Melandry,
I’m not a big user of smilies, but yes, the comment could have included one.
(And by Og, I hope that Philosophy major (who was no friend of mine, I spent a semister making fun of him) was planning on getting his MR or inheireting a good sum on cash (or maybe just getting past 20 and starting to grow up). His grasp on real world economics was startling).
Melandry – I did understand your point. ISTM that many women AND men are at college for no good reason at all. Not finding a mate. Not getting a profession. Not getting deeply into significant academic knowledge.
Tamerlane– thanks for organizing my list. It helps explain a point I failed to mention: I disagree with the idea that having in a field is “enough.” If a student can satisfy the History requirement by taking, say, Ancient History, she still doesn’t know geography, which has its own value to a well-rounded, educated individual. It’s all well and good for the academic departments to divvy up the requirements. From what I’ve read, this is what happens. The course structure was designed as a compromise to serve the faculty. It may not serve the student particularly well.
Lamia – I see what you mean about non-required courses. My college had specific courses required for graduation, regardless of major. Everyone had to take these courses (or they could test out of them.) However, that structure is rare. It’s more common to require a certain amount of study in various areas.
Kimstu – as far as I know, Women’s Studies is concerned mostly with 2nd rate stuff, because the 1st rate stuff has long been spoken for. If one looks at studies BY women, Women’s Studies doesn’t include Noetherian Rings or Nuclear Physics. Lise Meitner’s and Marie Curie’s work is covered elsewhere. The great woman writers, artists and poets are covered elsewhere.
How about the study OF women? The medical school covers physical differences and Psychology has long included women’s brains. The athletic department provides women’s sports.
So, what’s left?
december,
Macalester? In St. Paul, Minnesota. I wouldn’t worry. That’s my husband’s alma mater. His degree is in the highly employable fields of anthropology/sociology (there is a smiley here too). But he’s a senior manager for a Fortune 500.
I know lots of Mac grads. Most of the majored in humanities or soft sciences (including English and Theatre), though I know a couple of math majors who now teach. Took some of them a while to get going, but they are all doing well.
Well, I guess I went to college for no good reason at all.
Of course, the BA did help me get a better paying, more challenging job. Not in my field of study.
Of course, the studies did help me learn to think (or learn to think better).
Of course, the experience did help me mature.
Of course, I met a lot of people who created a network of contacts for me that have helped me in life.
Of course, if I now wanted to get a more practical MBA, I’d have the BA under my belt - even if its in humanities.
And I have a broad liberal arts collection of trivia to throw out at cocktail parties.
“Second rate” seems a pretty subjective statement.
Well, everything that you have tried to rule out is included. Applying a different interdisciplinary perspective to exactly the same things that are covered in other areas provides the opportunity for new insights. There is nothing that requires Women’s Studies to ignore “mainstream” information or knowledge.
I’m sure there are colleges where “women’s studies” is nothing more than a scavenger hunt for women who have been missed or ignored by the established departments. I’m sure that there are colleges where such studies are nothing more than shrill complaints against the evil that resides in “the masculine.”
Sturgeon’s Law still applies.
However, you have assumed, throughout, that those are the only ways that Women’s Studies are or can be organized. Is there any reason that we should believe that you know what you’re talking about?
Been long spoken for? Then why does anyone continue to study it? I imagine you have some sort of emprical justification for this entire claim. Perhaps a survey of course catalogues from major universities that tell us exactly where this material is covered.
Let’s take a quick look. My alma mater happens to be Columbia, reckoned by most to be a pretty major university with strong academic departments all around. It also contains Barnard College, a leading female-only institution of higher education. Let’s turn to the Fall 2002 catalogue and see what is offered in the Womens’ Studies departments.
