California State University, Northridge

PRESS RELEASE

July 22, 1996

Contact: Stacy Peterson,
Asst. to the Dir. of News and Information,
(818) 677-2130
speterson@exec.csun.edu

Women's Studies Chair Named

Cal State Northridge has named Julia Watson, director of the Women's Studies Program at the University of Montana, as the new chair of the Women's Studies Department.

Watson will assume her new post August 22.

"We're excited at the prospect of having Julia Watson, " said Jorge Garcia, dean of the College of Humanities. "She's clearly a scholar in her field."

Watson received her bachelor's degree in German and English at Western Michigan University, and her master's degree and doctorate in Comparative Literature at University of California, Irvine. She has published extensively in a variety of literary journals and magazines, focusing her work on women writers and feminist theory.

Watson has directed Montana's Women's Studies Program since 1993 and taught Liberal Studies since 1988 at the University of Montana. She has also participated in the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar since 1979.

She held earlier faculty positions at Elizabethtown College, Hobart College, William Smith College, the University of Massachusetts and at the University of California, Irvine.

Watson replaces interim department chair Mary Beth Welch-Orozco.