‘The Evolution of American Women’s Studies’

A discussion with Alice E. Ginsberg about her new edited collection, The Evolution of American Women’s Studies: Reflections on Triumphs, Controversies and Change (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

From Inside Higher Ed., March 27, 2009

Q: What were the key challenges to women’s studies in the early years of its development?
A: Feminist scholar Jean Robinson has written that: “When women’s studies was born in the mid-1970’s, politics was its mid-wife.” Marilyn Boxer echoes this sentiment when she writes that when women’s studies first entered the university “merely to assert that women should be studied was a radical act.” One of the key challenges to women’s studies in the early years was most certainly that it was intimately connected to the feminist movement for social change. It was, in fact, referred to as the “academic arm” of the women’s movement. These first courses, and the brave women who taught them, made no bones about the fact that knowledge was political (e.g., right answers often depend on one’s perspective, and we need to ask questions not only about what is taught, but what is left out). Women’s studies also distinguished itself by claiming that the personal was political, and thus making a place within courses for women to talk about their own experiences, expectations, and socialization.

Continues at Inside Higher Ed