Houck.J.2546_7.29.2025_Transcript

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0:05
Edwin Elizabeth Thomas: Alright, can you state your name, age, association with GWS at UW-Madison, and how long you've been here?

0:13
Judith Houck: So, I'm Judith Houck. At least I'm Judith Houck can print, I'm Judy Houck. I am 60, 62 at this point, which still surprises me. What were the other questions?

0:30
Edwin Elizabeth Thomas: How long you've been here?

0:32
Judith Houck: Oh, yeah. So I became faculty in 2002, but I was a graduate student in Madison in the late '90s and interacted with the department, both as a graduate student and as a teaching assistant.

0:50
Edwin Elizabeth Thomas: Some introductory questions. What drew you to Gender and Women's Studies initially? What was going on in your life, your family, your community, or the world at large?

1:00
Judith Houck: So, it's a story of failure in some ways, so I always considered myself to be a feminist, but I went to a college, an undergraduate college where we read, I think it was two books by women over the course of four years. So, I had internalized this idea, to some extent, that studying women as women, well, was women's work, right? In a way that was not complimentary, right, and so… but I only partially internalized that. I never really believed that. But anyway, eventually, I came to graduate school to study the history of science, I was going to study Newtonian physics, or maybe ancient physics, or something like that. Serious, serious topics about, or maybe about virtue, I don't know. And I spent a semester doing that kind of work, thinking or wondering why I wasn't a lawyer, because this was not my cup of tea. I could not see myself studying scientific ideas that were completely removed from people and drama and emotion, and it just, it wasn't interesting to me. And so, I thought perhaps I should drop out of graduate school, but I looked through the course descriptions and there was a History of Medicine course, which I hadn't been interested in before, and it was called Women in Health in American History. Which is clearly an artifact of the women's health movement, but I didn't know the women's health movement existed then, but I thought, why don't I, why don't I take that and see if there's something in this work that resonates with me, and I found a career in that course. Right, I fell in love with women's history, I fell in love with the analysis of gender, I fell in love with the history of medicine in a new kind of way, and that's where I've been in my research, my teaching, has been there ever since. But that brought me, gave me a research topic, or niche, but it also brought me into teaching. So that association with women's studies, it was a process, of course, between women's studies and gender, and women's studies and history of medicine. And so that also introduced me to the department. I took a graduate seminar with Elaine Marks on writing women's lives while I was a graduate student, and that, too, sort of knocked my socks off and gave me new ideas for methodology, new ideas for what was legitimate to study as a scholar. And also, I came to Gender and Women's Studies, or Women's Studies then, in, mid-'90s as a teaching assistant for gender… what was then called Women in Health in American History. Which is also an artifact of the women's health movement. And I mentioned this women's health movement twice now, because that's the subject of my most recent book. So, the influence of gender and women's studies is quite clear to my teaching and my research trajectory.

5:06
Edwin Elizabeth Thomas: What do you remember most vividly about the program, the department in its early days?

5:19
Judith Houck: Everybody cared so much. So, particularly in the TA context, I thought the students care deeply about what we were teaching. Learning about bodies, learning about the politics that those bodies are living within. The teaching assistants were excellent, and again, bringing that concern about women's health, healthcare more generally to an undergraduate audience from a variety of perspective, I liked being part of that team. I also taught with Mariamne [Whatley]-- no, I taught with Nancy Worcester. And she was just great. I also taught with other folks, but I remember Nancy most vividly, and she was just... her care for the students and the content, it was inspiring, and it's continued to be inspiring about what good teaching what politically-invested teaching looked like. And then in the classroom. What I met, what was my first impression was just how smart and interesting Elaine Marks was. Elaine died before I came on faculty in 2002, but she was an astonishing teacher. I mean, she could, how she could think on her feet in really deep and probing ways. The support she gave her students, the way she could parse a text. It was, it was a masterclass in scholarship and pedagogy.

7:20
Edwin Elizabeth Thomas: What did it feel like to be part of this, sort of this transitioning field of emerging-slash-established field of gender and women's studies? Were there any professional or academic risks considering your background initially?

