Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Nwsa News And Views, Elaine Reuben, Charol Shakeshaft, Kay Towns, Ann H. Beuf, Jackie Macaulay

Women's Studies Quarterly

Elaine Reuben

FROM THE NATIONAL OFFICE

Summer is traditionally known as a "slow" season in the Washington area, and an organization like NWSA, involving so many students and teachers, also seems to "take a break" between semesters. I can't speak for the Federal folk—except to note that July's march on the Capitol was followed by their extending the deadline for ratification of the ERA—but our work continued.

A Literature Of Survivors: On Teaching Canada's Women Writers, Cathy N. Davidson

Women's Studies Quarterly

"Do all feminists kill themselves or go crazy - or does that only happen in the books feminists write?"

I am reminded of this question put to meby a student in the first Women and Literature course I taught, whenever I look over a syllabus which begins with, say, The Awakening or The House of Mirth and ends with such writers as Plath or Sexton. Of course, we teach more than plot summary and biography. Set in its context, Edna Pontellier's "awakening" should be historically, sociologically, and psychologically illuminating for the contemporary student. But we must also accept the fact …

Women Mathematicians: A Bibliography, Karen D. Rappaport

Women's Studies Quarterly

Although long ignored or unrecognized, there have been several notable women in the history of mathematics. That the list is not long is due to the barriers presented to women trying to study mathematics. Those who were able to learn the subject encountered many more difficulties in their attempts to apply their knowledge. Yet in spite of these difficulties there were women who, because of circumstances, force of will, and/or brilliance, were able to achieve some recognition.

A Student's Journal: On Menstruation, Yolette Garaud

Women's Studies Quarterly

The following is an excerpt from a journal written for the Introduction to Women's Studies course taught this year by Naomi Rosenthal at the State University of New York at Old Westbury. Yolette Garaud is not a native English speaker; she was born in Haiti in 1952 and came to the United States in 1971. She is now an undergraduate at Old Westbury, where she is majoring in biochemistry. Unable to write the first journal assignment, she produced the following piece within six weeks of the beginning of the course. Interestingly, according to the instructor, it was being asked to …

Closeup On Women's Studies Courses: Feminist Theory And Practice, Melanie Kaye

Women's Studies Quarterly

This list is compiled annually as an educational service of the Women's Studies Newsletter Box 334, Old Westbury, NY 11568) and the National Women's Studies Association (4102 Foreign Languages Building, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742), and it is available from both. Compilers in 1978 were Sharon Hagan and Elaine Reuben for NWSA; Shirley Frank and Florence Howe for the Women's Studies Newsletter.

Editorial, Florence Howe

Women's Studies Quarterly

I am sending in this editorial from West Berlin, where, as visiting professor of women's studies at the Kennedy Institute for American Studies, I am teaching two seminars on women writers this summer. Mainly teachers and teachers-to-be are enrolled in the courses.

Major issues are being debated here in Berlin this summer. What is the future of women's studies at the Free University of the Kennedy Institute, where the last of three feminist faculty members will be leaving in March? And where there are no plans for replacing any of the three junior faculty members whose contracts have ended? A …

Poems By Minnie Bruce Pratt, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

Poems.

Back Matter, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Part-Time Work And Part-Time Leave, Sheila Tobias

Women's Studies Quarterly

The Modern Language Association convention in December 1977 included a panel on the subject of "Women and Part-Time Work." Joanne Spencer Kantrowitz, moderator, explained that, in forming the panel at the request of the Commission on the Status of Women, her "one objective was to create a group where men and women could discuss, together (and dispassionately, if possible), an area where women are consistently "used."

"In recent years," Kantrowitz noted, "the part-time category has become a male professional problem, too, as some institutions have seized on it as a convenient cost-cutting device which uses the surplus of …

Front Matter, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

On Novels By Black American Women: A Bibliographical Essay, Rita B. Dandridge

Women's Studies Quarterly

The following is part of a bibliographical essay which will appear in Black Women's Studies, to be published by The Feminist Press. The complete essay goes on to include extensive bibliographical information on individual Black women novelists.

