And I'll talk and make sure it's load enough.
Right, okay.
This is the interview with Judy Hudson by Bonnie Spaniard.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
The date is June 9, 1997 and we're in Judy Hudson's house.
And so I've asked Judy to talk about in what capacities she's been involved with in studies
at the University of Albany when she first involved in what the circumstances of that.
And then, you can get on this other stuff.
Well, I first became involved.
Let me go back to before I came to the University of Albany because, you know, how did I get entered into the Loon Studies?
Well, I really didn't know much about Loon Studies.
And in 1977, 1978, I went back to school for a second master at the College of Human Development at Penn State.
And this was in a program, an interdisciplinary program called Individual and Family Studies,
which was looking at sociological and psychological aspects of the development of individuals and a family.
And I got really interested in sex role.
And I say that I got my masters in sex role because I tailored everything towards that.
And then when I came here, the summer that I came here before I started working at the University,
there was a conference in Cornell on Androgenic, which was an interest of mine.
And I decided to go to it.
So I called the conference people and I said, was there anyone from the Albany area?
Albany area who was going to the conference because I thought, perhaps we could share a ride and it would give me a chance to meet somebody in the neighborhood sort of,
because I didn't know anybody or very few people here.
And it turned out that Lib Burns, who was in the counseling center at the University, was going to the conference.
And she called me or I called her and we shared a ride there.
And in fact, I think as I recall, we shared a room there.
And it was a wonderful conference.
Some of my friends from graduate school were there, unknowing, unbeknownst to me.
They attended too.
So then when I got to job at the University, I called Lib and I said, guess what?
I got to job at the University and she said, oh good.
And we got to, this was in the fall of 79.
We got together a few times for lunch over the period of the year.
And at the end of the school year, she said that she had been on the Moon Studies Advisory Committee.
And they were looking for new people and what I'd be interested in participating that she thought,
I'm not interested.
And I said, yes I was.
For a number of reasons.
One was that I was interested in the area of women's studies, although I didn't really still didn't know a great deal about it.
But I knew enough to know that it was something I was concerned about.
Another reason I had was because the job that I had, that I had, and have had in the library was one that really didn't give me much contact with faculty or students for that matter.
And I wanted that contact because you don't want to work in a vacuum.
At least I don't.
So I said, yes I would be interested in.
She said, oh good.
She said, um, there are some very strong people in the Women's Studies program.
And I think it would be good to have an example of a straight woman there.
And I thought, whoa.
But I went there.
And that's how I got started.
She gave my name to Chris Bowes and who was director at the time.
And Chris Call in April or May or whatever and said that they were having an advance out at her place in Delantham.
And would I like to come?
It would give me a chance to meet people.
And I said, sure, I'd love to.
So I went out there.
I remember the directions well because you went out in the 20s until you came to a giant chicken and then you turned left.
Anyway, I remember the record rest of the directions.
But that stuck in my mind.
And anyway.
And we were there.
And here were all these women, of course, none of whom I had met before.
And I have said before what happened that morning.
We had all gone outside and we sat down on the ground and we were talking.
And I remember hearing someone say, where are you, the angel.
And someone else said, oh, they'll be alone.
And pretty soon, a cargo of up in the Doris plant.
And somebody said, oh, here are you, the angel.
And these two, the Valqueries came walking up.
And the sun was just shining on their hair.
You know, these lawns, that's who left attractive women.
It was very impressive.
And I remember meeting Ellen Higgins at that, at dance.
Ellen lived in the community.
She was not really affiliated with the university at that time at all.
But was interested in when the studies as she still is.
And we gravitated together because we were both new kids.
The next fall, we had the first meeting, I think, that was at someone's house.
I remember that someone talked a bit about, first about all the jargon that we,
we tend to be.
And people tried to define some of the jargon.
What was an IFI, for example.
And what was an FTP, and so forth, and so on.
And then there was some more talk.
And someone said that they had the feeling that there was an in-group in the women's studies program.
And we talked a little bit about how not so much whether that was true,
but how to integrate new people into the groups so that they might not feel that way.
And someone, I'm not sure who it was, suggested that instead of having Chris convene all the meetings and leave the meeting,
that new people, two of the new people, be asked to be called coordinators, essentially.
