beneficial for the Institute.
“Study of gender is something that should go on in all disciplines,” she noted.
Still, the system means that new appointments for professors within the program are scarcer than the Institute would hope, said Marianne Hirsch, who holds positions in both IRWaG and the English and comparative literature departments.
“Sometimes we would like to make appointments,” she said, adding that the inability to grant tenure leads to “less stability and continuity” among faculty. Since many faculty may have to leave the
University if they cannot get tenure from an affiliated department, Hirsch said, it “would be very helpful to grant tenure.”
Even as the interdisciplinary structure of the program could be conducive to high turnover rates in professors, Hirsch said she didn’t think students in the undergraduate program have been negatively affected.
“I actually haven’t really experienced any turnover,” said Clea Litewka, CC ’10, who was a major in women’s and gender studies at IRWaG, but now concentrates in the subject.
Biers said she doubts there will be any new faculty appointments in the near future, though others in the department said there may be more appointments in the pipeline, which would open up the possibility of new classes.
“What’s frustrating is that I have had very few opportunities to take gender studies courses,” Litewka said, adding that there is “a real lack of LGBTQ courses … that focus exclusively on lesbian, gay, transgender, transsexual, and queer studies” and this perceived curricular hole could be filled by a faculty who teach queer studies.
According to the course bulletin, there is one LGBTQ course taught through Barnard, called “Discourses of Desire: Introduction To Gay and Lesbian Studies,” but it is not offered this year. There are no LGBTQ courses listed for Columbia.
Litewka also noted that the institute does not have a public health professor, which she feels is “a huge interest, usually, of people in women’s and gender studies.” One course on “Women and Health,” was offered by Barnard this fall, according to the bulletin, and none are listed for Columbia under the women’s and gender studies program.
Anna Couturier, CC ’10 and a women’s and gender studies major, has other concerns about the Institute.
“Although the lack of departmental recognition hasn’t really influenced my experience in a big way, I understand how much pressure Columbia’s lack of commitment to the important work being done in IRWaG has put on the program,” Couturier said.
“Unfortunately, the devastatingly inaccurate assumption that a focus on gender is an outdated lens of study creates an atmosphere in which IRWaG’s future is entirely dependent on the committed faculty who‑from year to year‑refuse to let Columbia lose such a vital part of its academic community,” she said.
“From my perspective I see the situation of IRWaG as analogous to the uneasiness Columbia has with many professors in the MEALAC department, whose research also interrogates many of the norms of Western academia,” she added.
Still, Litewka said she has enjoyed her time in IRWaG, and noted that students graduating with the major feel supported when preparing for graduate school. “They all really feel like they get great recommendations. They get a lot of help with their theses,” she said.
Litewka also noted that, while she appreciates Barnard’s involvement in Columbia’s program, she wishes that the Institute could branch out. “The problem is that we’re highly dependent on the Barnard women’s studies program on the undergraduate level,” she said.
Hirsch explained that IRWaG and the Barnard women’s studies department plan their curricula together each semester so courses do not overlap. “Students in our classes are from both Barnard and Columbia. Thesis students work together in a group,” she said.
The relationship between the women’s studies majors at both colleges is very close, said Janet Jakobsen, director of the Barnard Center for Research on Women, pointing out that they often hold events together.
Litewka added, “I wish there was a way, on the other hand, to attract more men to the major.”
Amber Tunnell contributed reporting to this article.
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