Feminism in Action: Building Institutions and Community through Women's Studies [1 ed.] 0807821292, 9780807821299

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
Listening
Explaining
Teaching
Organizing
Index

Citation preview

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2018 with funding from Kahle/ Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/fem,nisminaction0000obar

FE MINI S M

I N

ACT I ON

HU l L D 1N G

I N S T l 'l U T l O N

Jean Fox O'Barr The

University of North Carolina

Press Chapel Hill

&London

~

A N D C O ~1 1'11 L: N 1 1 Y T H R O U G

•

em1n1sm

1

I\VO M E "-

•

S ST lJ DIES

•

Ill

•

ct1on

Library/Information Services Metro olitan State University

© 1994 The University of North Carolina Pr v.•here lean O'Barr is the director, he '"ould soon realize that he ,vas in a very unusual place indeed. Instead of the dreariness and shabbiness typical of university offices ( even in fine private universities such as Duke), the ¼'omen's Studies Progra111 offices arc filled with sunlight, plants, and carefully chosen art. Jo the entryway, greeting the visitor is a display of ten years of1-shirL'i from various national w·o1nen's studies conferences, all striking for their bright colors and clever puns (one reads, ''desperately seeking Susan"-n1eaning Susan B. Anrhony). In the same ,\laiting area, the ,·isitor finds a comfortable couch, recent issues of the Chronicle of Hig1,er Educatiort, and Lhe campus nev,spaper. While he or she wa.its, the s1nell of good coffee wafts in, and without pron1pting, someone v.ralking by-faculty n1ember, staffperson, or Jean O'Barr herself-will offer some. ln the maio part of the office, people go about their work with an air of happy busyness, and Ln another area, students and faculty consult about several ongoing research proJects on women. From the conference room do\vn the hall, the passionate sounds of the weekly 1ueeting on ''fem.injst pedagogy'' spiU out, as a dozen or so faculty members argue, laugh, and struggle:: ro think in Lo existence a ne,.., way of teaching that respects both the insights of feminist theory and the imperatives of Lhe modcrn university. O'Barr's particu lar contribution to fen1inist theory Le; in realizing that these events do not just happen spontaneously and that there is a deep (although rarely articulateJ) connection between the planl~ coffee, and T-shirts on the one hand and new ,..,ays of teaching and of doing scholarship and the general IX

work of the academy on the other. This book is about feminise institution building, and it is written by someone \Vho is brilliant al it. Two important-and related-insights structure this book, which is a musthave for anyone, scholar or administrator, who cares about what it means to be affiliated with an institution that speaks to the needs of all of its members. First, every essay in this book draws on the insight that the towering dilernn1a of modern fen)_inist thought and practice is figuring ollt ho,v and why gender equity is so hard to come by. Man)' of the readers of this book are old enough to remeinber the days of formal barriers against women, in rhe academy as in the larger world. Merely two decades ago, for exa,nple, fine undergraduate programs like those at Princeton and Yale universities did not admit wo1nen 1 while others, like Harvard's, admitted them but underlined their "special" slatus by not permitting the1n to use facilities such as libraries that were open only to men. At the graduate level, virtually all elite Ph.D. and profe~sional programs unabashedly had quotas limiting the number of women they would acLnit. Those ,vere the days when Hannah Holborn Gray, then acting president of Yale, bad to use the back door at a local dub to go to a faculty n1eeting because the club did not admit women-and no one thought twice about holding faculty meetings there. But the last rwenty years have seen the rapid crumbling of these forn1al barriers, so n1uch so that the incidents above seem to be fron1 the Dark Ages rather than fron1 the recent past. Yet what is in some ways an astonishingly rapid achievement of formal equality in the academy has not been matched by real equality. Almost thirty years after the most recent wave of the women's n1ove111ent, won1cn students are still far n1ore likely to avoid ,najoring in n1ath and science than are their male peers; women are much less visible in the ranks of full professors than they are in the ranks of assistant professors; and female administrators-especially in the higher ranks-are still a distinct minority. Thus O'Barr's first insight is that forma l equality is the beginning, not the end, of the process. O'Barr's second insight concerns ho\V 10 get from here to there, how to build substantive equali ty into structures that at least nominaUy recognize formal equaJity. As O'Barr shares her 'Lease studies" with us in this book, it is apparent that she is at the cutting edge of social science theory. Modern social scientist:, (and especially "post1noden1" social scientists) are acutely aware that inequality gets built at the nucrolevel, that the politics of touch, of language, of how we think of things, all come lo structure what we think is possible. Although Michel Foucault is generally given credit by social scientists for this insight, O'Barr's case studies ren,ind us thal fominists ,vere there first. \,Vhen feministS in this most recent ,vave of the women's move1nent insisted (long before Foux

f()reword

caulc was known on these shores) that the personal is political, they grasped that it is the patterns and practices of daily life tbat create "difference" even as institutions increasingly recognize sameness. It is the n1icropoliLics of pow·er that count. This book is a brilliant exposition of the micropolitics of feminist power, told in concrete, real tern1s rather than the increasingly abstract and son1etin1es inaccessible ternu; of feminist theory. This is lived feminist theory. O'Barr tells us about redecorating the parlor where university events take place to include portraits of won1en prorninent in the university's history. She tells us about raising money, in an innovative pa1·tnership \-vith the uniw~rsiry Development Office, 10 build one of the finest ;ind liveliest wornen's studies progra111s in the United States. She tells us \Vhat real conlinuing education is and could be. This book, read quickly, is about hov,, to build a rich, welcoming, enticing structure responsive to the needs of a broad range of members of lbe academic ~ommuni1y. ILis about elegant ways of solving problems that bedevil women's studies programs across the United States-raising n1.oney, holding on to space, attracting busy students and overco1nmitted faculty, creating worthwhile programs-by someone who has a rare flair for it. As a handbook for how to rw, any innovative progran, ( women's studles or other), Ihis book belongs on Lhe shelf every administrator and ½'Ottld·be adn1inistrator, But 1nake no mistake: this is also a deeply political book. In no-nonsense, proble1n-solving ways, O'Barr brings to life a ne\v vision of what it would mean LO have a genuinely new w1iversity; a drean1 of a common language made real. Feminists from .tl.lary Wollstonecraft 10 Catharine MacKinnon have worried about a profound dilen1ma in fen1inist thought: How do we build a new world that does not merely invert or re--creaLe the male world of dominance and hierarchy? And in lrying 10 avoid that risk, ho,.., do we keep from creating ''worncn's spaces" that are in reaJity nothing more than 1he ghettos of the powerless? Ho\v Jo we engagt: in the real world with all of its constraints \vhile Slaying true to a vision of a different kind? How do we con1promise \Vithout selling out? None of these are easy questions, and w·e are further han1pcred by having to imagine a v1,orld yet unborn. But fe1nini~ls of every stripe who thi11k this is a project ,vorthy of tht! liberator)' poten1ial of fen1inism n1ust study this book and read it several tirnes. The personal is political, and in the pages 1haL follov,r, Jean O'Barr shows us how to transfon11 the world in ,vhich we Live, one stepand one day-al -a Lime. In so doing, she sho,vs us our potential.

or

Kristin Luker Princeton University Foreword

xi

,.o.CKNOWL£DGME.NTS

Ideas come to each of us in context. They are elaborated [n dassroo1nc; and over meal tables; Lhey are refined as we write and speak to one another. This n,anuscript, more than most, o,\'es a profound debt LO the hundreds of women and n1cn who have joined ,ue in generating the ideas that buiJt \ \lomen,s St udies al Duke University. f acknowledge the generous opporLunlties they have afforded n1e to explore what it means to focus a fen,inisl lens on the contemporary acaden,y. Among the many ,,vho have shaped my experiences, a few nu1sr be thanked by naJne, for my debt to Lhe1TI is grear. Mentors Jean CampbcU, Ernestine Friedl, George l\1addox, Margaret Taylor Sn1ith, and Emi ly Taylor recognized early efforts, opened doors, and modeled what il means to be a change agent in the academic world. The editorship of Signs: Journal of \Vo111e11 in Culture e111d Sodet)' showed me the importance of documenting our daily efforts to place wornen, gender, and feminist theories at the center or scholarship. My fumiJy, Mack, Claire, Emily, and Timmy, provide the support that makes a sustained effort possible. Vivian Robinson and Nancy Rosebaugh are n1y professional partners whose pcrspectivcs and energies fuel my own. Alice Kaplan and Kristin Luker read porrions or the manuscript at the level of sentences, and those details enable me to improve the rest. Ann Burlein\ insighlfuJ 1,uggeslions, keen editing skilb, and reliable assistance 1nade chis collection possible. Several of these chapters have been coauthored with students, and 1 am especially grateful to them. The Duke University coo1munity, its adn1inistrators, alumnae, faculty, aniderat ions, \ve confronted a more immediate challenge-benefiting from the po,ver that access to this space bestowed while making the space ,vorkfor feminist goals. Duke had never been an institution that forbade white women entry; it spent lhe better part a century defining the spaces that --won1en should occupy wi rhjn its walls. The parlors den1onstrated wealth, prized delicate movements, restricted interactions to stylized exchanges, displayed ornamental objects, required the labor of other women to clean and 1naintain them, idealized past times as essentially good times, and claimed such spaces as the embodiment of women. l n t he parlors we felt constrained to an ideal izcd and abstract 1nodel of \~omanhood in which women were rnore a part of the decoration than of the action. How could \ a response to N1addox's invitation to share what L \\•as learning, the talk reprot8

I l

s r

t,;

N I N 0

duced in Chapter 1 docun1enls the first time 1 dimly understood that n1y own observations constituted a forn1 of research. The Institute for Learning io Retirenlent continues fifteen years later to be one of the most vigorous programs at the university. It annually enrolls about five hundred retired people, supports its ovn1 staff and programs, and constantly overflows the space allocated to it. At a fifteenth-anniversary celebration in t992, the officers sho\vcased not only the institute's accomplishments but the way in ·which it has served as a model for similarprogran1s and become an object of study itself. The roots of my interest in education as a process arc laid out in this first chapter. lt is 111y atten1pt to describe the ways in which cl-assroom content and personal experience shuttle back and forth for each learner. I also emphasize students' need for institutionaJ :.paces that allow the diverse needs of different groups to be heard. I an1 beginning to recognize that when older s Ludents are left ou1, our understanding of education, of what constitutes a "good" student, is Linuted. Through the process of naming an absence (in this case, older students) l learned to see other absences. Later I would come to see the absence of attention. LO gender, race, class, and sexual orientation as fundan1entally damaging to our understanding of education as well. But then I did not make the link between the fact that the majority of these returning adults were women and the fact that the institution did not Listen to them. Retun1ingafter fifteen years to this lecture, which appears here as Chapter 1, I am struck with the ways in which the tenets of my work in Women's Studies lie in Continuing Education experiences. Tt see1ns important to begin this book where I began some tvventy years ago, by listening and by fashioning responses to ,vhat T was hearing. T heard women wanting more out of their educations but lacking the vision, vocabulary, or voice to know how to get it. T suffered fron1 the same lacks. But because 1 sal on the other stde of the desk, l found myself search ing for ways to respond to their needs, listening hard, and determined LO respond; il seemed to me that something larger was at stake, although iJ_ , the n1id-1970s l could not have told you what lha1 something might be. I had the opportunity ro explore the links between continuing education and \\'Omen's studies for the first tune almost ten years later ,vhen the editors of a volurne on v.•omen in higher edLication asked n-1e to write about reentry wo1nen because f had adn1.inistcred a continuing education prograrn from 1970 through 1982. By the time J was \mting and revising this piece in the mid-19Sos, I had become the director of Women's S1udics. Fro111 this standpoint, looking back at the relationship between reentry women and wo1nen's studies was inLr-iguing.

Listeni11g 19

As l began to reflect on the ways ,von1en make a place for themselves in the academy, l was struck with bow often women believed that the burden of adjustmenl was on them Lo fit in rather than on institutions to listen to women and n1odjfy their practices accordingly. This wns (and still is!) a perspective that many ·women bring from their personal lives to their emergent political and professional ones. Tt certainly worked this way for me. Yet through the process of writing the essay that appears here as Chapter 2, I came 10 quite a different conclusion. So did the other authors in the volume. As a resuJt, the editors fran1cd their introduction to empmtsize this new conclusion: vvomen have been changing for over two decades to fit into the systen1 of North American higher education; it js now the responsibility of educational institutions to make the changes necessary to ensure the future success of both women and higher education. This was the conclusion we came to; it was not the position from v;rhicb I began. I began with a question that l was frequently asked, usually in tones of despair: how can we possibly go about changing ideas about women as well as won1en themselves? In endless conversations with reentry women students and ,-vitb my peers, Tca1ne to see that the process involved three basic parts. It v,as never clear to me whether a particular step had to come first. J knew only that all three must be engaged before change, individually or instiLulionally, could come about. One has to ask, first, what is said about wo1nen? What does received knowledge, folk wisdom, and youI boss say about ,vomen? Second, based on your own experie1tces, are these accounts true? Here it is important to keep in mind that what these accounts leave unsaid is often a n1ore telling sign of \>Vbat is important and powerful than what they actually say. And, finally, what does this received wisdom mean? Why this particular emphasis, and what does it n1ean for what we can and cannot see? As I moved through the process of counseling won1en and living my own life, Tfound that 1 often did not see how differences between men and women got played out, much less how those differences contributed to the construction of ,vhat "'as male and female, valued and devalued, powerful and po\verless. I needed to learn to see and think in new ways. As these pages proceed, the stories of how ideas change and results foUo,v emerge. Herc I introduce the process by a confession that now seems absurd but then seemed ordinary. It is the L. L. Bean click. ln the 1970s, like millions of ocher dual-career couples, 1ny husband and I discovered mail order catalogs. And, of coLLrse, they discovered us, bombarding the house. We found the111 a wonderful ,vay to acquire the basks at ten o'clock at night, long after the mall had dosed and \.vithout any of the hassle associaLed ,vith taking the children shopping. We ,vould both order cotton, 20

L I S 1'

eN

I N G

button-down shirts-often from rhe s:.ime page of the catalog; one size for women, the other for n1en, but identical in color and style. The shirts ca1nc by UPS. Y.le wore rhem. And then they had to be cared for. My husband had always taken his shirts to a commercial laundry before we were married. Except for a few years when money was especially tight, I would take his shirts to the laundry each Monday, picking then1 up at the end of the day. Each Saturday I did the family laundry, setting aside 111y shirts, the ones identical to his, spending an hour or more ironing them. One day, in the midsl of thinking J would never be done, I asked n1yself a fundatnentaJ question. Since we both had the same jobs as professors at the san1e university and both

wore the san1e shirts, basic L. L. Bean, why did his go to the laundry while mine were washed and ironed by me at home? Why had we both agreed that his professional look was important, and why had we never discussed mine? Why was it acceptable to allocate 1ny time to ironing my shirL lir:;t publi~hed in Proceedings of Seminars, 1976-1980, edited by George l\iiaddox and Elizabeth Auld (D~1rham, N.C.: Council on 1\ging and Human Development, Duke University, 1980).

25

won1an ,..,ho had just packed lier last child off to fust grade. She had tong been fascinated by international relations and had rnajored in politicaJ science at Radcliffe before dropping out to 1narry. She wanted to know whether l thought she should take a course; whether 1 thought she would succeed; whether she could ever really get her B.A. degree; and if she did, whether I thought she should go to graduate school in political science or in international relations. The fourth was an older faculty spouse who firmly announced she had more degrees than she needed and was here to learn something. Who did l think gave a good course? Those four won1en and the people who have followed them since the Continuing Education Program began in 1968 represented a new range of chalJenges and needs for which we in higher education have few guidelines. The growth of Duke's program parallels the phenomenal growth of continuing education nationally and internationally. At Duke we began ,vith a narrow vision: to help women, one segment of what Patricia Cross termed the new learners, reenter traditional prograrns. Through the years we broadened our programs to offerings for both career preparation and personal enrich1nent. Now we are deeply involved in all aspects of lifelong learning, especially a new endeavor with retired people. { would like to discuss how higher education is responding to the diverse needs of people at all points along the life cycle and to introduce you to so1ne of the exciting developments we are pursuing here at Duke. I think it would be helpful to mention briefly the factors that have given birth to the boom in lifelong learning. Then J ,vill. outline ·who is i11 the business of providing continuing education and what kinds of education are becoming available. I want to end by pinpointing some of the tensions in s,vitching from traditional lockstep education to new forms. My argun1ent is that the university's claim to universality is indeed limited. While it conducts teaching, research, and service on a broad front of subjects, it still does so for a restricted clicntele-and thereby undermines its own ability to understand and explore the human experience to its fullest.

Definition ofTenns I use the life-cycle notion as it js used in the social sciences because it seems to me to be a 1nore accurate reflection of people'!> minds and bodies than chronological age or measures of educational levels. This notion also allows us to distinguish individual patterns of developn1ent, especially the quite different patterns for men and women. Men typically move through childhood and adolescence to early career commitment, not letting marriage and children 26

L I S T E N I N G

seriously deter their professional focus. Only in their forties do men question where they are going and why. Women evidence another pattern. Their early career con1n1it111ent is frequent!)' more tentative, the salience of marriage and children to their professional plans n1orc profound, their sense of resurgence and rededication at thirty-five stronger. The developmental needs of adults past twenty-one and before sixty-five have finally attracted popular attention, popularly focused for us by the con1pelling work of Gail Sheehy in Passages. 1 In Passages the author talks about the p red ictable crises of adult life: (1) the search for self-identity in late adolescence; ( 2) the twenties, when one selfrighteously pursues the "shoulds" of one's peer culture; (3) "catch 30," with its spurt of vitality; (4) the period of rooting and extending that follows; (5) the "deadline decade," with its fulJ-blown authenticity crisis; and (6) the period of renev;al or resignation in the fifties, when equilibrium is regained and the motto is "no more bullshit." At each passage four perceptual issues are at play, and it is these interrelationships which define how each individuaJ develops: ( 1) the interior sense of self in relation to others; (2) the proportion of safeness to danger that people feel in their lives; (3) the percepLion of time-whether it is available or running out; and (4 ) finaJly, a gut-level sense of aliveness or stagnation. The confines of a short paper do not allow n1e to relate each step of Sheehy's scheme to the educational process. I can, however, argue that the diversity which has come to characterize continuing education is a direct resuli of the multifaceted needs of adult learners, ,-vho are responding to their inner selves and external settings as they move through the life cycle. Other authors remind us of the fact that the life cycle does not stop at sixtyfive either. Den1ko, for example, delineates stages in the lives of older individuals and argues strongly that educational programs must be closely tied to the needs expressed by people over sixty-five. 2 We need to define one more term before we begin our discussion, and that, of course, is co11tinui11g education. I have a hard tin1e defining the tenn because it covers such a broad range of programs-from anything outside the lockstep residential degree programs (which have been the mainstay ot higher education) to the noncredit and nondegrce courses, conferences, and workshops on one thousand and one topics offered by associations, communities, and businesses. T prefer to define continuing education in terms of the orientations of its practitioners, n1ost of whom would agree that continuing education starts with the belief that education is not a vaccine to prevent ignorance later in life. The belief that people of any age have a legitimate need for and right to all kinds of educational experience~ is fundamental to continuing education programs and the moving force behind them.

