Hobart and William Smith Colleges

2025-2026 Theme: “Backlash, (Im)mobility, Reaction”

The theme “Backlash, (Im)mobility, Reaction” captures the world in flux, the world overcome by turbulence, with opposite forces clashing, breaking, turning over. The Fisher Center for the Study of Gender and Justice invites applicants to address the following question: what does it mean to think, to write, to act, and to create art in such a world? Do we succumb to the forces of the moment (such as reactionary forces) that inhibit movement? Do we react to them, mutiny, redirect, and fight back? How do scientists, artists, thinkers, and activists survive backlash—perhaps even turning the forces of backlash against themselves? What makes people move and react, during reactionary times that hinder people’s mobility?

Is backlash always reactionary? Backlash is a response to a breakthrough, feminist writer Susan Faludi asserts in her 1991 book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. The “wrath” of a backlash, she argues, is marked by its brutality. It is a preemptive strike against real gains and, as such, is reactive. Backlash often disguises itself as “pity,” “worry,” “concern,” or cynicism. “The backlash is not a conspiracy… For the most part, its workings are encoded and internalized, diffuse and chameleonic,” she writes. While in the 1980s, demographers, sociologists, economists, and legal scholars rallied to claim feminism was the culprit behind the “infertility crisis,” “female burnout,” and the erosion of the American family, in our time, politicians—finding ample support in incel, trad-wife, and far-right communities—similarly hold feminism and other progressive movements responsible for various social ills. Backlash is episodic: it manifests as moments of resurgence, as flare-ups or outbreaks. Here, we ask: is backlash the right term to understand our cultural and political moment? How does one survive or fight back amid a backlash?

The term “reaction” is twofold: in reacting, one can respond well or defensively. One can overreact or fail to react at all. In our world, the term “reaction” often evokes nuclear reactions or corrosive chemical agents. Reactive agents have a high tendency to interact and cause damage. Reactionary movements try to stop the tide of change. Reactivity is often built into architecture (e.g., automated doors) and technical systems such as AI. We are also interested in visceral or bodily reactions (e.g., how one’s body reacts upon hearing the news). Reaction can trigger forms of anticipatory obedience (e.g., the scrubbing of DEI policies and statements by institutions and companies).

Immobility names a paralysis—an inability to respond or react. By contrast, mobilization seeks to enable collective and large-scale responses. Tariff and border wars signal the end of a certain type of mobility that once defined the era of globalization. The current crisis is one of both immobility and mass displacement. How do we make both phenomena visible? Activist Harsha Walia asserts that the so-called migrant crisis is “a misnomer, and what we are faced with is a crisis of immobility, where millions of displaced people are prevented from moving to safety and held in cordoned-off zones of containment.” How do we theorize mobility and immobility in an era of mass displacement and rapid, unpredictable change?

provoke your assumptions 

Provoke your assumptions, challenge your beliefs and grow as a student and citizen by engaging in dialogue, research and scholarly collaboration at the Fisher Center for the Study of Gender and Justice. Bringing together faculty, students and experts in gender-related fields in the arts, humanities and social and natural sciences, the Fisher Center fosters mutual understanding and social justice in our contemporary society.

History

Since its founding in 1998, the Fisher Center has brought hundreds of national and international experts to campus to explore the facets and implications of one driving question: How do we more nearly realize, through our educational program, scholarship and presence in the larger community, our democratic ideals of equity, mutual respect, and common interest in relations between men and women?

• The Fisher Center was endowed with a $1 million gift from Emily and the late Richard Fisher, whose son Alexander graduated in 1993.
• It was inaugurated in October 1998, with an event titled "Engendering the Future: Educating Women, Educating Men, Educating Women and Men," that featured noted experts Carol Gilligan, professor of psychology and the Patricia Albjerg Chair of Gender Studies at Harvard University; and Michael Kimmel, who has written and edited many books on the topic of masculinity.
• The Fisher Center's 20^th anniversary was celebrated with an official name change from The Fisher Center for the Study of Women and Men to the The Fisher Center for the Study of Gender and Justice, moving away from the limits of binary conceptions of gender while continuing to lead the campus and community dialogue on pressing issues around gender and social equity. A series of special events took place in the 2018-19 academic year including a keynote speech by internationally renowned activist, professor and author Angela Davis.