When I first walked into the Women's and Gender Studies office five years ago this September, I was struck by WGST administrator Anne Brooks' smile. It was welcoming and knowing, soothing and relatable. I was considering becoming a WGST major and wanted to get a feel for the place. I checked out a few other departments geography, English and African and African American Studies but Anne had snagged me. Indeed, the reason I had come to Dartmouth in the first place was because I felt at home when I first visited.
We like to think that the definition of a "college" is structural or curricular, so we can easily explain it to those unfamiliar with Dartmouth. But it's really a feeling, a connection, a familial embrace. That afternoon, Anne perfectly embodied that reality for me. Little did I know then that she had practice, and that her ease and naturalness were informed by years of changes, to Dartmouth and herself. It was her 25th year as the first, and until now, only administrator of WGST. Today, after 30 years, she retires.
Like Anne, WGST has a storied past. Started in 1978, it was the first women's studies program among Ivy League colleges. It was undoubtedly and unabashedly political, as were women's studies programs across the country. Women who taught women's studies risked not getting tenure given the fact that they had to fight for the legitimacy of women as a subject worthy of study in the first place. The programonly survived because it wasa personal mission for its champions on the faculty. It was a brave new world not just in scholarship, but in how we do scholarship. Anne had been an activist and worked for a feminist press before coming to the program with the same drive for change.
As a new generation of students who missed the social change movements of the 1960s and 1970s arrived at Dartmouth, the program gradually came to be seen as just another academic program at the College. Faculty incorporated analysis of gender into other courses and saw the program as their job, not their duty. Anne married, had two sons and as students and faculty came and went, she became the center of the program.
Amid all these changes, personal and institutional, the program remained true to its roots and Anne provided the connection. Until recently,WGST drew only on faculty from other departments,so Anne was the only person who dealt continuously with students and knewbest what their interests were. For this reason,she was more influential in shapingthe curriculum of the programthan any singlefaculty member. Because of her,the programnavigated both the post-feminist position that gender studies is as normal and natural a discipline as economics, and the pre-interdisciplinary position that gender studies is too political and a blip in time compared to the core disciplines such as economics. Both sides presented a danger of eviscerating the value of the program, but Anne, with a sprightly rootedness and gentle yet determined demeanor, continued to make the connections with students that tacitly said, "We're cutting edge and timeless. You won't want to miss this."
WGST has become one of the program that seems to offer that one class for the non-major that was their favorite at Dartmouth. It is the program that may not change students' minds but completely changes how they think. Many students claim that after they take WGST 10, "Sex, Gender and Society," they will never watch television the same way again. This is the program that has produced majors and minors who are consistently recognized on Class Day for the influence they have had on the entire campus. That is all largely because Anne has pushed students to take chances, think differently and organize for change on campus in short, to be activists.
Anne is the embodiment of institutional knowledge that one characteristic so fundamental it takes the shape of insight, foresight, memory, efficiency, management, confidence, details and risk. Its goal is to keep everything, from students to faculty to course selection, in balance. In its ideal state, it is both political and traditional, subtle and bold, qualities that describe Anne, the "nourishing mother," as the real alma mater.
She has comforted me when I've cried and shared in my achievements, given me health and professional advice, taught me the importance of taking care of myself in living and learning and, most important, how to feel at home in both. That's what defines a liberal arts college.