Women's studies advisory committee.
And so Ellen and I volunteer to do that.
And it was a wonderful way to get introduced to women's studies.
Because we would meet with Chris before each meeting, and she would sort of brief us on her issues.
And then we would set up an agenda based on that.
And it worked very well, I think.
I think it made it even easier for Chris, because she didn't have to conduct a meeting at the same time
that she was trying to make the points that she needed to make and get the information that she needed to get.
And for us, for me, it was a wonderful introduction to the program.
And I learned a great deal from it.
And I think it brought me into the program in a way that certainly wouldn't have become involved anywhere near and deeply.
Had I had another kind of introduction to the program.
We did that for the first year.
And then the next year, it didn't work.
I mean, the idea was that some new people then would do this.
And whether there were people who just, they were not willing to do it, or what, I don't recall.
But it didn't work out for the next year.
And so that's something that dropped.
And I think it's too bad. It was too bad.
And I think that's a relevant kind of thing now.
But at the time it was, and it could have continued.
But because I was fairly conversant with what was going on, of course, I was able to participate in a variety of ways.
For example, early on, and I'm not sure whether the first of the second or the third year, but I have a feeling it was the first or second year.
We did. There was a feeling that we should have some bylaws.
And so there was a committee of three of us.
I believe it was, well, it was Mary Jo Long, who was the lawyer in the community, who had subsequently left the community.
And she was really not very active in the program except for participating in this drawing up of the bylaws.
And Margaret Clemens, who was a student, a senior at that time, who went on to go to law school.
And I worked on the bylaws.
And these are the first bylaws that the program had had.
Margaret Clemens, a women's study student.
She was at the women's study major.
And I think she won an award.
I think it might have been the Ada Craig Walker award, but I'm not sure.
Because we didn't have any women's studies award at that time.
She was a returning student.
She had a couple of children.
And oh, she was a very, very good kind of person.
You know, she, when she said she'd do something, she would do it and so forth.
I thought a lot of her.
Soon after that, at some meeting, we were talking about programming.
And I had mentioned that at Penn State, when I was at Penn State, they had a program where they brought,
let me back up and say that I worked in a library that served the gerontology program here.
And for the gerontology students, they had a program where the students took, of course, a one credit course.
And the school brought in people of researchers in gerontology.
And they would give a talk every two or three weeks.
There would be someone coming in and the students were expected to attend the presentations.
And then I don't even know if they did, whether they had a seminar to discuss that afterwards, I'm not sure.
But we began talking about programming that we could do.
And I mentioned that.
And the upshot of it was that we decided to have the Brown bag lunches, the research on women in colloquial.
And Judy Federley and I agreed to talk about it and set it up.
And so we did.
She and I got together.
I remember we walked over to size of the plaza and had lunch and walked back.
And we sort of did some loose dying about who we might invite to give these colloquial.
The idea was to ask people at the university and in the capital district area who were doing research on women to talk about their research.
It didn't necessarily have to be a completed research.
And I think that was the first time I've ever had a research on people sometimes often talked about research that was in progress.
And so the first person was actually Rich Smith who was visiting and Judy of course knew her.
I never knew her.
I don't know. 40 or 50 people at that meeting and I thought wow this is a great success.
Well of course that was the best intended one to be over at.
And it was because it was Rich Smith and people who had known him.
Okay. And then she gave a very nice presentation of course.
And that program went on for four or five years.
And I did it.
Judy got this to be doing other things.
I got to the point where everywhere I would go I would just keep my eyes open, my ears open to find out who was doing what you know.
And then I would approach them.
And my theory was and my practice was to ask them to do something to following year.
Viguing that people will agree to do anything a year from now.
And they did.
And it worked out pretty well.
Although towards the end attendance fell off.
And eventually I think after you came in we decided to let it go.
People had gotten busy and it may be that there weren't as many.
There wasn't as much curiosity about women's studies as they had in the past.
Because back in even in the early 80s it was still a fairly new area and people didn't really know what it was.
But for me that was very interesting too because I got to hear all of them of course.
And I got to know a lot of people and learn a little bit more about how you get things done at the university, how you get things publicized from social.
And actually it's developed into a routine after a while.
