Teresa Fund - News from Marian Meyers

It is with great pleasure, appreciation and humility that I announce that the Teresa Fund has been fully endowed at the level of $10,000 – all of it very generously contributed by our own Yoo Jae Song of Ewha University in Seoul. Yoo Jae decided to establish the fund in memory of her beloved mother, who passed away last year. Her mother’s whose Christian name was Teresa. It is Yoo Jae’s hope that the fund will enable, so that feminist scholars could to get the recognition and honor their they deserve. This incredibly wonderful gift is FSD’s first endowed fund, and the awards committee is working to establish criteria and guidelines for its operation. The awards committee this year consists of former FSD chair Carolyn Byerly, Yu Shi of Pennsylvania State-Harrisburg, and myself. Yoo Jae, who has been very active with the awards committee in previous years, will remain an honorary member of the Teresa Fund committee so as to stay informed.

With this $10,000 endowment from Yoo Jae, FSD can being begin the process of honoring our own deserving scholars. But it is up to us to make sure that the fund remains robust and grows so that we will be able to make significant awards to support feminist scholarship. Over the years, the Feminist Scholarship Division has put forward some of our best scholars for ICA awards, only to have the honors go to more traditional researchers. The problem that feminist scholars are facing is not simply within ICA – as we well know, feminist scholarship is still often overlooked, excluded and marginalized within our own and many other fields. The Teresa Fund Committee would like to use Yoo Jae’s donation as a starting point, to encourage others to contribute so that we can grant larger awards and so that more of those who are deserving of recognition get it. We ask that FSD members and others consider making donations to the Teresa Fund for its continued and sustained growth. It is worth noting that AEJMC’s MaryAnn Yodelis Smith Award, established in the early 1990s to support women’s research, has been the recipient of book royalties and other contributions from AEJMC members and others. We would like to see the Teresa Fund similarly be viewed as a deserving recipient of royalties from books and other types of donations. In supporting the Teresa Fund, we not only honor the spirit of its founding, but also ourselves and our own work, and the future of feminist scholarship.