By Sam King-Shaw
In the spring of 2022, the focus of my teaching assistantship was to help the chair of my department, Global Gender and Sexuality Studies, in organizing a conference to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Women’s Studies College at the University at Buffalo (UB). More specifically, my task was to conduct research in the University Archives, construct a formal timeline, and narrate the “survival story” of Women’s Studies at UB. As my research progressed, recurring themes emerged, by which I mean the central issues and concerns that animated the history of the Women’s Studies College and remained legible in the archive decades later.
I organized my findings into the timeline spanning 1969 to 2022, and four major themes of the survival story of the Women’s Studies College at UB: institutional precarity, controversy, radical roots, and intersectionality.
As a first-year graduate student, this project was a crash course in archival research. I looked through every box of materials from the Women’s Studies College, the later Women’s Studies program, and more recent records related to the Gender Studies program and department. I focused on the voices and events that were legible in the sources available from the University Archives – for the most part, newspaper articles and advertisements marked significant events, while memorandums sent between University administration and Women’s Studies faculty attested to the difficulties of maintaining Women’s Studies in an institutional setting that was often hostile. However, in these available sources, the perspectives and voices of students and community members were mostly inaccessible. After looking through as many sources as I could– which also included meeting minutes, event posters, flyers, proposals for a BA in Women’s Studies, conference reports, and course catalogs – I organized my findings into the timeline spanning 1969 to 2022, and four major themes of the survival story of the Women’s Studies College at UB: institutional precarity, controversy, radical roots, and intersectionality.
In the history of the Women’s Studies College at UB, precarity and controversy were often deeply interwoven. Both themes clearly shaped the archival remains, and therefore the institutional memory, of the Women’s Studies College. At the core of the College’s founding was a challenge to institutional, hierarchal power. The College was rooted in the contemporaneous activism of the 1960s, including the women’s movement, gay liberation, Third World movements, and student and anti-war movements. Further, students and community members held leadership positions in the College. However, these “radical roots” were often met with institutional hostility.
Figure 1. Women’s Studies College Charter, 1974. Courtesy University Archives, University at Buffalo, the State University of New York.
1974 was a critical year for the Women’s Studies College and exemplified the twin themes of precarity and controversy. To remain recognized by the University Collegiate System, the Women’s Studies College was compelled to undergo the chartering process, which would give the university more control over the College. Controversy abounded, particularly due to the College’s radical demands (including continued student and community involvement in the College’s governance), several women-only courses, and the language of their charter. The charter rejected “man” as a neutral term for “person,” and used “woman/women” instead (as shown in Figure 1). Despite university backlash, the community and student body rallied around the College. Ultimately, the university threatened to withdraw funding if the Women’s Studies College did not open all their courses to men. This threat underscores the institutional precarity that the college faced, as they could be pressed into making unwanted changes in order to remain in operation. Another key element of institutional precarity that emerged over and over in the archive was the lack of resources, both in terms of funding and in terms of faculty, staff, and work-study support to maintain the operations of the College.
While precarity and controversy around the Women’s Studies College gestures toward questions of disposability and institutional memory, it is also striking that precarity and controversy also produced much of the archival material that remains. Controversy produced materials that marked the existence of the College – threats from the university regularly sparked student and community protest, which generated media coverage in student newspapers, as well as flyers, handouts, and press releases, that eventually ended up in the university archives. Precarity, especially budget cuts, also produced paper trails – concerned newspaper headlines, frantic memos between faculty members and to administrators, even at least one open letter from faculty to the university Provost and President in 1985 (Figure 2). The institutional memory that remains of the College is undoubtedly shaped, and even produced, by its history of institutional precarity.
Figure 2. University of Buffalo Reporter, 1985. Courtesy University Archives, University at Buffalo, the State University of New York
During my research in the University Archives, the stories and themes that most resonates with me emphasized the radical goals, persistence, and resilience of Women’s Studies faculty, staff, students, and community members in the face of an institutional power – precisely those parts of the history that emerged from precarity and controversy. At the same time, I knew that many voices are missing from the archival record. It’s likely that the voices of students and community members are the most glaring absences, as these two groups were the first two be cut out of the College’s governance structure as Women’s Studies became increasingly institutionalized within the university. Whose voices are rendered disposable, and what forces determine the primary sources that survive for later research?
In the fall of 2022, I had the incredible opportunity to present the Women’s Studies College timeline at the 50th anniversary conference, “Visionaries and Troublemakers.” Several faculty members and students from the early days of the College were present, and there were many intriguing differences and conflicts between what I found in the archive and what people remembered from their own experiences. These conflicts illustrate the gaps between what can show up in the archive and what is missing and prompted me to think about why these gaps persist. Of course, it is not always possible to hear firsthand recollections from those represented in primary sources. However, interrogating the possible incongruence between primary sources and memoires is an important way to consider how histories of marginalization and systems of power can shape the archival records that remain.
Whose voices are rendered disposable, and what forces determine the primary sources that survive for later research?
My time in the University Archives showed me how important preserving history is, and how fragile historical memory can be, especially among groups and projects that are not valued from the institutional perspective. Again, I regularly found myself wondering whose voices were missing in the remaining evidence of the Women’s Studies College. Further, the question of preserving history (especially primary sources) has taken on another layer of meaning in the digital era. When I was in the archives, there was a very sudden decrease in available materials once I moved into the 21 st century, as records transitioned from paper memos to emails, for example. What will the primary sources from my department look like in 25 or 50 years? While I can’t predict the future, I look forward to seeing how we rise to the new challenge of preserving recent history and continue to learn (and teach) from vital primary sources.
Image Citations:
Figure 1. Women’s Studies College Charter, 1974. Courtesy University Archives, University at Buffalo, the State University of New York.
Figure 2. University of Buffalo Reporter, 1985. Courtesy University Archives, University at Buffalo, the State University of New York
Sam King-Shaw is a Schomburg Fellow, PhD student and Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Department of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University at Buffalo.