I'm trying to think about what else I've done.
I was active on fundraising committees.
I've been active on those over the years.
And we've had a number.
I remember the first time Bernie Sandler was here we had a dessert party at Jones and Transseem.
And that was a lovely occasion.
I don't know what we made in terms of the money but that was a very nice occasion.
I think we actually did.
Jonah has pointed to that as being one of the most successful ones.
I remember when Tony Morrison was here and we did, we arranged for a benefit performance of her play-greening Emma.
And that was very successful.
It was fully subscribed.
I know because I was in charge of the tickets.
And I think we didn't make quite a good amount of that too.
And then there was Sarah Cohen play.
I never forget, she gave me a copy of the play-bondie and I read it and it was so runny.
I thought, oh this is so runny.
But of course when I saw the play it was wonderfully funny.
And I think we made a lot of money out of that.
True, her gender positive.
But she needed, she also, I mean just to put that in context.
And she needed a university sponsor in order to do that.
So that was what she started out looking for and made very generously.
Made it a fundraiser for us.
Which I mean she's done that for the ability to do this to be a student yet.
Yeah, the play-bondie program.
And it's very wonderful.
And her plays are lots of fun.
I always go to them too.
And then it kind of, the fundraising got put aside.
And I hope that that's something that we can get back to at some point.
I do think that it would be a good idea to try and locate as many of our loans as we can.
And fundraiser, not just for fundraising, but I think it would be one of the best.
It would be wonderful occasionally to have a few of them come back and talk to the students.
You know, and say, here's what my women's studies background has meant to me in my life.
Because I suspect that many students don't really have a clue about what it's going to mean for them in the future.
Although there have been many students who have been very well-phobic.
But those are the ones we tend to remember because they've been so focused.
And you know, added all together.
Can I just want to get years straight here, timing and stuff?
What year did you come to?
I came to the university in the fall of 1979.
And I joined the women's studies program in the fall of 1980.
And I really was through Lidburns.
She was the person who recommended me.
Now, she was no longer a part of women's studies after that.
She had left the advisers.
There was someone else I wanted to mention too.
And in terms of people that I said, I haven't heard anybody say anything about.
And that is when I came up for tenure, of course, women's studies was supported me.
And there was someone who was on the CPCA at that time who, she was probably on the advisory committee.
I don't know how active she was.
Her name was Sarah Schifzer.
And Sarah subsequently, I believe, remarried and was then Sarah Cohen.
And then she left.
But I remember that I sort of knew who she was.
And after I got the results of the CPCA committee, I was at some function and she was coming.
And I wanted to go over and thank her.
And she came and she said, who is Judy Hudson?
I want to see who she is.
But I never knew her.
She was in Hispanics, a science study.
I don't know that she taught courses before.
Way back, I think she created the course on Hispanic women's literature or something like that.
And then Edna had taught it more recently.
And Hispanic, of course, is not necessarily determined that they would use NATO.
But I think she started that way back.
Well, I think the Trans
medicine one is for more medical help than overseas food and
дальше heroin through.
None of those women found that research is under the quarantine of disability and
also because most countries always want it.
And so I think for women's studies,
I was very pioneer in the history of Black Lives Matter.
really had gotten too far away from the moment study.
And so I ran for the steering committee and served on the steering
committee for two years, and that was very good.
Oh, actually, during that time, and before that time, I had
served on the scholarship and awards committee too.
That was the Judy committee for a while, because Judy
Farlow was chairing Judy federally, and I were on it for,
I think, two years, and then I was off of it for a couple of
years, and then this past year, Linda Pershing asked me if I
would serve on it, and Judy Barlow and I served on it.
And that's probably the best committee ever to serve on,
because it's a happy committee.
You get to do something nice for people, although sometimes
it's hard to make a decision.
I wondered about your working full time in the library,
and doing research that and competitions related to that
work that also Chris crossed a lot with me when the study
to Rina, but why do you think you, what were some of the
motivations, or maybe the benefits of whatever, for you
or being really doing the kind of double duties?
You know, you didn't have to do this involvement with
those studies to the degree that you did over the years,
and I wondered if he could place it.
Well, of course I believed in it.
That was part of it.
You want to say more about what people would do?
