WMST-L LOG9402B ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 08:16:51 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "NAOMI B. MCCORMICK" Organization: SUNY at Plattsburgh, New York, USA Subject: Re: MMPI and MMPI-2 inquiry > I am the outside reader for a doctoral exam in Counseling Psychology. >As an English teacher, I am a little in the dark, but I'm guessing that >the MMPI and MMPI-2 have been criticized for race and gender bias. >Is this true? Hi Irene and List readers: The MMPI was normed years ago (30s and 40s I believe) and was biased because the normative sample was white, relatively rural midwesterners. The MMPI-2, however, normed quite recently, included a diverse normative sample in terms of socio-economic status, race/ethnicity, and region. To understand this instrument, one needs to read manuals put out on it and that might be difficult for someone outside psychology. Suffice to say that a skilled psychologist interprets the test with full consideration of the implications of an individual's sex, socio-economic status or level or education, race/ethnicity, religious background etc since the implications of various scales differ for groups. A skilled psychologist also considers individual differences; I never use this instrument without first being very familiar with the life history and values and experiences of the individual who took it. It is a very useful, well researched instrument that is of enormous value, not just to ordinary clinicians but feminist ones as well--especially the new version. One aspect of the instrument is critical items..these are responses to particular items that might provide clues as to important issues for a person such a suicidal risk. Often, information from this instrument has enabled me to help people in ways that would have been impossible from interview info. alone. AS for your concern for gender bias; the test is normed to have different scoring rules for women and men and many concerns about gender bias in the earlier form of the instrument have been addressed in the empirical literature since and particularly in the MMPI-2. Skilled clinicians use the empirical literature to make interpretations. Hope this helps. I can't speak about the dissertation you are reading but one reason it may not have dealt with all the issues you are concerned about is that psychologists, unfortunately, don't tend to be a holistic in our research as folks in other disciplines. Yours truly, Naomi ****************************************************************** Naomi B. McCormick Dept. Psychology State University of New York College at Plattsburgh Plattsburgh, NY 12901 USA @@@@@@@@ @@ @@ Telephone (518) 564-3076; 564-3382 @@@ (A A) @@@ FAX (518) 564-7827 @@@ L @@@ % \ {} / % E-mail MCCORMNB@SNYPLAVA.BITNET ---- MCCORMNB@SPLAVA.CC.PLATTSBURGH.EDU | | /******\ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 08:41:50 EDT Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Michele L. Simms-Burton" Subject: Re: Women's Conference in Beijing In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 7 Feb 1994 08:43:08 -0400 from Jane, thank you for the information. Sincerely, Michele L. Simms-Burton TA808C@GWUVM.BITNET ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 09:27:53 EDT Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Michele L. Simms-Burton" Subject: Women's Conference in Beijing Thanks to all of you who forwarded information to me regarding the Women's conference in Beijing. As I obtain the information, I will compile it and put it on the list. Thus far, I have been told to contact the United Nations regarding the confer- ence at NGO Planning Committee-Forum '95 777 United Nations Plaza, 8th Floor New York, NY 10017 telephone 212.986-0987 fax 212.986-0821 email ngoforum 95@igc.apc.org Sincerely, Michele L. Simms-Burton TA808C@GWUVM.BITNET ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 09:29:22 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Jerome Nadelhaft Subject: Spousal Hiring The following request for information does not relate directly to the teaching of Women's Studies. But the members of this list are most likely the best source of information--which is of immediate interest to several faculty in the U of Maine History Department. So, the posting: We are seeking information on spousal/partner accommodation programs and/or policies at U.S. colleges and universities. We are especially interested in any publications resulting from the national conference on "The Dual-Career Couple and the Modern American University," held in October of 1989 at the University of Colorado. We would also be interested in any studies which correlate higher attrition rates among women faculty with rigid spousal hiring policies. ================================================================ Jerome Nadelhaft Nadelhft@Maine History Department (207) 581-1914 5774 Stevens Hall Fax (207) 581-1947 University of Maine Orono, Maine 04469-5774 ================================================================ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 09:38:49 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Marsha E. Hass" Organization: College of Charleston Subject: Re: The Glass Ceiling Re: the glass ceiling. The Wall Stree Journal has had several good articles as have several other business magazines. One in WSJ this past week. Hopec this helps. Marsha Hass hassm@CofC.