In August, the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Texas at Austin will close. I joined the department last year after leaving the University of Iowa’s Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies department, which also closed this year. As programs in women’s studies, ethnic studies and Black studies disappear across the country, I’ve found myself reflecting on how I became a feminist historian—and why this work matters now more than ever.
Back in 2005, as an undergraduate student at San Francisco State University, I took a course on feminist activists and read Angela Davis’ *Women, Race, and Class*. Davis argued that the experiences of Black women could only be understood through the intersecting forces of race, gender and class—and that confronting racism, misogyny and poverty was essential to liberation. From that moment, I knew a feminist view of history could transform how I understood present-day inequality and how I wanted to teach those ideas to future students.
For years, I brought that framework into the classroom, helping students connect the histories of voting rights, reproductive justice, racial discrimination and gendered violence to the challenges they see unfolding around them today. As feminist studies and ethnic studies programs come under increasing attack, I remain convinced that this work is indispensable. Nearly 45 years after Davis historicized the triad of women, race and class, we still need that critical lens to understand our world—and to defend human dignity and justice within it.