Fall 2002 Women’s Studies V3111
FEMINIST TEXTS I
Fall 2002 Women’s Studies V3311
COLLOQUIUM IN FEMINIST THEORY
Fall 2002 Women’s Studies V3520
SENIOR SEMINAR
Fall 2002 Women’s Studies G4000
GENEOLOGIES OF FEMINISM
Fall 2002 Women’s Studies W4300
ADV TOPCS-WOMEN/GENDER STUDIES
So the entire Womens’ Studies department of a major university is composed essentially of colloquia, seminars, and a theory class or two. Perhaps you can explain to us how this is “second-rate.”
The Barnard WS class offering in a little more robust.
Fall 2002 Women’s Studies V1001
INTRO-WOMEN & GENDER STUDIES
Fall 2002 Women’s Studies BC1003
INTRODUCTION TO WOMEN’S HEALTH
Fall 2002 Women’s Studies V3111
FEMINIST TEXTS I
Fall 2002 Women’s Studies V3112
FEMINIST TEXTS II
Fall 2002 Women’s Studies BC3121
BLACK WOMEN IN AMERICA
Fall 2002 Women’s Studies BC3122
JEWISH WOMAN
Fall 2002 Women’s Studies BC3130
INTRO TO GAY & LESBIAN STUDIES
Fall 2002 Women’s Studies V3311
COLLOQUIUM IN FEMINIST THEORY
Fall 2002 Women’s Studies V3521
SENIOR SEMINAR I
Fall 2002 Women’s Studies W4300
ADV TOPCS-WOMEN/GENDER STUDIES
But still, that is all. It is just an academic locus for gender-oriented theory and study. Unsurprisingly, the real meat is in the more ordinary disciplines. And within these colloquia, seminars, and theory classes, you read the great works, studies, etc., and you analyze them using feminist academic tools.
You may not agree with the intellectual validity of the tools, which I find perfectly understandable. But I am having difficulty understanding your substantive objections to a place where inderdisciplinary faculty can share methods, tools, and conduct peer review.
december, I can’t believe you would make the assertions you do and still show your face on these boards. I admire your guts. Or lack of shame.
Women’s studies are generally second-rate? What? All of them? Who are you, Gourman in disguise? He’s just about as credible.
In this economy (or any economy) it’s not rare for a liberal arts graduate’s first job to be something as mundane as selling bagels. If you’re trying to measure “success” or usefulness by one’s first job or first pay, it’s short-sighted. If she has a Macalaster degree (I haven’t heard of McAllister, but there probably is one) I wouldn’t fret overmuch. Even if she (gasp) had the misfortune to take a women’s studies course along the way.
BlackKnight:
Good point. In that sense, you’re completely correct, we are largely oblivious to the study of the experiences of men as a class. The same kind of blinders that had caused people to ignore women’s experiences by treating the male experience as the “generic” experience also causes people to fail to develop a perspective on the experiences of men, again because they are thought of as “generic” – and therefore they are not compared and contrasted to anything else in order to gain a perspective.
Some academic departments that used to be called “Women’s Studies” have shifted to Gender Studies and are doing some of this. (For that matter, some that are still called Women’s Studies study men, the male gender role, etc., also).
I was quite a fan of Theodore Sturgeon, the brilliant, creative science fiction writer. My wife’s late uncle had published Galaxy Science Fiction at one time. He know Sturgeon well. He said that Sturgeon was in and out of asylums, unfortunately. Anyhow, thanks for reminding me of a favorite figure from the past.
There’s a paradox within Sturgeon’s law. If 90% of, say, a college curricum is crap, that implies that one can distinguish dross from gold. One could then sift out the 10% which was non-crap. That subset would be 100% gold.
Ah, yes. Feminist academic tools. Does this mean that feminists have discovered advanced new ways of thinking? Approaches that eluded Einstein, Newton, Descartes, Bertrand Russell, Plato, Aristotle, Von Neumann, etc.?
Or, does it it mean that feminists are indulging in a less advanced type of thinking?
I’d bet on the latter.
However, I would invite Maeglin or anyone else to describe “feminist academic tools” here and try to demonstrate that they represent a step forward, not a step backward.