Lifelong Learning 27

Conlinuing education program directors play a key role in creating the means ,\Thereby people can achieve their varied educational aspirations. The role of these directors in aiding women is clearly borne out in So~ne Actio11 of fler Own: The Adult Wornan in Education. 3 1n an in-depth survey of the clients, directors, and former students of fifteen centers, Cless found thal continuing education programs, more than other progran1s in higher education, were characterized by strong- willed, creat ive directors who translated adult needs into an astonishing array of programs within universities-practically before the universities knew what hit them. There are two aspects of continuing education that distinguish it from other streams in education. Continuing education programs differ fron1 those whose primary focus is adult education. Adult education programs stress curricula that provide basic literacy up to a median Level. Many aduk educalion programs simply extend traditional programs and offer them to an older group of people. Continuing education, in contrast, often has a corrective ft1nction. Its goal is not merely to provide remedial work or traditional work to new groups, but to actively alter aspects of the existing educational system. Continuing education progran1s espouse the belief that learning is a continuous process that ought to respond both to externaJ changes in society and to an individual's internal quest for meaning. There arc certain affinities between Dewey's theory of progressive education and continuing education. Rather than approaching life as an "unfolding of latent possibilities," De\vey and continuing educators take a life-cycle approach. They see life as a process of developmenL The role of education is to provide "conditions in which reconstruction is facilitated."4 A second characleristic distinguishes continuing education programs from traditional programs. A traditional college education rests on a banking and storage 1nodel of education. This model has at least t,vo meanings. It can denote a traditional view of the life span that divides a person's life into two n1ain stages: first, the years of schooling that prepare .for life) years in which one accumulates depqsits that will later be cashed in; second, the \vorking years or the years of life itself when one draws interest on an earlieI educational investment. This view of education as capiLal is incongruous with the basic philosophy of continuing education. Another meaning given to the bank.ing- andstorage model refers specifically co the 1nethod of teaching in which the student is treated as a depository or receptacle. 5 Continuing educarors hope to discover a way of " integrating Lhe rich life experiences of older people in the classroom, of tying the lessons of experience to rhe conceptual structure of subject matter instead of .sacrificing one to the othcr:•e- Continuing education programs arc based on an exchange tnodel of learning, which sees the process 28

I I S 1 8 N I N G

of education as fundan1entally a method of exchangJ_ng experiences under tutelage in order to reach new levels of understanding for both leader and participants.

ltVhat Caused the Boon1? We have come to understand fairly clearly the demographic, sociological, and tcchnoloE:,11caJ changes that have made educa tion in later life an attractive possibility. These changes can be sun1n1arizcd as follows: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

The college-age population (the cohort group of eighleen- to twentyone-year-olds) is stabilizing. The expansion Lhat characterized higher education in the 1950s and 1960s is holding :.teady, if not dedini11g. Thus colleges seek ne\v students. As a population we are living longer, having more leisLlre tin1e both during and at the end of our working lives. Thus people seek education both as a new leisure activity and as a means to learn m.ore skills to make leisure tirnc more productive: for n1any, technology has n1eant alienation from work and dissatisfaction both with what one does to earn money and with do ing it for a very long time. Career dissatisfaction has emerged as an in1portant issue for individuals in their forties and fifties. That dissatisfaction pushes some people back to school. The knowledge explosion every few years also propels people back to school-both those who are happy doing what they are doing as well as those who would Jike to try new career ventures. ,von1en, minorities, and the academically disadvantaged who did not receive the benefits of higher education io earlier decades are dcrnanding entrance. These new learners often require different kinds of assistance in succeeding as students; their demands have created the support services characteristic of continuing education programs. Youth themselves seem attracted to travel and cooperative education programs, suggesting that there may be a place for "real world ,, experience intermingled with "education." The reverse of that proposition suggests itself-adults who live and work in the so-called real ,'\'orld n1ight also be able to absorb education meaningfuUy. Both the creation of the Co llege Level Entrance Progra,n (CLEP) and the development of competency-based evaluative mechanisms for adults all point to the attempt lo translate life experiences in Lo acaden1ic credit Research has demonstrated tbat the ability to learn is correlated with

l,ifclong l,ean1i11g 29

interest levels and relevance of topic more than the aging process, making fallacious lhe facile assumption that you must have acne in order to learn. The spread of the Elderbostel progran, is ample evidence of the eager demand for education by older people. For these and a host of other reasons created by our postindustrial society, the idea that people can and should learn throughout Lheir lives has gained acceptance. According to the Carnegie Commission on Nontraditional Study, one in three adults enrolls in s01ne kind of learning activity each year. Adults demand greater convenience in setting and format; they seek 1nstitutions where the en1phasis is on serving students rather than granting degrees.

Who Has Been Providing Education for the Adult? The list of agencies that provide some sort of education to adults is long: colleges and universities, libraries, agricultural extension bureaus, professional societies, some public school systems, the extension services of universities, the Red Cross, training and development offices in business and industry, city recreation departments, community colleges. YMCAs and YWCAs, the mass media, counseling centers for 'i'l'Omen, and many more. Their educational efforts were characterized by the fact that these groups each \vorked ,vith a specific population that had expressed some immediate educational objective. Only ia the last decade have agencies begun to find out about each other, share techniques and programs across domains, and plan cooperatively for community needs on a long-range basis. The assumption underlying cooperation (prodded, one might add, by federal funding guidelines that mandate an awareness of other programs) is that, with so much continuing education going on, lhere is probably less need to create a new progran1 than there is to identify existing programs and then refer people to the most appropriate program.

W7'1at Do Adults Want When They Come to Continuing Education? Perhaps the best scheme of conceptualizing adult educational needs was put forth by A. A. Liveright, former secretary of the International Congress of University AduJt Education, in Alvin Eurich's Ca1npt1s 1980, a collection of papers about "the shape of the future in An1erican higher education."A The key principles in this plan were, first, thal continuing education could become the instrument by which professional, academic, and business enclaves becon1e JO

L f S T R N I N (;

accessible to each other and to "outsiders" as learning resources; and, second, that the most significant overall goal for continuing education is the extension of a broad-gauged civic literacy and sense of en1powerment throughout the population. Liveright's plan calkd for a college of continuing education, working cooperatively with the media, urban governments, co1nmunity agencies, and arts and sciences institution~, through the following four "institutes": (1) the lnstitute for OccupationaJ and ProfessionaJ Development, which would answer the needs of Lhe adult as worker; (2) the Lnstitutc for Personal and Family Development, which would help the adult achieve maximum effectiveness in fan,iJy and personal relations; (3) the fnstitutc for Civic and Social Development, ,~.,hjch would prepare the adult for participation in community, national, and world affairs; and (4) the lnsLitute for Humanities and Liberal Development, which would encouragesdf-reaJjzation ai1d personal fulfiJbnent. Adjunct facully were 10 be drawn from corporation:. and professions; studenrs were to participate in determining curricula; centers with a special conkn1porary focus (such as metropolitan studies and probJem oJving) were to be created in accordance with social need. Liveright acknowledged that his plan had a utopian tone, but be provided an appendix giving details of programs at a nun1ber of U.S. universities and colleges that were already engaged in carrying out con1poncnts of his scheme. Since he wrote, n1orc and rnore programs have been created around these four dimensions.

Will Universities Becon1e Centers of Lifelong Learning? If l have painted a picture of the great ease with which all this is happening, I have painted a false picture. There arc still a large nwnber of tension points and unanswered questions in what I think is clearly a transition from the university as we have known it in the United States for the 135t one hundred years to the university as a li:feJong learning resource. What are some of these Lension points? The first question that ahvays cn1crgcs when older students arc discussed is, yes, but are they good students? The onlyreasonab1e response to this perennial question has to be, well, it depends on what you mea1, by "good." Measured only by grades, they certainly are competitive. A large-scale research project on rettuning students at the University of Michigan is showing that returning students have better-than-average grades. But to look at grade point averages alone is to ignore what continuing educator~ have been advocating, nan1ely1 that older students will force a rcevaJuation of what and how we teach. In

Lifelong Learni11g 31

J11di,1idua/izing the Systern," a number of authors argue tha t, wirh the con1plction of the equality revolution (that is, opening adrnissions co diverse groups in society), the quality revolution must begin ( that is, the challenge LO reconstruct the curriculum to teach the new learners). Adults are demanding consw11ers in higher education, as two anecdotes will illustrate. ln a recent guest editorial in the Washington Post, English professor Burlington Lowery said his greatest complaint was thal adult students were overzealous and overconscientious; he was simply not accustomed to such seriousness of purpose. 10 Nathan Teitel, a playwright v.rho teaches ai New York University, is worth quoting at length on the subject: On that memorable Monday, precjsely at 6:10 P.M., I began my noncrcilit lecture on Hamlet with a hollow heartiness. But in the front row Miss Steig1nuUer was un,~rapping a tuna fish sandwich, and next to her Mr. Elias "~as nnmching on a Hershey bar. I was forced to look up. Fortythree tired, hungry faces, ranging in age fron1 eighteen to a stray seventy. My first class at New York University's School of Continuing Education, the largest adult school in the count ry. Most of ,ny students had come directly from work: scrubbed nurses-still in uniform, cbjc secretar ies, ravaged fashjon models, engineers, computer operators, college dropouts, wan elementary schooJ teachers, bookkeepers, and fugitive ho1,Jse""ives. "Sorry if I disturbed you;" sajd lvliss Steigmuller apologetically as she carefully wrapped up the remainder of her sandwich. I stared at her for a long 1noment. In preparation for my trial by fire, I had wolfed a T-bone steak. "You can eat," T suddenly exclaimed. "You can all eat-if you want to. Hamlet ,von't mind." Silence. Not even a titter. (But did a fleeting smile caress lvliss Steigmuller's pinched face?) r shoved my cards away and began again: "Ha,nJet is a play about a ,nixed-up human being-like all of us ..." The radiator in the corner stopped hissing. The years ran. I taught courses in drama, poetry, the short story, and lhe novel. The faces were different, but the primary need was the same. What they invariably sought in literature was something n1ore than either mere entertainment or cultural adornment; literature v-1as always a means to an end, a tool to use in their unending search for self-realization . The classroom was their oasis: a place where they could feel fr.e e enough to give vent to their buried emotions and ideas. Everything had to be related to their lives, their experiences, their problems. Thus, in considering any ,-vork, background, biographical material, and specific content al·ways came first. Form, technique, concepts of aesthetics-these had to be in-

32

L I S T E N I N G

traduced obliquely. "Dreiser lays the truth on the line;' pronounced Mr. Tin1othy \,Yaish, embryonic stockbroker. "You bet he does!" Miss Kra~ bowski's sputtering, angry voice plunged on: "Not like Herningway-that n1ale chauvinist! He cares 1uore about those dopey bulls than he does about women;' Slightly irrelevant. But the free-for-all was on. At a judicious 1noo1ent-or so T hoped-1 raised 1ny hand. They were ready now, eager, waiting for the revelation. r tried not to disappoint the,n. Particularly for those students who never \vent to college, the man at the head of the class is Lhe final authority-the highest court of appeal. T wore 1ny robe diffidencly. 1couldn't do otherwise, since I learned as much from thenl as they did frorn rne. Their insights and fresh perceptions never failed to amaze me. Ahvays they insisted on getting down to the bedrock of hun1an relationships: "Did Cordelia have ro tell the absolute truth lo her senile, old father?" 11 Let me conclude by illustrating how we at Duke are responding to the cballe11ges and tensions I have discussed. My thesis is that we n1ust design diverse educational programs which speak to the evolving needs of adult members iJ1 a con1plex society. By doing so, the whole educational endeavor will be greatly improved. The uniqueness of our Institute for Learning in Retirement is an excellent case in point. We know from the swelling enrollments in our noncredfr programs that this conunw1ity is rich in especially talented and able retired people. We know that efforts to involve retired persons in the community are usually on a voluntary basis and require rhe individual to give of hin1self or herself to serve others while not dealing directly ,vith his or her own evolving needs. We know that feelings of belonging to and being comfortable with a like-minded group are critical to adull lcaming experiences. By applying this understanding in a unique format, we believe we can offer a teaching and learning prograo1 that serves both retiree and com1nunity. Tbe Institute for Learning in Retirement is a self-governing group o[ older persons who design their own curriculum and teach their own classes, drawing on the resources of the university when they feel the need to do so. The classes in the first semel;ler spanned the range from coping skills lo enrichment le-dmi ng. Out of their learning cornes a desire to elirninate the stereotypes under which they, as older people, live. Frequently in comnuttee meetings members can be heard laying plans to teach undergraduates, to develop a peer-run preretire,nent progran1, to be trained to lead discussion groups for older persons who are not as well adjusted to later years as then,selves. All of rhese

Lifelong Learning 33

activities attesl to the desire of older persons to integrate learning with life, to draw on their rich and unique body of experiences lo aid others. Learning in the institute is an integral part of living. How will this program turn out? I cannot say. Very talented people are involved i.n its creation; tnany equally able individuals are a,nong the fLrst members. We have every reason to think that the 1nodel -..-vc have created meets both the internal and external needs of the participants and their community. The parent programs on which the institute is based certainly did. And ,vhat about the four people 1 described in my introductory comments? The first one graduated last year from the Physicians Associate Program and is now engaged in fuJl-ti rne research. The second one got a bachelor's degree in nursing and moved to Texas, where sbe works as head nurse i11 a small hospital. The third person is still taking courses. She just hasn't decided which she likes best. The fourth person found several very good courses, decided she could do ,..,ith another degree, and is now in graduate school.

34

L l S T E :,; I N G

CHAPTER

2

Ree11try Won1en

it1 the Acaden1y 'fh e Contributions

of a Feminist Perspective

rom 1970 until 1982, I served as director of Continuing Educat ion at Duke University. After a year's leave of ,1b:;ence, I returned to the same institution to create its Women's Studies Program. Twelve years of working with reentry women combine \vith 1ny present involvement in Wo1nen's Studies for college-age students to provide a parcic:ular perspective on continuing education that form~ the basis of this discussion. 1 often 111use on whether it might have been done "the other way around"what it \vould have been like to work with women returning to higher education in the 1970s if Won,en's Studies had been 1norc fully in place and the curriculum transformed to reflect won1en\ experiences, expressions, and expectations. r subn,it that, without the knowledge gained by ham1ncring away at institutions to accept and assist nontraditional students, we would not have had the angle of vision required to sec how limited the educational enterprise is on gender-based questions. But I kno,"' that the obstacles returning \•lomt.:n t.tudenls faced ,.,rouJd have been minimal if feminist scholan,hip had been integrated into the curriculum lbey recejved when they arrived on campus. This chapter begins with a brief overvie,-v of the recent literature on returning ,-vomen students that illustrates ,-vhat has heen learned in two decades of incorporat ing older ,vomen on the campuses through continuing education programs. It then goes on to describe th~ process by which one administrator, 1nysclf, can1e to sec the contradictions between the contributions older ,vomen somewhat different form in Educating the J\,fnJonty: ~Vorne11 Challenge Tradition in Higher Ed111:at1on, edited hy C'.arol S. Pearson, Donna L. Shavlik, and Judith G. Touchton (New York: Collier Macmillan, 1989). pp. 90-101. Thi~ essay was first publi~hed

in

35

were n1aking in the acaden1y and the nature of the institutions they were entering. Finally, this chapter analyzes how· the questions posed by returning women students illustrate the "problems" of higher education with reference to gender as much as the "problems'' of a group of learners.

Returning Wo,nen Students: Nutnbers, Needs, Concerns The fact thaL large numbers of older women students return to U.S. campuses is an increasingly familiar theme in our society. And not only those of us directly involved in reentry programs know tbis. College administrators note the changing age and gender composition of their applicant pools in every school and division. Households and families adjust their lifestyles as the women in the1n reenter training and education at all levels to bettet their economic prospects as well as to enlarge their personal horizons. Schools, churches, and communities acknowledge that the stay-at-home mother is now going back to school and is no longer automatically available to fonn the core of their volunteer work force. Employers depend increasingly on women's recent course work and degrees to maintain the skill level of the labor force and to guarantee a competitive advantage in changjng labor markets. Who are these returning women? While no technical definition is widely used, returning women are generally thought of as over twenty-five years of age and \.\11th a history of delay or interruption in their educations. They are drawn from every racial, ethnic, and regional group. Age and educational history combine in a variety of ways to create "returning wo,nen." When continuing education programs for women first began in the 1960s at schools, colleges, and universities of al] kinds, the most frequent client \.Vas likely to be a woman in her late thirties or forties ,vho was rnarried, who had children no,., in school full time, and who was either completing an associate or baccalaureate degree or going for an advanced degree. Wilh each decade of continuing education the woman got yoLtnger and had greater variation in her personal and educational background. By the 1980s, the category also included single women in lheir twenties ,vho were dissatisfied ,vith the direction of their first college work as well as relatively ,-veil-educated women, often ,..,ith young children, who were switching fields for en1ployment purposes. ln the beginning of the continuing education movement, returning ,von1en often evidenced doubt about the legitin1acy of undertaking theirplans. \-\'omen raised in the 1930s and 1940s felt doubtful about putting their o,vn aspirations up front, accustomed as they were to putting the needs of others ahead of their

36

[.

