Women's Studies Programs Research Articles

Rhetoric and reality in women’s studies

Feminist activists frequently complain about the failure of most women today—even women of independence and accomplishment—to identify themselves as feminists. Advocates of women's studies usually explain away this uncomfortable fact by calling it “backlash” or blaming it on women's false consciousness or adherence to “privilege.” In this essay I offer an alternative explanation for women's public indifference or outright hostility to feminism, arguing that it is a result of the rhetoric and positions adopted by feminists themselves, especially those working in academic women's studies. I draw on recent books and articles reflecting on women's studies, feminist pedagogy, and feminism in general; publications of feminist organizations such as the NWSA and the AAUW; the Women's Studies E-Mail List (WMST-L); women's studies programs' own mission statements and course descriptions; and comments addressed to me personally by women's studies' supporters as well as critics. In drawing coclusions from my reading of these materials, I attempt to gauge the status of women's studies as an academic and/or a political endeavor around the year 2000.

Institutionalizing and globalizing women’s studies at Illinois State University

Feminist thought and the women’s movement have had a major influence over most of the disciplines and many institutions of higher education. Women's Studies has matured as a field of study, and programs and departments may be found throughout the United States and around the world that combined high academic standards and critical feminist perspectives. Nonetheless, Women's Studies programs continue to be widely criticized and many are under-resourced. This article describes the successful efforts of one Women's Studies program to develop a rigorous multi-disciplinary curriculum, collaborate with departments and colleges across the university, and build ties with community organization through strategies of expansion, gender mainstreaming, and internationalization.

Women of China: Economic and Social Transformation (review)

Reviewed by: Women of China: Economic and Social Transformation Sarah L. Anderson (bio) Jackie West, Zhao Minghua, Chang Xiangqun, and Cheng Yuan, editors. Women of China: Economic and Social Transformation. Foreword by Elisabeth Croll. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. xxi, 238 pp. Hardcover $65.00, ISBN 0-312-22441-9. Women of China: Economic and Social Transformation is a collection of ten studies that explore the impact of state reform on the lives of women. The book begins with a concise foreword by Elisabeth Croll, in which she states: "In a range of interpretations, including some powerful and eloquent critiques, the chapters focus on the changing role of the state and the economy in reform and the repercussions on women's lives and work, both positive and negative" (p. xii). Croll also provides the reader with a summary of the chapters that follow. Editors Jackie West, Zhao Minghua, Chang Xiangqun, and Cheng Yuan use the impact of state reform on the lives of women as the starting point for a rich discussion of how social and economic reforms affect the lives of women. The studies presented are both quantitative and qualitative in nature, challenging "the generally stereotypical and often benign view of reform held in the West" (p. 4) and "documenting the differences between women and men but also differences among women themselves" (p. 15). These studies dispute common preconceptions about the relationship between reform and its effects, and the reader is thus challenged to comprehend the breadth and depth of that relationship. As stated by Jackie West and Zhao Minghua in the introduction, this book has two themes: "women's relation to politics and the development of feminist perspectives" (p. 14). One of the challenges of editing a collection like this is to ensure that each contribution will relate to the broader themes of the book as a whole. The editors have met this challenge admirably. Each essay, in addition to examining its own subject in detail, contributes to the broader exploration of women's relation to politics and to the development of feminist perspectives. The book is organized into four parts. In part 1, "Political and Economic Transitions," Wang Qi and Zhang Heather Xiaoquan discuss the relationship of women to political and economic reforms. In part 2, "Gender, Migration and Labour Markets," Song Lina, Huang Xiyi, and Zhao Minghua explore the role of women as workers and the relationship between female labor and state reform. Mu Aiping, Chang Xiangqun, and Zhang Mei discuss the position of women within the family in a diverse collection of essays in part 3, "Family and Household Relations." In part 4, "Organising for Change," Shang Xiaoyuan and Min Dongchao study the role of women in the public sphere and the development of women's studies in the People's Republic of China. [End Page 266] The issue of women's representation in politics is tackled right off by Wang Qi in "State-Society Relations and Women's Political Participation," which focuses on "the wax and wane of women's representation in line with the fluctuations in state-society relations" (p. 20). Wang uses the term "women's representation" to mean "the presence of women in the party-state organs" (p. 21). This essay provides a concise history of the relationship between the state and society and how this relationship has affected women. The general trend that can be discerned from this brief account is that women's representation in politics was initiated under the auspices of the state, women cadres being recruited by the state through the All-China Women's Federation. With the advent of reform, women's political participation as cadres began to decline, as it was "no longer acceptable for family life to be sacrificed for a political career" (p. 32). Wang postulates that family care, seen as women's responsibility, regained importance in the reform era, and influenced the ability of women to participate in politics. While the numbers of women cadres were on the decline, nongovernmental women's studies programs were burgeoning. It is suggested that the two main ways women participate in politics—as a cadre in the All-China Women's Federation or as...