Cranky – Yep, I misspelled the college. Am I Gourman? No, but isn’t one point of this thread to rank the value of women’s studies? I have just as much right as anyone else to express my ignorant opinions.
I was wondering when this was going to happen. Time for a new thread. This is a different animal than justifying Women’s Studies departments.
Maeglin, in your reply to me above, were you saying that the politics invoked are part and parcel of the course topics themselves? (Or something along those lines?) If so, I’ll just go and stand over here in the corner and have a soda, as I am clearly out of my element.
Yup, I’m afraid I did. If you want to take a course in feminist historiography, unfortunately you have to swallow a fat load of Marxism.
There is nothing inherent about the connection between Marxism and feminism yet. It’s just the way the academic winds have blown for the past forty years or so, for lack of anything better. Such courses don’t always have to have a political agenda, per se, but they are always going to have a bias. This is pretty much the case with all courses, though the bias often seems to be “generic,” as I believe one poster already suggested.
Claims of political objectivity in pretty much any course pertaining to modern social, political, intellectual, or literary history seem to be farcical to me.
Feminist Academic Tools–
One of the general trends in anthropology and sociology has been for a target population (or some aspect of their behavior) to be studied in order to explain it to another population (academics, the study funders, etc). Feminist researchers questioned this separation of people into “those studied” and “those doing the studying”: it fit the general pattern of binary subject/object grouping that feminist theory had called into question in a broad sense, so it was worth examining and rethinking here. Should not the enterprise of sociology and anthropology be one of helping us to make sense of the world in which we live, for the benefit of all of us collectively? (Rather than assuming our own lives to be unproblematically self-explanatory, and the lives of others worth studying for our benefit or those of our funding sources) Dorothy Smith described in The Everyday World as Problematic a more recursive socio/anthrolological project, one in which the researcher attempts to arrive at behavioral descriptions and data interpretations that not only match the observable empirical data but also “fit” with the study subjects’ own understanding of their behavior patterns. This would necessarily sometimes involve changes in the subjects’ understandings (as people do tend to harbor beliefs about their behaviors and reasons that may be contradicted by studies of what they actually do), and sometimes would involve understanding a behavior differently as a result of seeing how the subjects incorporate the studies’ data into their general knowledge (researchers gain from going over the study data with the subjects and seeing how the subjects describe those results’ meaning, and in particular their implications).
======
Another example would be critiques of questionnaires used for quantitative statistical studies. That type of study is pretty dependent on standardized questions and answers, essentially multiple-choice polling, and conventional sociology and psychology has focused on the meaning of the resultant statistics, error margins, significances, and so forth; feminist methodology has put a lot more attention on the implicit assumptions invariably embedded in the wording of the questions and answers. A quantitative research report influenced by feminist methodology would include a discussion of the content of these texts, who originated them, and a spectrum of critical feedback from others regarding the wording. {e.g., a study of sexual habits of college students in which the phrase “premarital sex” appeared might elicit the comment that an eventual marriage is assumed if sex is “pre”; and if eventual marriage is assumed, is heterosexuality also assumed here?}. Most feminist researchers would devote a lot of attention to the wording of questions and answers before conducting the study as well as incorporating discussion of wording in the report itself.
This is an outgrowth of the feminist focus on the “power to define” in relationships; the general ways in which relationships that do not immediately appear to be about power inequity may contain power inequity anyhow; and how the less powerful component of such relationships often functions as a “mirror”, reflecting back answers and viewpoints and whatnot that actually reside more in the questioner / reporter / etc.
well, yes, you’re right. You’re just gutsier than me–you rarely seem to qualify anything with a “just my opinion, but…” or “I can’t speak for every case, but I’ve observed that…”
For someone with a degree from a staggeringly wonderful place, you hide your critical thinking skills and your ability to deal with relativeness (instead of black and white) very well.