I S T E N I N G

o,vn and failing to see the interrelationship between their ,~•elfare and the family's well-being. Three decades later, reflecting changing cultural norms about women, returning women were living more diverse lifestylt!s and were more willing to sec that without their own developtnent the happiness and wellbeing of those around them \vere stymied. Divorce played an in1portant parr in encouraging some women to return to education. When marriages break up, one strategy women frequently follow is to seek the education necessary for employment or beuer employment. Many continuing education counselors, working ~rjth returning women, report that educational counseling sessions often seem more like marriage counseling sessions as returning won1cn struggle to develop their own idencitics through education in the process of redefining their marital status. The evolution and diversification of conlinuing education programs, running the gaiuhit from liberaJ education programs for masters' degrees in elite institulions 10 in-bouse half-day training programs al places of employment, meant that returning won,en ca,ne to understand education n1ore as a process than as a one-time acquisition. The earlier idea that ,.,omen return to the campus to "prepare for life" gave way to the contemporary approach that learning opportunities are ongoing and thal wo1nen will enter and reenter for a long time period in response to their evolving persona l and professional needs. Thus, in the 1980s women of 1nany backgrounds gamed access to a w·ide variety of educational programs and oflen did so more lhan once, viewing it as an ongoing process of !ielf-develop1nent. The figures on returning women students are impressive and gro,ving: 1 • \-Von1en were the majority of students in higher education in the 1980s. • By 1986 women over twenty-five constituted 24 percent of aU postsecondary students. • Returning women students are found in every lypc: of institution, pursuing every kind of degree, while continuu,g ro confront patterns of ctiscrimination in some areas of study and in classroom expectations generany. • Part-time study and enrolin1cnt in comn1unity colleges are particularly strong, both becaui,e they are more accessible to large numbers of women and because of the hesitancy on the part of the n1ore traditional and prestigious instih1tions to fully welcome and integrate returning women studenls. • Programs of continuing education for women vary considerably in their focus, scope, and energy; yet almost every institution of higher

Reentry Women in the Academy 37

learning makes some accom111odations for older sludents, and 1nany have been highly successful in recruiting and educating large numbers of women. • Women who have heen reentry students and are now in the work force are enthusiastic advocates in their positions as co-workers, e1nployers, and college personnel. ln short, won1en return to education because they want to for personal reasons and because they have to for economic reasons, as we shall see below. What are the needs and concerns of the students, on the one hand, and of the institutions in which they matriculate, on the other. as the two 111eet? The research literature on reentry woLnen has grown so that ,ve now have a base from which to study returning women students and on ¼rhich to design and implement the programs that will n1eet the needs they have identified. Two recent publications review the previous research literature and demonstrate what twenty years of service and research have established. Ekstrom and Marvel describe several educational barriers facing adult \\1omen: institutio11a~ the formal parts of the college process that begin with admissions credentials and run to financial aid limitations, course regulations, and lack of womencentered counseling; situational factors, such as class and ethnlc background, family responsibilities, tinle conflicts, and lack of mobi lity; and personal or psychological concerns ste1nming fron1 weak self-concepts, derived in turn from the position of women in American cuJture and society generally.1 The authors go on to describe in some detail the many programs for reentry women that work. The programs "work," in the authors' view, because they start ,.,ith women's strengths as students (while acknowledging their relative lack of resources and skills in certain areas) and readjust the institutional policies to make them flexible enough to give reentry ,.,omen a chance to succeed. Holliday describes the specific policie:. of institutions of higher learning that demand alteration if reentry won1en are to be welcomed, citing the research literature supporting various recommendations. 1 She highlights changes in recruitment policy, admissions procedures, orientation programs, financial aid restrictions, staff attitudes, child care availability, and counseling to facilitate women's successful reentry. The voices of reentry women themselves have begun to be heard. The Modern Language Association cornpiled a rich collection of women's experience in The Road Retaken.4 Twenty-five women, writing from diverse perspectives, describe their eventual successes in resuming their education. A second por-

38

LISTENING

tion of the book docun1en ts the place of won1en as en1p loyees of higher education, aU written by v.romen who took less than a direct path to their present positions. The final section puts forth Lhe view of won1e11 who struggle on the perin1eters of the acadcn1y and the ways in which the acade1ny's more:. resist change. Taken together, the essays give a dear portrait of the women served by reentry progran1:. and their reactions to the proce:.ses they have undergone. While no single pattern can sumn1arizc the reentry process, all t\'\fenty-fivc ·women exhibit courage in 1he face of obstacles, asking of 1he acade1ny that it focus on their potential and not be bound by an evaluation of their particular current characteristic:. or discriminatory attitudes toward women':. achieven1ent in general. The title of McLaren's discussion of working-class won1en in adult education in Britain, An1/Jitio11 and Realizt1tion, speaks directly Lo the need to conceptualize broadly ,vhen describing as well as planning for reentry wo111en.~ McLaren surveys the growth of adult education and then e->...-plores in depth a group of students from working-class backgrounds. The women she interviews see reentry programs as enab ling them to change their social position, to provide them with irnproved job qualificat ions, and Lo assist them in finding more rewarding work. \,Vhilt> ever cognizant of the obstacles in realizing their ambitions, she suggest:. that with a solid matching of individual learners and institutional needs, the goals of both can be and have been 1net

The Personal as Political: Excerpts frorr1 an Administrator's Jounial The den1ographic trend is clear: reentry \V-01nen arc an important constituency in higher education. The experiences of continuing education personnel who serve adult \-vomen are equally clear: adult women students possess characteristlcs that are bothstrengtru and liabilities i.n lhe reentry process. Generally, they do very well as students if their liabiJities can be addressed and their strengths allowed to flourish. The lessons of twenty-five years of program development substantiate these claims; with requisite leadership and support, the academy can and does modify itself and e..xhibit the flexibility needed to incorporate older women as students. And the academy is rewanled; reentry students tend to do well and to sho," appreciation to the institutions that welcome them. And yet, after h'lo decades of working with reentry women, a piece of the puzzle has been missing. Clues about the characteristics of the missing piece are found in these episodes drawn from my administrative n1emory.

Reentry Wo111cn in the Acaden1)1 39

Episode 1 A biochemist by doctoral training, this reentryvvoman came to n1e through a continuing educalion course on life planning, explaining that the research laboratory was too demanding now and that she had come lo feel she had made a career mistake. Her interest in human interaction, fostered by her \111ork as a 1nothcr and as a civic leader, was now more decisive; she wanled to do postdoctoral courses in child development. Arrangements were n1adc, and some faculty in che psychology department were eager to utilize her talents and interests. After several courses, the enthusiasm on the department's side slackened. She was too persistent in her questioning, I was told. She doubted the assumptions and methods behind much of the research she ·was being asked to replicate. Based on her experiences as a mother and as a female leader, she asked for a funda1nental rethinking of what was being studied; her new colleagues resisted.

Episode 2 I discouraged another reentry wor11an from taking a course in American politics from an instructor who happened to be her neighbor. I felt that, for the woman's first course, she ought to tryson1ethingwith no previous history that might entangle things. No, she insisted, if she was going to go back for her B.A., she might as weU start with her friend and neighbor; he had promised to look out for her and set her straight on political science. She took the course, and the problem that arose was not the one I had anticipated. She handled the friendship and personal relationship with maturity. \.Vhat she could not handle was the subject matter. A.Jnerican polrtics as she understood it dealt with people, including women, and issues; she had, after all, been a League of Won1en Voters chapter president. But the course as presented to eighteen-yearolds never mentioned women, the issues she thought were on the political agenda, or the relationship between the women's movement and the changing face of politics. Not only could she never get an answer for why the material she valued was absent, she could not get the faculty me1nber to value the question itself. Women, according to the party line, were not active in politics, and Little 01ore needed to be said. Episode3 Another reentry won1an's love of literature was staggering. Mention a character, a plot, a poern, and she could tell you s01nething abour it, how she had reacted when she read it, and what the critics said about it. I thought she would sail through her English literature courses and was already making mental 40

L I S 'f E N l N G

plans for encouragin g her to go on to graduate school. As sh e resun1ed her college work, reading more and being required to read it from a rnore structu red perspective increasingly frustrated her. One day, after a long talk, she sajd things were a bit better. She was reading Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir and Doris Lessing regularly now on the side-they were making the reading of real literature possible. By real literature, of course, she was referring to the canon, the writing of white males and an occasional female that constitutes the literature major. Con fronted with the question of why what spoke to her was not considered literature, she explained that sh e would think about that prob len1 when she finished-when, indeed, 1 feared she would be finished

as the predetermined product of a process that denied the legitimacy of her own voice, a female voice, imposing another in its place. Thinking back to these three students and many others like them, I realize that, as director of Continuing Education during the 1970s, 1 sensed something was \vrong, although 1 lacked a coheren t explanation at the time. I urged older women students to speak up, to refuse accomrnodation in the classroom as their political mode, to believe in and pursue the values of rationale disclosure, lhe very values espoused by the settings in which they found themselves. OccasionaUy, confrontation benveen reentry won1en and faculty led to understanding, and understanding led to modifica tion in what was taught. But more often, questioning led to silence. The older students n1ade do with two worlds, the world of the classroom and the world of their experiences. The faculty and staff clairned that as soon as older women got accustomed to the ca rnpus, they would settle in, questions would disappear, and acceptance of "the way we do things" would en1crge. The silence pers isted through the granting of degrees, for power lay on one side, confusion on the other, and no explanatory system was readily available to say, "Now, look here ...." It is at this point in n1y experience as a program director that the new scholarship on women pointed to the missing piece of the puzzle. The early discussion of Title IX, first brought up by the American Council on Education's Commission on \-Vomen, linked the question of who was studying what. As l became 1norc familiar with the femin ist scholarship in my own field (African politics and development studies) and the interdisciplinary discourse that was S\veeping the social sciences and humanities, I came to see that many of the obstacles to reentry were as rooted in the curriculum as in policies of the academy and that changes ,vere needed to address both content and structure. Continuing education and wo1nen's studies are often Jinked, spoken of as parallel move111ents in higher education, but the way one informs the other is rarely examined in detail." This is \vhat I propose to do in the final section of this chapter.

Reentry \iVomen in the Acade111y 41

Moving on Two Fro111s: Conti11uing Education and Women>s Studies The research literature on reentry women, the experiences of program.administrators, and the testimonies of older students themselves agree ,vith each other about what the obstacles are and the successful strategies for overcoming them. Prescriptions urge institutions out of their inertia and individuals out of their hesitancies, asking each LO assume a risk-taking stance. Success stories fo r programs and people underscore the appropriateness of such advice. What would this process of matching oontraditionaJ students with traditional colleges and universities have been like .if feminist scholarship had been a central force in the day-to-day ,voc:kings of the schools? If the understandings derived from a study of gender systems had informed our thinking about causes and consequences? Quite different, I would argue. Consider the following examples. A primary institutional obstacle to reentry women has been their lack of preparation and their lack of comparability lo the younger students who form the 1najority of their class cohort. Through two decades of continuing education, programs have helped these older women get up to speed through courses, individual counseling, and general support. The women's studies perspective on this problem of the lack of fit between person and place gives us another angle of vision. Jt suggests that there may be less wrong with the person than the place and that the problem in making a rnatch benveen the two should be conceptualized as a problem of"\iVhat constitutes a student?" rather than as "vVe know a student when we see one, now let's work on n1aking this person more studenllik.e." Developments in \v-on1en's history spring to mind to illustrate how the issue might be recast. As social historians began to investigate ,.,omen's lives-What did they do on the ,vestern frontier? How did they experience industrialization? Whal d id they think about the n1oral climate of their com1nunities? and so forth-social historians began to argue that American history as it was conceptualized was only a partial history of the American people's eA-perience. They pointed out that understanding any of the standard topics would be both improved and corrected byan expanded definition of the topic, expansion that focused on what was happening to women and how men's and \'/omen's experiences came together to form the whole historical picture. In the process of incorporating ,vomen, historians are redefining what constitutes the study of history. Similarly, by incorporating older ,.,omen students, colleges and uni~ versities have had to confront questions about what constitutes a student. Tn fact, of course, both the developmenl of women's history and the evolu42

LISTENING

tion of incorporating nontraditional students were going on simultaneously in higher education during the 1970s. But as reform 111ove1nents they only rarely informed one another. Hindsight allow& us to see how much easier it would have been to conduct the cont inuing education debate if the historical debate had been more fully developed and n1orc vvidcly disseminated outside the profession. Older women students would have been seen as new students more frequently ilian as deficient students, just as won1en's history is con1ing to be seen as a new perspective on all history as opposed to a specialized developn1ent in a corner of the discipline. Having argued the case for older students, those students and their mentors were among the first advocates of giving women's history a central place in the curricu lu111. Sensi live to what exclusion meant in a personal do1nai11, they welco111ed inclusion in the political don1ain of the profession. Another obstacle for won1en returning to college has been articulated as the tension between their present and anticipated situations. How can a mother take courses as opposed to helping her kids with their homework? How can a vvife put priority on her goals and yet keep a n1arriage and her husband's career in central focus? How can women of diverse backgrounds utilize institutions designed for elite white n1en? Situational factors, said to prevent women's reentry and to limit their educational success, take on a d ifferent cast if seen from the perspective of fen1jnist scholarship. Feminist scho larship in the social sciences, particularly sociology and anthropology, has argued that women's private lives as 1nothers, wives, workers, and carriers of culture arc not only a n1atter of personal choices and circun1stances but the result of societal arrangements created by social and historical forces and reinforced by the expectations and the training that accompany such arrangements. Feminist sociologists and anthropologists have been looking close ly at the way in which economic, political, and social relationships shape the options open to individuals and showing that individual women are the recipients of a cultural system that defines and shapes women's expectations of themselves as well as the culture's view of their place. Seen from the perspective of feminist scholarship, the situational obstacles that women face in returning to college arc as 111uch social as personal. Addressing those obstacles takes on a more informed and effective cast when the woman ceases to blame circumstances and begins to address policies. Vvhi le a feminist a11alysis of the situational obstacles by no means elin1inates them, it does provide the framework of redress that is lacking when an individual reentry woman floun ders over the reasons for her difficulties. Having seen how linked the personal and professional lives of reentry women were, advocates of continuing education found in the scholarly debates about private-public linkages in won1en's

Reentry Wornen in the Acade111y

43

lives a powerful analytic tool for addressing individual needs and institutional policies. A th Lrd exa1nplc, drawn from the final set of reasons said to prohibit older women's easy reentry, again illustrates the contribution of a fen1inist analysis. Conventional wisdom has it that older. women students lack confidence, rely on others for validation, and have relatively weak self-concepts. While the literature and the experiences of those returnjng through continuing education are replete with instances of wo1nen who gro,.v into their own as a result of returning to school, there j,. While maintaining distinct priorities, both groups seek continuing conversation, for both subscribe to the central idea that the personal is political and both now have lhe data to prove what was once just o belief. \-'\fhat D(f[ere11ce Does lVotne11's St11dies Mnkc? The argun1ent so far has been that fenri11isn1 as a social movement and thal women's sLudies as an inlellectual challenge 10 ,-,haL we have thought and kno,\'11 are joined in an understanding that ,von1en's and men's lives are the result of social arrangen1enls and cultural practices, not idiosyncratic personaJ cases. They see t-hese aJ·rangements as having deep econonuc, political, religious, and cultural rools that are not easily changed. Yet lher join in a commitment to confronting and changing such conditions. I ,11ant to conclude 111y discussion with a look at the -ways in ,vhich boLh of these developments appear to be influencing young women and n1en. This too is the kind of topic that requires a doctoraJ dissertation rather than five minutes. Nonetheless, l think

,ve can get some strong indications about what is happening if we listen 10 the students themselves describe their learning. Up to this point I have been stressing content. 1 have been t::ilking about issues and ideas. Bui ,vhen I turn lo what students are learning, the discussion must s,vitch to process and how students lmk learning and living. Their approach can be summed up in the title or a new re-,earch project on women's studies being conducted by the National Won1en's Studies Association called The Couragr to Question. · Students in wo1nen's studies question, and it takes courage to do so. They are learning about the ' asking. "Make such a big deal out of designing a course-don't they usually just do ,•:hat they did the year before?" We spent the next hour talking about the teaching-learning process, the way What Does It Mean to Be a11 Educared Person? 61

knowledge comes into being, how ideas are modified with nev,1 ones, how criticaJ thinking proceeds. I had a dear sense, as did she, that she understood what it means to be an educated person for the first time. Driving home that afternoon, I reflected on bow this student, serious and responsible to her fa1nily and to her race, bad been gathering bits of infonnatioo from disciplinary offerings and was now ready to cross boundaries and unify ideas, taking another step in the process of liberal education. Before she had started the project, she had thought of herself as a consumer of knowledge. After she had experienced participating in the process of curricular design, she became an active learner in the construction of knowledge. 1 teach a graduate seminar in the history of feminist thought-fifteen fustto fifth-year students from ten departments. Here is what a third-year philosophy student wrote in her journal last week: After reading Harriet Martineau's Society in America, I went back to Tocqueville's Democracy in America, mostly out of curiosity, in order to compare his assessment of the posiLion of wo1nen in American society with that of Martineau. J had read Dernocracy in America as part of a course entitled "Values and Institutions in American Society;' a required course at Colgate. Being the kind of student who always read everything required, but not usually any more than that, my first observation was that although r had underlined large parts of the work I had not underlined the sections on the status of women. They, presumably, were unread. T can be fairly certain that this indicates that these parts were not assigned or considered part of the required reading for the cburse, which was a universitywide syllabus. So anyway, n1y first observation on the teaching of Tocqueville as part of tl1e canon was that only some of his observations are considered of importance to tbe issue of uvalues and institutions in America." One finds a very different characterization of American womcJ1 in Tocqueville than in Martincau's ,\Tfitings, but it is not so much due to the "facts" of the ,natter as to their interpretations o( those facts. I don't mean to suggest that "facts" and "values" are clistinct, but only that, although their descriptions of the material conditions are consistent, one senses a great difference in their approaches to their subject and consequently a great difference in the kinds of conclusions they reach. In short, Tocqueville, playing the role of "objective observer;' is primarily interested in the condition of women in relation to his theory about the effects of equality of condition on society in general. Martineau, on the other hand, treats

62

L l S T ~ N

r

~ G

won1en as ''ends-in-themselves" rather than as one case study vrithin the framework of some larger theory. l think that this difference of approach to the condition of women a1so accounts for the divergence in their assessment o[ the "morals" of Americans.... Fro1n a co1nparison of Martincau's and Tocqueville's works, I think we learn as much aboul observer as about observed. Or, at any rate, we learn that the questions asked-or not asked-will have a great effect upon the conclusions an observer is able to draw.

Critical analysis? l suggest that the student's ability to take texts, fantlliar and unfun1iliar, and work w·ith them at this level or understanding is the essence or what \Ve :;eek in an educated person, particularly one bound for the classroon1 to teach the next generation. Students concentrating in ,vomen's studies at Duke receive recognition for their ,vork in the form of a certificaLe, at both Lhe graduate and undergraduate levels. They receive both pieces of parchn1enr th:it mark their progress and titles that appear on their official transcripts. OccasionalJy someone in Placen1cnt Services warns them to retnove the title, lest they alienate prospective employers. One Sunday in September, eleven students, male and fen1alc, fron1 seven professional schools and departments, received certificates from the dean of the Graduate Schoo l in a ceremony before fa1nily and friends. A fe,v days later this letter arrivt!d: Dear Jean, It's the n1idcUe of the night. fl is only nine hours and a dinner out !>ince you handed out your -first graduate certificates in Women's Studies. I got out of bed at this obscene hour co share a surprise with you. I rru ly had no idea how 111uch it meant to me to receive this graduate acknowledgment-and to be among the first group of people to do so-and how delightful to have a n1an in the first class. As I looked around that roon1, seeing son1e peoplt> l didn't kno,v but n1ost of who111 I did-nol only kne,v, buc deeply cared for-it began to da\vn on me that this was in some ,.,,ays an incredible event. Here were all these men and women making -wo111en

their life's work!

