Women's Studies Departments - What's the academic rationale?

Great Debates
21

The arguments against a Women’s Studies department would then be that if female contributions to history have been lost, they should be dug up and presented in the general history department so that everyone will be exposed to them.

I take issue with this claim. I believe that (for example) Claudia Goldin is considered to be a fine economic historian.

It would help me if defenders of women studies could point to a few examples to back up their claims. I am also curious about the extent to which “interdisciplinary” implies “quantitative also” or “quantitative no thanks”.

I would also like to see a defense against the charge of insularity.

Hm. This is getting a little heated. Here’s a better request: show me an example of a body or piece of research that is a) high quality (good scholarship) and b) is unlikely to have been undertaken outside of a women’s study department. (Or, alternatively, show me a demonstrably valuable body of research that has benefited from being cultivated within a women’s study department, per se.)

22

Women exist, yeah?

And somebody wants to study them, yeah?

Well then. This is why we have women’s studies departments. It isn’t like this is freaking “fairies. gnomes and elves studies”. There is no real way to deny that women do in fact exist in this universe. And if something is there, shouldn’t it be studied?

We study all kinds of stuff for no good reason. I am a film major. I study…film. Now there is no earth-shattering reason to study film, when you get down to it. But it is what I do. I read a lot of theory. I write some theory of my own. Some people use theory to make films. Others go on to teach this theory to others. Hopefully some of this theory will change the world in a positive way, but it is, for the most part, a self perpetuating system that makes films, studies films, and then teaches a new generation to make and study films. Maybe it makes the world better in some way. Maybe it is all just an academic exersize. But it keeps us busy and to some degree employed, so why complain?

The same goes for just about any other major. Why study liturature? Why study sociology? Why study French? Why study history? Even hard sciences are not immune. Half of it is wild speculation that will be disproven in a decade, anyway. The stuff one learns in computer science majors is outdated by the time one graduates. Law school is little more than job training. All of academia is a little extrainious when you look at it too closely. It’s never going to be as real or as relevent as, say, growing lentils. But people spend their lives doing lots of things that arn’t really all that important- like installing swimming pools or dressing up in costumes and ice skating, or taking photographs of cute little kittens to put on calenders. So why are you only complaining about women’s studies?

Because you don’t like the politics? Puh-leeze. Repeat after me: Acadamia is lefist. Academia is leftist. Acadamia is leftish. Thats just the way it is. Acadmia is leftist. Churches are conservative. France is Francophone. It isn’t an outrage, it is just the way things are.

Finally, women’s studies have opened up new horizons. Or at least one new (admittednly smallish) horizon. One of the most influencial essays in film studies history, Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, comes from feminist film theory. This essay literally changed the direction of film studies, and brought up whole new ways of thinking about film. And that in turn brought about whole new ways of making films (which largely arn’t part of the mainstream, but which are still signifigant). Mainstream film theory- even stuff that has nothing to do with gender- would not be where it is without the techniques and insights of feminist film theory.

23

Funny,

I was also a film studies major. And I was about to use it to illustrate a point…

My school didn’t (when I was there) have a film studies department. My “major” was constructed in an interdisciplinary fashion - a lot of Art History, a little English, some Women’s Studies, some Comparative Literature, a couple classes taught out of the French Department, a dab of Studio Arts, etc.

Eventually, the school decided that enough people were self constructing this major and made it an official major. It still doesn’t rate a department (I believe its out of Art History), but there is now an established curriculum and established “Film Studies” professors (who answer into other departments (French, CompLit, etc), but meet as a committee).

Women’s studies are a lot like that. You can get the same thing if you take a “Women in America” course out of the History department and a “Gender and Relationship” course out of the sociology department, and a class on women authors from the English department. But it may or may not be the most effective way to get from here to there. It may not be the most effective way for the academics to share research and information, nor the most effective way for students to learn what they set out to learn.

In corporate terms, do you organize in silos? Or do you organize cross functionally? Or maybe you do a little of both in an effort to get the most effective organization.