Can we wear our pearls and still be feminists?: memoirs of a campus struggle

When Joan Mandle accepted the position of Director of Women's Studies at Colgate University, she had specific goals in mind to make the program stronger, more academically rigorous, and publicly open. The program would resist becoming the captive of identity politics and would refuse to allow itself to become marginalized on the campus. It would reach beyond the negative stereotypes of feminism on campus by appealing to and challenging all students and faculty interested in gender issues and social change.Just as Mandle anticipated, she faced obstacles during the transformation. Among her critics were feminist students and faculty whose views of a successful program directly contradicted Mandle's. While the new director called for outreach, they insisted on isolation. While she set forth a policy of inclusiveness, they sought to maintain an exclusive community. These individuals preferred the former model of the women's studies program, despite its tendency toward separatism.Can We Wear Our Pearls and Still Be Feminists? explores women's studies from Mandle's perspective as a program director, feminist activist, and scholar. She offers a vivid account of being forced to grapple with fundamental issues of what women's studies is and should be. Her strong commitment to feminism and women's studies does not prevent her from voicing her concerns; instead, it compells her to share the story of her directorship in hopes of shedding light on the strengths and weaknesses, pitfalls and triumphs of women's studies as an academic discipline.Through her examination of the battles involved in creating an academically significant and ideologically open program, Mandle provides insight into a possible avenue of change for feminism. By showing how the program at Colgate University was able to encourage campuswide discussions on feminism, Mandle demonstrates that women's studies can succeed as an inclusive and rigorous field. This enlightening memoir provides readers with a window on important debates concerning feminism and women in academia.

Gender studies: A global perspective of their evolution contribution, and challenges to comparative higher education

The incorporation of new fields of study in the university tendsto be a contested process. This has been the case for women'sstudies despite its many conceptual, theoretical, and methodologicalcontributions. Moreover, these programs have constantly sufferedfinancial vulnerability and struggled for academic recognitionand autonomy. Comparative data about women's studies programs existbut could be enhanced by explicit cross-national studies. At thecrossroads today, women's studies can chose to adopt more feministpolitical concerns and engage in socially transformative researchprojects or succumb to forces of globalization that, in making theuniversity increasingly entrepreneurial, preempt concerns forequity and social justice.

"Unstoried in History"? Early Histories of Women (1652-1902) in the Huntington Library Collections

I n 1833, an anonymous American writer disingenuously wondered why woman has never found an historian.' As it happened, women had been finding historians for quite some time-centuries, in fact-and with the advent of cheap printing techniques, they were about to find a great many more. Yet well into the 198os and early 1990s, contemporary feminist scholars were still remarking on the absence of women from the historical record: It is clearly not the absence of women, but the sense such information was not relevant to the concerns of 'history,' says Joan Wallach Scott, that led to the invisibility of women in formal accounts of the past.2 But given new interest in popular literature (including, more recently, popular history), not to mention the integration of women's studies programs into the academic establishment, scholars have begun paying more attention to the historiography of women's history. As they have discovered, women's history was of abiding popular and even scholarly interest long before the rise of academic feminist scholarship. Moreover, the growing body of research in this field raises important questions in a wide variety of historical fields beyond its immediate audience: biography and autobiography; the rise of women's studies; popular publishing; historical fiction and its relation to history; the history of feminism; Christianity and culture; and, of course, mainstream historiography.3

