Exhibit Opening Event! “Improvising in fields of constraint”: How Feminist Studies at UCSC was made, changed and unmade”

Join us on on May 27th from 4-5pm for the opening of “Improvising in fields of constraint”: How Feminist Studies at UCSC was made, changed and unmade”!

An April 9, 2026 press release from the U.S. Department of Education, titled, “Victories for Higher Education: Ending Gender Extremism and Cutting Underused Programs,” celebrated the closure of Gender Studies departments in U.S. universities. The closure of UCSC’s Feminist Studies department in July 2025 was listed as an example of the necessary end of an “underused,” “low-value” and “extremist” program of study that was “incapable of providing workforce-benefiting skills” to students. But for students, faculty, and staff, Feminist Studies was a center of intellectual and political life at UC Santa Cruz. The persistent struggle to make, define, change, and maintain the department over its 50-year history underscores feminisms’ continued significance in the university, even in a time of departmental closures and other forms of peril for the discipline.

This exhibit draws its title from feminist scholar Judith Butler’s evocative phrase in the book, Undoing Gender, which describes sexuality as an “improvisational possibility within a field of constraints.” The exhibit tracks the constraints within which UCSC’s Feminist Studies department took shape.

Curated by Madhavi Murty, Jess Fournier, Liliana Mata and Nithya Raghunath

We hope to see you then!