Claiming Success: From Adversity to Responsibility in Women's Studies

Abstract

Anniversaries provide an opportunity for both celebration and contemplation. The twenty-fifth anniversary of the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA) is just such an occasion. As we relish the growth of Women's Studies as an academic field and celebrate the refinement of its mission and curricula; the addition of majors, minors, degrees, and departments; the proliferation of faculty positions and lines; and tenure-track appointments for newly minted women's studies doctorates, we simultaneously recall the struggles entailed in developing and sustaining women's studies programs over the years. We recollect the gains that have been won despite censure and deprecation, sometimes within academia and sometimes in the wider world. Who can forget the radio talk show hosts and politicians in the early 1990s tripping over each other blaming feminism and Women's Studies for all forms of social depravity? We wince as we reflect on charges from internal detractors, faculty associated with women's studies programs, who have accused the field of being too doctrinaire, too radical, too liberal, too mainstream, too exclusive, or,