Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Front Matter, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

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.

"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 …

"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 …

"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. …

"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 …

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.

Three Decades Of Reminiscences About Women In The Academy, Thalia Gouma-Peterson

Women's Studies Quarterly

The following oral history was presented as part of a panel on "The Isolation of Women from Each Other in the Academy," at the GLCA Women's Studies Conference in Fall 1980.

I came to the United States in 1952 from Pierce College, a women's high school in Athens, Greece. During my years there as a student, I had always taken the friendship and companionship of women for granted. I had excellent teachers in history, psychology, chemistry, art, ancient Greek, physical education, and philosophy—all of them women; and I had come to take for granted the existence of strong and inspiring …

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 …

Back Matter, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

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 …

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 …

"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 …

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 …

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.

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.

Issues Of Race And Class In Women's Studies: A Puerto Rican Woman's Thoughts, Angela Jorge

Women's Studies Quarterly

This paper was read at The Scholar and Feminist VII Conference, Barnard College, April 1980. A longer version will appear in The Scholar and Feminist VII: Class, Race, and Sex—Exploring Contradictions, Affirming Connections, edited by Amy Swerdlow, to be published by G. K. Hall in 1981.

At the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, where I am a tenured assistant professor, I am teaching for the first time a course called Machismo and the Changing Role of Women in Hispanic Culture. This course is also the first and only one of its kind, although Old Westbury has had …

Teaching Black Women's Heritage, Betsy Brinson

Women's Studies Quarterly

In Fall 1979, I began teaching a course on Black Women in American History at the Open High School in Richmond, Virginia. The course was designed primarily as independent study with a weekly seminar discussion, and the students received three hours' social study credit. Because of my inexperience with teaching the subject matter, I limited the class to six students and was delighted to have all young Black women choose the course.

Our basic texts were Gerda Lerner's Black Women in White America and "Generations," an issue of Southern Exposure Magazine devoted to Southern women. We also used a wide …

Your Audience May Be Greater Than You Think, Mary Ann Millsap

Women's Studies Quarterly

To the Women's Studies Newsletter:

The National Institute of Education, which commissioned a series of eight monographs on women's studies as well as the Women's Studies Evaluation Handbook, has, since March 1980, been in the publishing and distribution business, mailing the 2,500 copies of the monograph series and handbook both to preset mailing lists (e.g., all women's studies programs, centers for research on women, libraries subscribing to this Newsletter, women's caucuses and commissions on the status of women in the professions, and higher education associations) and to those who have responded to various solicited and unsolicited notices in …

Front Matter, The Feminist Press

Women's Studies Quarterly

No abstract provided.

The Academic Job Crisis: Some Possible Responses, Emily Abel

Women's Studies Quarterly

The following article is a revised version of a paper originally presented at the Second National Women's Studies Association Convention in Bloomington, Indiana, and at a meeting of the Pacific Southwest Women's Studies Association. The Pacific Southwest region introduced a resolution at the 1980 Delegate Assembly calling for NWSA endorsement of policies beneficial to part-time faculty (see Women's Studies Newsletter VIII:3 [Summer 1980], p. 23); the resolution was passed.

I wish to suggest a perspective from which the National Women's Studies Association can discuss the current retrenchment in higher education and the job crisis in particular. Above all, it is …

Legal News: Suny/Stony Brook, Judy Wishnia

Women's Studies Quarterly

To the Editor:

After nearly five years of litigation, the class action suit charging the State University of New York at Stony Brook with sex discrimination (Coser vs. Moore) is about to go to trial. The suit, scheduled for the Winter 1980 calendar of the First Eastern District Federal Court, includes twenty-eight academic and professional women who are name plaintiffs, among them several members of the nursing faculty at the Health Science Center. The University is charged with discrimination against women in hiring, promotion, tenure award, and salaries. In addition, the suit includes cases of women professionals who were given …

Women's Studies: The Case For A Departmental Model, Madeleine J. Goodman

Women's Studies Quarterly

The underlying premise on which we in women's studies have campaigned, and campaigned successfully, for the augmentation of academic curricula by a new and multifaceted field of studies during a period of relative austerity and even retrenchment in the academic world is the recognition of the serious effects of long-term neglect of such studies by the established disciplines. History, we say, and have demonstrated, has not been the history of women. Literature studies have not heard the voices of women, and studies of art have not seen through the eyes of women. The prevailing models of human evolution have been …

Nwsa News And Views, Elaine Reuben, Pat Gozemba

Women's Studies Quarterly

FROM THE NATIONAL OFFICE

By Elaine Reuben

I am pleased to be able to report that NWSA has been granted tax-exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service. The outcome of our application was never in doubt, but the administrative process took a good while to complete.

Technically, that process will continue: the notice accompanying the form announcement of our tax-exempt status indicated that we will be under continuing scrutiny, since it appears, to the IRS, that we are likely to engage in significant lobbying activities.

Expanding The Concept Of Affirmative Action To Include The Curriculum, Nancy Topping Bazin

Women's Studies Quarterly

At Old Dominion University, a state university of 14,500 students in Norfolk, Virginia, the concept of affirmative action has been expanded to include the curriculum. From my perspective as a Women's Studies Director who also serves on the University Affirmative Action/Equal Employment Opportunities Committee, I would like to share the story of (1) how this came about, (2) what it means, and (3) what questions and problems it raises in terms of my work as Director of Women's Studies.

The President of ODU strongly supports affirmative action in hiring. Because we have an energetic Coordinator of International Programs, the President …

Integrating Women Into The Liberal Arts Curriculum: Some Results Of "A Modest Survey", Ann Froines

Women's Studies Quarterly

In 1978, the Women's Studies Program at the University of Massachusetts/Boston initiated a survey to examine the impact on the liberal arts curriculum of the new scholarship on women. We were looking beyond the courses offered by Women's Studies, since one of the goals of our program, like others, had been to promote the transformation of the male-centered curriculum. During much of its first decade, Women's Studies had focused on developing its own courses and scholarship. By 1978, the Women's Studies Program offered annually ten courses taught by its own faculty, as well as cross-listing another twenty courses regularly offered …