By Khanum Shaikh

The Women's Studies Program at UCLA is in the initial phases of envisioning a collaborative transnational project that links the UCLA Women's Studies Program with institutions and scholars from universities in the Global South. The project will start as a collaboration between various campuses of the University of California, (Berkeley, Davis, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles), and four Arab Universities including institutes in the Arab Middle East. Thus far, initial contact has been made with the following Arab universities: the American University in Cairo (AUC), American University of Beirut (AUB), Birzeit University (Ramallah), Lebanese American University (Beirut [LAU]), and Ahfad University for Women in Northern Muslim Sudan. These institutions represent a range of gender/women studies programs, institutes, centers, and initiatives, as well as diverse perspectives and goals.

While the above project is a collaboration between four University of California campuses and institutions/centers in the Arab Middle East, the UCLA Women's Studies Program and the Center for the Study of Women are also interested in building linkages with other institutions in the Global South - specifically in South and South East Asia. We are currently in the process of identifying different institutions and initiating dialogue to begin cultivating such linkages.

The goal of these projects is to create a meaningful exchange of ideas between Global South gender/women's studies programs and Euroamerican/Global North gender/women's studies programs through faculty and student exchanges, workshops, joint conferences, teleconferencing, sharing and building links to websites, co-mentoring, and the general sharing of resources and personnel. Our hope is that such a collaboration will enhance or establish anew all of the programs, institutes, and centers, and build intellectual community. Through this collaborative initiative we wish to foster transnational dialogue, cross regional networking, and interdisciplinarity within the field of Women's Studies. We also hope to contribute to the transformation of the field of women's studies and gender and feminist research, intellectually, academically and institutionally. Finally, we would like to build cosmopolitan and transnational research projects, curriculum, student body, and faculty.

Thus far, Anthropology/Women's Studies Professor Sondra Hale has been heading these efforts with the assistance of Khanum Shaikh and Sabah Uddin - doctoral students in the Women's Studies Program at UCLA. A committee of faculty from various departments who are interested in transnational work, as well as graduate students, will be formed to carry on this project.

Thank you, Professor Hale, for your vision and committed work.


Khanum Shaikh is a Ph.D. candidate in the UCLA Women's Studies Programs