Intro Women Gender Studies Class with Professor Fisher
 
“Is there a woman you know or have studied or heard about who has inspired you with her commitment to make the world more inclusive and more just?”
 
This is the question Hostos Professor Jerilyn Fisher asked the students in her “Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies” class this past February. It turns out Fisher’s students had plenty of names to mention, drawn from the spectrum of politicians, community leaders, family members, and other women who’d affected and influenced them.
 
Fisher knew of a perfect venue for her students’ suggestions: WomensActivism.NYC, an initiative that catalogs the stories of women activists. The initiative was created by the NYC Department of Records and Information Services to honor the anniversary of women winning the right to vote in New York State in 1917 and in the United States in 1920. The end result will be a permanent New York City archive listing women from around the globe who have made a difference through their activism and inspire activism today.
 
Under Fisher’s tutelage, students researched, wrote and edited capsule biographies of influential women over the course of the class and, when completed, uploaded them to the WomensActivism.NYC website. Their subjects included Florinda Soriano Muñoz, Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Edith Bell, and Angela Davis.
 
Their efforts met with applause. As Project Coordinator Spirit Tawfiq told Fisher: “You and your students have set the bar so high! Their stories, under your leadership, are fantastic.” 
 
The initiative was a grassroots storytelling effort, and Fisher was delighted that she and her students took part in an “awesome project.”  
 
Fisher specializes in U.S. Women’s Literature and Women’s Studies. 
 
For further information, please go to:  https://www.womensactivism.nyc