Women's Studies Programs

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The Don't Throw It Away! Project at the University of Illinois at Chicago

"Don't Throw It Away! Documenting and Preserving Organizational History" is an initiative at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) that seeks to encourage both grassroots community-based organizations and women's studies programs to preserve the materials that document their history. This article describes each component of the initiative: a workshop, a booklet, and a course.

?A Sense of Discovery, Mixed with a Sense of Justice?: Creating the First Women's Studies Program in Canada

The subject of this essay is the intertwining of personal and institutional transformation. In establishing the first credited multi-course women's studies program at the University of British Columbia in Canada, students and faculty challenged not merely an institution's hidebound conservatism. They also confronted resistance to interdisciplinarity, resistance to student activism, maddening bureaucracy, and irrational, often fear-laden responses to the possibility of admitting women to full intellectual and professional equality in the university. The history of this program--like so many others--is thus a history of battles lost and won, and lost again. It is also a story of faculty and students who refused to give up, even when careers were put in jeopardy and frustrations were unending. Finally, it is my personal reminiscence of the best professional experience I have ever known.

"A Sense of Discovery, Mixed with a Sense of Justice": Creating the First Women's Studies Program in Canada

The subject of this essay is the intertwining of personal and institutional transformation. In establishing the first credited multi-course women's studies program at the University of British Columbia in Canada, students and faculty challenged not merely an institution's hidebound conservatism. They also confronted resistance to interdisciplinarity, resistance to student activism, maddening bureaucracy, and irrational, often fear-laden responses to the possibility of admitting women to full intellectual and professional equality in the university. The history of this program--like so many others--is thus a history of battles lost and won, and lost again. It is also a story of faculty and students who refused to give up, even when careers were put in jeopardy and frustrations were unending. Finally, it is my personal reminiscence of the best professional experience I have ever known.

Letter to the Editor

THE PRESIDENT'S CORNER by Eugene Genovese O tu — A, .mong the endless current absurdities, spiced with flagrant mendacity, few match the wonderful assertion that a focus on "the people" rather than on elites has emergedfrom the Left and necessarily serves its ideological purposes. Those who long ago demanded the integration ofsocial history into political, intellectual, diplomatic, and military history intended to deepen, not replace, those standard subjects. They properly defended the centrality of politics, which cannot be understood without knowledge ofthe exigencies ofeveryday life. They were right, but that is only halfthe story. From Herodotus to Gibbon, thegreat historians paid attention to the social and cultural conditions and political influence ofthe lower and middle classes. Gibbons illuminating ifacerbic account ofthe rise ofChristianity and its impact on the Roman Empire alone belies the droll notion ofexclusive concern with elites. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire provides a model for those who would trace the influence of"the people" on the most historic ofshifts in political and socialpower. Iustice CO the giants on whose shoulders we stand is. however, not the primary issue. The historical profession has solemnly assumed that social historv and the study ol popular culture must necessarily serve particular political and ideological interests. Allegedly, they are the creations and handmaidens of the Left, much as political, intellectual, diplomatic and military history haw been the creation and handmaidens of the Right. How anvonc could U dumb enough to think that only leftwingers could write labor, women's, and Afro-American historv honestly and well defies imagination. And vet. so deeply has this curious notion pervaded the profession that \w find precious few conservatives who work on these subjects and find a great many who Dear Historical Society, condemn them out-of-hand. The fault cannot be laid wholly on the latter-day McC arthyites who have closed the doors of, say, women's studies programs to those who IV)CCt feminist ideology. 1 he Right has done us U-st do perpetuate the myth of inherent leltwing bias in the subject matter, and it h.is. il inadvertently, thereby aUttcd it. I he early demands for programs in Afro-American studies, women's studies, and other subjects had a rational and constructive foundation. The virtual exclusion of blacks and women from the curricula meant, first and foremost, a debilitating distortion of historv. and it cried out for correction. But because the demand came from people perceived—not always fairly —as wanting to transform campuses into continued on page 5 I would like to commend all those who produced Historically Speaking. It was highly informative and extremely well written. The "Job Crisis" was the clearest statement of the problem and the most cogent set of solutions I have ever read. I enjoyed Richard Schneirov's introduction of the "Labor History Panel" and wished there had been a summary of the panel discussion as well. As our discipline fragments, this kind of article is important in keeping us up to date. I found President Eugene Genovese's address characteristically thoughtful and witty. I think he captured the hopes that many of us have for the new organization. I am sorry I missed the conference. I am proud to be a member of THS and when I finish my dissertation will take a more active role in advancing its goals. Donald B. Connelly Ph.D. Candidate, University ofHouston 3 ¿.· The Profession 1 Presidents Corner 3 tive Director 7 Viewpoint: The Future ofHistory 7 Viewpoint: it Is Globalizat 9 The Practice ofHistory 12 THS s Firsr Convention 15 Regional Reports 17 THS in the News 21 THS National Conference Program 23 Recent Publications 29 Awards 32 Announcen 35 Membership Form 39 ...

