Women's Studies Courses Research Articles

Beyond Multicultural Illiteracy

One of the most hotly contested issues on America's college campuses today is the preservation of Western civilization in the minds of students via the infusion of the literature and history of Ancient Greece and Rome and western Europe. As two best-selling books, Cultural Literacy (Hirsch, 1987) and The Closing of the American Mind (Bloom, 1987) contend, America's youth are out of touch with this cultural heritage. Both Hirsch and Bloom raise this point without acknowledging the decidedly ethnocentric view of traditional Western civilization. Their works sparked a heated debate in 1988 on the campus of Stanford University which resulted in that university's faculty senate approving a Culture and Values core curriculum that included works from non-White and female authors. The controversy was further heightened when then-Secretary of Education William Bennett traveled to Stanford to denounce this curriculum decision himself. The Western civilization controversy at Stanford is emblematic of the wars being waged throughout the country on several fronts. For example, a group calling itself the National Association of Scholars carried a full-page advertisement in The Chronicle of Higher Education (November 8, 1989, p. A-23) which urged no retreat from the sacred canon; yet, using recent results of history and literature tests from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Ravitch and Finn (1987) underscore how little of the classical Eurocentric canon America's 17year-olds actually know. The state of California's history/social science curriculum framework (whose principal author was Ravitch) was lauded as an excellent example of the grand narrative of history to which all students should have access (Alexander & Crabtree, 1988), while a New York State Department of Education report calling for a Curriculum of Inclusion was denounced by defenders of the Eurocentric canon for bowing to the of Blacks, Latinos, and other minorities (Leo, 1989). Purportedly, all this fighting over the curriculum is a reaction to the fragmented, cafeteria-style curriculum that emerged during the 1960s as a result of civil rights, antiwar, and women's rights advocates' demands for a more relevant and representative education. The conservative argument alleges that these special interests groups, with their ethnic studies and women's studies course requirements, have pulled the curriculum in so many directions that for two decades American students somehow

Second Chance, Second Self?

abstract In July 1989 the author was awarded the first doctorate from a Women's Studies Department in the UK. As a mature student with no previous background in academia the author reflects upon that experience. The opportunity to participate in a Women's Studies course was very important to her both personally and academically. In talking with women students she believes that such courses can be highly significant in intellectual development and personal growth and as such should be an integral part of higher and continuing education.

“OUR HEARTS ARE COLLECTIVELY BREAKING”:

This article discusses teaching survivors of violence in an introductory women's studies course and addresses the pedagogical question of whether we are able to promote individual agency and empowerment effectively and, if so, how might we best go about it. Survivors spoke out in their journals and in the classroom about their experiences, shared feelings about empowerment, and assessed the ways and extent to which the course helped them to heal. I found that survivors benefited from being able to talk about their experiences and from being encouraged to place their personal experiences in a broader political context, but that a crucial component was the affirmation, validation, and solidarity they felt with each other in the classroom.

Formal women's studies in pursuit of feminism

Abstract The advent of Women's Studies within the academic world has been rejected by some feminists who consider it an impossible venture and an attempt to co-opt feminism. It has been defended by those feminists who see it as providing support for feminists as well as an alternative space from which to criticize the rest of the academy. Other feminists have abandoned the idea of a separate Women's Studies and argue that each discipline should take up the issues that are currently discussed in Women's Studies. Significantly, Women's Studies has not been regarded as simply another field of study. In this article the author outlines some of the issues that have been raised by feminists about formal Women's Studies courses.

Changes in sexist attitudes toward women during introductory women's and men's studies courses

Sexism toward women scores of university students at the beginning of an introductory women's and men's studies (gender studies) course were compared with sexism levels of the same students at the end of the course and with sexism levels of controls. Differences in sexism levels associated with Bem's sex role categories were investigated. Sexism levels among students in every category, except undifferentiated, were significantly lower at the end of the course, while controls showed no pre/post differences. As expected, males were higher than females both at pretest and at posttest, and sexism in both sex groups decreased significantly by equivalent amounts; but androgynous males in the introductory course were lower in sexism than sex-typed males and androgynous females were lower than sex-typed females. Undifferentiated subjects decreased in sexism least during the course, and cross-typed and androgynous males decreased most. The relationship of sexism to several additional variables not included in formal hypotheses also is discussed. These variables were age, religion, ethnicity, SES, and grade earned in the gender studies course.

