With its inception in 1986, the Noun Program embarked immediately on an ambitious series of conferences, colloquia, and (with additional funding from a Mellon II grant) faculty and curricular development--with stipends for course revision, course released time, Noun Forum lunchtime research presentations by Grinnell faculty, and FEMSEM, a series of faculty reading groups conducted by the Noun Chair and devoted to feminist and gender theory across the disciplines. The combination of a co-curricular speakers series--national and international scholars and activists participating in conferences and offering colloquia in feminist pedagogy-- and opportunities for curricular development made the Noun Program highly visible in the intellectual and academic life of this community in its first years. Noun also instituted summer internships with follow-up intern colloquia, and administered the Jeanne Burkle Awards for undergraduates most prominent in advancing women on campus. Burling Library began to acquire journals on international women's concerns and the HHH Noun Program reading room accumulated multidisciplinary texts in feminist scholarship, serving as a local resource and research center.

In the fall semesters of 1987 and 1988, two large conferences drew campus-wide attention to the new program. The Fall 1987 conference, "Reading and Writing the Female Body," included prominent figures such as Naomi Schor, Meridel LeSueur, Jane Marcus and Leila Ahmed. This conference established Noun as multicultural and international in its breadth, as participants explored the ideology of representation or "embodiment," both western and eastern. (The humanities disciplines figured prominently in this conference; a smaller conference in spring 1988, presented in conjunction with an ACM Women's Concerns Committee business meeting on campus, emphasized ACM faculty and student work in feminist pedagogy in the social and natural sciences.) The Fall 1988 conference, "Rethinking the Family from Multicultural Perspectives," cast a broad net to include writers, academic humanists, sociologists, economists and non-academics from the fields of social work, politics and business. This conference was co-sponsored with the Rosenfield Program, Black Scholars in Residence, the Minority Affairs office and the Iowa Humanities Board ($9,000 grant and an on-site Evaluator, who noted "spirited and prolonged discussion" after each presentation). A more global perspective on women's issues emerged in the Spring 1989 conference on "Women in Developing Countries," with speakers from India, the West Indies, Chile, Peru, Nigeria and the Republic of Singapore. Rather than "First World" theory, the focus here was on grass-roots and official forms of empowerment in the arts, literature, and social and economic organizations. From the vantage of 2002, these conferences seem particularly memorable, perhaps because faculty and students in those days could readily share in the excitement generated by the conferences' topics and close access to distinguished guests. We also had time to read in advance selected scholarship represented in conference proceedings.

More informal Noun events over the years included women's studies colloquia with scholars like the historian Elisabeth Fox-Genovese (Emory), who presented a workshop on gender scholarship in women's history (1986); literary theorist Father Walter Ong (Fall 1987); Carol Jacklin on the psychology of sex difference; Elizabeth Fee (Professor of Public Health, Johns Hopkins) on world reproductive rights and feminist approaches to the sciences. Both Ong and Fee were co- sponsored by a GTE Lecture Series grant awarded to Noun for a speakers' series on "Human Values in Science and Technology." Noun-sponsored or co-sponsored campus speakers (non- Convo) included Eleanor Smeal (NOW); the political theorist Jane Flax; Florence Howe (MLA past president); Anne Fausto-Sterling on race, science and gender; Maria Lugones (Argentinian feminist, Carleton philosophy faculty); Barbara Harlow ("Women, Writing and Political Detention"); David Halperin on Michel Foucault's queer politics; Marnia Lazreg on gender, politics and religion in Algeria; Karen Barad (Spring 1995) on "Meeting the Universe Halfway: Ambiguities, Discontinuities, Quantum Subjects, and Multiple Positionings in Feminism and Physics"; Lauren Rabinowitz on the dancer and surrealist film-maker Maya Deren; Miriam Cook on women and war in the Middle East; and Ohmar Khin on the sex industry traffic in women and children in Burma. In Fall 1999 Noun honored Louise Noun on the occasion of the publication of her new book, Iowa Women in the WPA. The Program's breadth takes us around the world and back home to Iowa.

Noun networking in the early years took Grinnell faculty to the Feminist Reading Group in Iowa City; brought countless lecturers to campus co-sponsored with host departments across the curriculum; kept Noun active in the ACM Women's Concerns Committee; brought feminist films to Georgia Dentel's Wednesday Night Film series. In 1989 some of us traveled by bus with students to Washington DC for a pro-rights NOW rally. Over the years Noun has co-sponsored events with Gay Pride Week and Women's History Month, ASIA, PAFA, SOL, Sloane, Rosenfield, Chalutzim, the Chinese program, and performances and exhibitions with the Departments of Art, Music, and Theatre. In Fall 2000 Noun co-sponsored the film-maker Trinh T. Minh-ha, who screened "A Tale of Love." Noun has sponsored poetry readings by Kitty Tsui, Cherry Muhanji, Margaret Randall, Naomi Wallace, Diane Wakoski, Ruth Behar, and Heather McHugh, and introductions to famous writer/scholars such as Marjorie Garber (Dog Love, in addition to her work in English Renaissance culture studies) and Tillie Olsen, whose visit to campus in Spring 2001 was celebrated with a group reading of many of her works, including her path-breaking short story, "Tell me a Riddle."

Among the Noun Program's most significant achievements over the past fifteen years, the Noun Convocation Speakers represent a distinguished list of "Who's Who" in national and international feminist scholars and activists. A bullet list of speakers and title alone indicates the breadth of vision Noun has promoted. (Note: For many of these speakers Noun either sponsored or co- sponsored faculty reading groups focusing on at least one major text by the visiting scholar. This allowed us to take better advantage of opportunities to interact with Convo speakers during informal afternoon discussions. Texts were provided by Noun/Mellon II monies while they lasted.)