It is somehow significant that 1ny father chose not to come yesterday (which means, ,n our family, he and n,y mother) because he had a golf event with his buddies three days later. It is significant because he bas driven t,vice as far-coa,mitting himselr to twice the Lime on several occasions-for events involving n,y next sibling-male-with a fatherdecipherable Ph.D. in laser engineering. My brother's contribution is

\Vhat Does it 1\t/.ean to Be an Ed11ca1ed Person? 63

r

TY Gl:S

clear, so,nehow. And he has done it by the books. My paren ts sent him to graduate school. He is still wilh bim at thirty-six-flying to international conferences and patenting away. He is a father's dream son. What is his drean1 daughter? \/\'hat lam realizing as J digest the award, the cer tificate, is that it 111arks li tera ll y )'ears of struggle, perhaps a lifetime, to say that women are firstclass citizens; that won1en are fully contributing members of our conununit)'· IL is amazing to me, in some ways-chat it has been an internal co111n1itmcnt of surprising strength that resulted in the events yesterday. Lam basking in the knowledge and the gro,.,ring understanding that that room and many other roon1s are filled with ½'omen and n1en ,~ith similar comn1itments. As I continue to study and to ,.,•ork, my relationship to that ,vork will solidify. Right now, ir feels newly coalesced, newly formed. I feel sobered, settled into that "'ork. I have a ne,v realization of the depth and importance and perhaps even the radical nature of \\That ,ve are doing. The point of this n1idnight rambling is to thank you and honor a program that changes lives, that allows-encourages-such moments a~ I experienced. P.S. 1 an, going to the feminist ethics conference in Minnesota. N[y 1nother sprang for the ticket as an early Christmas. Hov.• appropriate s01ncho,v. There is little I can add to this eloquent assessment of how empowering it is to kno\-v, ro know who knows and how, to know what to do with that kno,-.rledgc. This young won1an's reflections clarify issues of value judgment in her education in a way that no abstract exercise can. Clearly she has been infon11ed by previous analyses, but she is integrating them with present experiences to becomt: an educated person. Who is teaching these students? Faculty members, who are themselves active learners, engaged ii, changing their minds. This is from the report of a history professor who received summer support to revise his survey courses so that they include new scholarship on women. Dear Jean,

I have enclosed for you copies of the new syllabi 1 prepared this sum11,er lo shO\V you howl wilJ go about "rnain:.treaming'' won1en's studies in two courses. A syllabus tells you son1ething abouL a course and the mind of lhe instructor, of course, but in this case 1 do not fed that it says enough about the boost this progran1 has given to 1ny scholarly work as a whole.

111y

64

L l S T P. N l N U

I found that the Organization of Ainerican Historians' guidebook for mainstreaming women's history was indispensable and eminently practical. A nutnber oft heir suggestions have made their way into the syllabus: the stress on Christian morality and vie,vs of gender in late antiquity, more focus on the medieval fa1nily and household, the divergent experience of ,vomen and n1en in the spiritual life of the ~tiddle Age~, a more social approach to the Renal.)sance, and a do:.er look at the "crish ot the seventeenth cenrurv." I have dce1n ph,ts i,ed the "great inan" approach, but de~igne around individuab (still the reference for fresh,nen when 1.hey firsl lak.e hhtory). Tbe first point readings about 1.he "great 111an'' Gregory V1T, hov;ever, ,ire balanced with the voices of historical wo1nen-JuJian of Nor,vich and English Quaker wo1nen. for exan1ple. \\'hile the Europe to the Eighteenth Century course went smoothly, the revision of Renaissance and Retormation Germany proved to be quite a challenge. I abandoned the forrner approach of beginning with religious reform and now begin the cour:.e wilh an exan1ination of the primary dctern,inants of the ;;ocial experience in Central Europe: life and death, disease, fnn1il), household and gender, the material culture. When l do get to the Reforn1ation, l deen1phasi1e Luther and focus 111uch more on the roles of different groups-tov,;usn1en, peasants, '"'omen -in the slov,, process of creating confessional cultures. This reading and research program, aided by the grant frorn the Women's Studies Progran1, has therefore helped open up perspectives which few in 1ny field (Refonnalion studic~ and ea rly n1odt"rtl Gern1any) are OO\\ '"orking on. 1 teel very much like a pioneer, even though I can :.ee tha1 the vision has only begun to unfold. My research and teaching ,~·ould surely not have taken the turns that it has had I been al another institution. \Vhen l wrote lo a colleague in my field. one or t,vo women ,,,ho opened up the field to questions about gender tn Gerinan Refonnation history, asking her for advice in revising the syllabus, she said that nothing like the course that I was developing yet existed. That. is an exciting yet daunting realization.

or

Not all students and faculty are happy. One young man, a junior who ,.,•rites a regular column in the stu' complete the standard university course evaluation forn1. In addition to readings and a fi.nal examination, students complete four n1aior assignments, each of whlch requires tbem to perform a certain activity and then analyze in writing ,-vhat they observed when they performed the activity. Upon completion, the assignments are extensive]y discussed and compared in the sn1all group dlscus~ion!'.. The first assignn1ent, ""hich was described in Chapter 8, is a gender-role vioJation and explores how gender-role expectations affect persona l interactions. The exercise requires the students to publicly undertake nn action that they,-vould nonnallyconsider inappropriate for themselves as women or n,en. They must have an ob~erver srationed to watch both their own reactions and tbose of the people around them. In tbeir papen, they are asked lo draw on their reading and lecture materials in order to speculate on why the gender norm exists and to exrunine the source of social controls. Ln the second assignment, a curriculum evaluation, students tnove to the level of societal analysis. They fill out a questionnaire about two of their courses. The questionnaire is designed to reveal the underlying assurnptions of a course and the existence of gender bias. if any is present. Questions range fron1 the very specific (" Ho,-v many photos and illustrations ir\ rhe course n1aterial show women in positions of po~'ler or action? how many show n1en?" ) to

Teaching n5

essay questions requi.ring synthesis and analysis of the specific finding.'> ("What are the strengths and weaknesses of the course in terms of providing a full perspective on women in its subject matter?"). The third projecl, an oral history interview, requires that students foreground questions of history, change, and continuity. Students must interview a won1an who is at least twenty years their senior or over the age of sixty-five. After reflecling upon cerrain issues that they have conic to understand through talking with her, they write a report analyzing how these issues reinforce, co111plement, or contradict what they have learned fro1n daS$room resources. A large percentage choose to interview their mothers. FinaJJy, students must perform an action project, an attempt to initiate change. Projects can be done in groups or individually; they may be quite public or essentially private. The emphasis of Lhe assignment is not on the success or failure of the action but on the process of setting actions i.n motion as weU as understanding both what constitutes social change and how change occurs for women. Their final paper must draw clear links between what they do and the historical efforts of \'.'Omen to change society as well as women's social roles. Chapter 9 analyzes students' conceptions of gender, drawing on n1ateriaJ fron, the first assignment. Chapter 10 examines students' assessments of gender content and dynamics in their classes, a.c; derived from the second assignment. The ways that faculty understand their role in transmitting knowledge and defining classroom dynamics are the subject of Chapter 11. Here l argue that one way to increase the amount of material on ,-von1en in the curricuh1D1 is to teach studenls lo demand such material by taking students through the steps of researching ,vhat they arc being taught; exploring with then1 why that is the case; and then helping them create the intellectual and interpersonal tools they need to do something about the situation. Chapter 11 studies the w.ays in which students gai.n a voice as wotnen. The process of "con1ing lo voice" is discussed largely in terms of their relation~hips with friends and family. These Lhree chapters all draw on the undergraduate classroon1 for their data. Chapter u Jookb at the graduate core course, A History of Feminist Thought (WST 211 ). Since 1985 the Vv'on1en's Studie5 Program at Duke has offered a graduate program leading to a certificate in women's studies. To earn the certificate, students must take WST 111 as ,veil as two other courses that extend their disciplinary work on women and gender. This dual focu~ in the won1en's studies concentration reflects the context in which advanced study is pursued al Duke. Duke doe~ not offer n1aster's degrees in the traditional disciplines as free-standing degrees; nor does it offt>r a l 16

1' [; A C II I N G

1naster's degree in ,vomen's studies. Moreover, fcn1inist scholars at Duke offer within their own departments a rich variety of advanced theory courses that take up current debates as they en1erge. Thus the \¥omen's Studies community felt Duke needed a concentra tion that would include at least one course that would bring students from d iverse departments together for rnultidisciplinary conversations, give thcn1 a historical perspective on the contours of contemporary work, and enable them to see how feminist inquiry entered the AngloAn1erican acaden1y. The graduate core course emphasizes how the exclusion of n1aterial by won1en ha~ shaped the construction of the academic disciplines we have inherited.

Both graduate and undergraduate students seek out Won1en's Studies as a place in which to approach issues that they want lo explore no1 on ly with in their course work but after graduation in their careers as ,veil. Both express the need for a place where they can garner explanatory framework~ for their personal experiences. Both talk openly about their need to develop a voice that can express the questions they have and the answers they are discovering. Undergraduates experience isolation most frequently when friends criticize the changes a student in \"lon1cn's Studies is undergoing. While residential colleges often fuse the personal and social worlds of undergraduates, these students still have a \.vider univers ity and 1nany other places to turn for friendship and support for their en1ergent feminism. For graduate students, however, the department is their social and professional \.Vo rid. As a result, graduate students expe rience the issue of isolation more in tensely. As emergent professionals, graduate students are undergoing a soc ialization process that makes them feel vulnerable to attacks on feminist scholarship when they envision such inquiry as their " life's work.'' Graduate students often talk about lack of assistance, indifference, and even hostility from mentors ,.,•ho are unfainiliar with feminist frameworks. They also meet resistance in the undergraduate classes they teach from a younger generation that considers a feminist perspective unnecessary in today's ,.,•orld, where "everything has changed." Living and working within this context, graduate students often find explorations into the history of femini:,t scho larship both critical and frightening. They know that without this material they cannot get rhe full benefit of their disciplinary journeys. Yel gaining a fe1ninist perspective makes thern angry, frustrated, and sometimes discouraged ,vith how much ren1ains to be done. Because ferninist scholarship has developed so extensively within the past fe\.v decades, this upcoming generation of feminist scholars faces a vastly proliferating field with which it is difficu lt sitnply to keep up-much les~ keep up with other fields. Graduate student) face another reality: that learning this new

Teachi11g 117

n1aterial requires them to unlearn some of the collegiate knowledge they have masrered and to which they ding when so many previous foundations are being shaken. When I first presented the n1.tterial in Chapter 12 as a public lecture, l found tbe audience anxious to meet the foremothcrs who have preceded this generation, angered that these women have been neglected in inherited knowledge, excited to discover an intelleclual heritage as distinguished as others they have studied, and fascinated by the process in ,vhich students and material interact. Two of these four chapters are coauthored with graduate students. One of the n1ost rewarding aspects of working ,,,jth emergent scholars is the opportunity to teach them new material and to enable them to reflet beginning to develop a research tradition that documents their ongoing, daily activities, including curriculum transforn1ation. They have extensive individual experiences that enable them to describe anecdotally what is happening with colleagues and students. We've all heard about the occasional faculty n1en1ber who jests that including a ,-vork by a woman on the syllabus qualifies him (it is usually a male instructor) for the Women's Studies faculty. The Women's Studies students in bis class joke back, suggesting there is more to inclusion than that. Students new to feminisl scholarship often report that Professor X is ''great" because "We are reading two books by ""'omen this sen1ester." Students who have done a fair an1ount of work in women's studies decry Lhe syndrome of devoting a week at the end of the course to women-a week that often gets cut since "There is so much in1portant material to cover and we are out of time." Graduate students note with frustration their professors' Lendency to lu1np together race, class, and gender in one day devoted to a discussion of "difference." The following exchange is not atypical of my ex'Perience as director of Women's Studies. I chat ,,,vith a fourth-year graduate student in early modern European history who ,vill be teaching a course on gender and costume next spring. I ask him to write a short artide for the newsletter on what he is planning to do in that course-,.ve both kno,.,, that femin ist scholars have avoided the issue of costume and fashion even though questions of dress often crop up in discussions of feminism. We agree that such an article would be both useful for hin1 to formulate and great for the newsletter. He then volunteers the inforn1ation that a couple of years ago he could not have wriuen such an article. Why, I ask. Well, he explains, he has always known about costume and fashion, having entered graduate school with an M.F.A. in design as well as years of theater experience. But he "didn't get the gender part." I press further: what made him consider gender in his analysis nov., when he had not done so previously? Besides course work and general reading in a departn1ent that respects feminist scholarship, he cites nvo additional experiences. First, while working as a teaching assistant for one of the 'v\Ton1en's Studies faculty members last year, he learned how to use gender as an analytic 134

T E A C l:i I N G

tool and '"as astounded at how n1t1ch more engaged his students beca111c. Both those v.rho ''loved" th e approach (1nore frequently \vomen) s about th dual role of parenthood, the changing role of the liheratcd won1a11, and the desrruction of the typically dose-knit faJ11ily. But whereas the editors of the text chose to publish articles which depict several views of won,en, our class read only two articles from tha1 chapter. These two articles porrraycd the working won1an as the reason for the separa1 ion or parents from their children and one su.rve}' which recorded bow· often hu:>bands help their wives ,,rith housework. fhe professor completely neglected discussing the other articles which presented such subjects as a \Voman author's depiction of the modern French wo1nan. Similarly; an article in a later chapter rhal we read detailed the ~hopping pracrices of French women. Thus, the professor has chosen either to skip the fe1nale-oricnted articles in the text or 10 discuss those anicles whkh describe a traditional, subservient woman.

\.\'hen women are noted as "outsranding;' what is said about then,? This question proved provocative for one student in the music survey course. She began by observing that both her textbook and the lectures iJlcluded fe\v listings for women n1usicians before the 1960s:

One exception 1 found to this pattern came in the form of Oara Wieck Schumann, who had eight page!> listed next to her name. My curiosity piqued, I decided to read the pages listed, thinking that the topic of those pages ·would be Clara Schumann. ln.stead, l found that she wa1, the wife of the musical genius Robert Sd1L1mann. When Robert died, she became the lover of Brah,ns, another well-known and accon,plished mu:.ician. Little was said of her 1nusical lalenL other than the fact that she ,~as n 1nusical prodigy at n.ine but later had difficulty raising seven children as an adull. ,vould she have had so n1any page numbers after her nanic had she not been the wife and lover of two great n1usiciaos? Probably not. After tht:

Assessing Curriculu11z Transformation

145

1960s, r found that more female musicians were listed (e.g., Donna Sumn1er, Madonna, Sheila E., Tina Turner, etc.)-but still with onJy one or two pages listed by their name. However, compared with my physics text, the Masterworks of Music text is a paragon of gender equality. At least this text acknowledges the fact that great fe1Tiale ,nusicians have become n1ore recognized in recent hjstory. Using women's own descriptions of their lives is a third way material about women can be included in courses. Fundamental to the enterprise of femjnist scho larship is the idea that we must listen directly to women themselves, not simply to 1heir male observers and interpreters. Table 2 suggests that even fe,..,er courses in fewer departments take this approach. Students' responses to this question suggest that they are sensitive to the need to hear directly from women themselves and find this way of incorporating material particularly effective. A student in English put it this way: I learned a great d eal about ,-vhy gender roles exist and persist. Not only are male authors more visible than female authors, causing us to believe that there are actually more male authors than female authors, but vie are fed infonnation about wo1nen through the eyes of dominant canonized male authors. We are trained to see women and men as they are depicted in the literature we read because ,..,e have accepted lhis literature as a true reflection of society. We accept thal vvhat happens ro women in literature happens in real life, so when every single novel with a female protagonist ends and the woman is either dead or married, we believe this to be the way things are and v,e don't question the stereotyped 1-nessage ,-ve are sent. Until v,rornen's literature is more widespread and visible, we \vill not begin to see the side of women that only female authors can depict. Until fc1nale characters' lives begin to actually reflect our o,-vn, we w-ill not accept our own experiences as true. Over and over again, students claimed that the relationship of rnen's and ,vomen's lives to the social, economic, and political systems in which they live as well as to the differences between the positions, perspectives, and powers available to women and men were not discussed as frequently as they need to be. Listed as the fourth and fifth categories in Table 2, this material is evident in even fc,._rer courses in fewer departn1ents and at lower levels. \.Vhen courses deal with social relationships and with power dynamics, students are ftill of praise, as the following two statcrnents suggest. Art 70 [a the survey of art fron1 the Renaissance to the present 1 is the epitome of how a suhject do1ninated by males can still be taught to 14()

T E A C H J N G

eradicate the gender bias that it faces. Our teacher's exemplary approach to art explains why "'omen have been left out of art and \vhy they are depicted the .vay they are in each work of art. The teacher also requires reading out of a text that is dedicated ro female artists throughout history. Rather than separating the course into male artists and female artists, the professor integrates the subject matter by presenting works by females, showing the different view they give. This enables lhe student to look outside of an, into society, to see how the different sexes view the world. The student learns how the controller of culture (art) can influence the beliefs and perceptions that society has about groups within it. Specincally, we learn why women artists have been left out of art history books by our patriarchal society.

The first book we read in my history dass contained the letters \o\1 rittcn bet,veen a Nure1nburg husband and wife of the sixteenth century and shows the life of a won1a.i1 in her O\Vn voice. The entire clas-. was surprised by the amount of control she had over her life and that of her husband. The profcssor,van1ed us against fa lli1,g prey to the myths of women's lack of stat us and described lhe reality of her position within the community and the household. ln class, won1en are presented as an integral part of the formation of German history in the Renaissance and the Reforn1ation. The final qu~tion student:,, are asked to consider is whether or not the class deaJs with differences among women, particularly between women of different racial and ethnic backgroLLnds. Students claiin that n1ost cow·ses in n1ost departments do not. It is significant that they rarely commented on thi!> topic in the essays th.:it accompanied their questionnaires. Their silence suggests that very little material on women of color is part of their education. The following comment. v,•hich describe:. a class e.xploring lhe literature of colonialism, shov~·s that when such information is included, its impact is powerful: \Vhal is valuable is the class discussions, in which \Ve can relate the sexisrn to the racism that is found in the novels. vVe have also been abk to draw parallels and to reach_ conclusions about the relationships between men and won1en, between the conquerors and the conquered, between the participants and the nonparticipru1ts, and bet.veen the po,vercd and the disempowered. By discussing ,-.omen's issues in this class, we have been able to consider important question~ about the ideology of imperialism and to decide whether or not this ideology was justifiable. \,\,'hen given the opportunity to assess what kind of material on women and gender systen1s appear in their classes, students appear to be keen observers of

Assessing Curric11/um Tra11sfon11atio11

Library/Information Services Metropolitan State Universitv

147

the teaching and learning process. ln contrast to the way in whid1 they appear to rank a course favorably and then describe it in less favorable terms, students appear to have a clearer sense of ,vh:lt is and what ought to be included \vhen asked to describe the ways in which the material is presented In this part of the exercise, they acknowledge the absence of spec inc kinds of information and see the consequences of its lack.