I want to second Sven’s point about it not necessarily being relevant. Academia isn’t necessarily about being relavent. One of my professors (from the communication department) had just gotten her PhD when I took her class. Her thesis - “The use of asides in Moonlighting.” Earth shattering stuff. Changed the world, I’m sure. A distant friend has spent his life studying the music of the Kalahari bushmen.

24

You’re confusing two totally different animals. Claudia Goldin, to my knowledge, is a fine economic historian who happens to be female. She is not a historian of Women’s Studies. There is a difference also between the phrases African-American writer and writer of African-American literature. Also, when someone says feminist literature, that does not mean it was written by a feminist or by a woman. It simply means it is literature based, most likely, on feminism.

I am assuming you mean examples of historians of womens’ studies?

Seyla Benhabib, Joan Copjec, Drusilla Cornell, Agnes Heller, Jophanna Meehan, Elizabeth Meese, Alice Parker, Renata Salecl, Diane Bell, Penny Tweedie, Margarita Diaz-Andreu, Marie Louise Stig Sorensen, Micaela diLeonardo, Kamala Visweswaran, David Whitley, Kelley Hays-Gilpin, Anne Balsamo, Susan Bordo, Kathy Davis, Carol Camper, Leslie Heywood… just to name a few.

Do your own damn research, Bubba. It’s there.

25

Can you elaborate on this a little bit? Not only because there are universities (and churches, btw) that obviously contradict you such that I can name about a dozen at the drop of a hat. But because shouldn’t academia be apolitical to the greatest extent possible? It’s supposed to be about educating people, not about indoctrinating them.

And before you ask, I would have responded the same had you replied, “Academia is rightist.”

(If you’re interested in another thread, I disagree with you somewhat on Mulvey’s relevance to modern film criticism, too. Filmmakers like Catherine Breillat and critics like Carol Clover are awfully hard to reconcile with what Mulvey has to say about the male gaze.)

26

pld: *But because shouldn’t academia be apolitical to the greatest extent possible? It’s supposed to be about educating people, not about indoctrinating them. *

Of course: to say that “academia is leftist” is not the same thing as to say that “academia is a leftist indoctrination program.” For example, as all here know, I’m a committed political leftist, and I don’t try to hide that identity in my community or my academic workplace. But I do not put up any political paraphernalia in my office or my residence where students might visit, nor do I refer at all to political issues in teaching my classes. (Not that it’s all that hard to avoid them when you teach the history of pre-modern science. :D) Similarly, I know Marxists who teach about mercantilism and Republicans who teach about Marxism, and none of them feel the need to “indoctrinate” students with what they see as the “ideologically correct” view of the subject. Any professor who’s trying to make converts to a political cause rather than helping students to think critically about new information doesn’t belong in the business.

Sure, US academics tend to be liberal, just as US business executives tend to be conservative. Both seem to be more the result of self-selection than any kind of “indoctrination” effect.

27

Dangerosa and even sven, it seems to me that you’re both justifying women’s studies by comparing it to the least appropriate parts of current academia. That’s how slippery slopes lead us down, down, down. BTW it seems over the to assert:, “Even hard sciences are not immune. Half of it is wild speculation that will be disproven in a decade, anyway.”

IMHO real contributions by women have always been included in the curriculum. Have you ever heard of Emmy Noether? I studied her contributions to mathematics. (A mathematcal structure, a type of “ring” was named for her. UC Berkeley has a women’s math club called the Neotherian Ring.) Great woman writers like Jane Austin were always included in literature. Non-famous women are contributing to science today, including Prof. december and many of her colleagues.

Women’s Studies has created jobs for thousands of women (and a few men), who lack the ability to write like Jane Austin, to do mathematics like Emmy Noether, or even to do bio-statistics like Ms december. Those who study from the second-raters are not getting much of a college education.

