In Lauren Duca's op-ed at the Guardian on December 16, 2015, she took comments that I offered about pop singer Beyoncé out of context for a larger argument she wanted to make about the canceling of a course called "Politicizing Beyoncé." The course was formerly offered in the Rutgers Department of Women's and Gender Studies, where I am an assistant professor. I did not know about the course having been canceled until Duca called me, and I informed her that I was not able to speak at any level to the reasons for the course cancellation during our conversation. When she asked me whether Women's and Gender Studies as a discipline was hostile to the study of pop culture figures like Beyoncé, I disagreed. In Fall 2015, I taught an upper-level special topics course on Hip Hop Generation Feminism, in which we discussed many pop culture figures including Beyoncé. I also let her know that in my experience, the Rutgers Department of Women's and Gender Studies has been incredibly supportive of my work as a scholar of Black feminism and popular culture. My larger comments about the valuation of scholarship on Black women in academe more generally was meant to address a general trend, rather than to indict or otherwise implicate my department, who in fact supports the very kinds of scholarship that counteracts this trend. The ways she chose to frame my comments supported an agenda and set of beliefs that I do not share, and I regret that my comments have been taken in this manner. Rutgers Department of Women's and Gender Studies has been critical to supporting sound and rigorous Black feminist scholarship nationally and they continue to support both faculty and graduate students who work in these areas.

Rutgers Department of Women's and Gender Studies Statement on Politicizing Beyoncé

We were saddened to read the recent Guardian essay written regarding “Politicizing Beyoncé”, a course formerly taught here in Women's & Gender Studies by Kevin Allred, an ABD graduate student who served as a part time lecturer.

Though we decline to comment regarding any particular class or instructor, we would like to emphasize that in line with university requirements and best academic practices, all courses are routinely examined, and course schedules are determined based on a number of factors, including, but not limited to, departmental needs and program requirements, faculty expertise, and intellectual integrity. Course enrollments alone however popular the course, cannot become the deciding factor for offering a course in any given year.

The Women's & Gender Studies department at Rutgers University is one of the oldest and most highly regarded programs in the country. We have noted Black feminist scholars in our core and graduate faculty, including Nikol Alexander-Floyd, current undergraduate director, Abena P.A. Busia, current department chair, as well as Brittney Cooper (whose comments to the Guardian were taken out of context), among others. These Black feminist scholars have contributed greatly towards the positive history of teaching black feminist scholarship in our department. It is well known that courses on black feminism and that center on Black women have been offered through our department for decades, and we take great pride in the work we do.

Cheers Dr. Gray White! 

Dr. Deborah Gray White, Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of History and Women's and Gender Studies Core Faculty member, was recently selected to chair a new committee that will study the role of enslaved and disenfranchised populations in Rutgers-New Brunswick's history. 

In a recent announcement (see below), Chancellor Richard Edwards explained the significance of the new committee in light of Rutgers' 250th Anniversary. The announcement also highlights Dr. Gray White's long list of credentials that contribute to her appointment, including a stellar body of academic work on the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in African American and American Women's history.

To view Dr. Gray White's full WGS faculty profile, which includes research and teaching interests, click here. 

Monday, November 23, 2015

To Members of the Rutgers-New Brunswick Community,

Recently, I informed our community of the formation of a new committee to study the role of enslaved and disenfranchised populations in Rutgers University-New Brunswick’s history.  The committee will be charged with examining the role that the people of these disadvantaged groups played in the founding and development of Rutgers-New Brunswick, and with making recommendations to me on how the University can best acknowledge and commemorate their influence on our history. The committee will be composed of faculty, staff, and student members. I am enormously pleased to announce that Dr. Deborah Gray White, Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of History, has agreed to chair the committee.

Professor White, an American historian who has been at Rutgers-New Brunswick since 1984, specializes in African American and American Women’s history, particularly with regard to issues of identity and the intersection of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Dr. White’s many books include the path-breaking Ar’n’t I A Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South, originally published in 1985 and now in its second edition; Let My People Go: African-Americans 1804-1860 and Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894-1994. She co-authored Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans, which is in its second edition. Dr. White is also a Woodrow Wilson International Scholar and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow.

During her 31 years at Rutgers-New Brunswick, Dr. White has not only been a scholar and teacher, but she also co-directed of The Black Atlantic: Race, Nation and Gender project at the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis and chaired the School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of History.

I can think of no one more qualified to lead this meaningful examination of our history than Professor White. Her leadership and wisdom has for more than three decades been an immense resource to the University and those qualities have never been more essential for us than they are now. With that in mind, please join me in congratulating and supporting Dr. White.