How Do Ge111i-fer Dyna,nics in the Classroon-1 Relate to Curriculu1n Transforn1ation? The exercise on curriculu1n transformation was first developed to explore whether n1aterial on women and gender was included in the information that professors provi·de. ln the last three years, the exercise has been expanded to analyze the kind of inforn1ation being given. Both the "how much" and the "what kind" questions concern readings, lectures, and discussions-all forn1al aspects of what is being said about the subject at hand. l n the last two years, as the influence that interpersonal relations exert upon learning has become a more widely discussed topic on this campus, as on many others, J have begun to ask students to consider a Lhird question: Do the patterns of interaction in the classroom reflect gender dynamics and, if they do, bO\V are these interactions related to their acquisition of 1narerial? The students' understanding of these dynan1.ics can be quite sharp. The follov,ring comment about an ethics class co1nes from a student with little background in won1en's studies: So far, my ethics class has been a very alienating experience for me and many of my won,en friends in the class. The professor is male, and although "vomen constitute a strong majority of the class, the djscussion is dominated by men. The men dominate the discussion because almost everything they say is readily affim1ed by the professor, ,vhile the ,vomen have to fight to get their views acknowledged by the professor as valid. The n1ain readings arc written by 1nales for and about males, and all of the readings are discussed fro1n that viewpoint-that is, all of the readings are discussed within the framework set out at the beginning by rbe key authors, Kierkegaard and Peck.... If 1 w~re to base my assumptions about women in sodety solely on this course, 1 would assu1ne Lhat wornen are weak, immoral, neuroLic, sexual objects \Vhose role and position in society is to be inferior to n1an in every ,..,ray. No contemporary women's issues about the life cycle are discussed; for example, abortion, child care,

148

T E A C H I ~ G

women in the ,vorkplacc, and other issues of relevance to wo,nen are never discussed.

J\1en, too, learn lo sec the process of exclusion, as this comment from a male srudent suggests: The presentaLion of ideas in my statistics lecture and sectional meetings is so1newha t u11fair to the fen,ale gender. My professor and T.A. both have a ten on finding/believing in a goddess, having a reljgion that believes in the strength of women. lt celebrates cycles, connections to na ture.... r find myself thinking yes, l'm a strong person, and thinking about that article." However, she also says that she has not really follo,ved up on her interest in the article b)7 consistently practicing its suggestions. Nevertheless, Karen believes she has 1noved into a position from which she can feel confident about and able to vocalize her beliefs and feelings most of the tin1e: ''My family believes a woman is the one who ~hould take care of the children, because of their religious values. I don't want to have children unless it's going to be shared-fifty-fifty." At another point, she says, "I don't feel like T want to be a mom like my mom. l didn't knot.., how to articulate those feelings beforenow 1 do." Encouraged in her perception that her discomfort with her family's religious stance is legitimate, Karen has been able to come into ber ovn1, express her view, and confront the sense of loss that accompanies her newfound independence and strength. While v.1omen's issues are not necessarily the primary focus of her activities, engagement with them permeates her existence; "l have used my feminist beliefs to become a ,.,,oman leader in environmental move men ts."

or

Searching for and In1plementing Ways through the "Wall" Evidence for the ways in which students encounter proble1ns and employ tlus naming process is n1ost clearly seen in students' action projects, wh ich ask them to identify an issue and attempt to change it. Karen's account is typical. For her action project, she decides to confront her friends who cheer al commercials that combine beer and ,vo1nen. She describes the typical scene: 170

T P. A C 1l l N G

"Yeah, all right, beer and babes!" "There's tJ,e beer, no,v where are the hot babes!?!" "Sweet babes!" I have heard these phrases many Lin1e~ while \\·atcbing lelevision wilb some of my n1ale friends. My friends cheered this way for commerci.1ls, especially beer co111merciah, which included beautiful \\ she writes, "I cannot nm alone a.nd I can't travel alone-the fear of rape curtails every woman's freedom. Occasionally I've ridden my bike alone at night and felt-weU, yes, a little fear, but also a nagging guilt which I could not place. I realized that social pressures teach won1en that it is up to then1 to be careful, not up to men to stop the problem, and thctt by feeling guilt for my action, J was giving in lo repercussions of social conditioning." Aru1e sees that social conditioni11g is forn1ativc of her identity, her feelings, her actions, an\ith the histoq, and circumstances of the questioner as ,veil as with the composition of each class, every student acknowledges the fact that wo1ne11 have a problemaL1c relationship to society and lo their position iJ1 iL. The history of feminise thought is about understanding women's circumstance~, what women have thought about then1, and, perhaps n1ost significant, how Lhey have proposed to alter them. My goal in working fe1ninist thought with >'ou this 1uoraing LS to suggest through Lhe hh.tory that wornen'~ diverse reflections upon wornen challenge the very core of Western knowledge as this knowledge has been created and passed oa to LlS at the present time. To do so, I braid three sources together. First, r use the records \Ve have of women in the past: their letters and diaries; the essays, plays, and poen1::. they wrote; the speeches ther gave; what was written about then,. Second, I intcrnvioe n1y own under::.tanding of how ideas emerge \.Vithio the interaction of text and student, ideas thal yield incisive analyse.~ of conten,porary issues. Third, I rely heavily upon the \'\1ord~ of the students th.en1selve.s as they encounler lhese fore1110Lhers for the firM ti1ne. I have taken students' ,vords fron1 a learning log in which they ,,,rite °\'\1eekly entries. The log l>crves many different purpobes for each studenL lt contains a pen,onal account of the ideas studenls ar~ encountering in the class readings. Tt analyzes ho,•.' those ideas relate to d1crishcd beliefs, previous undcr~tanding, and other curreal dasse::. and experiences. Jt records what each student thought and how that student's thinking changes as the result of readings, discussions, and reflections. But most or all the log is a wh,h list of all the books to be rt'ad and ideas to he pursued after the prcscnr course, "when I have ' " t1n1e. Each i,tudent \\'Orks his or her C>\\fn way through the readings, learning log, and class discussions. Because the course focuses on retlunking acaden11c kno,,•lcdge as it is pr~enlly constructed, what any given individual student will learn tn the course of the class depends on his or her background. l have orga-

or

Gehtng 111to tht' Conversation 179

nized my analysis around some patterns that demonstrale how students use the space provided by the course to unlearn some ideas and reformulate. others. In one section I highlight the writi11gs of one student, 1'1ichelle LaRocque, Lo illuslrat.e how she engaged the material to rethink prior understanding. I will begin this chapter as I begin the course, where European history has conventionally begun-with Greek civilization-and move into the "New World" wid1 the emergence of Anglo-America. This approach replicates the way in which traditional academic disciplines have developed the historical record and raught what was deen1ed in1portant in the past. This is how women's studies began-with the 11eed to rethink the academic canon we have inherited. One of Lhe most difficult aspects of this unlearning process involves unlearning the misconceptio1l that we can simply correct former absences by adding women into the received chronology. \.\Then wornen are fully integrated into the canon, history no longer adds up in the same tidy way. Thus, while the course proceeds within conventionaUy defined periods, I focus on selective the1nes that link past and present in a not-so-tidy fashion. History is not any more tidy ilian ,.,omen's lives; chronological move1nent is not equivalent to developmental progress for women.

Back The,, ... We begin the seminar by talking about women tnost students have never heard of; the fact that so many of us are unfamiliar with these women n1akes us all uncomforrable. This cliscon1fort is particularly acute for graduate students, who are pursuing advanced work that should cover "everything." It suggests that what 1i1,1e know about the past mighl be incomplete in some fundainental sense. Not only arc wo111en n1issing; also missing ls tbe irnproved picture of Lhe past lhal including all women would provide. One of the first "missing women" we encounter is Hypatia. An Athenian philosopher, Hypatia was appointed to direct the Neoplatonic School in Alexandria in A.D. 400 at the age of thirty. Such an accomplishment was extraordinary for a woman and particularly note,vorthy because sht was not part of the rapidly growing Christian leadership of the city. A new sourcebook on won1en philosophers describes her as follo,vs: '' Her reputation was incredible. Students flocked to her from everY'vhcre, and letters reached her sin1pJy addressed to 'The Muse' or 'The Philosopher.' According to one of her pupils Iwhose wrillen records we havej ... she was at the tirne considered lo be the greatest living exponent of Pla1on ic, Aristotelian, and Neoplatonjc philoso· phy:' 1 Until the last few decades of feminist scholarship, Hypatfa's iniluence on J80

T E A C 11 I N G

philosophy was unknown. Her claims to fan,e could be briefly su111med up in two anecdotes recorded iJ1 the eighteenth centLLry: how she hurled the equivalent of a used sanitary napkin in the face of a student suitor with the words, "This is what you love, young fool, and not anyth ing that is beautiful"; and ho,.., she was mutilated and n1urdered by the archbishop of Alexandria in a bitter contest over political influence in the city. Even these two anecdotes are not com1uon knowledge. \Vhcn students learn Lhat Hypatia protested hu_ra5.,;ment ~1 rtd .issun1ed leadership in the face of opposition, they begin to wonder ,vho and what else they've been ,nissing. They are ernboldened by her story. The sense that it-has-happened-before mixes ,vitJ, the knov.rledge that she-has-been-forgotten in an uneasy combination. This uncomfortable mix of Lhe suppression of won1en and Lhe neglect of rheir achievement as well as a relatively :.ecure marital status. And th.is is a world in which Lhe sexual division of labor is fluid; rnen and wo1nen perfonn si,nilar tasks, and gender is not a primary social den1arker. The idea that medieval won1en exercised n. degree of power intrigues many students, and they demand to kno,v ,vhat happened LO duninish such po,vcr. Behind their question is a clear contemporary concern: if women once had such pov,•er and then lost it, are our fortunes like\vise in jeopardy? They find in the history of lhe Jvtiddle Ages ( the time of the con,mercial rise of Italian city-states) :,on,e highly instructive information about various ways in which social arrangen1ents change the conditions w1der,vhich wo1nen Jive. As dowry practices are re-designed to enhance Lhe accumulation of wealth in families for comruercial purposes, dov.'ries fail to protect ,von1en as they once did. The growing bureaucracy and power of the Roman Catholic Church restricts the roles and responsibilitie~ of ~vomen. And the recovery or classical texts, particularly Aristotle as pro1nulgated by Thon1as Aquinas, has major effects on women. The research of social historian Susan Stuard on gender dichotomies offers one set of explanations that students find useful as they struggle Lo understand how w(>meo came to a!.sume ~uch fixed and negative characteristics:

Getting i11to the Conversation

181

This systen1 of assigning qualities by sex, with ·wornen usually assigned the n1ore negative traits, had not enjoyed tnuch popularity in the early Middle Ages, however, nor had it been politic when abbesses, queens, and other powerful won1en distributed so much patronage .... When polarities became fashionable in the uth century, they stimulated imaginations and provided apt in1ages for theological debates.... Lay people, even the illiterate, could grasp polarities and en1ploy then1 as unque~tioned assumptions, sanctioned by theologians. . . . This new dcfinjtion of women passed on an inherited system of notions that remained largely unexamined, in which the polar construct remained constant while any particular comparison (men are at rest, women are mov· ing) could be constructed lo fit new circumstances.... Authorities in many fields of knowledge used notions of gender to simplify schemes of thought. They provided rationales for expedient acts Llsing the opposition of female to male as justification. Europeans began to speak of "woman" as a category rather than of women as they knew them. This tendency became an overriding consideration in justifyingv,on1en's roles, responsibilities, rights, and their place in Christian society.2 Students draw s01ne very specific lessons fron1 this brief exposure to medieval material. They learn that no single factor determines women's status. Rather they come to understand that many different social arrangen1ents in~ teract to determine ideas about gender as well as women's place. They learn that those experiencing the changes are not necessarily aware of tbe fuU impac1 of the changes at the time. And they learn that women's position is an excellent indicator of the nature of a society, for how ,vomen are seen and see themselves tells us a good deaJ about what a society values and ignores. Social and cultural arrangements simultaneously reflect and reinforce ·women's circtrn1stances. Won1en themselves act both to support and to resist the positions they hold in complex and varied ways. At this point in the explorations students want to know how women of.the Lime understoat female profe!>sional writer in France and the first woman of the late ~1iddle Ages to chanlpion 11er sex-a feminist forerunner, if you ,vill. Born co an halian academic family that worked at the courr, she was widowed at twenty-five and began ~\Tl'iting to support herself. Over the next fifty years, she wrole extensively. The Book of the City of Ladies (t404-5) is the ,vork best 182

T £ A C Tl l J.; (;

known today. She hegan what Kelly calls the querelles des fe1n111es, or war of women, a four-htLndred-year-old tradition of writing about won1en by women in Europe prior to rhe French Revolution. We have now recovered a large nun1ber of those writings, spanning geographical boundaries, and the

material is remarkable. These women write about women and sexual politics; they react to changes in the views of women and want lo make both men nnd won1en conscious of these changes. Like modern-day fen,inists, these wo,nen's investigations focus on two concerns. First, by looking :.tl their own situations, these feminist foremothers recognized that n1en's statements about " 'Omen's inferiority could not be validated. The disparagen1ent of won1en. as de Pisan and others can1e to see, \Vas literally "man-made," a projection of men about women that had no base in wo1nen's actual lives-however universal men's statements claimed to be. Second, the won1e11 of the querelles des fenunes looked back in hisrory to find po,verful and educated ,.,1omen of previous centurie:., using their stories to refute current clain,s that won,en could not be educated or govern. \Vhat is in re resting about this tradition is that the women schoJars did not attack men as individuals but rnen's ideas about women and tbe intellectual traditions that men were developing. The excitement that students experience when Lhey learn about their foremothers and about the? critical perspectives that these women had developed some five hundred years ago is palpable in the classroom. The idea th.at women have analyzed their situations ,vith such preciseness and that they resisted, using their ''pens as 5''\IOrds" to fight intellectual wan;, leads Lhe students to take up these \vomen as teachers, mentors, and role n,odels. Indeed, one student wrote, "Just a note, why are we calling her Christine [in class discussions]? You wouldn't run around caning Shakespeare Vvill, so ,vhy 1he chumminess here?" I suggest this chumminess occurs because de Pisan speaks to these feminist students with a relevance and directness thal make her seem a friend, someone whose goals and concerns they share.

What Can Be Done? V.1omen philosophers in ancient Greece, medieval women exercising some

control over property, \VOn1en writers of the Renaissance angered by the gap bet\veen ,vhat people said about women and what women actually achievedit is all a bit much for students who are accustomed to feeling moderately comfortable with ,vhal they have been laughl. What happened to these women and their ideas, the students den,and? v\lhy are aJI these \Votnen not common knowledge?

Getting into the Conversation

183

As a class, we move next to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Here the number of primary sources by women and secondary sources about then, is vast. Because we can san1ple only a few, lel me focus upon four exan1ples, each fro1n a particular time, as they are understood by one student, Michelle LaRocque.~ By following her thought processes, we can see the ways in which adding wo1ncn's voices to the conversation can transform analysis. I want to look al the £nlightenn1ent through a glimpse of Mary Wollstonecraft and her ide-as about education. I want to approach the refonn era by highlighting differences between the work of ,..,ell-known political activists (such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony) and the alternative strategies ofless ,..,ell known activists like Matilda Joslyn Gage. l want to look at the work of Afdcan American women reformers in the nineteenth century in order to stress that white middle-class women were not the only women engaged in feminist thought and action. Finally, I want to show ho," concern with politi~ cal reforn1 ii1 the 1niddle- of the nineteenth century gave way lo an economic emphasis as the twentieth century emerged. While there are enorrnous differences bo1h across a h'>'o-hundred-year time span and within the \vritings of thousands of women, there are some q ueslions that can help us n1ake sense of this diversity. For instance, Y1-·here did these reforn1ers locate the source of women's difference? of their oppression? What did they suggest would change those circumstances? Depending on how each wo1nan ansvvered those questions, n1any others soon folio\..,, Were analysis and explanation the mosl effective route to change? How effective were public acts of resistance? Should won1en reform the bon1e or the world or both? Would women, kept outside the formal institutions of society, be more likely to achieve their goals if they tried to get into those institutions or was critique from outside their best chance? Did all women share the same goals for change? Mary \,Vollstonecraft's J\ Vindication of the Riglits of vVon1e11 usuall}' proves a shock to the dass. 5 An English\voman born in 1759, she becan1c fan1ous for her spirited essays that attacked other figures of the da)' (particularly Edmund Burke, Talleyrand, and Rousseau). The success of her popular pa1nphlets led her to write a sustained analysis, the book-lenglh A Vindicatic>n~ whicb argues that won1en should learn (or be Laught) to fulfill their potential and to fight the roots of their subjection. A daughter of the Enlightenment who values reason as Lhe basis for thought and action, she describes the education of women in her society as follows: " Women are told from their infancy, and taught by che example of their mothers, that a Little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience, and a scrupulous allenlion to a puerile kind of propriety, wi ll ob lain for them the protection of a 184

T I' A C H I I\ G

n1an; and should they be beautiful, everything else is needless, for, at least, tvventyyears of their lives" (p. 44). Noting the limitations of the polarities that had becon1c so popular centuries before, Michelle listens to \Vollstonecraft's insights and applies them to contcn,porary issues of physical beauty, advertising, and eating disorders: \Ille see in Mary \Vollstonecraft the recognition that fthc won,an who concentrates onJy on her body J destroys not only her reason, and not only her self, but her very body as well. \\Then I listen to her descriptions of the genteel wo1nen who have becon1e slaves to their bodies, I cannot help but be reminded of the con temporary phenomena of anorexia and bulin1ia: " I once knew a weak wo1nan of fashion, who was n1ore than commonly proud of her delicacy and sensibility. She thought a distinguishing taste and puny ;ippetite the height of all hu,nan perfection and acted accordingly" [p. 57); and "\.Vhat can be a more melancholy sight to a thinking mind 1han to look into numerou~ carriages that drive helterskelter about the n1etropolis in a n1orning full of pale-faced creatures ,,,ho are flying from themselves" [p. 68 ]. Although weakness per sc is not now the feminine ideal, the woman with an eating disorder ... is destroying her body in much the same way as these v,rornen who cultivated physical weakness. \Vhat is interesting is that a picture en1erges of woman's body as a battleground- being siJnultaneously a means of po,,1er and Lhe source of her oppression. That beauty brings power through acceptability and social recogn ition, and it is the same beauty that serves to restrict her by directing all mental efforts to consideration of the latest cosn1etics and weakening her body when weakness is the feminine ideal and when " thin i~ in" (and "thin" is thinner than a human be ing is meant to be). ¼'hat we learn fron1 this, and perhaps ,vhat son1e of the Enlightenn1ent feminists did not realize, is that the solution to the man/woman as mind/ body dichoto1ny is not sirnply to assert the power of won1an's rnind. This, of course, is necessary. But if we look at woman's body itself as the site of a power struggle, then we see that reappropriating the body is as crucial as reappropriating the 111ind. Indeed, v-:e see that the mind/body dichotomy itself must be resolved. It is not enough to have power through one's body, there must also be power over one's body. And power over one's body means that the "end" for one's body-that is, one's selj-· 111ust corne fron1 internal rather than external n1otivations. Wollstonecraft's hard-hitting analysis inspires n1any students. They are excited to learn that n1ore than a century ago women were thinking in syste1natic

