Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

"Strong Is What We Make Each Other": Unlearning Racism Within Women's Studies, Bettina Aptheker

Women's Studies Quarterly

In the fall of 1976 I was hired by the Women's Studies Program at San Jose State University to teach one course which I had outlined and proposed to that program's curriculum committee the previous spring. The course, entitled "Afro-American Women in History," began with "the legacy of slavery" as its theme and worked its way from the colonial era to modern times. The following year I taught the class again, this time under the auspices of the Afro-American Studies department. The first time I taught the class the students were overwhelmingly white. The second time they were overwhelmingly Black. …

Women's Studies As An Energizer Of The Humanities In Southern English Departments, D. Dean Cantrell

Women's Studies Quarterly

The Rockefeller Commission on the Humanities, in issuing its thirty-one recommendations, noted: "We see our report primarily as a contribution to rethinking the humanities, not as a shopping list." In defining the humanities, among other things, as a "turn of mind" toward history, "the record of what has moved men and women before us to act, believe, and build as they did," the Commission recommends that colleges develop "new materials for teaching the humanities" as a "further means for invigorating [them]." That women's studies may be a legitimate energizer of the sagging humanities seems a likely possibility when one realizes …

"Once More Into The Breach" Of Western Literature Courses, Carolyn Ruth Swift

Women's Studies Quarterly

At Rhode Island College, we have been engaged in a debate over the inclusion of literature by white women and people of color in a required two-semester Western Literature course based on the two-volume Norton Anthology of World Literature. Feminists have been supported by the dean and the president, who threatened to veto the course altogether if it did not include some literature by women in its core of required readings. Under protest, the English department voted to add Emily Dickinson to its list. The Norton Anthology includes only one Black writer, Richard Wright, and before the end of …

Nwsa News And Views, Susan Gore, Elaine Reuben, Florence Howe, Phyllis Chinn, Rosalind Ribnick

Women's Studies Quarterly

NWSA's New Coordinator

The Search Committee is pleased to announce the appointment of Susan Gore as National Coordinator. A founding member of the Association, Susan Gore coordinated the Founding Conference of the South Central Women's Studies Association in 1978 and served on the Coordinating Council in 1979-1980. "Previously my most visible contribution to this organization has been handling the Annual Convention T-shirts," she said. "I hope to be able to do much more in the role of Coordinator."

A self-described "persistent optimist," Gore took her place in the National Office on September I, having spent the past year teaching for …

Editorial, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

Four Cheers for Elaine Reuben

When Elaine Reuben became National Coordinator of NWSA in 1978, there was no established National Office, there was no national profile of NWSA, the first Annual Convention had not been held, no NWSA projects or publications were in view, and no voice of NWSA was present in the Women's Studies Quarterly (then the Women's Studies Newsletter). We were about to become an institution, but we needed the builder, the person who could supply the vision, the bricks and mortar, and a bit of style as well.

Back Matter, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Is Your Campus Included?: "Everywoman's Guide" So Far, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

Everywoman's Guide to Colleges and Universities is an educational project of The Feminist Press initiated in the fall of 1980. Its purpose is to gauge the health of the environment provided for women by specifically analyzing the programs and services offered on individual campuses throughout the United States. The project will conclude with the publication of a volume by the same title, which will serve as a supplementary text to the usual standard college and university guides presently on the market.

A Small Survey Of Introductory Courses In American Literature, Paul Lauter

Women's Studies Quarterly

In order to get some sense of the extent to which changes in introductory American literature courses had begun to take place, I conducted a small survey. I collected syllabi from fifty courses in twenty-five representative colleges and universities across the country. These included one- and two-term survey courses, as well as somewhat more specialized introductory courses. Some of the courses used anthologies; others, individual paperbacks. The institutions included major private universities and colleges, like Brown, Williams, the University of Southern California, and Duke; state universities, like Rutgers and New Mexico; and women's colleges, I ike Barnard and Mount Holyoke. …

Newsbriefs, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

To Arm The Amazons: Educating Students About The Characteristics And Problems Of Feminist Workplaces, Kathryn Girard

Women's Studies Quarterly

The following article is adapted from an essay appearing in The Women 's Studies Service Learning Handbook: From the Classroom to the Community, edited by Jerilyn Fisher and Elaine Reuben, and available for $6.50 from the National Women's Studies Association, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742.

