The Future of Minority Studies (FMS) Research Project and FMS at Syracuse:

The FMS Project At Syracuse University, is housed in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department and funded through a generous grant from the Chancellor’s Office. The project focuses specifically on questions related to minoritized identities and epistemologies in the context of national and transnational justice and feminist politics. FMS at SU is guided by an interdisciplinary advisory committee, and sponsors local and national conferences, symposia, study groups, and houses the semester long FMS Mentoring-Publication Postdoctoral Fellowship.

About FMS

The FMS Project involves scholars and academic institutions with a primary interest in minority identities, education, and social transformation. Originally conceived in 2000 as a year-long research initiative, FMS has evolved to become a mobile “think tank” facilitating focused and productive discussions across disciplines about the democratizing role of minority identities, the changing role of higher education, and the need for an adequate conception of identities as the basis for progressive social change (minority is defined here not numerically but in terms of relation and access to power, in particular of such factors as race, gender, class, sexuality, and disability). The FMS network now consists of over 215 scholars from over 75 campuses across the country and abroad.

One of FMS’s long-term goals is to make U.S. colleges and universities more diverse, not just in terms of personnel but also culturally and intellectually. In order to realize this goal, we have created a summer institute, which fosters collaborative research and provides a mentoring context in which minority scholars (broadly defined to include all those whose access to social and cultural institutions is limited by their social identities) and those interested in minority studies can work productively and go on to occupy leadership roles in the academy. The FMS Summer Institute, funded through a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon foundation, has two components:

1. a two-week Summer Seminar for 12–15 selected graduate students and postdoctoral faculty; and
2. a two-day Colloquium involving a broad range of FMS scholars from across the U.S. and abroad.

The 2009 FMS Summer Institute will focus on “Queer Politics in Transnational Contexts” and will be led by Professors Minnie Bruce Pratt and M. Jacqui Alexander

The 2008 FMS Summer Institute focused on “Transnational Feminist Visions” and was led by Professors Chandra Talpade Mohanty and Minnie Bruce Pratt

The 2007 FMS Summer Institute focused on "Intersecting Identities and Social Justice: Realist Explorations" and was led by Professors Satya P. Mohanty and Linda Martín Alcoff 

The 2006 FMS Summer Institute focused on "Theory from the Periphery: Minority Struggles for Social Justice" and was led by Professors Paula Moya and Michael Hames Garcia

The 2005 Summer Institute focused on "Feminist Identities, Global Struggles" and was led by Professor Beverly Guy-Sheftall and Professor Chandra Talpade Mohanty

FMS @ SU Mentoring-Publication Post Doctoral Fellowships

Spring 2009: Lorgia Garcia Pena, American Studies, University of Michigan
Faculty Mentor: Silvio Torres Saillant

Fall 2008: Dalia Rodriguez
Decolonizing the Classroom: Silence, Whiteness, and the 'Other'
Faculty Mentor: Minnie Bruce Pratt

Spring 2008: Angela (Ixkic) Duarte Bastian, Anthropology, CIESAS, Mexico
From the Margins of Latin American Feminism
Faculty mentor: Chandra Talpade Mohanty

Spring 2008: Terri Adams-Fuller, Sociology, Howard University
Gender, Race, and Criminalization: A Post Katrina Analysis
Faculty Mentor: Linda Carty

Fall 2007: Mickaella L. Perina, Philosophy, University of Massachussets, Boston
Construction of Identity: Experience, Knowledge, and Justice
Faculty Mentor: Linda Martín Alcoff

Spring 2007: Nisha Gupta, Education, Syracuse University
Feminist and Multicultural Pedagogies and Higher Education
Faculty Mentor: Linda Martín Alcoff

Fall 2006: Elora Chowdhury, Women’s Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Challenges for the Women's Movement in Bangladesh: Engaging Religion, State, and NGO Politics
Faculty Mentor: Chandra Talpade Mohanty

"Unlike the mentoring junior faculty often receive from senior faculty at their institutions, which focuses exclusively on how to become tenured, FMS has a more comprehensive outlook. Junior faculty, I believe, are as interested in fostering a collegial, respectful environment to further their work as much as they are interested in securing tenure. In that regard, FMS offers a vision and concrete strategies to transform academic culture so that faculty—particularly junior and minority faculty—are able to thrive and do meaningful work. This enabling space of FMS, and the empowering mentorship from senior scholars, is extremely critical for the kind of transformative work that interests me. Furthermore, observing and learning from Professor Mohanty’s pedagogy has informed my own approach to teaching."–Elora Chowdhury, 2006 FMS @ SU Post Doctoral Fellow

FMS’s organizational structure and intellectual commitments:

