The Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women was established in 1981 at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, as an interdisciplinary research center focused on gender and women. In addition to research, the center is home to archives of feminist theory and women's history as well as Brown's undergraduate Gender and Sexuality Studies concentration. Postcolonial theorist Leela Gandhi, is the Center's director, having assumed the position in July 2021.
The Pembroke Center was named in honor of Pembroke College in Brown University, Brown's former coordinate women's college. It is affiliated with Brown's Sarah Doyle Center for Women and Gender.
History
In 1981, a decade following Brown's merger with Pembroke College, the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women was established. Joan Wallach Scott served as the center's founding director. The Center was initially supported by the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Rockefeller Foundation, though it now supports its programs largely through its own endowment.
In 2008, the Nanjing–Brown Joint Program in Gender Studies and the Humanities was established as a joint program between the Pembroke Center, Nanjing University and Brown's Cogut Center and East Asian Studies department. The same year, the center moved from Alumnae Hall to Pembroke Hall, following the building's renovation by architect Toshiko Mori. In 2016, the Center established the Black Feminist Theory Project, which focuses on rotating professorships and scholars in residence.
The Pembroke Center received a $5 million gift in June 2021, permanently endowing the Center's directorship. The announcement of the gift coincided with Leela Gandhi's appointment as director.
Directors
Joan Wallach Scott (1981–1985) Barbara A. Babcock (1986–1987) Karen Newman (1987–1993) Ellen Rooney (1992–2000) Elizabeth Weed (2000–2010) Kay Warren (2011–2014) Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg (2014–2021) Leela Gandhi (2021–)
Research and teaching
The Pembroke Center offers a broad range of research, teaching, and alumnae/i programs. The Center's work to preserve the history of women at Brown and in Rhode Island and feminist theory scholarship has produced the Christine Dunlap Farnham Archive and the Feminist Theory Archive.
Concentration
In fall 2006, the gender studies program merged with the concentration in Sexuality and Society to form the Gender and Sexuality Studies Program. Gender and Sexuality Studies is an interdisciplinary concentration that examines the construction of gender and sexuality in social, cultural, political, economic, or scientific contexts. Each concentrator will focus on a well-defined topic or question and work closely with a concentration advisor to develop a program that investigates this focus area rigorously and supplements it with foundational courses in the relevant disciplines.
Typical areas of focus might include the acculturation of gender, sexuality and race in American politics or activism; the construction of sexual and gendered identities in educational institutions or in various forms of visual media; a contrast between different cultural understandings of sexual identity, a particular national literature and history.
Pembroke seminar
The weekly Pembroke Seminar brings together Pembroke Center postdoctoral fellows, faculty research fellows, graduate fellows, other interested Brown faculty and selected students, affiliated visiting scholars, and distinguished guest lecturers. The research themes of the seminar change annually.
Postdoctoral fellowships
The Pembroke Center annually supports three or four postdoctoral research fellows in residence for an academic year.
Scholarly publication
Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies was established in 1989 at the moment of a critical encounter of theories of difference (primarily continental) and the politics of diversity (primarily American). The journal provides a critical forum where the problematic of differences is explored in texts ranging from the literary and the visual to the political and social. differences highlights theoretical debates across the disciplines that address the ways concepts and categories of difference (notably but not exclusively gender) operate within culture. It is published three times a year by Duke University Press.