28

I think you missed the point, december. It seems to me that sven and Dangerosa are not arguing that it’s okay for women’s studies to be of second-rate quality. Rather, they’re saying that quality in intellectual endeavors is not really measured by the immediate practical relevance of what is learned. After all, the novels of Jane Austen and Noetherian algebras have no more relevance than modern women’s studies curricula (possibly a good deal less) when it comes to satisfying life’s primitive necessities.

Now if you want to argue, and you seem to, that women’s studies should be abolished because it’s somehow intrinsically “second-rate”, that’s a different issue, and it’s up to you to support your position on it. So far, all you’ve done is fling a few unsubstantiated insults.

29

Ha! We’ve only got two African-American professors at all; one of them teaches English, and the other teaches psycholinguistics.

Yes. We have extensive requirements, including foreign language, lab science, philosophy, and yes, women’s studies. We also have American studies, European studies, and Asian/African/Latin American studies requirements. Any of those merit a frowny face from you? Any particular reason why you think women attending school at a women’s college should not take women’s studies classes?

30

English lit has provided thousands of jobs for men and women who can’t write like Jane Austen. I can’t draw a straight line, but I have a degree in Art History (or something like it). I’m not planning on creating any History, but I have a minor in that.

And real contributions are included - and a few not so real ones. No one teaches physics and doesn’t bother to mention Marie Curie just because she was a woman. But there is a difference between teaching about the contributions Margaret Mead made to anthopology and teaching a class focusing on the different roles women have in hunter gatherer socieities. Does the class belong in anthopology? - yep. If I were interested in a broader gender studies major, could I work it into my women’s studies curriculum? yep.

If you want to debate whether “liberal studies” or “cross funtional studies” are appropriate, that’s a different debate. But if we close down the English Lit or Art History programs because its difficult to apply them in the real world, what are all those girls looking to get their MRS going to major in?

Reminds me of a Freshman I knew in college who was disappointed in his Philosophy major. See, he thought he’d make $60k a year being Thoreau. Discovered all Philosophy majors do is either get boring jobs in business, go on to get law degrees, or get PhDs in Philosophy and teach Thoreau - and maybe, if they are incredibly good or incredibly lucky, have an insight that gets called Philosophy and gets taught by a future generation of Philosophy professors. No one pays you to sit next to Walden Pond and think.

(And to continue the hijack - is their anything more dumb than Freudian Feminist Film Theory? That was all the rage when I went to school - and it was just so *wrong[/])

31

Yes, because I think highly of women as academics. I think they can learn real, top-notch academic subject subjects. They don’t have to content themselves with second-rate stuff.

Also, I have respect for academia. I see its quality being pulled down because of a number of trends, one of which is women’s studies.

It’s an interesting contradiction that women’s studies departments claim to support the idea that a woman is just as capable as a man, but their curricula would imply the opposite conclusion.

32

Er, december, nobody is saying that female students can’t study both abstract algebra and women’s studies, or that they have to study women’s studies at all.

Saying that the entire academic subject of women’s studies “second-rate stuff” is merely an inflammatory assertion, not a meaningful contribution to debate. I’ve asked you once already to support it with actual evidence.

As for the quality of academia being pulled down, I’m not sure I agree with you. I’m sure seeing a lot better quality of critical thought among many students (in and out of women’s studies) these days than what they were apparently letting them get away with at the University of Chicago in the early 1960’s. :rolleyes:

33

There is no way to teach without some degree of indoctornation. The line between “apolitical teaching” and “indoctornation” is not clear- in fact, I don’t think it exists at all. For example, a business major indocternates one to believe a lot of stuff about capitalism- a hard thing for a Marxist to swallow. A nuclear physics major indocternates one to believe that it is okay to work on scientific research that could lead to weapons. Sociology majors indocternate one to believe that social structures are the most important aspect of society. A psych major indoctornates one to believe in a classical humanist mind-body split, whereas a pre-med major indocternates people not to believe in that split. These are all essentially political posistions.

