KC Johnson wrote here last about the University of Alabama's combination of its women's and African-American studies departments. It seems they're not alone. In an act of even more radical compression, the University of Nevada-Reno has combined [takes a breath] the holocaust, genocide, and peace studies program, religious studies, ethnic studies, and women's studies into a single new entity. This amalgam (proof that budget difficulties will even occasionally curtail modish idenity programs) is called the gender, race, and identity program.

Don't imagine that this compression has tempered the program's interest in exploring yet additional facets of idenity, however. According to the Nevada Sagebrush "The program also has a committee that is looking at the expansion of the program into the areas of a disability program and a sexualities program."