Novels written by Black American women have been woefully neglected by scholars, Black and white. They have been mentioned in footnotes, cited in cross-references, tucked away in bibliographies, and glossed over in reviews and surveys. Few are mentioned in the Encyclopedia Americana. No comprehensive study of the novel by Black American women exists. To date, no individual Black American female novelist and her …

Women's Studies At Barnard College: Alive And Well And Living In New York, Hester Eisenstein

Women's Studies Quarterly

It may seem somewhat confusing to be reading an article in 1978 on the new Women's Studies Program at Barnard College. After all, people say, haven't you had women's studies there for years? The answer is, well, yes and no. Of course there have been women's studies courses at Barnard for many years. Annette Baxter's History of American Women was one of the earliest courses in the country, first taught in the fall of 1966. Similarly, Catharine R. Stimpson introduced a course on Images of Women in Literature in the spring of 1971. The Barnard Women's Center was begun in …

Newsbriefs, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Nwsa News, Elaine Reuben, Elsa Greene, Billie Wahlstrom, Maija S. Blaubergs, Blanche Hersh, Berenice A. Carroll

Women's Studies Quarterly

Elaine Reuben

FROM THE NATIONAL OFFICE

The 1978-79 academic year promises to be an important and productive time for NWSA.

I am very pleased to be able to report that the Association has received a small grant from The Ford Foundation, $25,000 for a period of fifteen months, to support and strengthen this office and its capacity to reach and serve persons and groups working in women's studies.

This grant will make it possible to prepare and distribute membership and other Association materials throughout the country, will allow the Association's Steering Committee to meet and to communicate more effectively with …

To Our Readers, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

The Women's Studies Newsletter welcomes both brief news articles and longer essays of description and analysis about any aspect of feminist education. We are eager for accounts of women's studies in elementary or secondary schools. In particular, also, we would like to receive essays or shorter pieces on women's centers—their functions on campus or in the community and their relationship to women's studies programs. Please send us two typed copies of your article and include a stamped, self-addressed envelope.

Second Summer Institute To Be Held At Stanford, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

The second Institute in Women's History for Secondary School Teachers, sponsored by the American Historical Association, will be held at Stanford University from June 25 to July 15, 1978, under the general direction of Amy Swerdlow, formerly of Sarah Lawrence College, now at Rutgers University. The Stanford Institute will be geared to helping secondary school teachers integrate women into the teaching of western civilization and world history.

Specific goals of the Institute include the following:

1. To acquaint high school teachers with the recent scholarship in women's history;

2. To introduce them to new theories and techniques useful for the …

Marcia Guttentag: We Will Miss You, Florence Howe

Women's Studies Quarterly

On November 4, 1977, Marcia Guttentag died of a heart attack in a hotel room in Chicago. She was in transit on one of the innumerable assignments that she undertook - evaluating projects, consulting, lecturing. We know the life she led. It was like the one many of us are leading; overcommitted, extended physically beyond the limits of human physiology at 45, she rarely said no to a request.

I knew her only casually, had seen her only once or twice since a memorable weekend at Wesleyan University in the fall of 1972, when she had introduced a group of …

Letter From An Indian Mother To Her Daughter, Maithreyi Krishna Raj

Women's Studies Quarterly

At the recent Indian conference on Women and Development, the author of this letter, who is working on a doctorate in sociology, read a paper on "The Status of Women in Science." Currently, she is a staff member of the Research Unit on Women's Studies at the Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey Women's University in Bombay. S.N.D.T. Women's University was founded in 1916 and is the only university in India exclusively for women.

You are sixteen? twenty? or just ten? The years will soon pass and you will be a woman. What will you be like? Like me? my mother? grandmother? …

Front Matter, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Newsbriefs, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Women's Studies In India: A Bibliographical Note, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

In two of India's major cities, there are centers for women's studies. Thus far, they are research centers and places where growing library collections allow them to be of use to scholars and to teachers interested in changing their curriculum. Both of these centers would be grateful to U.S. scholars, women's studies centers , publishers, and libraries willing to share their resources and to send copies of books, articles, or pamphlets to India. In the annotations that follow, the address of each center precedes a brief description of its projects and list of its publications, all of which are recommended …

Closeup: Women's Studies Department At San Diego, Marilyn J. Boxer

Women's Studies Quarterly

Despite hazards both external and internal, the Women's Studies Program at San Diego State University (SDSU) has now survived eight years, has been strengthened in the process, and has moved in new directions. Designated a "program" in 1970, it is in fact a functioning "department," thanks to two successive supportive deans.