You know, believe in it, make that work.
Well, I just think that women studies provide a perspective
on life in this society that I'm not very good at putting
this into words, that sees the contributions that women,
a women make, the women can make.
It also exposes the discrimination that we've all experienced
in our lives.
I suppose the reason I'm so interested in it is because I'm a woman,
and I've experienced some of these things, not to a terrible degree,
but I see that they're out there, and it's unfair and unjust,
and I want to work for a justice society.
I suppose you could, one could ask, well, why don't you,
why didn't you make this kind of contribution to Africana studies
after all, the same thing through there,
I said, we're talking about racism instead of sexism,
and I guess the answer to that is because I'm a woman,
and it has started and closer.
Aside from the whole question about whether I would be welcome
there, which is a whole other thing.
So that's one reason for making the efforts that I've made for women
studies.
I think another is the reason that I said before,
and that is that it gave me an entree to a part of the university
that I wouldn't have had otherwise.
I've really never had the desire to teach,
but I, whereas as the college where I used to work,
because I worked at the reference desk and because I did teaching
bibliographic construction, I had contact with faculty,
and I had contacted students, and I didn't have that here,
and I really missed it.
It's very hard to work in that kind of a vacuum.
After all, it's the faculty and the students who are the people
from the library set up, and I personally find it difficult,
not to have contact with them.
So it enriched the experience that I had,
and it made me a better librarian.
And of course, it led to a lot of things which most people
wouldn't say were necessarily pleasant things,
service on CPCA for example.
But again, it gave me an opportunity to make a contribution
to the institution in a way that I might not have been,
had I just been, you know, stating my little job.
I look at some of the other librarians who have not made this,
who have not had this kind of opportunity,
because I was fortunate in that I was interested in an area
that was so open and welcome to everyone who came to it.
And I see that I have had a much richer experience than they have.
At least I believe I have had one.
So that's why I've done it.
And it's been great.
It has also shaped the kind of research that I did in library
work, research is such a heavy word, you know,
the work that I've done in the library field,
because I was able to use my interest in women's studies
and to find ways to make, again, to make a contribution
to women's studies through the kind of research that I did.
Indexing projects that I did that looked at,
that indexing of periodical, feminist periodical,
was really my attempt to do activist research in women's studies
by not just finding out what was indexed and so forth,
but then going back to the publishers,
the indexing publishers and saying,
you really should be including these other things,
and we got some good response from them.
So, you know, it's all mixed up together.
It's a whole, I guess we're all,
well, combination of all these things.
Yeah, yeah.
I wondered about in your reflecting on your period of time,
and involvement in the studies,
how, you know, some kind of perspective on how
you think in that period of time that one of the studies
was trying to deal with the issue of diversity
and you mentioned racism and, you know, other isms and stuff,
and I don't know if you have a perspective on that effort
because obviously the program was founded by white women
who were pretty much the only women at the university almost.
And faculty has become a little more diverse over time
to vary their differences and such,
and also by the university making a better effort
to increase diversity of faculty hiring and such.
And, you know, and that's the central issue,
and then the studies trying to address, you know,
heterosexism and, you know, the range of what's being
the experiences and racism and the range of diverse
heritage and such.
I don't know if that's, you know, something you want to
fit some line on.
I don't know that I have anything new to shut on it.
I think that it is that,
bringing diversity into women's studies has been a problem.
I think that the first couple of years that I was involved
with women's studies, I wasn't aware of that,
but mostly because I really wasn't aware of what the curriculum
involved and so forth, and it wasn't an issue that was
discussed very much.
But I would say from, I think I was,
when Iris came in, I think she began to raise the issue.
And I think we've been grappling with it ever since.
And it's hard to know whether,
whether we'll ever be able to successfully deal
with that, I hope we will.
But because I think we're much better off now,
because we have a few women of color involved in women's
studies, and until we have that, it was very difficult
to try and even address the issues, because we haven't
walked in the steps and lived the life and so forth.
And to a certain extent, I believe you can teach someone
who is not a part of a group can teach about the group
in a true sort of way.
But at a certain point, you have to have the people who
are within the group teaching about themselves.
Yeah, that's really what I think about it.
Go ahead, thank you.