Sisterhood can be joyous and energizing. It can also be frustrating and disillusioning. The personal cost of working in a women's center, a rape project, or a women's studies program is often quite high. We expect the hours of exciting and tedious processing that it takes to build such programs. We don't …

"Why Are You Here?": A Man's Experience At The 1981 Glca National Summer Institute In Women's Studies, Cyrus W. Banning

Women's Studies Quarterly

"Why are you here?" As one of two men among the sixty or so participants and staff at the 1981 GLCA National Summer Institute in Women's Studies, this was the question I feared and knew I had to be able to answer. During the three weeks the Institute lasted I was actually asked it only a few times, but the conscious awareness of its legitimacy was with me every minute. I thought before I went, and believe more firmly now, that a man can be a feminist and even an effective teacher of women's studies. Since this is a claim …

A Grand Illusion: Continuing The Debate On General Education, Joan Hoff Wilson

Women's Studies Quarterly

Basic curriculum reform is difficult at best to achieve. Although it was quickly obtained in the 1960s, when grade inflation and the proliferation of "relevant" courses accompanied the elimination of requirements, the result was faculty withdrawal or acquiescence, not basic reform. Consequently, recent moves by Harvard, Stanford, and other prestigious schools to redesign undergraduate programs represent the first attempt at fundamental curriculum reform since the 1930s and '40s. Unfortunately, because these efforts come largely in reaction to the changes of the 1960s and to the disturbing decline in undergraduate enrollments, especially in the humanities, they tend to offer old wine …

"Being In A Cr Group For One": A Man's Experience At The 1981 Nwsa Convention At Storrs, John Schilb

Women's Studies Quarterly

You stumble into the preregistration line, knowing you're the only human being in the lobby with a beard, hoping no one will pay attention to your suddenly unique gender. Your mind flashes back to the Hartford airport a few hours ago: masses of tired businessmen being catered to in the cocktail lounge by "girls" wedged into tight white blouses and even tighter black hot pants and even tighter black high heels. As you sipped your Bloody Mary, you wondered if Susan Griffin had seen the place. But the present snaps you forward with the moment you've been nervously anticipating: a …

"Everywoman's Guide" As An Organizing Tool On The Bowling Green Campus, Susan S. Arpad

Women's Studies Quarterly

I returned Bowling Green State University's completed questionnaire for the Everywoman's Guide to Colleges and Universities with a note of thanks to Florence Howe, The Feminist Press, and the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE). I hope that the Guide will have a wide distribution and that it will help women students better to evaluate and select colleges. While the publication of this guidebook may have been the main goal of the project's originators, I think the questionnaire itself has the potential of having an even greater direct impact on individual campuses. On my campus in Ohio, the …

Shaping The World Of My Art, Paule Marshall

Women's Studies Quarterly

Paule Marshall's most recent novel, Praisesong for the Widow, will appear in 1982. Her prize-winning first novel, Brown Girl, Brownstones, originally published in 1959, has just been reissued, with an afterword by Mary Helen Washington, by The Feminist Press. This essay is adapted from "Shaping the World of My Art," which appeared in New Letters 40, no. 1 (Autumn 1973): 97-112, and is reprinted by permission. The transcription of the women's talk is from p.70 of The Feminist Press edition of Brown Girl, Brownstones (available from The Feminist Press, Box 334, Old Westbury, NY 11568, for $6.95, plus …

Teaching The Feminist Minority, Barbara Hillyer Davis

Women's Studies Quarterly

In women's studies conferences during the past few years, I have heard many descriptions of pedagogical approaches to specific student groups—working women, displaced homemakers, business majors, and so on. I admire and learn from these presentations and at the same time I am uneasy. For some reason my classes are never like those described. The longer I teach them, the less homogeneous they seem. I am working out my role as a women's studies teacher in a university in which—as in most others, I suspect—no class consists of just working-class women, just reentry women, just Native American women. It is …

News From Women's Studies Programs, Florence Howe

Women's Studies Quarterly

We began this feature because we had news, and we continue to have news. Also, rumors are current again about the potential demise of programs, as well as the less dramatic cutting of budgets. We know of the demise of no programs, and the occasional budget cut we have heard of (as at the University of Washington) is not for the curricular program, but for some new addition that was planned. Send items—good news or bad—to NEWS, Women's Studies Quarterly, Box 334, Old Westbury, NY 11568.

Guest Editorial, Elaine Reuben

Women's Studies Quarterly

FROM THE NWSA NATIONAL OFFICE

The spring term has been completed; conference participants at our Third annual meeting have departed Storrs. Some will be participating in one of the several summer institutes for women's studies curriculum development offered around the country, and the world; or attending other feminist workshops and conferences; or taking part in summer school sessions, or simply savoring and looking forward to continuing activities in the fall.

This year, though, more than ever, it is hard not to be painfully aware of powerful contradictions to an old "story-book" picture: teachers, students and academics at their leisure for …