Honoring the Legacy of Dr. Savita Nair and Protecting Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies in Upstate South Carolina
Guest Post by Dr. Kathleen Casey
Two years ago, I left my job as a tenured historian at a small liberal arts college in Virginia to become the Director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Furman University in South Carolina. I gave up my community of friends, neighbors, and colleagues to go deep into the Bible Belt to steward a deeply politicized discipline at a college that had been Baptist for most of its 200 years.
I quickly realized how deeply contentious LGBTQ+ issues were here. At the grocery store I saw the headlines of the local paper which described a debate over whether a “Read with Pride” library display should be allowed to stay up. The display featured a paper chain rainbow in the public library of Travelers Rest, a small town north of Greenville. Apparently, a few people were really mad about it, claiming it made them feel unwelcome in the library.
Figure 1: I guess we’re supposed to “Read with Shame” now? Photo from Greenville News, June 21, 2023
The display was so objectionable to a very vocal few that the Greenville Public Library System changed its rules regarding all displays. Basically, almost no displays are allowed now and the library has continued to ban books with LGBTQ+ content.
I knew that I was trading off job security to direct a discipline which was (and still is) desperately needed in the South—a discipline that had the capacity to save students’ lives. I still remember the stranger who sought me out at a workshop for chairs and directors at Southern universities in my first semester at Furman. During a break, she came up to me and told me that Women’s Studies courses saved her life. When she was in college in the 1980s, she was struggling with an eating disorder that nearly killed her. The Women’s Studies classes she took gave her a framework for understanding what she was going through and enabled her to seek the help she desperately needed. “I need you to know this,” she said.
We can’t always save students and, if a student is in crisis, we need to refer them to those with specialized training in counseling. But on some days, the weight of trying to both teach and care for students (in addition to ourselves) and our programs, feels very heavy. But I’m so glad this woman shared her story with me. I try to remember it at the hardest moments, like when the executive orders started coming out one after the other. Right now, universities around the nation are losing millions of dollars in funding while others are quickly caving to anti-DEI demands. We know most of these orders are unconstitutional, but they have had a chilling impact. Of course, some have felt these changes more deeply and intimately than others. Last week, we learned that two Furman students had their visas revoked.
The reality is that, since Women’s Studies classes first began to be offered at American universities in the 1970s, the average college student stayed away from them. Many still do, though this is starting to change, especially now as students are realizing the political stakes of not being able to think and speak about complex and evolving understandings of gender and sexuality in informed ways. Though in many places, course offerings have expanded, in others, programs have shuttered altogether. And the general climate has also become much worse. Across the nation, students considering declaring a major or minor in WGSS might reasonably wonder if family members who help pay their tuition might stop. Still others might want to declare a major or minor, but worry what might happen if WGSS appears on their diploma. While skepticism about the “value” of a major in women, gender and sexuality studies isn’t new, these fears are heightened like I’ve never seen them before.
On November 1st, 2024, we lost our former WGSS director, Dr. Savita Nair, who died way too young. She co-founded Furman’s first study away trip to India and her research focused on the experiences of Indian migrants, especially women, to eastern Africa. But she likely made her greatest impact helping to steward Furman’s WGSS Program for more than two decades. She advocated conducting a national search for a new director, and initially led the search committee to hire for the position I now occupy. But by the time I arrived at Furman for a campus visit in January of 2022, she was absent from campus. I didn’t find out until I moved to South Carolina that she was fighting a terrible illness. I could tell she had already done amazing work with this program, and I was excited for the day she would return to campus. That day never came.
Figure 2: Throughout her twenty-one-year career, Savita Nair was recognized for her incredible work, winning the Alester G. and Janie Earle Furman Meritorious Advising Award (2004), the Alester G. and Janie Earle Furman Meritorious Teaching Award (2009), the Cherie Maiden Invitational Award for Contributions to DEI (2023), and the Jim A. Smart Award for Vocational Reflection (2024).