Now I was just thinking about the future,
and where we will go, and whether we will be able to.
Let me back up and talk a little bit about two years ago,
I guess, and last year when the university has been looking
at it the way it's been organized and trying to downsize
and so forth in these plans of trying to combine women's
studies and Africana studies, and some kind of gender
and ethnic get-off.
And in a sense, I can see some value.
I could see in the best of all possible worlds,
I could see that there being a value in that,
because there are many commonalities.
But unfortunately, this is not the best of all possible worlds.
And furthermore, I think this is the danger of ghettoizing,
of putting everything that is interdisciplinary, ethnic,
or whatever you want to characterize that particular
difference in one lump in one place is a very dangerous thing
because it explodes.
And it's much easier to cut off their heads
than if there's only one head.
And at a time like this, when we seem to be under attack,
we have to be aware of these kinds of dangers.
And we say, why not?
Is it appropriate in this interview?
I don't know how much you want to do this,
because I could have all to stay in.
And if it's, yeah, right.
Well, it's less of an asking and more of an exploring
because someone who, Michelle Ford, who's
been working with the teaching collective internships
this year, gave a short statement,
or her statement was read at this celebration this year.
And it was embedded in it with some kind of comment
about how she's been looking at the early organizing
and the origins rather of the collective and intro
and that she made some kind of statement
about that after a while gender, I'm sorry, race and class,
were sort of added to the content of intro.
Something of that kind and Joan,
she was involved in the first thing, really talked about that
with me, after we took the exception to that.
And I think I would like to have a conversation with Michelle
about what she was looking at because the intro stuff
to begin with, and over many years,
has identified those very important topics
to quote other oppressions.
Now, it took a while, I think, in the development
of feminist thinking, you know,
academia to talk about these things,
these really simultaneous interlocking, et cetera, et cetera.
And it's a much more accurate and better
analysis and all that.
But I guess, I mean, I think Joan sort of wanted credit,
enough credit for those early days when the kinds of grappling
with the issue of how sexism and racism and such,
as unsuccessful as they might have been compared
to what we're able to do now and what we do do
and try to do.
That there was a difference between not doing anything
and really being so blind about things or so.
I'm sorry, blind is not a good word, but really seeing the gender.
Yeah, the difference between saying gender
is the primary oppression, which a few marks the feminist
or some people, I guess, said first or whatever,
versus understanding that it's much more complicated
and you don't order them and all that sort of stuff.
So I actually, because I didn't come from teaching,
I really have had very little, with the exception
of taking your research seminar.
I've had no experience with the coursework, women's studies.
And I never felt, I think if I were still going to be around
in the next few years, I would want
to get involved in the curriculum because I want to know more about it.
But I was very reluctant at one time to sort of,
because I didn't know anything about it.
I thought, well, hold on to my decisions and recommendations
and so forth on the curriculum.
I think that was a mistake because that
was, has been the way to learn about it.
But as a result, my exposure to it
is mostly as a participant in the advisory committee meetings
in the department meetings as a listener, as a watcher.
So I really can't speak to that.
I mean, I know what I've learned from doing these interviews.
I know that early on, there was an effort
to get some of these issues into the courses
and to get classes and races and sexism
was one of the early courses, too.
But I can't judge because I was only on the sidelines
in the particular area.
Have another question about your reflections
on the days when the programs in the earlier days
when the advisory committee was much more fluid when,
as you said, I think that it was really an atmosphere
in which everyone was welcomed or, you know,
was outreach and open arms and that, at least,
a feeling of that.
And we've become certainly more of an academic unit,
trying those, supposedly, to preserve some of those special things
about women's studies.
And so I don't know.
I wondered if that was one thing where
there had any reflections about sort of the feeling
of the involvement of women's studies
as it has really become so much more of a successful academic
department.
Well, I think that it was more exciting time
because there was a much larger, more diverse group.
I mean, diverse in the sense that it wasn't just university
people.
And but I don't necessarily.
I'm not sure that we don't have a better program now
than we did then because the program has matured.
I guess I am concerned.
As someone else raised this concern,
and I agree that I am concerned that we're
not bringing new people in.
And I think that's something that I hope
that's something that will be attended to look
at the new, the incoming faculty and invite them
to become involved.