The President's Corner

The President's Corner

Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: the use of personal experience in theoretical and analytical approaches

This article is drawn from my research work, where I have interviewed students on a combined women's studies course through the 3 years of their degrees. I worked with 14 students in total, mainly non‐traditional entrants. The women combined their women's studies programmes with a range of other subjects (including literature, law, sociology, health studies, psychology and more), so giving me good comparisons between a range of academic subjects. My research has indicated that although it is not always recognised as academic study, the women have found the use of personal experience both challenging and exciting in developing the tools needed for theoretical and critical analytical approaches. I will conclude by suggesting that to take account of gender issues, as well as considering other marginalised groups, subject areas need to develop approaches to learning and teaching which encourage the use of personal experience in enabling students to engage in theoretical and analytical approaches in their study.

Women's Studies Programs

Women's Studies Programs

Producing multiculturalism in higher education: Who's producing what for whom?

This essay explores ways in which multiculturalism is institutionally produced in a small liberal arts college. When the offices of admissions or student life deploy the categories multiculturalism and diversity, they are likely to seek academic expertise from humanities or African American, Latino, or Women's Studies Programs, the disciplines most closely matching identity slots on the college applicationforms. In doing so, they recreate the presupposed categories of person that shape U.S. perceptions of race. This leaves little room for an anthropological perspective that examines the bases on which concepts of person and social identities are constructed.

Globalizing women's studies: pitfalls and possibilities

As women's studies becomes increasingly international in scope, women's studies programs face new challenges. This article explores the difficulties of defining and meeting curricular goals within the rapidly changing landscape of women's studies. It describes the process of creating and teaching a course called 'Global Feminisms', focusing on pedagogical issues and on the strategies that can grow out of a course such as this. In teaching Global Feminisms, I did not want my students to become experts on women in any particular part of the world, but instead to become different kinds of feminist thinkers and activists- more international in their perspective; more thoughtful about their own subjectivity; and better at both listening to and engaging with traditions other than their own. A map of the course is interwoven with a reflection on several questions provoked by the introduction of a global perspective into women's movements and women's studies. The article concludes with a discussion of the ways in which the internationalization of women's studies pushes us to rethink the women's studies curriculum as a whole. Finally, the Epilogue reveals some of the connections and gaps between how a teacher thinks about a course as complex as Global Feminisms, and how her students experience it.