raises hand sheepishly
I have a Women’s Studies minor from a very large Big Ten university. I started out with getting an English minor but then I took one Women’s Studies class to fufill my “diversity requirement” at said Big Ten University. That changed my college career. I was in a class that was made up of 75% male jocks who had been stuck taking that class to fill their diversity requirement, 5% feminazis who didn’t shave and hated the jocks, 15% women like me who were sort of curious but not really all gung ho on the feminism ideals and then another 5% of mystery people who blew off the whole class and only showed up for the final exam. The class was taught by a heterosexual man who had two degrees in Women’s Studies.
And you know what? The class was really fucking interesting. Everyone got along, everyone had a different viewpoint on women’s role in society today and everyone particpated in the class discussions.
Before taking that class I had no idea what life was like for my mother, my grandmother and my greatgrandmother. Did the class prepare me for the job I have now? No. Was it a waste of time? Absolutely fucking not. I have a greater appreciation of my past and a clearer view of the present and the future.
goes back to being a lobbyist, the job her political science major trained her for
I’m sorry, tramp, you will, indeed, have to leave this thread. Anyone who actually knows anything about Women’s Studies must leave, so the ones of us who are posting the most (and know nothing) can keep blathering on. Myself included.
Thank you.
I’m just kidding, of course. I appreciated hearing about it.
Just the type of response I’d expect from a MAN
I just thought I’d chime in on this thread and offer the idea that some women in Women’s Studies aren’t rabid feminists.
Uh? Tramp, that’s Crank As An Old Man.
You’re both distaff members of the SDMB.
** Maeglin **, *"If you want to take a course in feminist historiography, unfortunately you have to swallow a fat load of Marxism.
There is nothing inherent about the connection between Marxism and feminism yet. It’s just the way the academic winds have blown for the past forty years or so, for lack of anything better. Such courses don’t always have to have a political agenda, per se, but they are always going to have a bias. This is pretty much the case with all courses, though the bias often seems to be “generic,” as I believe one poster already suggested."*
Maeglin, first let me say that I’ve been following this thread, though too busy to post, and I’m sympathetic to what you’ve been saying here (and in the other thread) in response to december. But I do want to demur with respect to some of the above. My own educational background, btw, isn’t in Women Studies, but I have taught courses that are cross-listed in Women Studies.
You suggest here that the connection between feminist critique and Marxism is mere historical accident. But that’s a bit misleading and it also overstates the role of Marxist theory in feminist criticism and in women studies departments.
First, academic feminism comes in many varieties and the notion of studying women (as opposed to studying the construction of gender) is, by and large, prior to the influence of Marxian critical theory. The idea of women studies is rather more to do with the civil rights movement than to do with the influence of critical theory (whether Marxist, poststructuralist, or what have you). To put it simply, from that view, women weren’t being represented sufficiently in academia–either as objects of knowledge or as scholars–and so the answer was to devote interdisciplinary study to women as part of a broad-based equal-rights-oriented feminist movement. The political and philosophical underpinnings here are liberal, not Marxist or poststructuralist.
By contrast to women studies is gender studies: the idea that gender is a social construct for men as well as women. Marxism comes into play here because Marx provided certain philosophical tools for explaining the historical origins of certain of our most cherished beliefs: in this case, the idea that to be masculine men should behave in a certain way; and to be feminine women should behave a certain way. Postructuralism also influences the gender studies perspective: so, for example, Foucault-influence feminist scholars might think about gender in relation to power, or the accumulation of certain kinds of knowledge in the biological or social sciences.
Now most feminist scholars of my generation (I’m in my late 30s and my PhD dates from the late 90s) really see themselves as informed by gender studies. They may actually wish that Women Studies were called gender studies: not just to be inclusive (as someone said above) but also to avoid the (pernicious) appearance that women are the only humans who have genders; (and also to avoid identity politics in crude form). For the same reason, such feminists will tend to see feminism as something that concerns men as well as women, and they will often want to teach courses on masculinity/men. Sometimes (though not always) feminists of this stripe have serious differences with feminists of the earlier variety.