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 10:18:08 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Judith F. Clark" Subject: Re: The Glass Ceiling Has anyone ever been involved in a discussion concerning the appropriateness of the term "white paper"? At my university, white paper was considered by some to be a racist term. The preferred alternative was thought to be "position paper." Opinions, comments, suggestions??? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 10:32:03 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Judith F. Clark" Subject: Re: where do they learn Re Christine Smith's comment applauding Jennifer Alabiso's recent posting - I found that my (former) husband was also threatened by the label feminist; likewise some of my current (female) co-workers.(They were put off by my gentle suggestion to a male colleague that he needn't put his hands on my shoulders/back when conversing. I explained that I found it uncomfortable, for which my female colleagues (college-educated - as if that is supposed to make a difference in attitude...) now view me, suspiciously, as a flaming militant, radical feminist who is about to burn all my underwear in a protest against men!!!!!!!!!! (p.s. I now have a lovely, supporting, strong husband of ten years who is not threatened by competence and who feels totally safe around discussions pertaining to women's abilities/responsibilities/opportunities. They DO exist; it just took a while to locate him.....!) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 10:34:27 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Giavanna J. Munafo" Subject: Re: 'where do they learn' thread (fwd) Susan sent this to me, but I think it belongs out there with the rest of the thread. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 7 Feb 94 09:47:59 CST From: Susan E. Dunn To: gjm9u@darwin.clas.Virginia.EDU Subject: RE: 'where do they learn' thread In Message Sat, 5 Feb 1994 10:23:58 -0500, "Giavanna J. Munafo" writes: RE: 'where do they learn' thread >I plan to go through the archives and collect them >into a file as a resource for a project I'm working on. -------------------------------------------------------- I had one thing to add to this thread simply because I found the discussion rather irritating. It struck me as very "kids today" in tone, that is condescending and out of touch. Yes, students today watch mtv and get their information from television. Certainly this can be frustrating, but if we approach them with disdain, is it any wonder that we meet with resistance in the classroom? My concern in teaching students, as a feminist teacher, is not in saying, "you are bad/wrong/ignorant/etc" (which is not to say that I don't have my moments of frustration!), but to teachi them skills (critical thinking, interpretation, asking questions, writing and discussing) that will help them approach their culture -- and by extension other cultures as educated human beings. I've been teaching composition primarily for business students the past few years. These are very conservative students, many of them rural, most of them white, the only diversity in the classroom comes from asian-american and international (mostly asian) students. I say, you work with what you're given. The asian students are often very conservative but they go a long way towards opening up the white students' minds towards different cultures. (And given the japan-bashing in the business world, I see this as a great opportunity for my students to learn tolerance.) Mainly I have students write about their worlds (sports, weddings, television, family, etc) and then interpret their own cultural assumptions. This may not be radicalizing them overnight but I also don't meet with hostility. One step at a time, I say. And besides, they bring a weath of really interesting experiences to the classroom that they are not used to being told are of value. The other thing to consider re students today is that they are actually very media savvy. They may lack verbal and writing skills, and they are often not particularly strong in critical thinking, but after two decades of being bombarded with visual imagery they have a kind of visual acuity and knowledge of the genres of television that we ourselves could learn from. No, our students don't think like we do. They never will. But if we approach them with disdain then they are not going to succeed as students and we are not going to succeed as teachers. ---------------------------------------- Susan E. Dunn "Everybody gets so much Department of English information all day that University of Wisconsin they lose their common sense." Madison, Wisconsin 53706 - Gertrude Stein sedunn@students.wisc.