Unpaid and Critically Engaged: Feminist Interns in the Nonprofit Industrial Complex

Abstract

In 2011, the National Women Studies Association (NWSA) joined a national conversation about civic engagement by publishing what has come to be known as the Teagle White Paper (Orr “Women’s”). In this document a panel of women’s studies scholars make the case that women’s studies, as a field, has been developing pedagogical approaches that look very similar to the work currently being advocated in national educational reform movements. Women’s studies, as a result, can (or, perhaps, should) be considered a vital resource for scholars and, more importantly, administrators looking to infuse campus life with civically engaged curriculum. The national movement aimed at jump-starting the civic purpose of colleges and universities started in the mid-1980s, when a handful of university presidents founded a coalition (Campus Compact) that supported and promoted civically engaged practices and programs (Hartley; Musil). As Matthew Hartley notes in a review of the movement, curriculum reform was central to this effort, but community service or the integration of community-based activities into university coursework was equally important (12). Bridging campus and community, or theory and practice, has long been a critical component of women’s studies, especially at San Francisco State University, where an internship course has been part of the department’s core curricula since its inception. However, the terms of engagement in women’s studies are strikingly different from those in national educational reform movements. The Teagle White Paper links feminist pedagogy to the civic engagement movement and makes the work and history of women and gender studies more legible to our colleagues, students, community partners, and campus administrators. While we share the goal of making the intellectual and political contributions of WGS more visible, we hesitate to embrace the phrase “civic engagement” because its historical focus on “producing ‘better’ citizens” (Orr, “Women’s” 6) can unwittingly underplay the role the corporate university and nonprofit sector have in maintaining rather than disrupting the status quo. In the discussion below, we trace the development of an internship class in women and gender studies at San Francisco State University, showing how it