7:37
Judith Houck: Yeah, by the time I was here, I didn't… I didn't feel there was any risk associated with scholarship that could be read as gender and women's studies. In part because I was trained in part by a generation of scholars who believed deeply both in disciplinary training and interdisciplinary training. And so I was a historian whose scholarship was relevant to the field of gender and women's studies, women's history, but I was trained first as a historian, and I still feel that right, I really feel that that training was, is still who I am, but being also associated with gender and women's studies gave me new methods and appreciation for interdisciplinarity that our department supports, affirms, requires, really. So, I didn't think it was really very risky. Our department has always been, the faculty, the students, have always been kind of superstars, and so, their, the glow of the achievement of these scholars provided a great deal of protection for all of us who are associated with the department because their achievements were just so noteworthy. So I didn't feel like, so, training elsewhere, professional identity as a historian helped me mitigate any risk. And the esteem with which these scholars were held also mitigated the risk, and there's also risk in being in a place, or studying something that doesn't feed you, right? And although I love history of science and the work that I decided was not my cup of tea, I couldn't see myself studying that for a career, right? And the idea of following that pathway, there were real risks there, both in the quality of the work that I could do, and also, just doing something that I didn't feel passionate about.

10:31
Edwin Elizabeth Thomas: I wanted to follow up on something. What is scholarship that could be read as gender and women's studies, according to you?

10:42
Judith Houck: Is it a little like obscenity, right? You know it when you see it. It's scholarship that certainly puts women, or gender, or sexuality at the center. Right? Work that says women matter, mattered. And their scholarship about them matter. And that kind of work can always be read as political, even though the work itself may not feel like, somebody's on a hobby horse, right, or a high horse. But saying these topics matter. I feel like that is consistent with the mission of gender and women's studies. The work that takes gender as an analytic category, and actually women as an analytic category, I think is women and gender studies scholarship, the work that is, does not resist diversity of experiences, understanding that women are different because of their abilities by race, class, sexuality, so… my first book on the history of menopause really was a book about white women because, in part, it's not that I wasn't interested in other women, but this is the category, particularly the medical category of woman, was so, at least when they were talking about menopause, was about imagined white subject. So I think those are some of the ways that is scholarship that is consistent with gender and women's studies. I mean, certainly there is work that puts women at the center that, I would argue, is not consistent with gender and women's studies. But I think that's the first step to sort of, that's the first step on the flowchart, just to put gender, or women, or sexuality at the center. An appreciation of diversity, I think, is also at the center of our analysis.

13:49
Edwin Elizabeth Thomas: Thank you for that. I want to shift gears a little bit to trace the institutionalization of GWS. One thing that's often mentioned in some of my other interviews is the relationship between the community and the department that has evolved over time. So, in your early years here, what was the relationship like at that time between the department and the community here in Madison? What was going on in Madison, in Wisconsin, nationally, at that time, and how did that trickle in to the department?

14:34
Judith Houck: Yeah, by the time I came here. So when I was a TA, I had an office in the house. I assume, I assume that you've talked or will talk to somebody about the department, or the program, right, that lived in the house. So, when I was a TA, I had an office in the house. But by the time I was faculty, I didn't. We were already in commerce. And that, and so the stories of faculty and graduate students and community members all sitting on the floor of the house on Brooks Street, those days were gone. Right, I have no… and so the idea that community members would attend our meetings and try to urge our department to be more political and take a stand on this or that, or accuse our department of being too academic, right, those stories, that's hearsay for me. And so I don't actually feel as though by the time I got here, we didn't, there are also stories of graduate students from other departments being really active in Gender and Women's Studies, that also was mostly true. Graduate students from across campus did provide some of our lecturers. So I don't have that much to say about that. Right now in our policies, we have two, we will allow two people from the community to join our department committee, Committee of the Whole. But since I have, in the 23 years I've been on faculty, there have been no community members who have taken us up on that. And, yeah, so I think that's both a loss, and it's, I mean, it's what happens when radical organizations become part of the establishment they had once hoped to change, right? They change along with it. So, there is those tendrils into the community in that kind of way, asking feminists in the community to help us create and nurture this department. Those days are fairly, fairly gone, right, or completely gone. I hesitate to say completely, because there are ways which this new generation of scholars is doing more community-engaged scholarship, right, and I think this is great. But that's, that is different from community members coming in and trying to shape the department itself.

17:52
Edwin Elizabeth Thomas: On that note, one of the things that was mentioned is how, not just at UW-Madison but how women's studies had kind of an infiltrative nature when they sort of stormed into the university and demanded space. So, I wanted to ask you, has the infiltrative nature of women's studies department been co-opted into the university?