When I took this job two years ago, I couldn’t have imagined that Savita would no longer be living or that Trump would be in office again. Needless to say, it’s been challenging. I believe our program is having a positive impact on our campus and the Upstate region in general. I’m starting to hear from high school students in other states who want to study with us, but who remain worried about how inclusive and welcoming our campus and region is for queer people.
While this fear is not unreasonable, the program is bigger and stronger than it has ever been; over three times as many students have declared a major or minor in WGSS compared to two years ago. We have made stickers and cheeky t-shirts with slogans that say “FU GENDER” and “GO BEYOND BINARIES” that were more prescient than we could have imagined; it brings me joy to see them all over campus. We’ve brought 13 speakers to campus from around the country and organized over two dozen events, which more than 2,500 people have attended. Thanks to our amazing archivist, Jeff Makala, we have also amassed an incredible archive of over 1,000 queer zines from around the world, the second largest collection in the Southeast. (I imagine that our founders must be turning over in their graves). But we continue to evolve, as we should. Our university is almost 200 years old; it’s the oldest private college in the state. And 2025 marks the 30th anniversary of the WGSS program. Despite incredible obstacles, we are stronger and more visible than we have ever been.
But our aspirations are still bigger than that. We plan to become a formal department and hire more professors. We need a central space on campus in which we can not only gather to be in community but be visible to students and colleagues. We want to continue bringing speakers to campus to talk about transphobia, homophobia, body image, queer biology, abortion, poetry that centers trans experiences, sexual harassment, women’s history, and more. We are just beginning to plan a speaker series for next year around the themes of resistance and resilience. Let this post serve as a formal invitation to you to attend these events, which we also try to Zoom for those who are too far away to attend in person.
Our biggest accomplishment this year is the establishment of our first-ever endowment. On April 1st, we announced that Savita’s mother, Shanta Nair, wished to make a gift to support the legacy of her daughter’s work and support the WGSS Program. Shanta has now established the Savita Nair Endowed Fund for WGSS, and she has elegantly described the purpose of the endowed fund: “one chapter has ended, but it is my wish that her [Savita’s] story continues in a different form to benefit her beloved program and Furman University forever. The name Savita means sunlight, and with every sunrise, may this endowment continue to bring purpose and meaning to the lives of the people it shines on.” Hear directly from Savita’s mother in the short video below:
I promised Savita’s mother that our program would do everything we could to amplify the power of her gift so we can create an even stronger, more stable future for WGSS at Furman and in South Carolina. From now until April 29, I’m asking you to make a donation to grow this gift and ensure the future of our program at a critical moment. Every gift can help us support students who want to explore WGSS, but might otherwise not have support from their family to do so. Every gift of $10 or more makes a big difference, getting us one step closer to garnering the most donors of any program, department, institute, center, or athletic team on campus. Last year, we surprised everyone by winning this contest the first time we ever participated. (We even beat the football and men’s basketball teams. And if we do it again, we will win an extra $4000).
Whether you are able to donate, share this message with others, or follow us on Instagram @WGSSatFurman, we greatly appreciate your support.
Click here to donate.
Once you click the donation link, you’ll need to click “Make Your Gift Early,” then type in the amount you’d like to give. Then under “Designation,” type in “Savita Nair Endowed Fund for WGSS.” The instructions in the short video below visually show you how to make sure your gift goes to the Savita Nair Endowment for WGSS.
Thank you for reading.
With deep gratitude,
Kathleen
Kathleen B. Casey is the Director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, where she is also a Professor of History. She has written two books, The Prettiest Girl on Stage is a Man: Race and Gender Benders in American Vaudeville (University of Tennessee Press, 2015) and The Things She Carried: A Cultural History of the Purse in America. The latter will be released by Oxford University Press in August 2025 and is available for pre-order now. Casey has been interviewed by Vox and Inside Higher Ed, and has published articles in Gender & History, Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies, the Journal of American Culture and Ms. Magazine. You can contact her directly at kathleen.casey6@furman.edu.