A distinctive feature of the FMS Project is that it is inter-institutional, inter-disciplinary, and multigenerational. To date, FMS scholars have come from over 75 institutions of varying sizes and types: private research universities (e.g., Brown, Cornell, Stanford, Syracuse) liberal arts colleges (e.g., Hamilton, Moravian, Mt. Holyoke), major state universities (e.g., Indiana, Michigan, Oregon, Tennessee, Wisconsin) as well as HBCUs (e.g., Howard, Spelman) and smaller state and community colleges. Moreover, FMS scholars come from a variety of disciplines in the humanities and the humanistic social sciences, and range from undergraduate students to senior administrators. FMS has a lively website (www.fmsproject.cornell.edu) with a Discussion Forum that becomes the space where FMS scholars across the country "meet" to discuss and collaborate on research and activist projects, plan conferences and colloquia, etc. Palgrave-Macmillan publishes an FMS book series. The multi-tiered structure of FMS now consists of both a national organization and strong local organizational bases on various campuses like Cornell University, Spelman College, Stanford University, Syracuse University, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, University of Oregon, University of Washington, and University of Wisconsin-Madison. An unusual aspect of FMS is that resources are shared among the various FMS campuses.

One of the guiding philosophical ideas shared by most participants in FMS, the theory of "postpositivist realism," has emerged as a promising research framework for stimulating inquiry and intellectual engagement among literary scholars, philosophers, area specialists, and some social scientists. On this approach, the researcher is led to pursue a series of questions about "socially embodied identities" that invite concrete historical investigation and ethnographic inquiry. (For more information on intellectual projects of FMS, see Reclaiming Identity: Realist Theory and the Predicament of Postmodernism [University of California Press, 2000], and Identity Politics Reconsidered [Palgrave, 2006].)

Spring 2009 FMS @ SU Events

March 4
Lorgia Garcia Pena:
Of Bandits and Putas: U.S. Imperialism and the Imagining of Dominicanidad

April 14
Dionne Brand, English and Theatre Studies, University of Guelph
Inventory: Notes to a Poem

FMS at SU Past Events

FMS @ Syracuse University Advisory Committee

Linda Martín Alcoff is Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies at Syracuse University.

Nancy Cantor is Chancellor, President, and Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies at Syracuse University.

Linda Carty is Associate Professor, African American Studies at Syracuse University.

Winston Grady-Willis is Associate Professor, American Studies at Skidmore College.

Margaret Himley is Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric and Co-Director of the LGBT Studies Program and Minor at Syracuse University.

Tazim Kassam is Associate Professor of Religion at Syracuse University and historian of religions specializing in the Islamic tradition.

Scott Lyons is Assistant Professor English at Syracuse University

Chandra Talpade Mohanty is the Dean’s Professor of the Humanities and Chair of Women’s and Gender Studies at Syracuse University.

Minnie Bruce Pratt is Professor of Women’s Studies, LGBT Studies, and Writing at Syracuse University.

Marcia Robinson is Assistant Professor of Religion at Syracuse University.

Silvio Torres-Saillant is Associate Professor of English and Director of Latino-Latin American Studies Program at Syracuse University.

FMS Project Advisory Board

M. Jacqui Alexander, Professor of Women’s Studies and Gender Studies, University of Toronto

Lourdes Benería, Professor of City and Regional Planning and Professor of Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Cornell University

Nancy Cantor, Chancellor, President, and Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies, Syracuse University

Johnnetta B. Cole, President of Bennett College and Professor Emerita of Anthropology, Women’s Studies, and African American Studies, Emory University

Mary Sue Coleman, President of University of Michigan,and Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Biological Chemistry

Harry Elam, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in Drama, Stanford University

Leslie Feinberg, Political activist, writer, and independent scholar

Rosemarie Garland Thomson, Associate Professor of Women’s Studies, Emory University

Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women’s Studies and English and Director of Women’s Research and Resource Center, Spelman College

John L. Hennessy, President of Stanford University and Willard and Inez Kerr Bell Endowed Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Roberta Hill, Associate Professor of English and Native American Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Biodun Jeyifo, Professor of African American Studies, Harvard University

Dominick LaCapra, Bryce & Edith M. Bowmar Professor in Humanistic Studies, Cornell University

Jeffrey Lehman, Professor of Law and former President of Cornell University

Daniel Little, Professor of Philosophy and Chancellor, University of Michigan, Dearborn

Hazel Rose Markus, Davis-Brack Professor in Behavioral Sciences and Director of Research Institute of Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (RICSRE), Stanford University

Lester Monts, Senior Vice Provost of Academic Affairs and Professor of Music, University of Michigan

Jose David Saldívar, Professor of Ethnic Studies, University of California-Berkeley

Claude Steele, Lucy Stern Professor in Social Sciences and Director, Center for Advanced Study, Stanford University

Helena María Viramontes, Author; Professor of English, Cornell University