18:17
Judith Houck: Yeah, co-opted is such a, such a loaded term. Certainly, Gender and Women's Studies in universities, and in this university, its role, how it operates, its relationship to administration has changed significantly. And in many ways, Gender and Women's Studies has become just another department. And I say that cautiously, but in, I think, in some ways it's true. We are still political in nature. Our work is political. Our presence is political. But so is the work of, let's say, geography, right? We're not the only politically informed department on campus. And one of the stories of gender studies or women's studies departments is that we started out as the academic arm of a political movement, and I think that's true. And I think in some ways, we still are, in some ways, the academic arm of the political movement, but we have, but we are more ordinary in terms of a poli… what we do departmentally. Right? I think Gender and Women's Studies, at least in Madison, is no longer the sort of a gadflea to the administration, right? We are well-respected by the administration because of our superb teaching, our excellent scholarship, the service that we provide to this university. We are not antagonistic like we once were. And again, something is gained, and something is lost by that. We have not been starved of resources, at this point in time. Except part of a larger constriction of state funding for the university in general, which hurt all departments. So, but the idea that feminist scholars are everywhere on this campus, I think is a, and therefore, there is more than one place on campus that feminist scholars can find a home. A collegial home is really great, right? And that is, um… I would not say our mission, then, has been co-opted by the university, I think our presence and changes in the world have transformed the academy in that way, and made many departments much more friendly to feminists, you'll find a lot more feminist, and feminist work, in departments that were 40, 50 years ago, quite antagonistic. I think that's great. Right, I think, and that's, you know, a product of the mainstreaming of feminist scholarship and gender and women's studies more generally. But, that said, we are seeing women's studies, gender studies, sexuality studies across the country being eliminated. Both because of budget cuts, and, this seems like Gender and Women's Studies seems like a place to cut while maintaining the college's mission, right? That's the language that sometimes comes out. But, on the other hand, I think we're being cut, not just for budgetary reasons, but in this moment, 2025, and a new administration that is hostile to feminism and LGBTQ folks, and diversity, inclusion as social goods, right? This, gender and women's studies has been seen as dangerous, right? We don't need those ideas. Because those, in that sense, we recruit, right? We recruit in our classrooms in the sense that we tell, we draw pictures of the world as it is, and what it could be, and we ask our students to make judgments about that, right, and about the importance of diversity and the importance of women's achievements, the humanity of queer folks. We do, we do this work. And that, at this particular moment, is still dangerous, radical. And therefore, under attack. So on the one hand, I want to say that the department is increasingly just like other departments, and yet, I believe fully in the radical importance of what we do here. The scholarship that we produce, the students we teach, the courses we offer, all of that is still, it's a social good, right? It's not just important academically. And I will acknowledge that in these budget cuts of higher ed across the board, things like German and history, and other, and certainly ethnic studies programs. African American Studies, Asian American Studies, you know. Chicano-latina studies, these programs are also under attack, so it's not just us. But these things happen when taxpayers and legislators decide that higher education is just about work force development.

25:45
Edwin Elizabeth Thomas: Would you characterize the department today as under attack?

25:58
Judith Houck: Would I characterize the department today as under attack? We are in a gender and women's studies department at a moment of cultural, national and, in fact, and state, rhetorical attack on diversity and gender in women's studies, right? That is true. And certainly, but I, so certainly some people in the state of Wisconsin thinks that this is superfluous, dangerously ideological. That said, I don't feel that UW-Madison GWS is under the same kind of threat as it is in other… universities in the state. I think gender and women's studies has always been important but precarious in some of our other UW campuses, and they are feeling that precarity to a greater degree now than they were two years ago, I would say, but our administration has, under Dean Wilcox, been super supportive of Gender and Women's Studies, and I say Dean Wilcox, I'm not, I'm not saying other deans have not been also supportive. Carl Scholz when I was chair before was also supportive. Our colleagues on campus understand that we have superb scholarship that we do here, that our teaching is first-rate, our students are engaged. My colleagues across campus always talk about how great it is to have Gender and Women's Studies students in their classes, because they are passionate, they are committed, they are hungry. They are hungry for knowledge, and, you know, every professor, every teacher, every lecturer, every TA, likes students who are hungry for knowledge, who want to learn more. So, I don't exactly know where I came down on that answer. So sure, we are under attack. And certainly, individuals in our community, right? Trans folks especially, but other queer folks, people of color, individuals are certainly attacked. Are under attack by our national culture, and how that is trickling down to people on the street, in the grocery store. And in legislatures.