Fall 1988 Carolyn Merchant (The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution, 1980), "The Global Ecological Revolution: Nature, Gender and Science in the 21st Century"

Spring 1989 Catherine Stimpson on "Cultural Democracy Today"

Fall 1989 Alison Jagger, "Sex Differences and Sex Equality"

Spring 1990 Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza, "Feminist Interpretation of the Bible"

Spring 1990 Sue-Ellen Jacobs, "Sex, Sexuality and Gender Variants"

Fall 1990 Barbara Allen, "The Ethics of Care"

Spring 1991 Ruth Schwartz Cohen, "Feminist Perspectives on Reproductive Ethics and Reproductive Choices"

Spring 1991 Colleen Jones, "Diversity in the Curriculum"

Fall 1991 Cynthia Enloe (Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics; Does Khaki Become You?) on post-Gulf War gender relations

Spring 1991 Leila Rupp , "The History of International Feminist Movements"

Spring 1992 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (In Other Worlds; The Post-Colonial Critic), "On Behalf of Cultural Studies"

Fall 1992 Anne Lane, "Women's History in the Courtroom"

Spring 1993 Barbara Harlow (Barred: Women, Writing and Political Detention), "Negotiating Treaties: Maastricht and NAFTA and Interpretive Communities"

Fall 1993 Yu-Shih Chen, "She Stoops to Conquer: Precepts for Girls in Ancient China"

Fall 1993 Betty Mtero, "Women in Development in Zimbabwe: A Grassroots Perspective"

Spring 1994 Patricia Hill-Collins, "The Gendered Politics of Racism and Nationalism"

Spring 1995 Hortense Spillers, "Multiculturalism and the Diaspora"

Fall 1995 Teresa de Lauretis (Technologies of Gender), "Cultural Studies and the Resistance to Freud"

Spring 1996 Sara Suleri (Meatless Days), "The Empire and its Double"

Fall 1996 Rekha Basu, "Still Stuck, Stiffed, and Stigmatized: Feminism's Unfinished Business"

Spring 1997 Carolyn West, "Mammy, Sapphire and Jezebel: Historical Images of Black Women and Their Implications for Psychological Functioning"

Spring 1997 Jorie Graham, head of the Iowa Writer's Workshop, "Does Poetry Matter?" (from the poet Dana Gioia's famous title)

Fall 1997 Susan Bordo, "Looking for Reality in a Culture of Images: Race, Gender and the O.J. Simpson Trial"

Spring 1998 Jael Silliman, "Entrenched Elisions: Reinstating Women in Population and Environmmental Struggles"

Fall 1998 Lani Guinier (Tyranny of the Majority), "Lift Every Voice"

Spring 1999 Marjorie Garber (Shakespeare's Ghost Writers, 1987; Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life 1995), "Gender and Still Life"

Fall 1999 Anne McClintock (Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest, 1995), "Metamorphoses: Cross-dressing, Race and the Cyberbody"

Spring 2000 Carol Bardenstein, "Cultivating Attachments: Discourses of Rootedness in Palestine/Israel"

Fall 2000 Trinh T. Minh-ha (Women, Native, Other; Framer Framed), "The Interval of Talk and Tale-Telling"

Spring 2001 Nancy Folbre (Who Pays for the Kids? Gender and the Structures of Constraint, 1994; The War on the Poor: A Defense Manual and the Ultimate Field Guide to the U.S. Economy), "The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values"

Fall 2001 Martin Bernal, "Black Athena: Different Models of Ancient Greek Origins"

Curricular Development

With Mellon II money, Noun in its initial years particularly promoted the curricular integration of new scholarship on gender and women's studies through new course development and revision. Roberta Atwell created the foundation course for what would become GWS, an introduction to women's studies; Anita Solow (Math) created a course in the feminist critiques of the sciences. Curricular incentive grant money over two years (1989-1991) allowed the staff of Humanities 101 (Homer and Fifth Century Athens) and 102 (Roman and Early Christian Culture) to workshop under Ellen Mease's direction the immense array of new scholarship on women and gender in the ancient world. FEMSEM took up feminist critiques of canonical works across the disciplines while continuing to bone up on the seminal scholarship on gender. Those of us who participated in FEMSEM in these early years remember with exhilaration the breadth of perspective represented by our reading, including Gerda Lerner's The Creation of Patriarchy; Ruth Bleier's Science and Gender; Carol Gilligan's In a Different Voice; Luce Irigaray's This Sex Which is Not One, essays by Sandra Harding, Chandra Mohanty, the feminist legal theorist Catherine MacKinnon. Later reading groups took up Teresa de Lauretis, Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction; Rita Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics; feminist theory of science and social science (convened by Mease); seminal essays in feminist theory (Gayle Rubin's "Traffic in Women"; Adrienne Rich's "Compulsory Heterosexuality"); Helen Cixous and Catherine Clement, The Newly-Born Woman. This multidisciplinary approach insured that as the foundation for the future Gender and Women's Studies concentration was being laid, feminist theory and work were widely represented throughout the curriculum and an array of cognate or elective courses stood ready for the umbrella of GWS. In 1988-89 the GWS Concentration Committee, chaired by Broe, successfully formulated the proposal for the concentration; Alan Schrift took the proposal through its bureaucratic paces for division approvals and the entire faculty welcomed the new interdisciplinary concentration in Spring 1989.

With the division of the Noun Program and GWS in 1990, Noun has dedicated itself to the support of multicultural and cross-disciplinary speakers and events at Grinnell, issuing calls for proposals in international feminisms and other issues concerning women and gender around the globe, honoring requests from any and all as funding has permitted. The Noun Program Committee in these years has consisted of at least twelve faculty and students from across the divisions, with representation from student groups such as SGA, the Multi-ethnic Coalition and the Environmental Action Group.