Leaving the Ivory Tower: Factors Contributing to Women's Voluntary Resignation from Academia

Over the past decades, women have entered nontraditional fields, have received advanced degrees in ever increasing numbers, and have been appointed to university positions, despite the biases in the hiring, tenure, and promotion of female faculty on which the feminist literature has focused.1 Yet significant proportions of women are choosing to leave academic positions before reappointment and tenure decisions. I would like to explore the reasons for that choice. A significant percentage of the women among my fellow graduate students entered academic positions and then left several years later. I noticed the same phenomenon among female colleagues at universities, and now I am beginning to see my own female graduate students consider leaving academia almost as soon as they are hired in faculty positions. Reasons for leaving (or thinking about leaving) vary. One woman was the token woman in an all-male department. Another felt that she could not perform the discrepant roles of researcher, teacher, and administrator at the high level she desired. As the only black woman in an all-white department, she was asked to serve on too many committees and was needed by too many students. A number of women said that they did not feel appreciated by their colleagues and received little support and encouragement. Many indicated that research and teaching on women's issues were devalued by their colleagues as not serious, hard-core, or related to their discipline. And one woman explained that her greatest fear was that she was learning how to play the academic game only too well; she needed to leave academia before she lost her personal sense of integrity. At least one study has taken note of this phenomenon. A 1983 Smith College report on gender ratios in tenure appointments indicated that equal numbers of men and women were hired at the junior faculty level, yet more men than women came up for tenure.2 The major factor accounting for this imbalance was the high rate of voluntary resignations on the part of female faculty. Specifically, 9 percent of the women, but only 2.5 percent of the men, resigned voluntarily before the first reappointment, and an additional 10 percent of the women and 5 percent of the men resigned voluntarily after at least one reappointment. In contrast, the gender ratio of involuntary departures (terminations) was equal. The women who left Smith College reported the following reasons: (1) barriers to conducting research, including high student contact, unrealistic departmental expectations, unsupportive environment, and unsympathetic colleagues; (2) heavy teaching demands, including the need to serve as role models for female students, lack of support for women's studies courses, heavy advising loads, and lack of feedback on teaching; (3) psychological factors, such as stress generated by pressures on junior faculty members, perception of lack of control and lack of information, and anxiety about evaluation by others; and (4) social and family life concerns, such as social isolation and competing demands from spouses and children. Interestingly, male and female faculty did not differ in their levels of scholarly activity (number of publications and presentations), even though women often felt that they were not as productive as they would like to be. Because Smith is a small, all-female college, its findings may not apply to other academic

Teaching women's studies to male inmates

Simon Fraser University, in conjunction with the Correctional Services of Canada, offers university credit courses within four federal penal institutions in southwestern British Columbia. A first year introductory Women's Studies course was run at a medium security prison housing an entirely male population. Course materials were similar to those used on campus, with some allowances made for an all male group.The instructor compared these students and previous, almost exclusively female, students of this course. The male inmate students were highly motivated and vocal. They expressed a similar level of stereotypical attitudes as on-campus students, and appeared to be receptive to the ideas of the course to a comparable degree. Their written work was poorer, in many cases, than that done by on-campus students, while their participation rate in classroom discussion was noticeably higher. All in all, the male inmate students appeared to benefit from the course at least as much, in the short-term, as any previous group of Women's Studies students.In conclusion, it is suggested that Women's Studies for Men could be successful of a prison environment if courses were constructed and presented within a context which stressed empathy with women from a perspective which emphasized that while individual men are not responsible for the collective conditions of women, they are responsible for the implications of their own actions.