29:29
Edwin Elizabeth Thomas: You spoke about finding home within the department, and it's something that you also mentioned in your interview with the department 10 years ago. For a lot of people, that's hard to find. And I wanted to ask, how has the department been successful in becoming diverse over time in its composition, in its viewpoint, et cetera?

30:00
Judith Houck: So, I'm gonna parse those questions separately. So I did find in Gender and Women's Studies, a home, right? Not my exclusive home when I was a graduate student, or when I was a faculty member, but a home. And sometimes it was a refuge. And this idea of refuge, I think, was super important early on in the program, in the 1970s, when it was normal to be hostile to feminist scholarship. Right? And it was normalized to sort of assume that women scholars would be less than. Right? And so this sort of refuge, which is different than home, but perhaps related, was really important for… In my generation, it was less... the hostility elsewhere was not, I'm not saying it was gone, but it was certainly nowhere near the intensity. But I do, um, I have found a home here in my colleagues. It's nice to have… yeah, it was, it was and still is an important home. And certainly in the last 10 years, as I've been chair on and off, it's been increasingly, it feels like home. On the other hand, home might be using the word home to describe an academic department, I think is both great and a little dangerous in the sense that it implies that we should be cultivating a sense of comfort in our midst, right? And that challenging each other is sort of, can be hostile. Right? That's the sort of, that's the downside of wanting to see a department as a home is that it can, it can make some conversations that would be easier in, say, political science, more difficult here. Right, and that we have to give ourselves room in this department to have, to think of ourselves sometimes in coalition rather than in a family, right? So we can have difficult, challenging, conversations, right? Because. We should not all think the same thing about… we shouldn't march in lockstep, right? That is the sure way to make ourselves obsolete. So we always need to have new radical ideas, and some of those ideas are gonna be off-putting to others, right? And we need to work through that, and I think, and that can be super difficult, right? And it can feel, and maybe sometimes it is personal, right? And so, giving ourselves freedom to do that. But then the second question about diversity, which is connected to home, I think. I think Gender and Women's Studies Department, sorry. So Gender and Women's Studies departments are, the idea that there are these generational struggles. So generational struggles in some tellings are about incorporating more scholars of color into the ranks. Including, although, I think, here, that was all... certainly, I think Gender and Women's Studies embraced diversity and saw it as important to departmental cultures, um, important to academic perspectives. And in the first years, and now I just don't want to speak about the sort of earliest years about creating a diverse department and program, because I wasn't here. I have heard rumor that there were really significant battles over sexuality, but again, I wasn't here for those, right? And so, talking about diversity now, I think there is always more work to do. But when I left the chair position the first time, I think we had one scholar of color in our midst, right? And that was unacceptable, right, it was really unacceptable. And over the last 8, 7 years, we have very strategically worked to make sure that never happens to us now. And I think in terms of faculty of color, we're over 30%, maybe closer to 40%. So we've made in a relatively short time, really good improvements there. But it didn't happen accidentally, right? It went, it was through strategic decisions about what kind of areas we want to hire in. It was strategic decisions about which cluster initiatives we wanted to be part of. Finding other departments to partner with. So that happened because we decided it needed to happen. In terms of sexuality, I think the department is also diverse in terms of gender, gender identity, again, we are pretty diverse, most folks, identify as women, but we have trans folks, we have non-binary folks, so we are, again, diverse in that respect also. We have, roughly 15 years ago, maybe, closer to 20 years ago, we also began building in disability studies. And through that, we have, through that, and not through that, we have increased the number of faculty who identify as disabled. So, I think it's a value of, gender and women's scholarship and the community, that having diverse perspectives in terms of many things is important, I think. And right now, we're living up to that perspective pretty well. It's not as though, there's more work to do, of course there's more work to do. But I think it's okay. I think we're doing pretty well right now.

39:09
Edwin Elizabeth Thomas: I wanted to move towards your time and leadership. This is also coinciding with your time as chair coming to an end. So my first question. This is a question about the [inaudible] to give some background. But in your two terms as chair, what has been the rose and what has been the thorn?