As far as the whole “does this merit a department” question…women’s studies used to (and in places still are) be scattered across various different departments. For example, you would take a class about film theory with a focus on feminist film theory, or a class on sociology with a focus on women. The shift comes when most of the theory is about women, as opposed to about sociology or film studies, and that theory relates more strongly to other theory about women, as opposed to other theory about sociology or film studies. Women’s studies has developed a theorectical basis, vocabulary, and trajectory different enough from the various departments that spawned it that it merits it’s own seperate department.

Most women’s studies classes arn’t about history or “discovering forgotten female contributions”, as people seem to believe. It is more of a highly theoretical study of what it means to be a gender. Yeah, it is a lot of academic speculation, but in the end, what isn’t?

34

One difference is, Margaret Mead’s most famous study has been debunked.

Is Coming of Age in Samoa still being taught? :eek:

35

I see no justification for Women’s Studies to exist as a separate department when it would make more sense to simply bring in all other subject matter, study it from a Women’s Studies viewpoint, and then close the rest of the university.

:
:
:

well, that’s more or less the reverse of the status quo ante. Prior to women’s studies, academic departments and their various theoretical perspectives, study traditions, ingrained habits, etc, were developed by men, making them Men’s Studies. In some cases, this makes damn little difference (for the most part, astrophysics as studied by women from an independently feminist original vantage point does not differ from astrophysics as studied by conventionally patriarchal-mindset unenlightened male academics, for instance); in other cases (sociology, political science, psychology, medicine and health, anthropology, theology and religious studies, history, literature, art, economics, music, organizational and administrative studies, philosophy, and a few other niche areas), though, important new perspectives were gained by re-approaching and/or reconceptualizing these subject areas from a female and/or feminist viewpoint.

Back when I was a Women’s Studies student, the radical perspective within feminism was that we had to get these perspectives out of our own little ghetto–that is, when you take Introductory Psychology 101, the relevant theories that emerged out of feminist theory should be taught alongside the others, as one (or as set of) vantage point(s) with which the student should be familiarized. Because this was generally resisted, though, having a Women’s Studies department at least made it possible that students would encounter these perspectives. Having your ideas ghettoized in a “niche department” is better than not having them taught within the university setting at all.

Were there also “liberal” (vs. “radical”, I mean) viewpoints as well? Oh, you bet. People who wanted Women’s Studies Departments to exist forever and ever so that women academics who studies what other women academics had done could get teaching positions in academia. The Women’s Studies Department as Employment Opportunity.

36

december: *One difference is, Margaret Mead’s most famous study has been debunked. *

Are you seriously suggesting that the criticisms of Coming of Age in Samoa mean that it is no longer important to discuss Mead’s contributions to American anthropology??

37

This sort of reasoning would make Creation Science equal to modern genetics.

38

Let us also remember that “Women’s Studies” does not merely involve going back through all disciplines and pointing out prominent women who haven’t gotten adequate attention before. And just because a course was enblightened enough to mention women’s contributions does not mean you’ve had a taste of “women’s studies.”

It’s not just memorizing names of famous women. It’s about examining why they aren’t included. It’s about why their contributions might be different, might be more or less valuable in some way. And a whole lot of other things which I can’t even begin to venture a guess about because I’ve never ever had a woman’s study course. I went to a woman’s college, by the way and apropos of nothing. My knowledge of this stuff is from scholarship on disciplines in general.

The thing is, every time you add feminist perspectives and theories to a course, you may certainly expand the worldview and analytic scope of the material but you inevitably then have to push something else out of the course. Semesters are only so long. That’s why some disciplines subspecialize, and that’s why some fields split off. But of course, this takes us back to the concern about ghettoizing certain ideas and perspectives. Would we be better off having an element of women’s studies in each department, or letting women’s studies form a critical mass in its own department. Ah, the struggles of academe!