Getti11g into the Conv,ersation

185

ways about gender and its construction. Other sludents get impatient when they read her. Yes, they acknowledge, she had things figured out. But \\That did she do? Did any won1en get beyond theorizing and take action against oppression? The short answer is yes. The names of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony have become increasingly familiar as the new scholarship on women has spread through schools, organizations, and the media. We know that ,vomen began to organize to get the vote, Lo reform social and political 1Jractices, and to in0uence the course of daily life through their study and action. These middle-class women of the nud-nineteenth century believed strongly in women's power to right wrong through activities informed by careful study. They certainly faced opposition, often fierce, but they did so firm in the belief that it was they who were implementing democratic ideals and practices, not their critics. They became relentless in their energy and commitment Lo women's suffrage, for they believed that in the vote rested power. Unlike their EnJightenn1ent fore1nothers, for ,-vbom lack of education had been the stumbling block to full civic and cultural life, rhese reformers believed that access to political decision n1aking hc]d the key to women's en1ancipation and society's bettern1ent. In 1876, some fifty years before a constitutional amendment allowed women to vote, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan 8. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage began to write a six-volume History of \.-Vomen's S11.ffenge. Believing that their long struggles v,ould cuhninate in change, they sought to record the process throughout. One section of the first volume records their best retorts to objections to votes for wornen. These two paragraphs sound as if they could have come from yesterday's newspaper: But, "in the settlen1ent of national difficulties," it is said, "the last resort is war; shall we summon our wives and n1others to the battle-field?" Women have led armies i£l all ages, have held positions in the army and navy for years in disguise. Some fought, bled, and died on the battle-field in our late war. They performed severe labors in the hospitals and sanitary department. Wisdom would dictate a division of labor in war as well as in peace, assigning each their appropriate department. Numerous classes of men who enjoy their political rights are exempt fro1n n1.ilitary duty. All men over forty-five, all ""ho suffer mental or physical disability, such as the loss of an eye or a forefinger; clergymen, physicians, Quakers, school-teachers, professors, and presidents or colleges, judges, legislators, congressrnen, State prison officials, and aU county, State and National officer:.; falhers, brothers, or sons having certain rela-

186

T £ A C H I N G

tives dependent on then1 for support-all of these sumn1ed up in every State in the Union make millions of voters thus exen1pted. In view of this fact there is no force in the pleas, that "if women vote they must fight." Moreover, war is not the normal state of the hun1an fan, ily in its higher development, but merely a feature of barbarism lasting on through the transition of the race, fro1n the savage to the scholar.6 vVhile most nineteenth-century activ i:,ts emphas ized changing the influence of women by giving then, the vote, others identified addit iona l obstacles to won1en's en,ancipation. They saw the possibility that even when women were

no longer excluded fron1 society's decision-making bodies, thl'y could stiU be proh ibited fron, influence because they lacked the ability to think and .c.peak for the1nselves. lvlatilda Joslyn Gage represents one such advocate of change outside the political arena. Originally active alongside Stanton and Anthony in the suffrage tnovement, Gage began to assun,e a more radical stance as she researched women of the past. EventuaJly she broke with her peers, going on to write \V'o1ne11, Church and State. \Vritten in 1893, Wo,nen, Church and State rails against the church for "aiding, abetting and providing a syste1n to ensure women's subordinaLion": "The most stupendou!> system of organized robbery known has been that of the church to\vards wornen .... The whole theory regarding women, under Christianity, has been based upon the conception that she had no right to live for herself alone. Her duty to others has continuously been placed before her and her training has ever been that of seifsacrifice."7 Rejecting the idea that men are governed by reason and women by en1otion, Gage says: "Jt is men at their political conventions, sporting events and in war and rape, who totally let go of their emotional control in a way that ,vomen have never done. It is man who has exhibited the ,vi ldest passions-the most ungovernable frenzy; it is man who has shown himself less controlled by reason than is possible for women under the most adverse circumstances" ( p. 243). While Gage's radicalism has distanced her voice from the mainstream history of ,vomen reforn1ers that fem inist scholars have recently begun to narrate, Gage nevertheless managed something of a cultural end run. Gage was the aunt of Frank Baum, author of the Oz books; we have in his central character, Dorothy, a very independent woman. Literary scholars have demonstrated Baum's debt to his aunt and the reformers of their time. Even when " 'e make allowances for the more modern interpretations that have made their way into the Judy Garland vers ion of the story, Dorothy can be read as the woman Matilda Joslyn Gage sought-a woman who has a voice, a person ,vho rebels

Getting into the Conversation

187

against social instil utions that restrain her, and a le..r heJ· foremotber was one or the n1ost radical theorists of the nineteenth century, whose message moved into the cultural center in a distinctive way. Prom margin to center-isn't that lhe way new ideas travel? And aren't most propositions that are made by women about women and on behalf of women injtially disolissed as too extre1ne? Do they then go on to become popular, as Gage1s ideas did, via Dorothy-like .figures?

Additional Alternatives to What Can Be Done Students reading across these nineteenth-century figtues begin to explore the very different solutions by which these women sought to answer the question, "What can be done?" Students observe that while some wo1nen sought to modify institutions by working within them, others increasingly worked outside those institutions to create alternatives. They note that there is no single cause of women's difference or subordination but rather a configtrration of many influences. As they try to figure out the pattern and the best way to eradicate it, they become a,-vare of the differences in proposed solutions. Yet the history of feminist thought explores an awareness of differences arnongwotnen that involve tnuch more than differences among white middleclass reformers. As students read the writings of relatively well known nineteenth-century African American women reformers (such as Julia Cooper, Ida B. Wells, and Pauline Hopkins) as well as virtually unknown African American women (usually slaves), students learn that African American women activists had a different understanding of what constituted "feminist action ." They learn not only that African American women reformers proposed strategies different fron1 their •white fen1ale counte rparts, but also that significant di11erences exist an1ong these African Al11erican writers. As Michelle puts it The original pieces that we read by Cooper, Wells, and I lopkins all seerned quite differenl fron1 one another. Also, their being on the "outside" of the tradition that we1ve been reading, and not having much sense of the h.istory of Reconstruction-] didn't even know· that any African American women were educa ted at the tirne, I figured just a handful of African A1nerican men had access to education-it was hard for me to tit things together. Reclain1ing a history for African An1ericai1s was clearly i1nporlanl Lo 188

T E A C H I

NG

Hopkins and Julia Cooper. Both recognize that the-y arc the- heirs of a past "not of their own making." Hopkins showed, through h.er fiction, thal African 1\mericans must w1derstand their past in order to work toward a future. She tried Lo te-c1ch her readership that they were the descendants of a great and ancient civilization .... Hopkins feared Lhat African Americans would be annihilute of my belief:,: :,tructure!> that affect wo1nen are embedded in the larger social fabric, and that very social fabric ni.ust change for won1en's possibilities to be sustaiJ1ed; only political pressuJe, in its 1nultiple forn1s, can bring either structural or ideological change. ln discussing howl go about building institutioru; and communities, I have emphasized the centralit)' of space, both physical and psychological, to the process of change. As these stories show, space is an indispensable precondition, for it enables transfonnations in ideas and approaches to develop. The chapters in Part 4 were written in the order in wh.ich they were lived. Chapter 13 draws on the perspectives [ gained during the five years (fron1 i985 through 1990 ) I edited Signs: foun,a/ of,Vo111et1 in Culture a11d Society. Chapter 14 describes ho,\f the \Von,cn's Studies Program at Duke built an endowment benv-een 1986 and 1992. 'laking \1Vo1nen's SLudies extramural illu1ninates the connections that can be fostered between the academy and its alumnae supporters for feminist pluposes. Chapter 15 centers on a project with undergraduates called \'\"ARP that Women's Studies undertook with the Duke Women's Center in 1991-92. Designed to create space that enabled students to exi>lore the meaning of what they were learning i11 class, the project grew into a space where undergraduate •women, rethinking the parameters of the personal and political, came to empowerment through the experience of talk. Chapter 16 grew out of a facu-lty developn1ent workshop, designed originally to further curriculum transformation and now focused on the inherited academic traditions of teaching and learning that n1ute attempts to change gender relation197

ships. The workshop began in 1989. The fina l chapter, Chapter 17, looks at some characteristics ofwo1nen's studies itself that will shape its history and its undertakings into the future. \IVriting these chapters for this essay collection over the past year brought to the fore central tenets of building feminist institutions and community. They are tenets l had embraced but rarely articulated or explored. The chapter on alumnae funding \vas the easiest to ,.,rite, for the tenets by which I operated '"'ere both straightforward and strong. l worked colleclively with a group of people, ond we were practiced in articulating our goals. Vve faced some indifference and opposition, forces that served to sharpen our sense of direction and determination aJong the ,.,,ay. The chapter on journal editing came into being aln1ost as sn1oothly. Working from a feminist perspective where a view from the margin is second nature, 1 found it fascinaling to assu1ne a second marginal position, that of ed itor, and to use both to analyze the institutional dynamics I saw at work in the academy. The chapter on \¥ARP, the student project, was the most enjoyable lo develop because I realized anew the vitaUty, intelligence, and con1mitment that many 'itudents bring to the educational enterprise. Faced with some two hundred pages of carefully constructed student thoughts, I reveled in "''hat I had learned with then, and because of them. And Lhe final chapter on the historical and conceptual contours of ,von1en's studies flowed in conversation with colleagues as ,ve worked through common projects and talked together about the future, sitting in the very roon1s described in the opening pages of this book. The chapter that stumped n1e was the chapter on teachi.ng. l fussed with ii for over three months, never satisfied with its contours. Always in the back of 1ny nlind was the recognition that teaching is what l had been !rained to do and had done for more than twenty years with considerable positive feedback. In the front of my mind was the fact that the alumnae of Duke University had honored me in 199l by establ ishing a teaching endO\'lment in my name. Accarding to the empirical evidence, teaching was son'lething I knew and did well. Yet describing how J thought about teaching and hov; it needed to be altered was more difficult than any of the other projects. I came to understand that I lacked a language for describing the practices of teaching and learning and that J was trying to develop the language within a tradition and in an environtuent that works against such attempts. l turned to the active listening skills that l have used throughout 1ny career and employed them again to think about teaching. My insightful research assistant, a graduate student in the Department of Religion, Ann Burlein, reminded 1ne of my own patterns. Typically, she said, I 198

0 R G A N I I, I N G

reorient my thinking and doing when faced with a problen1. I then follo,v the practices that are the structuring principles of this e~say collection, listening and observing, followed by efforts to explain and to instruct. l do not pull back, she concluded, unlil I have set in motion new organizational structures and perspectives to sustain the issues I see evolving. En1ploying feminist ideas and practices to alter student-teacher relationships is both the most recent and the most difficult of the chaUenges L have undertaken. And that is probably ,vhy I had the most difficulty writing the chapter on teaching and learningand why I ultimately Lound il the most salisfyi.ngt

Organizing 199

C

H

A

P

T

E.

R

1

3

What Is It Like

to Edit Signs?

rom 1985 through 1990 I edited a scholarly journal, Sig11s: Journal of Wo,nen in Culti,re and Society. Scholarly editing is not an art graduate students are taught. Most faculty serve as editors onl y once in their careers. usually long after having been readers and authors. Editing a scholarly journal gave n1e insights into feminist scholarship and into the workings of contemporary universities rarely glimpsed from other vantage points. ln this essay I explore a question thal was frequently put to n1e during those five years-''What is it like to edit Signs?"by reflecting oo some of the lessons I took away from the experience.

The Journal Signs Signs is a quarterly interdisciplinary journal of feminist scholarship that publishes both original research and theoretical essays. Running approximately 225 pages, each issue contains a dozen or so articles as \Veil as book revie\vs. About one in three issues revolves around a particu lar theme. Circulation hovers at 6,000, n1aking Signs one of the largest scholarly journals in any field. Signs originated in 1975 at the initiative of lean Sacks, then director of the Journals Division at the University of Chicago Press. Workjng closely ,vith the leading feminist scholars emerging during the first part of the decade, she established a scholarly publication that would foster the new scholarship on women. Catharine Stimpson was its founding editor; the journal was housed first at Barnard and then at Rutgers. After five years Signs rotated to a group of scholars at Stanford, where it was edited by Barbara Gelpi. As 1985 approached, the University of Chicago Press decided to regularize the .five-year rotation process and issued a call for proposals, much as funding agencies do. fn the sumJner of 1984 several fen,inist scholars associated ,vith the newly formed Center for Research on Women at Duke and the Univei:sity or North 200

Carolina at Chapel Hill received a letter from the University of Chicago Press inquiring into their individual or collective interest in housing Signs. Support from the university in the form of released time for the editor was a prin1e consideration. At that point I had just becon1e director of Women's Studies; my colleagues and I believed I could use n1y position as director to secure an additional staff person for the program as well as negotiate haJf-ti1ne off to edit the journal. For the next month we talked a1nong ourselves about how we would organize such an endeavor, who might be involved, and what our chances n1ight be of securing the journal. Two colleague~ and l took the initiative and wrote the proposal to Chicago in the space of a few days. It was July and hot as only the Sou1h can be. Because \"/omen's Studies had not yet been given any secretarial help, T found 1nyself running between offices and typing madly. l reached the post office just n1inutes before it was closing for the Fourth of Ju ly holiday and sent the proposal off. Driving home, I reflected on ,vhat J had just done. \Nas it wise to push for Signs? Did we haYe the time, talent, or resources for an undertaking of this scope? What would \VC gain? Did l really want an affirn1ative answer? A month later I received a call from Jean Sacks late one Friday afternoon. She said our proposal had received top ranking fron1 th_e scholars across the country who had reviewed it; now she wanted to talk to me. No, she said, she did not need to talk to anyone else other than my dean ro ensure that I could be released haJf-tin1e. She launched into a series of tough questions that constituted a job interview-questions about who l was, what l thought, and hov.r l 111ade difficult decisions. r talked about n1y enthusiasn1 for adn1inistration, my commitment to the growth and diversification of feminist scholarship, and what r understood to be my reputation as an effective leader. Then, rather abruptly, she announced 1 was the new editor of Signs and hung up. I sat for a long time, stunned and alone in my office that afternoon, thinking about what had just happened. I vacillated benveen ,vishing I had missed the post office deadline and knowing that this development could solidify the building of fe1ninist scholarship on ca1npus. Those feelings only intensified the folJo,\'ing Monday when I learned that Jean had announced her retirement that same afternoon. Journal publishing is something academics learn by doing-there is no how-to reading list, no training other than the hands-on experience. \Ve spent one year of start-up time on the telephone with the editorial office at Stanford and \c\tith the Journals Division at Chicago. Barbara Gelpi and her staff were unfailing in their constant attention to our every question. Sinularly, Robert Sherrill and his staff at Chicago reviewed policies and procedures again and again until the system began to sink in with us. We conducted a national search

~\That ls It like to Edit Signs?

201

for the managing ectitor, Mary Wyer. She Lhen led a local search for the assistant editor. Salariei. for the t~vo staff peopJe can1e directly from the lJniversity of Chicago Press, as did all office setup costs. My full salary continued to be pajd by the university, its subsidy to the publishing enterprise. With staff in place, Mary and l traveled to both offices; these trips helped us put faces with recom,nendations as we figured out what to do next. After a year of preliminary work in which a board of associate editors was selected, en,ployees hired, policies and procedures put in place, and a new office equipped, \VC began to both review new manuscripts and prepare our first issue from pieces forwarded to us by the Stanford office. Prom 1985 through 1990 we published the journal out of an office on the Duke carnpus. The staff read every individuaJ artide that can,e into the office. We then sent about 75 percent of those articles to one of the associate edjtors. About half of these, in turn, were sent to scholars around the country for detailed review and evaluation. No 1nore than 15 percent of the submissions we received were eventually accepted for publication. Ivlanuscript decisions were n,ade by the board of associate editors; drawn from Duke, the University ofNorth Carolina at Chapel Hill, and other nearby schools, the board met as a group about every tvvo months. In addition to getti11g the journal out four times a year, we con1piled six books, collections of previously published articles around an emergent issue in feminist scholarship. In late 1989 the process of rotation began again as we oversaw the transfer of the journal to the University of Minnesota. During those five years, I learned a great deal about publishing acade1nic journals, feminist scholarship, a:nd the workings of students, scholars, and universities. Tcan now say that the most fundan1entaJ lesson I learned is co go ahead and get the proposal in, no matter how hot ilie afternoon or how late the hour. Ruminating on five years of the most demanding intellectual and political work I have ever knov,'n, l identify three clusters of ideas that I developed as l learned to wear the lens of an ectitor. One duster relates to the ,vays thal extant academic practices are shaped by feminist scholarship. A second and closely intertvfined issue concerns how a journal's practices in turn can shape both feminist scholarship and liaditional disciplines. Both of these clusters involve a 1 deepening sense of 'fcminist process." A lhird cluster of ideas draws out the severaJ ways in which Lhe production of fcn1inist scholarship influences daily can,pus life. Jn each of the three instances, collaboration proved the key to accon1plbhment, be ir collaboration in the review process, collaboration between professional cilitors and scholars, or collaboration with the general

202

0 R G A N I Z I N G

campus community. Thal collaboration continues, even though Signs is no longer a daily presence at Duke. Its influence continues to echo over the can1pus.

Changing Traditional Acade111ic Culture Looking back Lhrough Lhe Signs years, I arn struck with how often the conventional wisdon1 of the lraditional acadcn1y was inadequate lo the n1ore complex tasks before us. Again and again we found ourselves engaged in unlearning son1e of the ,vays in ,vhich ,.ve had been trained as well as learning alternative ways to proceed.