Funded initially by the SDSU Foundation in a period of militant feminism, in 1974 Women's Studies was assimilated into the administrative structure of the College of Arts and Letters. In the California State University system, funding for academic programs is determined almost exclusively by student enrollment. Departmental status for …

Back Matter, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

The Sarah Lawrence Summer Institute In Women's History, Amy Swerdlow

Women's Studies Quarterly

In the summer of 1976, 43 high school teachers from 16 states across the country participated at Sarah Lawrence College in an intensive three-week Summer Institute on the Integration of Women's History into the High School Curriculum. The Institute was conceived by the Committee on Women Historians of the American Historical Association, sponsored by the American Historical Association, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and co-sponsored and designed by the Graduate Program in Women's History at Sarah Lawrence.

Responding to a need among high school teachers for training and materials in women's history, which has proven to be …

Letter From India... Written Later, Florence Howe

Women's Studies Quarterly

This is not an easy letter to write, though I write easily. I could not write it from India. I am undecided even now about how to write it. Perhaps I should begin with pictures: a naked five-year-old girl gently placing a barely-clothed infant in the shade of a parked car, then running before me up the steps of Old Delhi's grandest mosque, her right hand moving rapidly from her mouth out towards me in a gesture that is unmistakable even on my first day in the noon heat. A bouquet of brilliant sareedraped women-twenty-four circles on the floor before …

Facts About Women In Higher Education, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

The following is the conclusion of a WEAL report, the first half of which appeared in our Winter 1978 issue.

WOMEN GRADUATES IN THE JOB MARKET

What we have, in the final analysis, is a core group of exceptionally well-motivated and well-qualified women. The question is: Do they have equal access to available jobs? The answer is no. The proportion of women who received their doctorates in 1976 and who were seeking employment was 26.5% compared with 19.7% for men. These figures suggest that the availability pool of women is larger than the actual percentage of doctorates they earn, 23.3% …

Nwsa News, Elaine Reuben, Maija S. Blaubergs

Women's Studies Quarterly

FROM THE NATIONAL OFFICE

The National Women's Studies Association has been "in business" at the University of Maryland for two months as I write this memo. When it appears, the semester will be almost over, the weather may be better, and I will be preparing to report on my activities as Coordinator at the Spring 1978 meeting of the NWSA Coordinating Council.

The outlines of that report are already taking shape.

Editorial, Florence Howe

Women's Studies Quarterly

Many people continue to inquire about the status and future of women's studies. With this issue we wish to announce that our annual updating of information about academic women's studies programs in the United States is under way. If your program was listed in the issue dated Summer 1977, you will receive an inquiry from us about your 1978 listing. If yours is a new program or a program information, please write to us at once. The deadline for the 1978 program list will be July 1: the information will appear in the Fall issue.

Williamina Fleming: "Women's Work" At The Harvard Observatory, Anne Gordon

Women's Studies Quarterly

From time to time, we have published the work of students in women's studies courses. The following essay, originally written as a term paper, is such a piece.

Last spring, I fulfilled Harvard's freshman Expository Writing requirement by taking the section Women in American History. Each student was asked to choose one woman from the many who have never been fully studied, and to write about her life and work for the entire semester. From a suggested list I chose Williamina Fleming, astronomer.

I soon realized that Fleming 's biography, while intriguing, would only yield so much information. She was …

The Berkeley School System: Women's Studies Program In Jeopardy, Susan Groves, Phyllis Koppelman, Lyn Reese

Women's Studies Quarterly

The Women's Studies Program of the Berkeley Unified School District was created in 1972. It all began when pressure was placed on the Berkeley Board of Education in 1970 by the Education Committee of the Berkeley chapter of NOW. The committee, which included University of California women, made a strong case for examining sexism in the schools. The Board responded by creating a Women's Task Force whose purpose it was:

-to study the role of women in the Berkeley Unified School District;

-to bring to the attention of the Board both positive and negative aspects of the District in its …