39:45
Judith Houck: I have… I just see a beautiful bouquet. The thorns are fully hidden. I have loved so much about this job, and I know this is a rare thing to say, to mention being chai and a love for the role, right? But I have loved so much about it. It is, I have loved helping other people rewarded monetarily and in other ways, right, for their excellence. For their excellent research. There's just nothing better than helping people get rewarded with recognition for their scholarship. I love giving people recognition for their teaching. And recognition for their service, right? I love helping shine a light on my colleagues, right? And when I say colleagues, I mean teaching assistants, and teaching faculty and lecturers and faculty. I love that. I like nurturing and mentoring more junior scholars, right? One of the things… That I love about this job is doing teaching observations of people's teaching, right? And seeing excellent teaching, learning from that teaching, and then offering tips for taking what is already excellent and making it better. I love being part of searches. Either on committees or just being part of it, where we get to see all this new talent out there, and we get to bring some of it home, right? And then we get to support them as they get to tenure. I like being in a position where, if I see some things I disagree with, or that we could do better, or that we could develop an area, I love being in a position where I can make that happen. I just, I like that. I like being of use, I liked being of service, and I like to lead. I like all of those things. In terms of thorns, I mean, there have been difficult times. Right? And the thorns have mostly concerned moments of difficulty among... where the department is dealing with difficult things. Right, and just, and trying to work through our differences, and our frustrations, and our ignorance, and our fear. And being vulnerable to each other, and keeping…an academic department together, right? Those have been, there are not many of those moments, but I think every chair in every department has some moment of really difficulty around issues that matter. And you just, you just hold your breath and work through it and trust the process, and trust your colleagues. But those are moments of difficulty. And then thorns, there's always another form to fill out, right? Or, you know, it is… the workload, I would say is, it's not that… The work never stops as being chair. There's always something to do, if you want to be of service, there's always something to do. There's always, the email from Associate Deans on Friday at four, bless them, that there is something due on Tuesday, right? Or Monday, and those are moments where you just, you're happy for the opportunity to participate in something sometimes, but you had other plans for your weekend. Those are, over the course of enough years, those thorns, I'm ready to give them up, right? So those, yeah, I don't love everything about being chair, right? And I am so happy to have a new chair on the horizon. I can't, I am excited, and I think they will be superb, and take the department in ways that I couldn't or didn't know we should, I'm excited for new leadership and new ideas. But there have been moments about being chair that have been quite satisfying.

45:54
Edwin Elizabeth Thomas: You mentioned "could'nt, should'nt," which makes me wonder, are there any "could've, should've, would've" moments for you that stand out as part of this job?

46:13
Judith Houck: Oh, there are always tasks left undone or ideas that remained ideas. And some of them are about my own personal capacity to get everything I wanted done. And some of it is just the capacity for other faculty and staff to help do the building, right? And sometimes the capacity has just not been there. The one "could've, should've, would've" I would have liked if the department had been, had more events that were explicitly public-facing. Now, whether that's public-facing to the student body of the department or the community of Madison, etc. I think gender and women's studies scholarship is tackling some of the issue at the core of our national convulsion right now. And abortion, reproductive rights. All kinds of lines about gender identity and the appropriateness of trans supportive care. I think, and a variety of other topics, or thinking about the gendered aspects of immigration and the gendered aspects of the crackdown on people of color. I think, if we'd had more capacity as scholars, and, I don't want to say servants of the state, but as participants in the Wisconsin idea, I think we could have had more teach-ins, we could have had more…public panels around the consequences of Dobbs, right? I think we could have, but we did not have that capacity. So I'm not… This is just something we couldn't make happen at this particular moment in time, and it's not as though showcasing our expertise in a public way, the time has is over, right? Certainly, the need for public-facing scholarship is great as it's ever been, probably more, certainly in the last 10 years, so, perhaps the new chair will, if that's something of importance to them, maybe they can take it on.

49:53
Edwin Elizabeth Thomas: What has been your philosophy as chair? What is your leadership philosophy, and how has it changed, how has it evolved?

