In only six months, individuals have contributed more than half of the match, and we hope to meet the challenge in one year rather than in five. First, the creation of Women's Studies in our lifetime has responded to a crucial range of human concerns. Every academic discipline, however arcane it may become at times, can trace its origins to simple and powerful human needs. Women's Studies stunningly fulfills this requirement, beginning not only in the discontent of women in a society tilted away from their self-realization, but also in the worries and wishes all of us encounter in regard to our identity as sexed women and men. In addition, Women's Studies has become a model for interdiscipli-narity.
Wags sometimes claim that interdisciplinarity sponsors learning a mile wide and an inch deep.
But Women's Studies has provided what all of us must prize, authentically fresh organizations of knowledge. We are reaffirming our support for the field as well in the acknowledgement of its advances, which seem to have achieved the work of centuries in a few decades. Women's Studies has become particularly rich in variety, rigorous in practice, and replete with those internal debates that occur in the most energetic fields. The winners of this year's dissertation awards are at a real distance from the founding works in the field, much as such early work prepared a ground. It's funny in this context that Emerson employs the male pronoun to represent all people.