Conventional wisdom would have it that brillianL minds, cloistered in solitude, arrive al great thoughts and present then, ia polished fonn for the world to acclaim. \.Vrong. \Ve quickly learned that a colJaborativt: approach brought out the best in the scholarship before us. This was particularly true of fen,inist s,holarship that must meet the standards of 1nany different disciplines as \\'ell as tackle proble1ns that have neither standard tnelhodologies nor ,vellaccepted explanatory frameworks. Some of the best pieces we published were the result of elaborate consultations among editorial staff, reviewers-, associate editors, and authors-consultations that often lasted months if not yea.rs, One particular piece stands out in my memory. The author, a young scholar, had con1e upon an in1portant piece of a historicaJ puzzle and described it in an article submitted to us. She did not know the literature of the surrounding disciplines; ~he 'tV3S working a1 a sn,1111 and 1solaLed college without colleagues or a library; she had attended a graduate program ,vhere none of her mentors were likely to bt: of help on this pn>je1,.L To make matte-rs worse, her topic vvas one in ,vhich Lhc Signs board lacked baclq,iround. But ,vc sensed she was on to son1ethlng and began a net,,vorking process Lbal lru.ted the helter part of lwo rears. Vve suggested books ro read, people to call; v;e went over several versions informally before beginning the forn,al review process; when the manuscript was fonnaUy reviewed and passed b}' the bonrd, we fell justified in congratulating ourselves as ,veil a'> the author! An extraordinary situation, this article became a benchmark for us. Will we have to go to those teng1hs on thb one? we would ask ourselves in other circun1sta11ces. Yet we also knew this situation represented what we aU hoped could becon1e a feminist standard of the collaborative process. When we assigned a tnanuscript for review, we were conscious that we were making poliLical choices every time we gave a mru1u.script to an associate edhor, chose an ex1ernnJ revie,ver, a:.kcd for intcrpret.1tions of revie\\•s from \Vlwl ls /J Like to

Edit Sign~?

203

other board men1bers. We wanted the input of the best minds, but we also knew that every mind comes attached to a scholarly position; we had to balance positions as ,.,,elJ as expertise. We asked ourselves what we needed from reviewers and ho"" their perspectives related to the arguments 1nade in the article. We knew that only by treating our process explicitly would we be able to recognize merit in the pieces under consideration. Our primary task was not to find out what was wrong with a n1a11uscript, but to identify what was right and build on that core. Any other stance would have stymied the development of the field, a field that faced enough external delractors as it was. When rcvie¼rs on an article came back, both were read by the staff (son1etimes also by the assoctate editor working with us) and almost always sent back to the author for revision. A revised article went through the same process-: back to the associate editor, back to the reviewers, t11en to the staff and additional editors who built the case for publication. The final step was lo take the case for publication to the bimonthly meeting of the full board, which n1ade a publication decision based upon the reviews, a summary of the article, and the arguments put fon,vard by the sponsors. At this stage, documentation on an article ran to at least ten single-spaced pages. This docwnentarion contained a series of carefully developed argwnents that would eventually make their way into the final article through the editorial process. Every step in the process required collaboration, not competition. How could one person understand what the other said and help strengthen it? How could \ve in1prove scholarship in ways that would also enable the article to speak to a broad, interdisciplinary audience? v\fhy was one ptece more important than another and therefore should merit space in the journal's pages? How could we work with the author to incorporate these perspectives into a final product that would appear in the journal? The initial view that most of us brought to Signs was that of an author. We believed articles should be written by qualified scholars who ...,,orked fron1 an interesting thesis which they supported by good evidence and presented in a comprehensible, if not lively, manner. While ...,,e had all asked colleagues to read drafts and make suggestions, we expected that an author must demonstrate his or her ability to produce alone. l1naginmg the author and the journal in a contest, we asked ,..,,hether an article was "good enough" or "right for us," ,..,,halever those terms meant. In the process of learning ho,.,r to read articles, go over reviews, build arguments, and gain consensus, we learned another point of vie"''· We learned to articulate our O\\'TI asswnptions and to engage with our authors in a dialogue. Early in our history as an editorial group, in the process of revie""'ring a piece one associate editor said, "I don't care what century you are talking about, just 204

0 R G A N 1 Z 1 N G

tell me the 1node of production;' By this point we had already come to understand that every author and every reviev.;er came with a position. This episode forced us to confront the obvious: each one of us involved •,vith Signs also came with a position that required articulation. The outcry that follow·ed her state1nent involved us in a debate abou t different frames of reference-what they assumed, how they n1attcrcd, and ,-v hat choice best served the argument of the author. \Ve "''ere not engaged in a contest of wills bernrccn authors and editors; we '"ere engaging in a fen1i11ist process with an outcon1e that sought to benefit everyone involved. This episode bccan1c another on our things- wehave-learncd list. In the following years we would say to one another: "You're

not going to tell 111e that the century doesn't 111attcr, arc you?" lt '"as not just our in teUect ual positions that we had to identify for ourselves, but our racial and sexual positions and their attendant politics as well. As we worked together over the years, the differences in our racial backgrounds as well as our sexual identities came into play. In the early years, the African An1erican won1en and lesbians on the board struggled wfrh having to educate the full board lo perspectives they felt board n1en1bers and staff should already possess. Over ti1nc, as their perspectives were honored and trust developed among us, all of the associate editors and the staff came to grapple 1norc directly with the co1nplex and nuanced ways in which race and sexuality constructed our understanding and p layed into our decision making. Another convention of the academy is tha t the academy breaks down into two sets of people: the faculty, who are experts in the subject n1attcr, and a support staff, who are traint:d to implement details. Wrong again. Academic publishing requires a variety of professional talents, among wh ich editorial talent and training arc critical. Nevertheless, the idea that editing entailed more than extensive vocabulary and good grammar was one that l found died hard. Early in the process of hiring staff and forn1ulating policies and procedures, editorial skills remained an unrecogni;,,ed and consequently underva lued aspect of the journal's operation from the point of view of the scholars involved. When first considering the criteria for hiring a managing ,e ditor and an assistant, we often tended to say that exposure to fen1inist scholarship, politics, general intellectual acumen, and familiarity with the campus were more important than editorial training and experience. \ a group in spite of our size and the lessons of our io6

ORGANIZl"Ik colleagues to work through a question with us, engaging them in thinking about research on won1cn and its tin pact on their field. The reference desk of the library, from the beginning a \\IOnderful resource for our endless questions, gained even n1ore expertise in feminist scholarship fro111 the sheer volume of our calls. That expertise translated into innovative student papers when students approached reference librarians for help in formulating paper topics. Each year v,c en1ployed several undergraduate students as assistants. They made photocopies, an5'vered the phone, logged manuscripts, blinded submissions, tracked 00\\IO tardy revie,\lers, and generally backed up the staff. Their favorite activity was opening the slacks of books and manuscripts that came in each day; using a holiday metaphor, they talked about what they were discovering as presents. The opportunity to know what was con1ing out and who was writing \Vhat gave an imn1ediacy lo their work in fen,inist rheory and \VOn1en's studies that they cherished. Because the availability of work-study funds at the graduate level limited the number o{ graduate students \\.'e could employ, \.\le created a series of graduate intern positions. Son1c worked on exchange subscriptions v,rith other journals, others maintained our contacts with foreign edi torial board members, while still others helped on special projects. Many found that involvement with Signs becrune a source of en1powerment for them. Thinkjng back about Signs, one graduate student said, "Working a:. a volunteer at Signs was an opportunity for n1e to be in touch with wo1nen's studies, which I was getting away from during my first year in graduate school. And having aJ I the Latin Alnerican journals. there was really wonderful for 1ne because J had no access to that n1aterial otherwise." She continued, " In n1y

i-Vhar Is it Ltl--'tensivc professional field; the Won1cn's Studies Program al Duke could not have attracted endowment gifts without the cooperation of our Develop1nent Office. In retrospect, it is clear that our development staff made t\VO significant contributions. Pirst, they had the expertise to develop a can1paign strategy, they had al un1nae data from which to work, they had the contacts that led to o ther con tacts, and they sin1ply knew the day-to-day workings of fund raising. The initial difficulty of convincing the n1en in charge of developn1ent was never con1plctely overcorne; while some can,e on board, others simply did not include \!Vomen's Studies on their agenda ,vhen app roaching donors. Their reluctance, however, was more than overcome by the enthusiastic support of n1ost of the won1en on the Dcvelop1nent Office staff. They quickly grasped the project's potential and went far beyond their assigned responsibilities to ,nakc the campaign ,,•ork. Like che alumnae they contacted, these women connected personally \Vith 'v\1omen's Studies and becan1e powerful advocates for the endeavor. A second contribution was Lhe growing recognition thal 'v\1omt:n's Studies received along with monetary gifts. The backing of the Developrnent Office translated into feature stories in can1pus publications, invitations to participate in other university events, advocacy on campus for the initiative, and eventually national recognition for the project fro1n a professional group, the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. Some alumnae who ,vorked on the \Vomcn's Studies campaign were brought into other advisory capacities in the university, exerching a fen1inist perspective on those boar& and projects as well. Bringing n1ore people into the Vvon,en's Studies circle, especially people with different university positions and external contac ts, meant that the program became well known in places we would never have ventured otherwise. Through these contacts ,vith nonacadcn1ic units. on campus, \Von1en's Studies was able to engage these units in conversations that contributed directly to giving wo1nen's concerns a higher priority on the institution's official agenda. The Vv'on1cn's Studies Con1munity ln addition to the alu1nnae and the Development Office, Lhe third group of actors in this fundraising process ,vas, of course, the faculty, students, and staff of the progra1n itself. I see at least three ways in ,vh ich those of us in Women's Studies were shaped by this five-year experience. First, and perhaps n1ost obviously, we were forced to develop a way of explaining fe1ninist scholarship that was accessible to the nonspecialist. fac-

Educati11g beyond the Walls

235

uJty and students alike were challenged to translate the nuances of scholarly discourse into explanations and approaches that made sense to people who did not share similar backgrounds. That meant speaking without jargon, dra\ving on more tbaa one djscipline or single theoretical fran,ework to explore and solve problems. That meant liJJki11g ruscussions of meanings with discussions of practical possibilities. That meant learning to think about those issues that came out of their experiences rather than putting forward on1y issues that scholars tbe1nselves bad named as important. Talking with alumnae spurred us to explore the links between what people knew about a subject and how they felt about that subject. Al first, talking to development staff and alun,nae audiences was demanding intellectual work. On the one hand, translating con1plex ideas into accessible presentations was difficuJt. On the other, while caring deeply about the issues being discussed, most alumnae had been trained not to use personal experience in building kno,.,ledge. Helping them do so 1neant helping them unlearn old paradigms and assume new ones, never an easy task. Encounters between alun1na and scholar-whether in a group or individual setting-wouJ in order lo get t4e group moving. Yel ,ve did not want to completely fashion the agendas and topics that the group would cover. The format we designed was open-ended, one that would enable us to observe and follow where the group was going, what questions were mO!>t pressing, and what future formats seemed most useful. The first Lhree fall sessions were structured according to this open-ended fonnat. Participants would read 1naterial chosen by the three staff members and then write an essay that grew out of our discussion. These essa}'s were to be distributed ahead of tin1e, so that all group 1nen1l>ers could read each other's Lhoughts before the session began. Each session would be taped ru1d then transcribed by work-study students in the Women's Studies otflce. The three of us who were staff also decided to write essays, having deliberately chosen to be members of \\/ARP who read, wrote, and discussed rather than instructed. This choice was the result of long discussions. vVe recognized differences in the power lhat each of us held as planners. \,Ve also knew we could neither sin1ply disrniss our po\ver as facil itators nor pretend that this power (however varied) was identical to the diverse po,vcrs lhat students wield. ln om essays we planned to deal directly with differences in our ages, experiences, and status. By naming our specific po\-vers alongside our vu lnerabilities, staff members sought to baJance the occasional mterventions \-ve 242

0 R G A :-J I '/ I N G

would be n1aking as facilitators responsible-for n1oving the group fonvard with our own gro,vth as ,ve learned alongside the students.

l\1irrors and Wir,dows: The Fall Sen,ester Early in September 1991 bright orange posters peppered the ,vomen's dorn1itories, the library, and the student union. They asked undergraduate women who were cu1ious ubout developing their organizational skills and their ana~ lytic abilities to join wilh like~minded won,en in forming a l>emester-Jong discussion group. The poster read: The purpose of the project is to learn about the process by ,vhich the kno,v)edge we have about women in culluTe and society translates into effective action, as well as ho,v action and activisn1 around won1en's issues relates to feminist thought. ... The acronym \r\'ARP refers to the first set of strings put on a loom. Seen by weavers as Lhe foundation for their ,vork, we envision \,VARP as the beginning of a new approach to how undergraduate wo1nen view themselves and :ire viewed by others as they bring together their classroom and can1pus lives. Participants began WARP by holding up a n1irror. vVhat did each of us know and ,vhat could we learn together a!) a group of diverse ,,.1omen about the experience of being fcn1aJe in contemporary middle- and upper-class An1crica? The opening reading was Susan Glaspell's "A Jury of Her Peers."~ \Vrilten in the early twentieth century, Glaspcll 's short story- tells the tale of two w·on1en who visit the house of a third woman after ber husband bas bei.:-n killed, surmise that she murdered him, and then conspire together Lo hide the evidence. Themes \\'ere readily identified: the behind-the-scenes forn1 tbat ·women's action often takes; the devaluation of women's experiences and knowledge; the strength created ,vben women share knowledge; the isolacion of women who are not in a comn1unity of ulher ,von,en; and the d.ifficulties that obstruct achieving that con1munity. The images of women identified in these themes took us directly into rrcounting personal expenences 1.,f what it meant to "be a girl." The students' comments ranged from being denied pitching lessons because no girl-however good her arm-cou Id ever play pro ball to having been subjected 10 scholarship intervie\vs with elderly n1en \-\fho fretted that good money n1ight be wasted on ,.,•omen who would drop out of college ,1s :.oon as they met some man. For the follo\vi.ng session, \\l'e wrote papers about our experience of "being a girl." Participants shared someti1nes funny, sometiines poignant. but always

Tilings You Ce111 Never J)rove i11 Gour/ 243

insightful stories that ranged from growing up with a mother who was too busy helping relatives from Liberia get on their feet in the Unjted States to spend tirne with her daughter to being shamed by a boyfriend's mother who n1adc assumptions about the studenl's sexuality. Additional themes e1nerged: the crucial role played by relationships with o lder women (mothers or otheri,) as young girls struggled to accept or reject "being a girl "; the importance of connecting with other girls in solidarity; the feeling of isolation when connections with other girls and won1cn were not there; the difficulty of bridging the generation gap between girls and women who did not remernber ...,hat being a girl was like. As \Ve ruscussed the papers, ·we ret urned over and over again to the various ways in ,vhich. our experiences ai; girls and wo inen had been devalued. Discussion sJowly shifted fron, ,nirror in1ages that look in,-vard onto past personal experiences to ·window images that look out onlo the cultures Lhat have also shaped us. Mary's experiences of being singJed out as an exceptional student became our transition into the third session:

My parents would always brag abou Lmy inLelligence to their friends. I think I made them proud because my success ,neant that they \.Vere successful in beating the odds, that their supposedly "retarded" child was instead some sort of gen ius. But v,hat bothered me was that they ,.,ould make these con1IDents in front of my brothers and sisters. I wouJd think to n1yself, "Don't they realize they are isolating me ,vithin my own house?" Fron1 an early age, T felt like they, rny siblings, were watching me too. On the one hand 1ny parents' scrutiny kept the attention off of them; but on the other hand, I think, not maliciously, that they didn't want to see me do well because 1 had all the attention. Because of this, I never felt that my family, the people who were supposed to be the close1>l to me, really knew me. I never felt as though Thad any backup, so T never did anything I thoughl would require it. The third session (the last 1neet ing that was planned in advance) focused on exploring feelings of being "exceptional." As ,vornen \Ve felt that ,ve constituted lhe exception to university norms. Not only did ,ve still expect and vaJue this "exceptional" status, but we used th is status to measure relationships with other won1en. As Martha observed, this identjty as an "exceptional" woman influenced the ways group men1bers experienced being a feminist: "This is so interesting, because as the series of papers has developed, one of the things that has continued to come up is the notion of ourselves as exceplional women. Vic have in some \¥ays gotten a lot of positive feedback for being exceptional women. Now, I am hearing that, as we all rnake this transition to exceptional in 244

ORGANf7fNG

terms of being a feminist, ,ve arc finding ourselves in a whole other dimension here, [one I that is really lone ly." For the fourth and final fall session, the group logether decided to think about con,petition and cooperation an1ong ,vo1nen. Jn keeping with the shift in our conversations from exan,ining interna l obs1ades and externa l barriers lo negotiating both, the group also decided to think about what they envisioned doing during the spring. fu the final writing assignment of the fall, each group member "'as to \vritc an idea for :in "action" project that cou ld provide a first step in trying out the idea:. we hod been forming in our conversations throughout the fall. The ideas were bigh]y varied, ranging from producing a film on eating disorders to printing a feminist newsletter for the campus. But all the proposals contained 1nany uncertainties. Elaine's essay pul the dilernma bluntly: "Now comes the harOmet.hing that would share the benefits of the group with others, while si111uJtru,eously feeling frustration about how to decide what to do. We decided to put aside specific proposals in favor of using the upcoming holiday break as a time lo do a litcie research on ourselves. We agreed that while at home for the holidays, each member would decide what constituted an actioo based on their own circumstances and then consciously "con1n1it" Things l'ou Ca11 Never Prove in CourJ 245

tbat action. When writing u p our experiences, we were to examine the process Lhrough which our ideas informed the action vl/e chose to take. We would then follow our customary practice of sharing our papers when we reconvened in the spring, and, based on what ,,ve learned by comparing our experiences, decide on our spring agenda at that time. This decision, and the individual experiences of the group men1bers over the holidays, proved LO be critical in shaping the directions the group would take the following semester.

