Sandra Harding
Director, 1996 - 1999

During Sandra Harding’s directorship, CSW continued to develop new programs and events, offering some 60 lectures and conferences each year.  Several new student awards were endowed, the first-ever Meet Our Authors: Book Signing and Reception was held, and CSW sponsored numerous lecture series, including ones on Feminist Controversies and one on Gender and Science.

Accomplishments: 1996 to 1997

In 1996, two publications emerged from the proceedings of CSW sponsored conferences: Going Public: Women and Publishing in Early Modern France, published by Cornell University Press and Encountering the Glass Ceiling: Gender, Values and the Structure of Work, published by the UCLA Institute of Industrial Relations.
 
CSW co-sponsored events organized to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of UCLA's Women's Studies Program, including talks by renowned speakers Catharine Stimpson, Patricia Hill Collins, and Adrienne Rich, as well as two panel discussions, In the Beginning...The Early Years of Women's Studies held on January 19th, 1996 and Chicana Feminism and Chicana Studies held on May 1, 1996.
 
Many esteemed scholars delivered papers as part of CSW's assorted ongoing lecture series in 1995-1996, including Teresa De Lauretis, Elizabeth Frazer, Eve Kosofshy Sedgwick, Sondra Hale, Gail Kligman, Marjorie Garber, and Anne Friedberg.
 
Thinking Gender, CSW's sixth annual graduate research conference, co-sponsored by USC, was held.
 
 CSW co-sponsored quite a few conferences in 1995-1996, most notably the international conference, Structural Adjustment: Comparative Perspectives, taking place on February 23, 1996 and the conference Joan of Arc in History and Film, held on May 2-4, 1996. Additionally, CSW co-sponsored two symposiums, Childbirth in Early Modern Europe, held on February 9, 1996, and Essentialism and Representation on May 11th, as well as two exhibitions, Votes for Women: A 75th Anniversary Celebration at the Huntington Library from October 24, 1995-January 28, 1996, and Sexual Politics: Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party in Feminist Art History at the Armand Hammer Museum from April 23-August 18, 1996.

Three new student awards were endowed--two graduate and one undergraduate: the George Eliot Dissertation Prize ($1000) for the best dissertation focusing on gender criticism utilizing historical perspective in either literature or the arts; the Constance Coiner Graduate Fellowship ($1000) for a graduate student engaged in research on feminist and working-class issues with demonstrated excellence in teaching; and the Constance Coiner Undergraduate Prize ($500) for an undergraduate student who demonstrates an interest in working-class and feminist issues as well as activist practice for social change.
 
The Center worked closely with the project Women, Gender and The Transition in Central and Eastern Europe, headed by Professor Gail Kligman (Sociology) and Co-PI Susan Gal of the University of Chicago, to organize a major international conference held in the summer of 1996 just outside of Lucca, Italy, bringing together twenty feminist scholars from Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Germany, and the United States.
 
The seventh annual Thinking Gender conference, co-sponsored by CSW and USC, brought forty-five graduate students from six regional campuses to present their research on women and gender issues.
 
Many esteemed scholars delivered papers as part of CSW's assorted ongoing lecture series in 1996-1997, including Constance Penley, Kathryn Norberg, Tillie Olsen, Mai-Khanh Tran, and Harryette Mullen. Together with the African Student Union and Nommo, CSW also sponsored a talk by Angela Davis on Affirmative Action and the Struggle for Social Justice delivered on October 18, 1996 and sponsored a talk by bell hooks, entitled resisting representations: race, gender, class and culture on April 21, 1997. Rosalind Petchesky delivered the Anniversary of Roe v. Wade Speech, entitled Sexual Rights: International Rhetoric and Intimate Claims on April 21, 1997. Together with the Center for African American Studies, CSW co-sponsored a February 13, 1997 talk by Cheryl Harris, Sojourner Truth: Constructing and Recovering Race and Gender, as part of a celebration of black history month. CSW also co-sponsored four major conferences, two symposiums, a workshop, and two exhibitions, most notably the conference Working Women: The Struggle Continues, with Karen Nussbaum and Maria Elena Durazo, held on November 20, 1996 and the conference "Nur Eine Frau": Women Writers in Exile, 1933-1997, held on May 2, 1997 in conjunction with an exhibit at LACMA.

1997 to 1998

1998 to 1999

During 1998-1999 academic year, CSW offered sixty-seven programs, twenty-two of which were solely initiated and organized by CSW. Most notably, The Feminist Controversies Series continued for a second successful year and featured one UCLA faculty panel discussion per quarter. The Center hosted its third annual Meet Our Authors: Book Signing and Reception in December, which featured thirty publications from twenty-seven authors. The center also hosted its annual fall reception, and a reception in spring to celebrate the arrival at UCLA of the leading feminist journal Signs. Bonnie Spanier gave the Roe v. Wade Lecture, entitled Your Silence Will Not Protect You: Breast Cancer Activism. Among the renowned scholars speaking as part of CSW's continuing lecture series were Francoise Lionnet, Roger Gorski, Kimberle Crenshaw, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. CSW also organized the 9th annual Thinking Gender graduate conference.
 
CSW co-sponsored four lecture series (comprising twenty-three separate programs), including the Sociology and Gender Series, Gender and Community Development, and the Annual Lecture Series for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Studies Program and twenty-two additional events (including six conferences and the campus wide UCLA Women 4 Change 2000). CSW co-sponsored the first annual QGrad conference as well as the LGBT Regents' Lecturer, June Reinisch.