50:02
Judith Houck: So, I take seriously the dual roles, at least I think of being chair, is, it's a service position, and it's a leadership position. And the idea that I see myself as a servant leader makes me roll my eyes, right? Because it seems much more highfalutin for what I really feel like I do here. But my goal is to serve. It is to do some of the things that make the department run better, make our classes more popular, make, provide more time for faculty to do their own scholarship. If I can make things easier, and better, and more efficient for the people around me, that is what I want to do. Right, that's the service component. It is to also make sure the public image of the department is strong. It is to make sure the department and the people in it are recognized. That is, I take quite seriously. I am here to serve people and the reputation and the administration of the department. But it's not just a service role, right? I took seriously setting some of the priorities, right? And making sure that when there were pots of money available. I was going, I was gonna lead us to them, and how we negotiated some of the things it, you know, I got to take my agenda, in both terms, and then taking that to the department and see which pieces of my agenda could also be the department's agenda. Right, this is not about me, but if we could create shared vision and shared purpose, then I was gonna do that. My first term as chair, I was an associate professor, and that had certain kinds of challenges, but I also, I wasn't, I felt like I had a firmer hand on, is it the tiller, the rudder, I felt, at least on some things that I was pretty confident about steering the boat, right? And I made clear to the department what I thought should happen in some cases. And tried to see if I could get the department to come along with me, right? Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn't. This last 4 years, I think, I was certainly there were moments when I said, very rare moments when I said, as chair, I can tell you we are not gonna do that, right, or I cannot, as chair, sign off on that. I just can't, right? But I felt my job these last four years was to do more helping the department figure out what they wanted. I thought I was less directive these last 4 years. In part because I can see retirement, and the department is not, is less, I am still very much invested in this department, but it's also less mine, right, in the sense that I have less than a decade left, far less than a decade left, and some of the people in the department who have 20-year careers ahead of them, and that I felt my job was to provide evidence or opinions on both sides of issues, and help the folks who are going to be the leaders in 10 years, and be members of this department for the next 20, figure out, given the fully fleshed-out options, what their decisions were going to be. So it's changed a little bit over time.

55:08
Edwin Elizabeth Thomas: So, my final question to you. One of the benefits of your second term of your second term as chair is the GWS PhD program. And so, I wanted to ask you, what is the promise and potential of a GWS PhD program, 50 years into the department's evolution? Almost 50 years.

55:29
Judith Houck: Yeah, so, when I was chair the first time, we tried to get the PhD program through, and these were moments when resource restrictions in the wake of the Scott Walker governorship, and an increasingly dominant, conservative, legislation branch, right? The legislature meant that new initiatives, like a new PhD in gender and women's studies was off the table, so we spent a lot of time that first term working on it. And at the last minute, we did not apply. And so I was just thrilled to be here to be chair when Gender and Women's Studies at UW-Madison started its PhD. I think I was, one of the reasons why I was in favor of this, as I didn't understand how an academic department in a Research 1 university, and Research 1 universities are in large part, I mean, a significant part of that is about training the next generation of scholars. Right, and the idea that a department that focuses on gender, women, and sexuality could be one of the very few departments that didn't train graduate students, it meant  that we were second class, second tier, department, right? We were almost a real department, but not quite. And that wa sort of untenable to me. But now, after we got this PhD, and we have our second year, our second cohort has just finished their first year, and we have admitted our third cohort, that this is really exciting, and I really, we are not early to this work. Other departments have had PhD programs for more than 10 years, so we're slow to the movement in some ways, but I think we're gonna be first-rate, and we already are in terms of attracting top-notch students and applicants, we're already doing great. So, we had a recent search over the last few years in this department. And some of the candidates for the search were Gender and Women's Studies PhD students. Right, or had been trained in gender and women's studies. And that just made me see the potential for developing this department and this discipline and this field more fully, and seeing people work through, scholars work through interdisciplinarity more fully. Because our department right now, I would say, we have both interdisciplinary scholars, and we have scholars from many disciplines. And the idea, and both of those things play a role here. But I think the idea that we are going to learn how to train those of us who are trained in disciplines are really going to learn so much about training interdisciplinary scholars, and we're going to really change the shape of the field, or be part of this greater change in the field as we move from multidisciplinary, and really, more of us, oor the discipline will be built on interdisciplinary scholarship. And so far, these scholars that we have admitted into our programs are just affirming our commitment to the PhD. They are creative, they are enthusiastic, they are smart. And they're really gonna change the field, right? And make it. We're gonna see where they take it and what they make of it, and it's gonna be theirs to do. So I'm super excited. And maybe I'll even still be here when the first one graduates, but, it's really, it's a development that's time has come, or past the time has come.

1:00:54
Edwin Elizabeth Thomas: All right, that was all the questions on my end. Was there anything else you would like to add?

1:00:59
Judith Houck: It's been a real gift to be a part of this department, both as a student, as a TA, as a faculty member, and then, as leader. It's been, yeah, so many of the highlights of my career have been associated with my, might have been because of my association with the department. And it's been a real pleasure to lead for some of those years. And to be a participant and a community member for some of the others. So I'm thrilled that what emerged at a time of struggle and conflict and anger and disappointment and frustration has now built into this really remarkable department that's still also willing and sees our work as part of building a more just society. So, it's been a pleasure.