By Debra Bradley Ruder

Gazette Staff

The Women's Studies program started with a phone on the corner of a desk in University Hall.

"The day we got our own phone and listing in the directory was symbolically the most important," recalled Professor Susan Suleiman, a former chair of the Committee on Degrees in Women's Studies. "A room of one's own, a phone of one's own.

"Today," she added, "we are part of the normal life of this great institution, and that's exactly how it should be."

Faculty, students, and staff jammed into Warren House last week to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the women's studies concentration.

Champagne flowed as the 100 or so friends toasted those who have guided the program and those who have enjoyed the fruits of their hard work.

Since its birth in 1987, the interdisciplinary program has grown in size and scope and this year boasts about 40 concentrators. It draws faculty from various FAS departments, two of whom -- Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and Katharine Park -- have joint appointments in women's studies. Ulrich and Park, whose appointment begins in July, were on hand for the festivities.

Over the decade, the concentration has moved several times and will soon occupy space in Warren House, a historic home that is part of the new Barker Center for the Humanities.

Thursday's featured speaker was Carolyn Heilbrun, the writer and Columbia University English professor who chose Warren House as the setting for Death in a Tenured Position, a 1981 murder mystery that underscored academia's resistance to women scholars.

Copies of the novel topped the mantle, and flowers adorned the huge 19th-century bathtub where the fictional Harvard English professor -- the first woman tenured in English -- is found after a faculty party. Plans are to dedicate the bathroom to Amanda Cross, Heilbrun's pseudonym.

Among the celebrants was Harvard President Neil L. Rudenstine, who offered a toast to Suleiman, Alice Jardine, Barbara Johnson, Marjorie Garber, and other faculty leaders of the program.

In a letter, Radcliffe President Linda S. Wilson conveyed her congratulations "on the extraordinary accomplishments of the faculty, staff, and students in women's studies. Yours has been no easy path."

Florence Ladd, director of the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute at Radcliffe, said the Women's Studies program has changed the intellectual and cultural climate of the University.

"If women's studies is thriving here, it has a safe future everywhere," she said. "I wish you well in your new house."