The four essays in this collection present a multifaceted conversation about what is at stake in "passing on" the institutionalized project of Women's Studies at this historic moment. The authors come to this conversation from a diversity of histories, commitments and investments in Women's Studies. Framed by the argument that Women's Studies is a project fraught with uncertainty, the authors explore what it means to live within this uncertainty and how one might respond to it intellectually, emotionally, politically, institutionally and pedagogically. In exploring their own responses and taking into consideration responses from other feminist intellectuals, the authors subject their practices to the same kind of academic critique to which they subject the discipline, its location, theories, methods and pedagogies. The purpose of these essays is not to enact these responses nor to fix a firm direction for the future of the discipline; but rather, by looking back and attending to the now, inspire us to grapple with what might be possible.

Ann Braithwaite is Associate Professor in and Co-ordinator of Women's Studies at the University of Prince Edward Island.

Ann Braithwaite's profile page

Susan Heald is Associate Professor of Women's Studies at the University of Manitoba.

Susan Heald's profile page

Susanne Luhmann is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Women’s & Gender Studies at the University of Alberta. Her research and publication areas include trauma and cultural memory, queer and feminist pedagogy, and women’s and gender Studies. She is the co-author of Troubling Women’s Studies: Pasts, Presents, Possibilities (2004).

Susanne Luhmann's profile page

Sharon Rosenberg's profile page

"Finally, a book about Women's Studies that is untroubled by trouble and curious about what uncertainty might yield if left undisciplined! With clarity and courage, these essays unmask the struggle for definitional power and political authority at stake in current debates about the past, present and future of Women's Studies in the North American University."— “Robyn Wiegman, Margaret Taylor Smith Director of Women's Studies, Duke University