At the end of every semester of Women’s Studies 101, students are asked to reflect on the following questions:
What is Women's Studies? What difference does it make?
As we kickoff both the Fall 2011 semester and our Women’s Studies Blog, we thought it would be interesting to hear from Women’s Studies Faculty, Staff, and Students how Women’s Studies has shaped your knowledge of, and perspective on, women’s lives.
We look forward to your responses!
I came to Women’s Studies as an English major my junior year of college, and, in many ways, that perspective/those ways of thinking still inform how I view -- and do -- women’s studies today. Some (simplified) ideas that most English Majors in my time accepted as a given are/were:
ReplyDelete1)We have no thoughts that are not mediated by language.
2) Language can never quite represent the world 100% accurately.
If you accepted those two premises, it often followed that our individual and collective realities, in many ways, are a series of stories: stories we tell ourselves, stories we tell others, stories others tell us.
Choosing to study language and writing, for me, was about looking at interesting stories, both those that said something that reflected my experiences and those that were completely outside of my reality, but could still grab a hold of me and shake up my perceptions of the world and of the other stories I had heard (or told). Women’s literary studies in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s was still very much about unearthing lost voices … both literally via archival work, and figuratively, by simply reading works written by women that nobody had thought to take seriously before.
I still see Women’s Studies as doing that type of work today, regardless of the discipline. The voices we listen to aren’t necessarily lost, but they (still) often go unheard and/or unnoticed. From something as simple as our “summer blockbuster” films pretty much always being male stories told from the point of view of a male protagonist to something as complex as how patriarchy, capitalism, and imperialism converge upon women’s bodies both locally and globally, Women’s Studies, for me, provides both the interesting stories and the tools for reading them.
My Background:
ReplyDeleteThe National Organization for Women (NOW) was organized in 1966. My parents were 18. They are certainly products of that generation. Growing up, our household was fairly progressive. I am a product of liberal religion, a love of liberal arts, democratic and peaceful activism. My parents still go to Democratic Women meetings together.
There wasn’t much to rage against in our household. There was a solid structure, values and ethics, right and wrong and the importance of equality were very important, and I rarely felt draconian restraints.
To me, it felt that anyone in my generation, male and female, would be feminists. Human rights and equality should be important to everyone whether it is sex/gender, race or sexuality.
When I was in college, I was a Literature major at a liberal arts university. At some point, I started looking for something that would speak to who I was and be interesting to me on a personal level.
Women’s Studies did that. When telling people my minor, there was usually a comment that followed. “You mean you study women? I do that!” (cue googly-eyes) or “what, underwater B.B. stacking/basket weaving was all filled up, huh?”
The assumption that it was simple, we just sit around and talk about “women stuff” and that it was an easy A was infuriating. I worked hard in my classes, I truly cared about what we discussed, the books we read and our professors had high expectations of us.
The readings in my Women’s Studies courses supplemented my Literature readings and, at least one of my Women’s Studies courses counted toward my major as well (Black Women in Literature.) It was often a nice break from the long strings of “dead white guy readings” that tend to dominate Literature coursework.
My Women’s Studies courses introduced me to Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Adrienne Rich,
Lucille Clifton and the list goes on. Here is a nice list of African American women authors:
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/_generate/AFRICAN%20AMERICAN.html
What is Women's Studies?
Women’s Studies takes the dominant paradigm and flips it to see other viewpoints; of women, minorities, the repressed. It shapes your world view.
I have always been a feminist, but Women’s Studies put it in context. It gave me perspective and a sense of community. It was empowering. So much of our (collective) history has been written by the victors and those in power. In order to see the whole picture, we have to listen to the stories from the outsiders, the women, the minorities, we need to know both sides and celebrate victories together.
What difference does it make?
To me, it is important that Women’s Studies continues because we have not won. Until sex/gender, race, sexuality and social standing are no longer issues, anywhere, we have not won.
In the words of Solomon Burke, “None of us are free, one of us are chained. None of us are free.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hv6sQXI1WY