Ruby Blondell

WCC Memories (December 2021)

When I attended my first APA (as it then was) in the early 80s, I was seriously demoralized by the sea of men in grey suits that seemed to constitute our field. The only splashes of color turned out to belong to the members of the WCC, who stood out not only for their more colorful garb but for their attitude. This was manifested, among other ways, in comic songs celebrating the accomplishments of members at the convention's opening night reception. Judy "the hat" Hallett was especially conspicuous, sometimes wearing giant fun-size yellow sunglasses. Those were also the days of crowded parties in individual hotel rooms featuring bathtubs full of booze. I remember a conversation with Amy Richlin about the semiotics of hair: she reveled in her crinibus passis.

I thought, these are my people, so I looked into how to join. But even after signing up I felt like an outsider, since the caucus' original purpose was to support the study of women and gender in the ancient world, which was not at that time central to my own work. When I first became involved with the caucus, the most pressing item on my agenda was therefore to broaden the WCC's mission statement to include the support of women classicists generally. (This wider scope was reflected in the revised bylaws in 1992.) Around the same time, I started the WCC list as an email group of some 25 names in my address book. It now has about a thousand names, and is the primary means for departments to demonstrate to administrations that they have made a good faith search for non-male job candidates. I am proud that some 30 years later it passed into the hands of one of my former students, Melissa Funke.

I cannot imagine how my career would have looked without the WCC. The co-sponsored opening night reception, still THE place to see and be seen at the SCS, was where I connected every year with friends, with many of whom I have collaborated over the years. Those were the days of super-awkward bedroom interviews at the APA, sometimes featuring unmade beds, and of depressingly regular tales of harassment and discrimination in academia generally. I was the only woman in my department when I was hired in 1985. Yet that department (now majority female) has grown from strength to strength in regard to gender politics, partly through close involvement with the WCC. The first grad student steering committee member, my student Lindsay Morse, created the now beloved student cocktail hour at the annual meetings; my colleague Alex Hollmann designed the banner for the WCC table; many of my colleagues and former students have served on the steering committee and in other leadership roles. The culmination of this involvement was hosting the 7th Feminism and Classics conference in 2016. I am beyond proud that former UW students, Eunice Kim and Adriana Vazquez (seen here helping prep the conference) are now at the helm of the WCC.

The WCC was for decades the home for progressive classicists, regardless of gender. (During my years as Secretary-Treasurer, about one fifth of the members identified as male.) When the Lambda Classical Caucus (originally the Gay and Lesbian Classical Caucus) was founded in 1990, the WCC welcomed them as co-sponsors of the opening night party. For its part, the LCC took over the job of providing hijinks, with its costume contests. WCC members took to this new tradition with enthusiasm. [Photos attached of a few notable WCC members in costume.] More recently, the WCC has been at the forefront of welcoming other underrepresented classicists, notably, in recent SCS history, by honoring the creators of the Sportula. The WCC awards for scholarship, along with innovative and fun panel topics at the meetings, have also helped to highlight progressive work and help build the CVs of people involved in kinds of feminist research that have typically received too little respect within the traditional classics academy.

The humanities, and the field of classics in particular, are in the process of a tectonic shift, for better and for worse. My hope is that the WCC will remain at the forefront of progressive change, doing its best to soften the blows while amplifying voices that are now being heard within the profession for the first time, as evidenced in the rise of several new caucuses following the model established by the WCC. I hope the WCC, going forward, will continue to grow with the help of these new voices, while supporting them with the hard-won experience of the past 50 years.