Oppressive pedagogy: The importance of process in women's studies

In British Universities, Women's Studies courses are often structured in a conventionally academic way. This raises a number of problems in that the academic model contradicts some fundamental feminist principles. The first part of the article consists of a discussion of these contradictions. In the second part, some attempts to develop a feminist pedagogy on one course are described.

Gender studies at Griffith University

The opposition to the introduction of a women's studies concentration area (a related set of courses) at Griffith University reveals the close links between opposition by the Right to feminist demands for change, (for example for women's reproductive and occupational choices), and opposition to the introduction of tertiary women's studies courses. The history of this battle at Griffith University also reveals the university's retreat from a commitment to the professional autonomy and competence of the women's studies planning team to a politicisation of the university's internal decision-making process.

Teaching about Women to Male-Identified Students

There has been tremendous growth in the scholarship about women over the last 15 to 20 years. At the same time, women's studies courses have expanded from a few scattered courses in the early 1970s to nearly 500 women's studies programs and over 20,000 courses presently. Increased attention paid to women in both scholarship and curriculum is a positive development. At the same time, however, the growth in women's studies courses and courses about women

The Politics of Sexual Knowledge: Feminism and Sexology Textbooks

For over a decade now, I have been one of the women's studies faculty members teaching Human Sexual Behavior, our most populous curricular offering. Women's studies programs are not the usual academic home for such a course, and many of the students1 are drawn by the topic itself and not necessarily by its departmental affiliation. The greatest challenge of the course resides in our chosen agenda to create this as a women's studies course, to situate the subject matter within a feminist

The Birth and Growth of "Friends of Women's Studies" at the University of Cincinnati

Every day, from September through May, for the past six years I have greeted my colleagues in the Center for Women's Studies with a question: How many Friends do we have? I wasn't paranoid; I was checking and rechecking and checking once again on the health of a young organization-Friends of Women's Studies. The following essay is an attempt to explain how Friends came about, how it functions, and what it has accomplished. It is meant, in part, as a response to the many women's studies directors who have phoned and written to ask, How can I start a Friends group? It is also meant as a tribute to the wonderful women with whom I have worked who shared my dream and turned it into a reality. I arrived at the University of Cincinnati in July of 1979 to assume the directorship of the Women's Studies Program, which was then five years old. The university's crowded campus had given rise to many programs for its 36,000 students, but many had also languished because of lack of funds and energy. The Center for Women's Studies had achieved a small niche-an office in an outof-the-way building, a part-time assistant, and a secretary. But despite enthusiastic faculty, a potpourri of wonderful programs, and a regular newsletter, the program had little visibility on campus and very little in the larger community. I was determined to bring women's studies to a much larger audience. I believed then, as I still do, that women's studies courses, lectures, symposia, and publications are too good to keep to ourselves. In the spring of 1980, I brought together a handful of faculty and a somewhat larger group of community women to begin an open-ended dialogue on the significance of women's studies on campus and in the community. That dialogue continues and has expanded over the years to include thousands of participants and to address every significant issue facing women today. The immediate outcome of this extended discourse was the creation of Friends of Women's Studies, an organization devoted to supporting the Center. The longer term outcome has been the personal and communal growth of women's studies faculty and Friends. A description and analysis of three recent events will illustrate the current dimensions of this dialogue.

What Have We Won, What Have We Lost?