And why would someone FROWN at a women’s studies requirement? december? Many, many colleges have some sort of area studies or breadth requirement. It’s not to “indoctrinate” students – it’s about making them think harder by being exposed to different ways of thinking. I may not be a psychologist, for example, but you can bet your ass I am a better economist for knowing how psychology might approach the same problems economists look at. It’s hardly like that psych course I took “indoctorinated” me (cue spooky music).

39

Not based on the content-free opinions that you have thrown out.

Now, I am quite sure that Sturgeon’s Law applies to Women’s Studies (and Black Studies or other niche studies based on some subset of the population). Some institution launches a study group or a major or a department and gets some publicity. Other institutions want to be able to “compete” and throw together their own study groups, majors, or departments, and soon most colleges and universities are offering the same things with no guarantee that the courses offered have any quality at all.

Frankly, the same nonsense goes on with math and computer science and any number of other course offerings. Ohio has over a dozen colleges offering Computer Science majors, yet I have discerned a pretty consistent pattern that graduates from Mega U. and Micro College are pretty well qualified for a job while most graduates from Giganto U. and Nano College are pretty clueless.

Sturgeon’s Law and copycat academic recruiting is, however, a separate issue from the notion that Women’s Studies programs are inherently second rate, or that (as you have stated, deliberately or not) that Women’s Studies teachers are second rate.

I can see arguments made for both sides.

If a Women’s Studies program is providing a good interdisciplinary approach to the humanities, I am likely to support it, even if it does not guarantee someone a job upon graduation. I am surrounded by people who have the breadth of vision that one gets by peering down a straw. I see numerous errors in corporate decisions, public policy, and even the pursuit of scientific knowledge committed by people who only see the world from a single perspective, knowing the most intimate details of some strand of knowledge with no concept of the thread in which it has been spun–to say nothing of the skein in which the thread is coiled.

Conversely, knowledge of what women have contributed (or what blacks or Asians or whoever have contributed) should be included in the general knowledge base. One should not need to go to a special study in order to discover the contributions that individuals have made, simply because they have been members of marginalized groups.

However, I have stumbled across enough records of individuals in marginalized groups whose contributions have either been ignored or mis-credited to know that we have certainly not attained that goal. I do not know whether we will increase that general knowledge in these areas more swiftly if we wait for each academic discipline to actually review and publish a corrected history of that discipline or if we expect researchers in a niche department will bring that history to light. (Who, outside niche studies groups, is actually making that effort to discover them? Emmy Noether succeeded in getting recognized (although I would bet that few people outside the math community would recognize her name), but how many women (blacks, Asians, whoever) are still unrecognized because their efforts were credited to someone else?)

And to the question that someone might pose as to “Why do we need to know about these people?” I would note that discovering the actual individual who performed an activity allows us to better search for what all they have done. In the case of fairly recent people, we may even be able to search through their personal notes or diaries for further understandings of their efforts or even breakthroughs that they might not have published.

Do you have an example of a well-regarded Women’s Studies program that is genuinely performing second-rate teaching or investigation? Or are you simply throwing out the standard “It was invented by [gasp] Liberals and it must be bad!”

40

Ahhh…much better.
I like your distinction of gender studies. It’s much more…ummm, inclusive than women’s studies. It’s hard for me to know where to begin with this and I think others have begun to do a pretty good job already.

There’s so much ground to be covered, I thought it might be helpful to find out exactly why you wanted this to be a debate topic.

If I simply didn’t have concrete information on the worthiness of women’s studies and I sincerely wanted to be enlightened, I would find a book entitled something like"Introduction to Women’s Studies." I wouldn’t start a thread asking for it’s justification. Your tone seemed doubting.

I don’t doubt the necessity of womens’ studies for the same reason I don’t doubt the necessity for the distinction between neurobiology and neurochemistry. I couldn’t delineate their distinctions but I assume that they exist as seperate fields because there are different bodies of knowledge to be studied. If I had, for instance, read some article criticizing women’s studies and had been given some reason to doubt it, then I might go ahead and do that. But it would take evidence to the contrary of people already deciding that it was worth their time and money to pursue this field at an academic institution to make me change my mind.