Through My Lens: A Video Project about Women of Color Faculty at the University of Michigan

For some time now, the media, state legislatures, and the legal system have questioned the rationale behind affirmative action and, thus, have aimed to eradicate the presence and role of minorities in higher education. Ironically, faculty of color are still greatly underrepresented at the university level; and many face isolation, racial and gender-based antagonisms, the devaluation of their research interests and achievements, insufficient mentoring and support mechanisms, and ambivalence about their academic authority. In addition, they face the serious challenge of reconciling dominant career values with the demands of cultural traditions and family life. Although many of these issues are shared by white women faculty and by faculty of color in general, women of color face double forms of marginalization in terms of race and gender; indeed, our very presence simultaneously challenges traditional boundaries, be they departmental, disciplinary, epistemological, racial, or sociocultural. Given these concerns, in 1995 the Center for the Education of Women and the Women's Studies Program at the University of Michigan proposed the establishment of the Women of Color in the Academy Project (WOCAP).1 Constituted by a network of women of color faculty throughout the university, and led by a steering committee, WOCAP has emerged as a central site for networking and community formation among its members as it continues to serve as a resource for information and support. The

Women's Studies Programs

Women's Studies Programs

Critical Interdisciplinarity, Women's Studies, and Cross-Cultural Insight

In this essay I examine the relationship between methods and analysis in Women's Studies. I argue that methods produce an intellectual flexibility that can be conducive to insight, and that therefore become a way of enhancing receptivity to in members of dominant groups, but that it is only analysis that works at the same time across lines of race, class, gender, and sexuality that creates a critical interdisciplinarity. Analysis by Gloria Anzalduta, Maria Lugones, and Uma Narayan suggest that mestizaje can enhance feminist understandings of interdisciplinarity; Sandra Harding's work on standpoint theory helps articulate knowledge claims for a critical and Women's Studies. Maria Mies offers a specific example of research that moves interdisciplinarity into feminist practice, with implications for pedagogy in Women's Studies as well. Feminists often use the word interdisciplinary to distinguish Women's Studies from other academic fields, to describe the structure of women's studies programs and curricula, to identify a research methodology, to claim outsider status in the academy, and to imply a site of dialogic knowledge production. At the same time, as second-wave feminist theory has embraced difference and a plurality of feminisms, responding to critiques from women of color and, in the 1 990s, moving towards a global or international perspective on women's lives, the word cross-cultural has taken on its own value as both a description of objectives in Women's Studies and a site of conflicts within feminism.' Thus, to describe Women's Studies as either or has become something of a cliche. However, we have not yet moved in the direction of setting these two terms in collocation with each other or of theorizing their intersection. Indeed, the two terms do not readily modify each other. In some ways, focusing on concerns of interdisciplinarity in Women's Studies, thereby appearing to locate feminism strictly within an academic sphere, may appear to work against a construction of feminism that takes into account the lives and struggles of non-academic women. Similarly, because the dimensions of Women's This content downloaded from 157.55.39.177 on Tue, 15 Nov 2016 04:01:38 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Reconceptualizing Curriculum Transformations

The four collections reviewed here emerge from a feminist curriculum reform movement that is now almost thirty years old. During the late 1960s, from within a widening critique of white male-centered educational institutions, Naomi Weisstein was among the first to articulate a fundamental problem of the academic disciplines. Speaking at an American Studies Association meeting on October 26, 1968, she asserted, My central argument, then, is this. Psychology has nothing to say about what women are really like, what they need and what they want, essentially because psychology doesn't know (Weisstein, 1970, p. 205). Weisstein's lecture, published in 1969 as 'Kinder, Kuiche, Kirche' as Scientific Law: Psychology Contructs the Female, marked a growing realization among feminist teachers and scholars that the traditional disciplines could only offer students inherently flawed constructions of reality in which the experiences, contributions, and works of women and minorities were ignored or distorted. With this realization, feminist educators began to take an activist stance toward curricular and pedagogical reform. During the 1970s and early 1980s they struggled to integrate the study of women and minorities into existing courses, initiated women's studies programs, and mainstreamed women's studies courses within the