In the minds of many feminists it is still an open question whether women's studies in the academy is a contradiction in terms.1 For many reasons, one of which is that education is big business, the educational establishment is one of the most conservative of all social institutions in America. Large campuses like ours in the California state university and college system tend to be administered like businesses, accountable to superiors and the taxpaying public for a product turned out with maximum efficiency and minimum cost. The values of the managers-hierarchy, competition, clear vertical chains of command-are quite antithetical to the ideas and practices valued by the second wave of American feminism. Furthermore, many people who teach on university campuses subscribe to the most conservative justification for higher education: that their function is the transmission of static bodies of knowledge to maturing generations. When we moved out of the women's movement and onto university campuses more than a decade ago, we were right to be skeptical about our ability to change the institution of higher education and right to be worried about the institution's ability to coopt us. Bitter as the struggle has been, I think that a number of central issues still have not been resolved. That we have brought significant change to the campus is true, but we have not been permitted to do it our way. We have not sold out, but we have not won, either. In the eighties, our situation has been made even more difficult by the political climate and the difficulty that the women's movement is having retaining its commitment to sexual politics.2 The experience of the Long Beach Women's Studies Program may be idiosyncratic in important ways, but it also raises a number of interesting general questions about the institutionalization of women's studies. As Sherna Gluck and Sondra Hale make clear, from the beginning the university objected to our attachment to collectivity in the governance of the program and in our teaching styles. But administrators and faculty were also extremely antagonistic to the content of women's studies courses, an issue that has received surprisingly little attention and one that I think may be central to our continued development as a new discipline in the academy. Administrators and faculty did not initially seem to consider women's studies subversive, perhaps because they failed to take seriously the intellectual enterprise in which we were engaged. Few of them in the early seventies saw women's studies as anything more than a marginally defensible intellectual exercise. They thought we were disruptive, and consciousness raising quickly became their euphemism for inherent anti-intellectual tendencies in women's studies. As we developed the women's studies curriculum, we found our academic credentials constantly at issue. We learned to develop a bemused tolerance for colleagues on committees who were capable of uncovering evidence of functional illiteracy in simple typographical errors; we smiled through the speeches of colleagues who, in the intellectual vacuum presented by women's studies, were only too happy to offer expert advice. But if we thought that what our colleagues wanted to s e was the development of women's studies, we were wrong. Our most rudimentary efforts to add compensatory information for and about women to university curricula were often met with disdain and open antagonism. Only later, as women's studies grew, was this Hale/Sievers 43

A New Opportunity for Women's Studies: Inclusion in a Revised Core Curriculum

Recently many women's studies program directors have come to regard nation-wide trend toward revision of curriculum as a threat to health of their programs. The core though its form may vary from school to school, generally consists of those courses a college or university deems necessary for graduation. These courses, which can vary from year to year, decade to decade, reflect political and cultural biases of curriculum committees institute them. The current sweep of curriculum revision is generally conceded to have begun with Harvard's decision in 1975 to institute a new curriculum of general education courses required of all students. The last ten years have seen hundreds of colleges attempting to revise structure and content of required courses; those who did not move to do so in late 1970's or early 1980's are likely to begin contemplating revision in light of February, 1985, report of Association of American Colleges, which found American college and university curricula lacking in coherence. Clearly, if women's studies program directors do not alert themselves to implications of large-scale revision, white, male academic power structure may be tempted to exclude from curriculum those courses are too often regarded as marginal, narrow, supplementary, or clearly elective in nature-for instance, most women's studies courses. Our years of experience in dealing with academic patriarchy should not only alert us to dangers of revision but also reveal to us strategies for turning danger into opportunity. Core curriculum revision does, in fact, present enormous opportunities for women's studies. Inclusion among offerings leads to higher course enrollments from a broader student population. Core inclusion also carries with it a validation within academic community is equally valuable. William Bennett, Secretary of Education, and supporter of revision, has often been quoted as saying such a process represents a return to idea that some things are more important to know than others. Bennett's words can serve as a call to supporters of traditional, elitist, androcentric curriculum-or they can afford curricular revisionists an opportunity to validate newer courses of study that, like women's studies, broaden students' perspectives. Clearly, Bennett, who-while still chair of National Endowment for Humanities--issued a report castigating American colleges and universities for failing to give their students an adequate education in western culture and traditions, finds suspect curricular innovations like women's studies and ethnic studies. His claim American college students are presently being ripped off and his advocacy of a curriculum preserves traditional culture and offers students the best have given a new impetus to conservative, elitist forces who are only too eager to restore glory of standard presixties curriculum, which excluded study of women and their achievements. My recent experience with revision at Eastern Connecticut State University suggests even when statement of philosophy includes noble mission of equipping students to deal with a rapidly changing,

