Students Say Education, Goals Enriched by Women's Studies

Two Women's Studies graduate students who arrived at UC from different countries are forging local bonds leading to global action as they study and work.

Atucungwiire Rwebiita and Federica Gentile are inspired to action, they say, through the busy department's varied initiatives.

Rwebiita, who's working toward a master's degree in Women's Studies, was born in the village of Ngoma in western Uganda. He graduated with a BA in Social Sciences from Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda.

Last October, he headed up Cincinnati's first GuluWalk, an international initiative that supports abandoned children of northern Uganda. More than 30,000 people in 82 cities and 15 different countries participated worldwide.

"Apart from coordinating GuluWalk, I am on the board for Help Uganda Grow, and many other civil society organizations," said Rwebiita, president of the African Student Union.

Initiatives like GuluWalk are important in terms of teaching, he said, "because they widen the scope of both graduate and undergraduate students in understanding the realities of war affected areas in the world."

Most important, he said, is "their effects on the most vulnerable and marginalized who are mostly women, children and the elderly members of the community."

Atucungwiire Rwebiita

"With initiatives such as GuluWalk students, faculty and staff alongside members of the wider community are led to realize that we are all global students," he said. "There is a significant relationship between the politics of the center and the periphery. United States is the Center and Uganda is the periphery. USA policies will therefore impact the periphery, and its foreign policy has something to do with the continuation or the end of such conflicts."

Rwebitta said he gained a lot of insight, personally and on a global level, from organizing the walk.

"I realized that the actions/inactions of individuals in western countries have something to do with continuation or the end of conflicts in Africa," he said. "I further realized that collective action is the only means of overcoming such conflicts. People are there to help, but the problem is that they don’t have the messages about civil wars and its effects on women and children. This effort is meaningful to me as a person who has lived in war torn regions, and particulary in Uganda. In addition, I take it as my responsibility to lead this crusade of peace because there won’t be any development without peace."

Second year master's student Federica Gentile, from Italy, said that after a few years of working in Europe "in the framework of the promotion of equal opportunities between women and men," she decided to go back to school "because I had a feeling that I needed more theoretical background to better work."

"Given that I was interested in women’s issues, a Women's Studies program appeared to me to be the logical choice," she said. "I knew that the Women's Studies program at the University of Cincinnati was very good and for this reason I applied."

Now the graduate assistant for the North American Women’s Studies program, Gentile said she likes the fact that the program is interdisciplinary and the academic environment, challenging.

Federica Gentile

She's very excited about the possibilities for students participating in the North American Women's Studies Program, which promotes student exchanges in Canada, the United States and Mexico.

"Qualified graduate and advanced undergraduate students can receive major grants to cover their expenses for studying women’s and gender issues in Mexico or Canada for a regular term or a summer institute," said Gentile. Participating institutions are York University (Toronto), Mount Saint Vincent University (Halifax) in Canada, El Collegio de la Frontera Norte (Ciudad Juarez; graduate students only), and the Universidad de las Americas (Puebla) in Mexico.

In June, a summer institute will be offered in Puebla. The topic is "Women's Human Rights, Citizenships and Identities in a North American Context," but focus also will be placed on immigration issues, Gentile said.

Department head Anne Runyan said the exchange program enhances the educational and international experience for already strong graduate students, and has encouraged many to study Spanish who would not otherwise.

However, she said, it has "perhaps had the greatest impact on attracting strong internationalized faculty, with the tenure track hires of Endowed Chair Amy Lind (a Latin Americanist with gender and development and sexuality studies specialties) and Assistant Professor Olga Sanmiguel-Valderrama, a Canadian and Latin American women and the law specialist."

"It also has generated strong faculty connections across our partner institutions that we hope will continue past the grant period and our own unique course on "Feminisms in a North American Context," (which we hope to put on line and continue attracting international students to) will continue this focus in our curriculum and faculty research," Runyan said.

"This emphasis and our new faculty should also help to attract more Latina students … Our strongest students continue to be attracted to our MA/JD joint program in Women's Studies and Law, that remains one of the few and the premier such program. We have also had a number of excellent undergrad certificate students over the years – some entering our grad program – and many more are being attracted to our major and minor, with particular interest among undergraduates in our Sexuality Studies concentration."

The Puebla summer institute is open to UC and non-UC students with sufficient background; however, expense and language study grants are only available by application for qualified UC students. Applications for the summer institute and for semester study abroad in Fall 2007 are due March 1, 2007.

For questions or more information, contact the NAWS Graduate Assistant at nrthaws@uc.edu or (513) 556-3694 or Anne Runyan, Department Head, at anne.runyan@uc.edu or (513) 556-6652.

Applications are available in the Department of Women’s Studies (620A and 620C Old Chemistry Building) or

online.