Beverly Guy-Sheftall (KNFP 8) Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women's Studies and English and Founding Director, Women's Research & Resource Center, Atlanta.

This article was originally published in the January 2009 issue of the KFLA Newsletter.

From the early '70s, Beverly Sheftall has been a leader in the field of women's studies, particularly as they relate to African American women. Beverly began her career as a professor of English at Spelman College, her alma mater, and there she went on to become the Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women's Studies, as well as the founding director the Women's Research and Resource Center at the college. Her decades of scholarship have yielded a number of texts, including the first anthology of African American women's writing, Sturdy Black Bridges: Visions of Black Women in Literature. Her most recent book, co-authored with Johnnetta Betsch Cole, is Gender Talk: The Struggle for Women's Equality in African American Communities. Beverly believes she has found the perfect match between exploring her passions for reading, writing and teaching, and an environment where she taps into these areas daily.

"I have a very broad interest in women's issues and the connections between race, gender, class, and sexuality in cultural contexts," she says. "I'm interested in how Native American women are doing with health issues on the reservations; how women in South Africa are coping with HIV-AIDS; and I'm able to pursue these interests through teaching, publishing, and the work of the Women's Center."

"Through the years, Beverly has steered the Women's Research and Resource Center into the areas of curriculum development in women's studies, research on women of African descent, and community outreach, including forming coalitions with women's organizations outside the U.S. Among its many areas of exploration, the center recently embarked on a focus in women's health internationally, particularly women and HIV-AIDS.

Beverly describes her calling as "politicizing young African American college students and helping them to see an urgency in the need for change." She emphasizes, "In these anti-liberal, anti-progressive times, it's important for people to remain radical and to not let anyone convince them that it's a bad thing to be. Remember, radical people changed the world, not people that were satisfied with the status quo."

Beverly measures success by the extent to which she is able to reach people. This can happen in both small and sizeable ways, she says, adding that sometimes a small gesture can have very significant results.

She recounts, "In one case, I had only known someone for about an hour. I made some observations and took a risk, I gave that person some advice. Some years later she ended up coming to Spelman as a colleague. I hadn‚'t thought about that afternoon very much since, but she told me it had been a life-changing event. It‚'s a kind of risk-taking that sometimes pays off."

While she is now starting to grapple with succession planning, Beverly continues to have a lot of fight left in her.

She says, "I realize how much work needs to be done and what bad shape the world is in. I feel it's important to hook up with people who have the same sense of urgency. That's what keeps me going."