Richard L. Edwards, Ph.D.

Chancellor, Rutgers—New Brunswick

Wednesday, October 14 - WGS Town Hall (11am - 1pm)

Email discussion items to Jasbir Puar (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)  RSVP for lunch to Suzy Kiefer (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Monday, October 19 - Convivial Conversation (11am - 1pm)

Join us in our first Convivial Conversation of the semester with PhD Candidate Nafisa Tanjeem and Professor Mary Hawkesworth

Mapping Transnational Activism in Social Media: The Case of Rana Plaza Collapse in Bangladesh

RSVP to Suzy (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) and on Facebook! 

We are proud to celebrate the accomplishments of our graduate students in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, whose work continues to advance critical scholarship and social engagement. Through innovative research, publications, conference presentations, and community-based projects, our students are making meaningful contributions to feminist inquiry and to pressing conversations about power, identity, and equity. Their achievements reflect both intellectual rigor and a deep commitment to transformative knowledge production.

• Rosemary Ndubuizu was awared a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, which awards her a full year of funding to finish her dissertation. 
• Lindsey Whitmore was awarded the School of Arts and Sciences Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Education.
• Susana Galán was recently awarded the Bevier Fellowship, a highly competitive award given to dissertation-stage doctoral students at Rutgers to support completion of the PhD. This is the first time a WGS PhD student has won this award since the program's inception in 2001.
• Rasha Moumne was awarded a Social Science Research Council (SSRC) Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship, which will allow her to do fieldwork in Lebanon this summer.
• Carolina Alonso Bejarano was awarded the Graduate School of New Brunswick's Dissertation Teaching Award. GSNB makes two awards each year to graduate students who have shown excellence in both teaching and research and who propose to offer an upper-division undergraduate course in the major in the area of the student’s dissertation research. Carolina will teach a course on "Decolonial New Jersey."
• Max Hantel was recently awarded a two-year postdoctoral fellowship to begin Fall 2015 at the Gender Research Institute at Dartmouth (GRID). Max will take part in a seminar on "Gender Matters: Feminist Ecologies and Materialities."
• Recent PhD graduate Laura Lovin won a two-year Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship from the European Commission. Her research project is "The Race, Class and Gender of Transnational Urban Labour: Romanian Workers in the Cities of London and NYC,” and her collaborating institution is the Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research at London South Bank University.

Max was recently awarded a two-year postdoctoral fellowship to begin Fall 2015 at the Gender Research Institute at Dartmouth (GRID). Max will take part in a seminar on "Gender Matters: Feminist Ecologies and Materialities."

Recent WGS PhD Dr. Laura Lovin recently won a two-year Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship from the European Commission. Her research project is "The Race, Class and Gender of Transnational Urban Labour: Romanian Workers in the Cities of London and NYC,” and her collaborating institution is the Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research at London South Bank University. Cheers!

Dr. Cooper was awarded the Darwin T. Turner Award from African American Review. Her essay, "Maybe I'll be a Poet, Rapper: Hip Hop Feminism and Literacy Aesthetics in Push" won the top journal prize given each year for the best essay representing any period in African American or pan-African literature and culture.

Women's & Gender Studies Graduate Program Presents:
Convivial Conversations Series

Monday, February 16, 2015

11am - 1 p.m. - Ruth Dill Johnson Crockett Building - Douglass Campus

A conversation between Rasha Moumne, PhD Candidate, and Professor Jasbir Puar

Light refreshments served. Please RSVP to Suzy Kiefer (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Rasha Moumne, PhD Candidate:

“What is a gay refugee? Producing wartime queerness between Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon”

This paper is an initial exploration of the discursive and legal production of the figure of the Middle Eastern wartime gay refugee in the wake of the US invasion of Iraq, the ongoing war in Syria, and the emergence of a gay refugee assistance industry in Lebanon.

Professor Jasbir Puar:

“Inhumanist Occupation: Palestine and the Right to Maim”

This talk looks at the productivity of disablement as a war tactic of the Israeli state in Gaza and the West Bank. It argues for a revisioning of biopolitics that accounts for maiming as a goal of settler colonialism that defies easy demarcations between making live and letting die. Such an analysis complicates recent debates about the function of "collateral damage" by mining the schism between targeting to kill and targeting to disable.

Open to Grads, Undergrads, Faculty and Staff

Wednesday, Feb. 25 // 11am - 1pm

Please send your agenda items to Professor Jasbir Puar at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.