Asian American Women's Studies Courses: A Look Back at Our Beginnings

It has been over a decade since I first team-taught the Asian American women's course at UCLA. I was still a student, as were many of the other members of the team. Together we struggled to obtain materials that were nonexistent, develop an analysis where there previously was none, and perform as leaders even though we had not done so before. This was in 1973, three years after the first Asian women's seminar was conducted at the University of California at Berkeley, and one year after the first one had been offered at UCLA. Since then, there have been a number of Asian American women's classes taught, mostly in the western region of the United States. In the meantime, I had obtained my doctorate, and upon graduation reflected on the fact that this course had been the most meaningful class in which I had participated; thus, I continue to teach the Asian American women's course at UCLA. In the twelve years that have passed, Asian women's studies has matured, along with those teaching it. The history of this course is a case study in the conflict inherent in the struggle to change entrenched social roles.

Placing Women in the Liberal Arts: Stages of Curriculum Transformation

Research on women has created a new body of knowledge that is reshaping our understanding of the traditional curriculum. The scholarship about women's experience produced in the last two decades has entered the curriculum primarily through women's studies courses. But what happens next? In the last five years, informed administrators and women's studies teachers have undertaken to transform traditional courses throughout the curriculum. Marilyn Schuster and Susan Van Dyne present a paradigm describing how teachers and students experience the process of curricular change. Their analysis suggests that teachers may move through a sequence of stages and try a variety of strategies in order to represent women and minorities,and thus a fuller range of human experience, in their courses.

Toward a Feminist Literary History

Intellectual leaders of feminist literary criticism find the study so effective that they predict it will revitalize the study of literature, reinterpret classic texts, and reshape the canon through recovering the lost culture of women's writing.1 These goals, if laudable, seem ambitious, especially given the inattention of the profession generally. Nonetheless, feminist criticism is clearly one of the fields of greatest energy and useful controversy in literary studies today. Thus there are now more efforts than ever before to reconstruct American literature by including the works of women and minority authors or to effect feminist transformation of the curriculum.2 But there are also warning voices: the Modern Language Association Commission on the Future of the Profession cautions that mainstreaming women's studies courses and programs may be premature by a decade;3 and in a recent ADE Bulletin Elaine Showalter

Inside an integration project: A case study of the relationship between balancing the curriculum and women's studies

This paper presents an ‘inside view’ of a federally-funded integration project in a small women's college in the Eastern US from the perspective of the project director. The author illustrates various stages and kinds of ‘Women's Studies’, pointing out that the integration project has resulted in increased Women's Studies course offerings, as well as a minor at the college. She makes distinctions between superficial integration and more profound efforts, which lead to a real struggle between traditional and feminist scholarship.

Women's studies, self-esteem, and college women's plans for the future

Questionnaires distributed at the beginning and end of the semester assessed the self-esteem and life goals of college women enrolled in five women's studies courses and five other courses in related disciplines. The two groups were compared in terms of the changes in self-esteem and goals from the beginning to the end of the semester. The underclasswomen in the women's studies courses tended to express more traditional expected career goals and lowered self-esteem in the posttest. In contrast, the upperclass-women in the women's studies courses reported increased self-esteem in the posttest. Implications for teaching women's studies courses and previous women's studies research are discussed.

Is parenthood a desirable adult role? An assessment of attitudes held by contemporary women

The purpose of this study was to explore contemporary women's perception of parenthood. The attitudes toward parenthood of 213 undergraduate females enrolled in family or women's studies courses were measured by an 11-item Likert-type scale. Major findings include (a) the expectation that parenthood will be among the subjects' adult roles, but will be delayed; (2) a rejection of the idea that motherhood is a prerequisite to women's happiness and fullfillment; (3) a confused perception of the effect of parenthood on the male; and (4) a suggestion that although these young women intend to parent, they assess their preparation to do so as limited.