I forget who it was.
I think maybe it was Iris.
Who raised this good question of the structure
that we have now is such that people
don't become voting members until a joint faculty don't
become voting members until they get tenure.
And we might want to look at that because, in fact,
why would anybody get involved in a sense
if they're going to be just junior members,
when they're really junior members?
So interesting.
Oh, I mean, that's us.
Yeah.
So it's something that I hope that when
the studies will take a look at, because here,
people are retiring and living in the university,
and there's nobody else coming in.
And during the first year, there was turnover,
but there were always people coming in.
And we don't have those people coming in.
And we have no guarantee that as people, for example,
if that trans people translate, that Francine's line
will be so.
We have seen as far as I know, it's not being.
So I think we've gotten a little comfortable.
A little too comfortable in that respect.
We've had other battles to fight.
And to me, it's not that we have just been sitting on our laurels
and saying, aren't we wonderful?
Although we do that a lot, and rightly so.
But we don't sit on our laurels.
But I do think of this one area.
It's important to attend to.
Are there any other kinds of changes
or re-emphasis of certain things
that have been successful in the past,
or gotten more attention in past, or?
Or well, I would like, because this
is not something that we've done in the past.
But as I said, I would like us to begin to identify
alumni and to utilize them, independently.
I think that I know that women studies changed
a lot of women's lives.
Being, coming here and taking the courses,
changed their lives.
And I think that they probably appreciate that.
And many of them want to share that experience with others.
And whether they can do it by making a monetary contribution,
or some other contribution to the department,
I think many of them would be willing and eager to do it.
But they haven't been asked, because we haven't
made an effort to identify them.
And I don't know how you...
I must say, I think that the development people at the university,
some of them are very good.
And it might be worth consulting with them,
saying, how do we go about doing this?
And they may have some constructive ideas.
And certainly there are people like Kansas Graudin,
who are not active in women's studies,
but because of her interest in the women's community on campus,
I'm sure she would be happy to make an effort to have...
At the women's studies, reception was last spring,
because I was running it.
I started to think about it.
Are there any people whose phone numbers I have
that I should just call up and say, why don't you come?
And among them was the student Elaine Reinerke,
who is in the area.
And I happened to, she's been living in the same place,
so I have her phone number.
And we had done the teaching collected together,
you know, about 12 years ago or so.
Anyway, she came and she graduated,
she graduated, we got in a master's in social welfare,
and this being a social worker, and was married,
and I think she had a kid, a kid, a kid, a member,
she was a child, and she was so thrilled, actually,
to come to the reception and highlight it as one of the number of people and stuff.
And I could see how much, how important it could be in many, many ways,
and I think it takes a couple of us sitting down and just doing this
in a couple of hours, tracking the dance, so that's that kind of work.
Right. And thinking about how to, how to, how to do,
and then what to do. Right, right.
If I was going to be around, you know, I would want to be involved in that.
Mm-hmm.
So that's the legacy I can't leave.
So if you're anything else, then, I don't think so.
I'm hoping that in my new life, I'll be able to make the kind of connection
that I've made with when I'm sitting here,
because it's been an important part of my life.
And there've been wonderful years.
Great.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Okay. Right.
I turned it back on again, because I realized that I never mentioned working with Kathy Turek.
Kathy is another one of the people like me who have full-time jobs outside the study's
department, but have made contribution, are interested in concerns with women's studies
and have made contributions to it.
And certainly, I think her contribution has been wonderful.
Her computer expertise is such a wonderful resource that we can draw.
We have been able to draw on an in a variety of ways, both in terms of her teaching that
computer, female friends they can use.
Very convenient.
And just her personal assistance for people who wanted to go online and learn how to use
the electronic world instead of having it abuse them.
And I think that having her in the center of direction to teaching and learning is can
and will be an advantage because I know she's working with many of the women's studies
faculty with Vivian, certainly, and some of the other faculty in trying to utilize the
electronic, whatever, that we have available to her teaching.
But she certainly is very, very interested in many of the issues of women's studies.
And she's very busy.
But again, she's going to be continuously to be in the middle of every place.
I just thought of someone else who's actually still here, but who hasn't been so active
in recent years in women's studies.