Talking Over the Holiday Break WARP participants' hol iday encounters turned out to be pivotal. Here is how Amy reflected on her three weeks at home in Ari2ona, as she grappled with the basics of expressing herself through words:

J a1n thinking of the many times I have corrected my mother and her boyfriend when they used exdusivelanguage. "Mankind." Scott infernally laughed al me every time Twould say something. I don't think that he's sexist per se. But he is one of those people who wan ts someone to understand what he is saying rather Lhan how he is saying it. You know, Scott (for now my archetypal n1ale), you will never understand why it means so much to me to hear inclusive language until you have sat in on a science class with a sexist 1naJe teacher, and ,vatched as every male felt affirmed in his dreams of winning a Nobel Prize and the females couldn't have appeared less interested. All due to the subtle psychological process of feeling so pervasively excluded by language cues. Things you can never prove in court. Things the human psyche never

misses. . . . Back to n1y mom. Vl/e were driving in tl,e car "'ihen she brought up Lhe sexist language incident "You kno"", Amy, I spoke to him later on that night." l looked at her blankly. "Motn?" " I told hirn that he'd never understand unless all he'd heard his entire life was 'she this' and 'she that.' Language as it is set up excludes won1cn from the very start. It's like we are an anomaly that ' mankind' will never understand." I smiled. "I do hear what he's saying. But I rcallr do feel like vocabulary i~ so often n1entality." While Laura's suuggles also centered on language, she was prin1arily concerned with being typecast as a speaker:

246

ORGANl:llNG

Al hon1e one night, while drying the dishes after dinner, I thought about changing the world, or at least about changjng my fan1ily. I wondered how I could do it. ... 1 realized that I felt uncomfortable taking action tn n1y fami ly-in speaking (1 envisioned ensuing arguments) on behalf of niy beliefs-especially to my brother or fath~r. h seemed harder than speaking out at Duke, or among friends, perhaps b1.•c:1use in n,y fan1ily Tplay acenain role-I clJ11 the fen,inisl one and everybody believe~ that they can anticipate n1y response to everything anyway so they don't really listen. Even to me il somelimcs seems "automaton-ish." My brother plays ru1other kind of role-he is the sexist one.... T--le's very loud, and carries on conversation:. aJJ by himself, with himself, all the tin1e, or makes obnoxious noises just to get attention and I tend to be very quiet and not say n1uch of anything. even when things arc burning inside. I let a lot slide by, bec.1use I know he's just doing it lo provokt:, lik.e when we >-\'ere decorating rhc tree and he n,ade a big deal of how girls couldn't string lighb, how lhal was a man's job, but girls could do the tinsel. I wish I could think of a way to really con11nunicate ,vith niy brother, but J fear we arc both caught up in these old patterns-I ignore hin1 and bang up the tinsel. or I 1rr to say something and he doesn't listen an>""ay and [ ~liJI hang up the tinscl. For Elaine, talk about language caused a divide that was deeply painful. She describes a visit to her old piano teacher: We sit acro:,s from each other at her kitchen table, berwccn u.;; cups of tea and a plate of cclai_rs. \•Vhat can I say about tvlrs. --? The.' first tin1e l n1et her she frightened me half to dea th-th is gnarled, "'rinkty old ,voman with a strange guttural accent, not too n1uch bigger than 01c, intin1idating me with her resemblance to the \Vicked \Vitcb of the \Vest. l was seven years old and dying to play Lhe piano: she was seventy-seven and "'rilling to take on another pupil. Little did J realize thiit lessons included more than scales and Bach; l would learn how to becon1e an independent person, critical thinker. and creati\'C arti:,t. Fourtcen ycars later, 1 find it hard to describe her 10 other~ because her voice mingles with n1y o,vn in rny head . . . . And then the shock o[hearing thost'. !itrange word~.... "I do11't like feinini.sts." Why? .. , [ stared at her in con1plete disbelief. What could she be saying, this ,vo1nan whom T want to be like when I reach t.he age of ninety? I asked her to stop; I did n' l want to ,on tinuc the conversation and ~hatter any inore ideals, but r did continue bccau:,c I couldn't help myself. Things You Ct111 Ncl'er Proi,e in Court 247

1 had to know, n1y entire self-esteen1. yelped in fear. Nonnally she can make me see her point of view and accept its vaJidity, even if I choose not to follow her advice. This tirne, 1 knew I felt too strongly on this issue to even discuss it with son1cone. And yet, to me, being a fen1inist n1eans being able to act on my capab1lities the way Mrs. has for her whole lj fe ....

I asked myself whether il was possible to be a fcn1inisl and not think you are, and then r real ized that Mrs. - - could not be a part of the ,-vomen's movement because of her age, and her unique background and education ... . Mrs. - - represents another case of the special woman who cannot identify v,ith all won1en because she doesn't see herself in the same boat as a deaning woman earning belo,v the minimum ,.,,age.

As Elaine places her teacher's life against her o,-vn, she begins to see bo,v a tern1 has 1nany meanings and how she might reconcile labels and lives. She concludes: " For some reason, it is much easier to question my O\'\'n principles rather than 1ny belief in her. How can 1 change fro111 an individuaJ perspective to one encompassing a wider range of people? This one conversation has been the most troubling shake-up on feminis1n that 1 have had in a long time. r don't know \\fhat synthesis of ideas will emerge from my doubt, but r am ready to lay myself open to the possibilities." Leslie's story deal> directly with the politics of talk:

My family and I were guests for dinner at another family's house over winter vacation. We were in the dining room, with cloth napkins and everyone on their " best behavior," when someone brought up the \Villia,n Kennedy Smith trial. When my father said he "would have trouble feeling sympathy for a woman like that," I felt as if I were a student attempting Lo decipher a Zen koan. What did he mean by a woman "like that"? When he explained, "ALI I kno,"' is that she can't be total!)' bla,neless-out partying at three in the morning, t hat kind of thing. If a woman u. in bed v.rith a man, Late at night with her clothes off, it would seem lo me that she has already given her consent." Thal experience, and this essay, is not really about change, unless it is about n,y own change. Listening to n1y father speak, and then listening to the silence of the eight others around me as I began to organize my anger (,vhe-re does one begin to challenge those kinds of staLemenl.)?}, I experienced an epiphany. I used to think thal 1 was surrounded by peop le who see the world as I do. I didn't know that 1 could be close Lo someone who subscribes to a view so drastically different fronJ 111y own, and from everything that I 248

ORCANl71NG

believe ill. Thal this person has also contributed to n,y gene pool was a 1najor factor contributing to n,y shock .... I al-Y.-ays knew that people whom I disagreed with affected rne politically, as a voting citizen, as a :.tudenl, etc. But the effects those strangers have on me are simultaneously placed oa so n1any others-other citizens,

other students. It vvasn·1 personal. Al the dinner table that night, I realized that there are also people ,\lho see the world differently than me ,,Tho have everything to do with my personal life: my iS together and teamed up for a project on won1en in that class. They sought rny help developing a research methodology to co1npare femullil and right-,ving won1en for their project. \\Tithout having developed a history of learning from one another, the class could not have entertained such topics, 111uch less productively discus~ed them ,vilh each other, reaching new levels of iS of\Vomen's Continuing Education," pp. 3 :u. 4. George Parkyn, "1bwards a Conceptual :Vtodcl of Life-Long Education;• l:.'d11catio11al Studies rmd Doc11111e11ts ( New York: UNESCO, 1973), p. 19. 5. Paolo Frl!ire. Pedagog) of t/1e Oppressed (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971). 6. Harry R. Moody, "Education and the Life Cycls·: A Philo~ophy o( Aging" lPape1 presented at the First National Congres~ of E:ducational ~rontology, Tune: 1976), p. 10. 1. G.iil Sheehy,

7. Northrop Frye, "Clair de Lune lntellectuel:' in ·n1e Modern Century (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 87-123, 8. A. A. Liverlght, "Learning Never Ends: A Plan for Coatinujng Everi11g C1•c; Anrient lsraelitt• ~\fom1111 in Ctmtcxl (New York: Oxford Universitv Press, 1988 ). ' 6. Most helpful are two drliclc:. by Elsa Barkley Brown, "Afncan-American \l\lomen's Quilting," and "Womanist Consciousness: Maggie Lena Walker and the Independent Order of St. Luke." in Black \Vome11 in America.- Social Scit·nce Pcrspectii-es.. edited hy ~lichelinc Mahon et al. (Chicago: Universit)' of Chkago Press. 1990). pp. 9-rS and 17)-96. 7. Caryn McTighl! Musil. ed .• Tlie Courage to Q11estw11: \Vomrns Studies mul S11ulN1t Lt·c1n1ing (\Vashington, D.C.: Association of American Colleges and lhe National \\/omen's Studies Association, 199~). 8. Kerith Cohen, "\'Vhy An1 I So Angry?," in I':11gaging Fe111i11lsm: Snulents Speak Up and Speak 0111. edited by lean O'B,ur ,1nd Mary \\fyer (Cb.irlott.csville: University Pres~ of Virgln1~ and Proje'~lbury, •.Y.: Fem inbt Press, 1985); Bonnil· Spanier, Alex,rnder Bloom, and Darlene Burovi,1k, ed~.• Towurrl II Balmrcetl Currint/11111: A ::io11rrebook for l111tiati11g Geuder brtegra1io11 Prowers Based on tfre H?1ento11 College (.011ferc11ce (Cambridge, !\1ass.: Schenkman, 1984); Karen J. \,Varren, "Rewriting the Future: The Fem1n i.,t Challenge w the Malc:.tream Curriculum," Feminist Teacher 4, no~. 2-3 ( r-all 1989 ): 46-52; "A Speci,1l Fc,11Ure: Transforming the Tr,1ditional Curriculum," ~Vomcn\ Studies Qu11rterly 10, no. 1 (Spring 198i.): 19 31. The impact of women's studies and curriculum mtegratton on students and faculty is discussed in the following sources: Ruth Crego Benson, "\\.'omen's Studies: Theory and Praciicc," American Associatum of 1.:11iver)1ty Professor$ B11/le1i11 58. ( 1972): 283-86; Rohen J. Betuch,1, "Feminist Pedagogy a~ a Subvt·r~t\'C Auivity," in Gendne•d S11b1ects: The f)pramics o.f Femimst Tec1d11ng, editt:d br l-1argo Culler and Catherine Portugul'~ (Ilo~ton: Routledge, 1985), pp. 81-95; Christine Bose, John Steiger. and Philomina Victorine, "!:.valuation: Perspectives of Students and Graduates," \Vomens Swdres Newsletter 5, no. 4 ( rall 1977): 6-7; Lorelei R. Bru~h. Alu.:c Ros~ Gold, Jnd Marni Goldstein "'h itc, "The Paradox of Inten tion and Effect: A \\'omen·~ Studie~ Cour~e," ~1g11s 3 (1978): 870-83; Renate Duelli-Klein, "Berkeley '1-reshwomen' Look at \'\fomen's Stud1e~," \Vomcn s Studies Quarterly 9. no. 2 (Summer 1981): 24; Leslie A. Hemming, ''New Visions. New Methods: The Mainstreammg 1:.xpenence in Rctro~pcct," in Clinngi11g Our Atinds, pp..w-58; Frit~che, J'oll'ard Excelle11cc mul Equity; Sarah l loagland, "On the Rccdu1.auon of Sophie;• in H'omen's Studies: An /111erdisnpli11ary Collectio11, edited b) Kathleen O'Connor Blllmh,1gen ,1nd \\!,1her D. Joh1v;on ( \\'est port, Conn.: Greenwood Pres.s, 1978), pp. 13-20; Renate D. Klein, "The Dynamics ol tht' \Vorncn's Studies Classroom: J\ Review Essay of the 'leaching Practices of \.\'omen's Stud1e~ m Higher Education,'' \Vome11 's Studies lnter11,11imu1I 1-orum 10, no. 2 (1987): 187-206; Genie 0. Lenihan and Mdanie Rawlin~, "The Impact of a \\•'omen's Studies Program: ChalJengmg and Nourishing the True Believers," Jo11r11al of tlie N111io11al Assocwrio11 of \Vome11 Dea11s, Ad111i11istralors, mul Co1111selors50, no. J (Spring 1987): 3-10; Nancy M. Purter and ~fargarcl T. Eileenchild, Tile Effecrive11ess of \l\'c1111e11's Studies read,mg (\\.'ashington, D.C.: National Institute of Education, Department of Health, Education, and \.Velfare, February L980); Cheri Regh.ter, "Bne( A mazing ~lovcmcnts: Deal ing with Despair m the \\'omen's Studies Classroom;· \Vome11's Studies Newsletter 7. no. 4 (Fall 1979): 7-10; and Jay,1e E. Stake and 1\fargaret A. Gerner, "The \Vomcn's Studies Experience: Personal and Professional Cains for " 'omen and Men," Psychology of \,Vomen Quarterly 11 (1Q87 ): 277-83.

Nore to Page 133 289

Johnella J-.i. Butler and John C. Walter, eds., Tra11sfor111i11g t/,e Curriculum: Ethnic S11ulies 1111d \Vomen's Studies (Albany: Swte University ofNcw York Press, 1991); Susan Hardy Aiken, Karen Andcr$on, Myra Oinnerstein, Judy Lensink, and Patricia MacCorquodaJe1 "Trying Transfonncttions: Curriculum Integration and the Problem ofResistance;' in Reconstructing tlie Academy: \Vomen's Fd11cario11 t111d \.Von1e11s St11dii:s, edited by Elizabeth Jvfinnich, Jean Q'Barr, aod Rachel Rosenfeld (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 104-24. 3. Janet E. Wright and Margaret A. Talburll, J11cludi11g Women in the Curricu/11111: A Report to rlie Ford Foundation ot, the Current Srau of K,wwledge about tire Impact af Curriculum lntegratio11 Projects (Ann Arbor: Formative Evaluation Research Associates, August 1987 ). 4. Peggy l\llclntosh, l11teractive Phast'.s of Curricular Re--Visiorr: A feminist Perspective, \e i:.sue1> by working as a group, reading all the students' written assignments .md evaluations, and conducting interviews with the student, and "How the Other Half Gives;' CASE Currerils, March 1989, pp. 10, 12, 14-15; Anne Mathews, "Alrna t-.laters Court Their Daughters," N1;iv l'ork Times Maga.rim:, April 7, 1991; Lii Mc1'4illen, ''College Fund Raisers See Their Alumnae as Untapped Donors," Cl1ror1icle of Higher 6ducatio11, April 1, 1992; Letty Pogrebin, "Contributing to the Cause," New York Times, April 22, 1991; Susan Tifft, "Asking for a Fortune," \,\forking Woman, l':ove1nber 1992., pp. 66-70, 94; Kad,leen Teltsch, "Network of Women Hopes to Change American Philanthropy,'' New rork Time$, f\,fay 14, 1986. A number of organi1.ations concerned with philanthropy have published reports on women and giving. Among lh~e are a November 1988 report from the \\'oman's College Coalition; "Short-Changed: A Look at funcling for Chicago-Area \'\/omen's Organi1.aLions'' {September 1985) by tl,e Chicago \'\/omen in Philanthropy; "vvomen and Families iu the 8o's: A Role for Philanthropy" (Spring 1985) by \.Vomen and Foundations; ''Getting It Done: From Comn1itmenL to Action on Funding for \\/on1en and Girls" (ApriJ 1992) by \,Vomen and Foundations; and the proceedings of a Wwgi,pread Conference (October 199.2) by the Center for \'\/omen and Philanthropy at the Unh•ersity of Wisconsin. Some women's studie:. programs have conducted fundrai~ing campaigns. Example~ include Brandeis University, the Center for the EducatiOJ1 of \\.'omen at the University of Michigan, Ob.io State University, Princeton University, the University ofNortl1 Carolina at Greensboro, the Univers1ty of South Carolina System, anJ \'\fichita Stale University. 1.

292

Notes to Pages 189-219

Cliapter 15 \\le have given the student participanb fictitious names 10 protect their privacy while retaining the names of the three faculty and staff initi,11ors. Our commilme11l lo creating a space for listening to students grew, in p,1rt, from the publication of £11gagi11g Frmimsm: Str1drnls Speak Up 1111d Speak Out, edited by Jean O'Barr and Mary Wyer (Charlottesville: UniYersity Press of Virgima, 1991 ), an anthology of writings by sixty students in \-\'omen's Studies at Duke. These essay~. journal entries, exams, letters, and reports powerfully argue for the fact that students make connections bt'lween the v,1rious facets of their ljves when they engage feminist scholar~hip and that these same students lack any institutionally legitimized space for conversations about these connections to occur. 2. Susan Glaspell, "A Jury of Her Peers;' in U.S. Stories: l{egio11al S1ori1·s frot11 rhe FortyEight States, edited by 1'>·1 artha Foley and Abrahilm Rmhenbcrg (New York: I lcndrick~ 1.

liousc-Farrar Strau:,, 1949). We chos~ tru1- story, originally publi~he Questi,m: 1.

\>Vornen's Studies and Student Lear11111g (Washington, D.C.: As:;ociation of American College~. 1992); Caryn J\1cTighe 1"1usil, ed., St11de111s a/ the Center (VJaslungton D.C.: As~ociation of American Colleges, 1992); Jean O'Barr .ind lvfary \>Vyer, eds., 1:.rrgagmg Pemm,sm: Studems Speak Up am/ Speak 0111 (CharlouesviJJe: University Pres-s of Virginia, 1992). 2. I have been helped in this formu lation by papen, ( undated and unsigned ) ~ent to me from the University of Michigan's \'\'omen's Studies Program. 3. The Graduate Consortium in \Yomen's Studies at Radcliffe College began using the1>e

Notes to Pages 239-81

293

categories in Lhe spring of 1993 in a graduate seminar called "Peminisl Perspectives in Research: l nte-rdisdplinary Practice in the Study of Gender.'' Faculry were drawn from Boston College, Rrandcis Univer~ity, Harvard University, H,;1rvard Divinity School, Mas-

sachusetts Institute of Technology, Northeastern University, and Tufts University. 4. Katie Keni, "The Power of Interdisciplinary Perspectives," in E11gng111g Feminisnii pp. 121-22.

294

Notes to Page 283

N

D

E

X

'Barnard College, 2.00

Ahortion, 17,; Accommodation, .:p Ac.tion, 9, 97; 1..onccp1ion 1.1(, 251; vt-rSU\

R.ium, Fr.ink, 187

in flut·nc.e, 251 1\1.tivism, 11, 116, 168-69, 170-77; political. 186; African American, 188-!19; aJ1d knowledge, 243; diffkuhy i11, 245-4(,;

Beauvoir, Stmone de, 48, 191-92 Birth cont.rol, 47 Rody, the, 2;6-62, .268, 280; rc.ippropria1 i ng, 185

talk a~. 24fi-51 Addam~, Jane, 189-9u

B0ok~ and scholarship, 209

Bl:'JUly, I05, 171-72, 185, 256-57, :1,59-62

Burlein. Ann, 198-99

Ad_iuslmem, 20 Administration. univers-ity, 10, 229; and women's ~n1die!,, 215-18; influl!ncing, 223-25; resistance of, 228; .inti disdp lin~, 2.78-79 African Americ.ins, 80, 89, 105, 184, 209, 211,221, 2.p, 257,260, 271; and voice, 15J; as activistJ>, 188-89; as almnnae, .1_\0

California Polytccl,nic University, 73-74 Camp,1ign for \Vhmcn's Studies, 231 C.ipit..11Camp.iign for the Arts and Sci-

Agi.ng, 17, 107 Alumnae: supp, 20, 72, 94-95, 1~2.; and ,hange, 21

C..ollabora1ion, 268, 271-72 Collaborative learning, 263-76; and history, 275. See uLso Education; Le,1rning Colleges, community, 37 Colonialism, 147 Commonalities, 9, 104-111 Communal living, 190 Communication, 1, 79-80; oral, 110. 169; pedagogy in, 147; of feminist thought, 178-94; ;1nd collaborative learning, 27,;; of women\ studies, 279-81 Homophobia, 175. See al.so Hetero~xualny, bi:u toward hook~, hell, 192-93

Hopkins, Pauline, 188 llostili ty, 192 Houseke