Diving (Back) into the Wreck: Finding, Transforming, and Reimagining Women's Studies and Sexuality Studies in the Academy

Abstract

Diving (Back) intothe Wreck: Finding,Transforming, and Reimagining Women'sStudies and Sexuality Studies in theAcademy Breanne Fahs We are, I am, you are / by cowardice or courage / the one who finds our way / back to this scene / carrying a knife, a camera / a book of myths I in which / our names do not appear. —Adrienne Rich, "Diving into the Wreck"1 As a sexuality researcher who has traveled with a formal, institu tional "women's studies" label since the start of college—first as an undergraduate at Occidental College's women's studies/gender stud ies department (1997-2001), then as a graduate student in women's studies at the University of Michigan (2001-2006), and now as a ten ured professor of women and gender studies at Arizona State Uni versity (2006-present)—my formal ties to academic feminism owe much to the work of those who blazed that path for me. Scholars of my generation—those who have always seen women's studies in the academy as possible and available—often forget the hard-won bat tles, challenges, and struggles that gave birth to women's studies as a field of study. As we now embark on the challenge to decide where women's studies and sexuality studies should reside within the acad emy— as separate fields, as joint programs, or as fields tied with ethnic studies and American studies—the privileges and dangers of this conversation deserve assessment. feministStudies39, no. 2. © 2013 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 496 Forum:W/G/SStudies 497 While interviewing radical feminist Ti-Grace Atkinson several years ago, she advised caution about a formalized association between women's studies and sexuality studies.2 She warned, aptly, that fusing women's studies and sexuality studies too closely could lead to the implicit pairing of women and their bodies (and men and their minds) that feminists had long fought to negate. We had been discussing some shifts at the university—the move from women's studies to gender studies and conversations about further collapsing women's studies into "something else"—and she expressed concern that, even though the political alliances between women, gender, and sexuality studies remained strong, the linguistic connection between the three would create political assumptions about women and bodies that could be difficult to shake. This advice hit particularly hard for me as a sexuality scholar in women's studies, as my entire career has inces santly fused sexuality, embodiment, radical feminism, and women's studies together. The road to renaming, reclassifying, and regrouping women's studies and its allies is fraught with messiness, intellectual and ide ological struggle, personal passions, and hard-earned political strat egizing. With so many having a stake in this process, the priorities of administrators (concerned with cost-cutting, student retention, and numbers), chairs and directors (fighting to keep women's studies and its goals alive), faculty (struggling with pedagogical and political ten sions, particularly about intersectionality, not to mention keeping their jobs), and students (wanting a recognizable, "legitimate," and provocative course of study) too often stand at odds.3 In my experi ence, at least four key areas in this debate provoke the most discus sion, each of which I outline briefly here: (1) the politics of naming; (2) the intellectual risks and benefits of "ghetto" studies; (3) shifting def initions of "social justice" as an umbrella term; and (4) the continu ing risks of institutionalizing radical, activist, or politically significant social movements. Every college and university I have joined has had numerous discussions about name changes in women's studies. At Occidental College, a decision was made to link both women's studies and gender studies, while the University of Michigan (after a heated multi-month debate among faculty and graduate students in 2004) decided to retain the name "women's studies." Arizona State University's Tempe 498 Forum:WIGIS Studies campus recently transitioned their women's studies program into the School of Social Transformation, while West campus (my current home) has embarked on a series of conversations about eliminating both women and gender studies and ethnic studies in favor of a larger social justice program, mostly in the name of "saving" the program from...