And that's Martha's own act.
And that's an example of a faculty member who never herself taught either a women's studies
course or necessarily integrated a whole lot about women into her courses.
And she certainly encouraged students to do that if that was their interest in papers
and such.
But Martha, I remember her saying to me at one point that she had become involved with
women's studies.
That state involved with women's studies over a number of years as an affiliated faculty
that was very active in a couple of ways I'll mention.
Because of the community of women, of just the group of women, she just really enjoyed
working in this situation, working with what she characterizes this really wonderful
group of women.
She got a lot out of it just from that perspective.
Now in terms of her contributions, Martha is one of these people who really knows how
the institution works.
And so over the years when I was director and probably before that as well, she was really
important in helping us figure out how to do certain things in the institution, how to
navigate our way through various sorts of things, both in terms of resources and a number
of things like that.
And I think she was also involved.
She would often be involved in personnel situations where, again, what you did was very
important and it was time consuming and things like that.
And she was also one of the people who was instrumental in proposing the Tony Morris
and be given the Schweitzer chair, which is the SUNYWIDE chair, and come to Albany and
come and be part of the Writers' Institute, which was successful for a couple of years
in Tony Morris and to have her actually be affiliated with women's studies as well.
You mentioned the fundraising thing around her play and that was quite extraordinary.
And she also taught some courses, creative and writing courses and content courses of
literature and such, cross-listing with women's studies, which was great.
And a number of us had the opportunity to actually get to know her a little bit with
who's quite a remarkable thing.
So I mentioned Martha as somebody whose name wouldn't show up in the list of courses
because she didn't do that and whose commitment was really very important over the years.
Another person like that is Meredith Bluff.
Who has made a number of wonderful contributions to women's studies.
But again, they're not the kind of thing that shows.
Although I think she did teach a course.
I don't know whether Gloria has been an instructor of record in the Intro to Feminism and that section.
Meredith may have done that.
I think she may have done it once a minute, dear early on.
But of course, once she went into administration, again, she's another person who was there
to help us strategize because she knows how the system works too.
Perhaps at a different level.
But we need to have the right time.
Just to make that explicit Meredith Butler was in the library.
I mean, she had an appointment in the library and then she was an assistant to...
She was an assistant vice president.
She was an assistant vice president.
Tomorrow an elchman at one point which was in academic affairs.
And then she came back as director of the library and she was a dean.
So she took on the dean's account.
She was a library.
She did a library.
Yeah.
And another thing that Meredith did which was really critical.
The point was she noticed that she got made us all aware in women's studies that women's studies faculty were not being represented among people who were getting awards and such and honors at the university.
And so again, that takes a certain amount of work but it also takes a certain amount of really knowing how the institution works.
And she really headed up the group that was willing to start nominating people appropriately for various awards and doing the work that needed to get all that information together and write the letters and everything.
And once that started the reality was that we have outstanding people and they got the recognition.
And so it wasn't necessarily all that easy.
And you see behind the scenes there are times where a particular dean or whatever was not particularly supportive of women and there were those people's names didn't go as far as they should have.
But a lot of the lack of representation among the award winners was because we just hadn't been doing the kind of work you need to do.
And possibly assuming that we wouldn't do well with it and others wouldn't get the awards.
And there's that whole thing about internalized discrimination and such.
And I think what we saw was that one person alone doesn't overcome that but a group of people.
And then as the women, as more of the women involved with women's studies in various ways not only got tenure but then got promoted to full professor who's work really became more visible.
And then those people continued to be willing to put names forward and do the kind of constant commitment really that you need to have to maintain the growth of a feminist community in the various parts of it not exclusively in women's studies.
Well, that's one of the unique things about the Albany women's community, the Albany women's community.
And it hasn't just happened. It's been people like Meredith and Gloria and other people who have recognized that you have to build a community.
It doesn't just happen. And you have to tend it and keep it going.
But it is a most unusual group of people.
And I don't know.
It really is amazing that we've been able to gain the recognition that we deserve.
That's right. It's like, wow.
I mean, it's not as though these things are puffery pieces.
All of the people who have been recognized have had accomplishments that deserve recognition.
But until somebody points that out, they're not going to get recognized publicly. Right?
Right.
