Women's Studies chair says program can benefit society at large
Susan Lanser has been on a quest.
"Brandeis has a superb faculty with extraordinary strengths in feminist scholarship. I hope to bring people together from all disciplines, so we can have sustained conversation, and sustained curriculum and research," says Lanser, professor of English and comparative literature and chairman of the Women's Studies Program since 2001. She's also an affiliate member of the Department of Romance and Comparative Literature.
Lanser was hired when Shulamit Reinharz stepped down from the chairman's position. Reinharz, a professor of sociology who headed the Women's Studies Program for nine years, founded and directs the Women's Studies Research Center and the Hadassah International Research Center on Jewish Women at Brandeis.
"I came here with ideas, principles and knowledge of women's studies, but I don't have an agenda. Strengthening the program will be a collaborative effort," she says, true to the inclusive spirit of feminist scholarship.
Lanser's academic affiliation with women's studies was forged during her days as a graduate student. Attracted to the field's power to transform "not only intellectual inquiry, but academic institutions themselves," she was one of the first to teach women's studies at the University of Wisconsin. She also helped establish a women's studies program at Georgetown University, and was on the faculty of the Women's Studies Program at the University of Maryland while she directed that school's comparative literature program.
Her first book, The Narrative Act, applies feminist theory to the analysis of narrative form. She is also the author of Fictions of Authority: Women Writers and Narrative Voice, which explores strategies in women's novels across three centuries. Lanser has edited three other volumes, including a special journal issue on Disciplining Feminism? The Future of Women's Studies and an edition of Helen Maria Williams's 1790 letters on the French Revolution. She is completing a book on female intimacies in the 18th Century.
"Women's studies has a very special mission to change the world," says Lanser with the caution of someone aware of the weight such a pronouncement carries. "If women's studies is to work, it's because it makes change, not only for women, but for all people. We need new theories, new programs for action as the world changes. It's very easy for gains to be lost."
The Women's Studies Program at Brandeis offers joint master's degrees with nine different departments as well as an undergraduate certificate. It also operates a graduate colloquium series. A Hewlett Foundation grant helped to create a faculty seminar to shape the Women's Studies Program's core curriculum.