Now here’s the deal on the politics and the debate with pldennison. Yes, there is an inevitable political implication to the idea that gender is socially constructed: that “femininity,” along with “masculinity,” is not a fact of nature but a product of historically variable conditions.
There are political implications for the simple reason that so many conservatives resist this idea. But the same kind of built-in political implication exists for many kinds of learning. For example, many economics textbooks naturalize a brand of economic thinking that supports the political status quo; often the rightish end of that spectrum.
Speaking purely for myself: a lot of my teaching centers on nineteenth-century history and it would be very difficult to teach that–to teach about imperialism, for example–without revealing a generally left-of-center perspective.
That’s not to say that there aren’t conservative historians at some colleges and universities who teach about imperialism; but certainly the methods through which I’ve been trained to study history are based on liberal, materialist, and poststructuralist philosophical positions. Let me stress: that doesn’t mean that the methods I employ lack “objectivity”–certainly not any more than any other set of philosophically grounded methods. What it means is that the objectivity I bring to bear as a scholar and teacher is towards the end of seeing society, culture, and/or events as the products of complex historical conditions; and that’s inevitably different than someone who, say, tends to see history as the acts of great individuals (usually men), or of a static human nature, or an inevitable march of progress. And these historical approaches also had strong political implications.
OTOH–and again this is just me speaking for myself–I’m very conscious of the fact that students’ these days are wary of politics and I try to be sensitive about that. But precisely because I try to be sensitive about it, I don’t try to affect some position of alleged neutrality. Instead I try to explain where I’m coming from, never to hector, to keep electoral politics entirely out of the classroom, and, whenever possible, to give some airtime to opposing viewpoints and even debate.
Heidi Hartmann once wrote:
This is unfortunately true, and it is also true that flavors of feminism and feminist theory that incorporate any variant of marxism still tend to analyze relations overall as if they were fundamentally material economic (i.e., marxist-centric) relationships; and such is NOT TRUE of the perspectives of feminist theorists as a whole, only of a small percentage of them.
The theoretical perspective within feminism most independent from and most analogous to marxist theories is that of radical feminism.
In a considerable portion of the academic landscape, Women’s Studies departments were implemented and tolerated not because the universities were overwhelmingly open to the ideas coming out of feminism, but as a way of throwing a bone to the (then) current and vibrant social movement while still retaining control over content and perspective. The marxists were one of the major ensconced faculty persuasions, and by Og if anybody was gonna teach feminist content, they felt, it should be them. More often than not, Women’s Studies departments are indeed heavily marxist.
Marxism is a 120++ year old cobwebby social perspective, and despite its revolutionary pretensions has very little radical content to offer at this point. Dialectical materialism isn’t what you’d call the cutting-edge analytical perspective these days. The theoretical perspectives that grew more directly out of the movement itself are more like 20+ years old and far from cobwebby. The name for the theories that analyze everything from feminism as a beginning point (as opposed to approaching women-as-subject-matter from some other beginning point) is radical feminism, from “radical” meaning “root”.
While some radfem theorists are the very same people you think of when someone mentions “nut job feminazis”, this is still the well to drink from. I recommend Robin Morgan, Elizabeth Fisher, Sheila Jeffries, Marilyn French, Sonia Johnson, and if you can get past the male-bashing, the otherwise rather brilliant Mary Daly.
The struggle to get Women’s Studies into the university has given way to who shall control and occupy it and determine its content. In addition to the marxists and radical feminists, the postmodernists want the territory. Ten years ago they were gaining a lot of steam but I think many of their balloons have been fortunately punctured since them. The marxists, on the other hand, continue to hold sway.
For more of my views on same, click the button and check out my web site. (Once upon a time I was gonna be an academic and I wrote some nice papers).