Amidst the flurry of conferences and calls for papers seeking to articulate the state of Women’s Studies as an academic discipline, (1) graduate students in Women’s, Gender, Feminist, and Sexuality Studies are adding to the debate. The next generation of scholars held a general conference in feminist scholarship at Rutgers in April, 2006. Drawing on the assumption that as graduate students we have to do cutting-edge research, and aiming to intellectually engage in the breadth of this research, it seemed useful to sketch a map of where and what our scholarship is to get a sense of where we might be going and what exactly it is we are doing.

With this in mind, Sonja Thomas, president of the Rutgers Women’s and Gender Studies Graduate Student Association, put out a call to US-based PhD programs in Women’s, Gender, Feminist, or Sexuality Studies in the spring of 2005. Graduate students responded from ten schools, and The New Directions in Feminist Scholarship conference emerged from their efforts. (2) As the host institution, Rutgers located funding for advertising, all conference meals, and housing for 20 presenters. Various aspects of the conference were an exercise in putting theories of collaboration and power sharing into practice. Over a six-month period, committee members debated questions ranging from the wording of calls for papers to the selection of conference abstracts. Committee member Jennifer Musto (UCLA) recalls that after debating whether to allow concentrators to submit abstracts and present at the conference, there was an acute consciousness of the desire to create intellectual space for graduate students located in stand-alone PhD programs. Although the committee ultimately decided to include concentrators, preference was given to graduate students in stand-alone programs.

This issue of institutional location calls to mind Wendy Brown’s article on “The Impossibility of Women’s Studies.” One of her key points was her assertion that interventions from Women’s Studies scholars might be more fruitful in disciplinarily grounded spaces. Although the continual growth of stand-alone PhD programs in Women’s or Gender Studies in some ways challenges Brown’s argument, there is certainly solvency to her thesis. One dilemma that comes to mind regarding current graduate students in such PhD programs is whether our competency in other disciplinary fields holds the kind of institutional currency that would allow us to obtain jobs in those departments. When one considers that there is a whole generation of scholars in stand-alone Women’s Studies PhD programs, many of whom have had their entire post-secondary training in interdisciplinary fields like Women’s Studies, are disciplinary spaces even an option for us? For some, interdisciplinary spaces may be the only place we can do our work. What we have yet to learn—and for which there is yet no data—is whether scholars with PhDs in Women’s Studies will be employed in Women’s Studies departments or in traditional disciplines.

The benefit of having the majority of presenters based in Women’s, Gender, Feminist, or Sexuality Studies was coherence across panels. The scholars grounded their work in feminist or queer theories, rather than drawing primarily on literature from traditional disciplines. Despite the variety of topics in the thirty papers presented, there seemed to be common theoretical languages underlying all the panels. (3) Such shared conceptual tongues have sometimes been harder to identify at multidisciplinary conferences using gender or sexuality as the primary category of analysis.

The conference sparked the exciting theoretical dimensions presented, but I want to note that of equal importance were the professional development opportunities. In addition to meeting future colleagues and dialogue partners, there were structured breakout sessions to debate contentious issues in Women’s Studies and feminist scholarship. These were critical moments where we could take a step back and begin to tease out the disciplinary possibilities of Women’s Studies, and what our place in it might be.

However, many of the richest conversations took place informally: over meals, during coffee breaks, or out playing pool. It was immensely valuable to compare notes on the cultures of our different institutions. How is “Introduction to Women’s Studies” taught? What is the process for advancing to candidacy? What difference does it make to have a department versus a program? How are graduate students funded? What are the dynamics amongst faculty members? Do graduate students imitate those dynamics? Why are race and sexuality still being pitted against one another as categories of identity? Is the perceived Humanities/Social Science divide useful when it comes to thinking about interdisciplinary scholarship? And if we want jobs when we complete our degrees, what are the advantages of disciplinary versus interdisciplinary research?

These exchanges allowed for a critical self-reflexivity that is difficult to achieve within the confines of a home institution. They also highlighted the tensions we may feel as upcoming scholars grounding our work in a field that is rather ambiguously defined, while negotiating pressures to link our work to traditional disciplines. This leads to an awkward game of Women’s Studies Twister™, in which we have fingers in disciplines and a toehold in Women’s Studies, simultaneously reaching backward and forward in theoretical space while straddling an increasingly uncomfortable canonical divide.

I keep coming back to Rachel Lee’s “Notes from the (non)Field: Theorizing and Teaching ‘Women of Color’” when I think about the Feminist Directions conference. One of Lee’s major critiques was directed at the benefits of roving, especially when this is linked to an idealized notion of membership in a particular category of identity. As Lee argues, “guerrilla tactics” and “haunting space without ever gaining territory from which to speak is tiring.” (Lee, 2002) Although Lee was speaking specifically to the use of the term “woman of color” and the bodies of “women of color,” her argument also has relevance for those of us in Women’s Studies who are (or are also) “queer” or “disabled” or who come from “poor” or “working-class” backgrounds. This issue came up numerous times at the conference, both in paper presentations and during informal conversations. It is still relevant for those of us doing feminist scholarship to question why we utilize particular terms, and the ways the specificity of identity becomes erased in the process of being lumped into a category of identity.

It might also be useful to think about the ways being a “Women’s Studies scholar” has itself become a category of identity within academic institutions. Whatever our relationship to power and privilege as individuals within Women’s Studies, it is worthwhile to note that Women’s Studies as a field doesn’t hold much institutional privilege. It appears that most scholars aligned with Women’s Studies have to develop sophisticated skills in moving in and out of disciplinary conversations. While this process is easier for some than others, pushing against the boundaries of disciplines in which we are outsiders can be exhausting. This conference helped to carve out a small space in which to stake our theoretical and epistemological claims to what we do: feminist scholarship that negotiates both the contradictions and the possibilities of Women’s Studies.