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 10:37:53 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Jennifer Alabiso Subject: Re: popular format vs. academic respectability In-Reply-To: <199402080756.CAA06006@umd5.umd.edu> from "Jane Hannigan" at Feb 7, 94 11:04:15 pm BRAVO!!!!! This is the sort of thinking that will bring a movement that exists now as larely academic (read: higher education) into the hands of the mainstream. bell hooks addresses this issues with poignance too. thanks!!! Jennifer Alabiso MS student, School of Graduate Education U. Penn jalabiso@ccat.sas.upenn.edu According to Jane Hannigan: > > Yes, Dawn and others are raising a critical issue. It will be a tragedy > if women follow the patriarchical pattern of diminishing and devaluing > sound contributions to knowledge. I believe it a gift if one can manage > to complete research and place that research before us in clear prose. > I don't find that simple! When I have to read a paragraph in a work > several times to grasp what the writer is saying I am worn out before I've > come to grips with the ideas and that is vary sad. A basic principle that I > have used for years in my teaching is that a feminist perspective is > inclusive and I find that very important! To be dismissive or arrogrant > about the work of others is wrong in my view. If I have to accept that > writing in a dense and incomprehensible way is required I will be > saddened. I hope for much more from women today. Jane > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Feb 1994 16:21:39 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Lisa Foisy Subject: body as knowledge in curriculum I am interested in feminist epistemologies along the theme of 'body as knowledge'. Specifically, I am interested in learning about any Women Studies Programs where the 'practice' of body as knowledge is incorporated into the curriculum. By practice, I am refering to the guiding, use of, developing, heightening of awareness of the body, such as we do with our minds (we theorize, philosophize, read, write,all which develop our thoughts/minds) Use of body rather than talk about it. Send msgs to Foisy@vax1.Mankato.msus.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 11:45:50 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: STRETCH OR DROWN/ EVOLVE OR DIE Subject: Re: popular format vs. academic respectability I have just two comments to make about the thread on academic v. popular writing. The first is an attempt at some explanation of why we might not value popular writing in the same ways we do academic writing (at least within the academy). My answer comes from Lewis Hyde's examination of scientific writing in his book The Gift. He argues that scientists who write articles on research which are read usually only by a handful of people (probably by fewer people than read our esoteric research) get enormous amounts of fame and reputation for it (I would call this symbolic capital, after Pierre Bourdieu). Scientists who write popular books and textbooks tend to get almost no academic credit but lots of money--material capital. His argument is that the articles are generally configured as "a gift" freely given and hence not remunerated. Of course this is a fiction (a part Lewis doesn't really examine very closely). Of course those scientists who receive the symbolic capital of fame can easily turn that symbolic capital into material capital--prestigious research positions, grants, etc. Those who write textbooks and popular accounts are rewarded less by symbolic capital than by material capital. I would maintain that is much the source (for good or ill, I'm not sure I'd say which) of academic distrust of popular accounts. Academic publishing is not a quick way to get rich. Most academic books make very little in theway of royalties for their authors. They are not widely read. But they do give the writer some symbolic capital. That capital can in turn be exchanged for material capital in the form of prestigious and well-paying jobs with smalla teaching loads (there's a dream). My second point is to raise the issue of what happens when academics do write popular books. Lingua franca a couple of years ago ran a story about crossover publishing. They pointed out manyof the problems authors run into trying to get books published popularly. The example they used was Deborah Tannen's book You Just don't Understand, which has been pretty roundly critiqued on this list. It's interesting to compare that book, which is certainly accessible, to her scholarly research and ask what's thedifference. One difference is that her editors required her to make certain concessions, to tone down her feminism, to beef up the "self -help" aspect of othe book. It's no easier to stay "pure" in commercial publishing than it is in academic publishing and we fool ourselves if we believe that it is. I have a male colleague who was writing a book on the men's movement--a very pro-feminist book--and he withdrew it from a popular press because they were trying to turn him into Robert Bly. Too often we tend to think of writing done in a vacuum. It isn't. However else we want to think about the writing we produce, it is also part of the systems of exchange that constitute modern print capitalism and we have to deal with those one way or anothe--either your dissertation advisor is telling you to make it more complicated or your editor is telling you to tone down your feminism (which in truth may mean saying something you never intended to say and don't believe) Sorry to go on. ,,, (o o) +-------------------------------oOOo-(_)-oOOo--------------------------------+ | Laurie Finke, Women's and Gender Studies, Kenyon College | | Gambier, OH 43022 phone: 614-427-5276 | | home: 614-427-3428, P.O. Box 731 mail: FinkeL@Kenyon.Edu | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ () () ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 08:43:15 PST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Theresa <60840883@WSUVM1.BITNET> Subject: Re: where do they learn In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 7 Feb 1994 09:55:00 -0500 from Jennifer writes that we older women feminists need to outreach to the twenty-so methings. Yes, we do. When I first arrived at grad. school, I organized an ev ent (usually twice a year) that I called feminist teas. Essentially, I took a very traditional women's _thang_ and transformed it into a moment and space whe re the faculty women and the graduate women could meet on neutral ground. I al so tried very hard to open the teas to women in other fields than my own. You would probably not be surprised to learn that women in fields like engineering were happy to take an hour and eat good food with other women in other fields l ike English and history and biology. And we all exchanged experiences and tact ics for dealing with the very male structure of academia. nearly six years lat er, I am finishing up with grad. school and we still hold teas occasionally (th ough I no longer have time to organize them myself). But (and here is the big question): how can I outreach better to the undergraduate women who really need to know that the big questions are being asked and that it is okay to be any ty pe of person you are or want to be? Oh, and Jennifer, the best way to answer the question about sexual preferences- -whether one is Lesbian or not--I think (of course this is really situationally dependent) is to ask: does it matter? When I present material in class that us es queer theory, that is sometimes a question my students ask. I hope it allow s both women and men in my classroom to realize that sexual preference is perha ps less of a stigma than they may be imagining (having been raised watching t.v . and reading popular mags like Seventeen). Theresa 60840883@wsuvm1.csc.wsu.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 13:54:21 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: sally blazar Subject: kd lang newsgroups I would appreciate any information anyone might have about discussion groups devoted to kd lang. Please send info to me at this e-mail address: blazplas@acs.bu.edu Thanks. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 12:57:39 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "NAME\"Janice M. Bogstad\"" Subject: Basic Reading-Am/European Feminism I am working with a Russian historian who is trying to bring herself up to speed on modern feminism. She's asked me a for a list of basic readings starting in the 60s or so to the present. I can give her large bibliogra- phies, but she really needs a selection of works on women, the feminist movement, and women and history - she works on Russian women's history, especially from the October Revolution through the stalinist era. If anyone can recommend a bibliography of about 100 items, such as you might use for a couple of early courses in women's studies (i.e. the first one or two,) I would appreciate it. Meanwhile, i will be compiling a list and will also use individual selections. Please reply privately to BOGSTAJM@UWEC.EDU Dr. Janice Bogstad, Univ. of Wisc.-Eau Claire Thanks folks. Jan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 12:22:55 -0400 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Joan D. Mandle" Subject: Re: UN Conference/95 d dir ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 13:15:00 CDT Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Virginia Sapiro Subject: Re: popular format vs. academic respectability I liked Laurie Finke's intervention on the different styles of writing very much. This is an important issue for those of us who are writers and those of us who select books for students to read. While it is important to maintain some healthy cynicism about power structures and the symbolic meanings of all human activities, I sometimes see too much cynicism about, for example, the difference between scholarly and other writing. I care very deeply about my writing, and whether I am addressing a scholarly or more general audience (or an advanced scholar vs. student audiene) makes a difference. Likewise when I lecture or do talks. Speaking only of the social sciences (simply because that's what I do), there are some very important differences between scholarly and other writing. The standards of evidence differ, the use of a whole range of rhetorical devices differs; the degree of precision demanded in argument and in language (thus the usual charges of "jargon" against the "academic/scholarly" writer), the standards set for revealing and evaluating the method by one reaches a conclusion; the degree to which illustration can be substituted for evidence, and how one sets the whole. I enjoy switching audiences on the same topic (say, between an academic conference, an undergraduate class, an interview on the radio, a presentation at a local women's organization) partly because of the effort at reconstructing what one is saying and how to say it. There are plenty of books from which one can learn a lot, but which also do not happen to meet the standards of evidence, argument, method, etc. required for many scholarly uses. Faludi's book is a good example. Virginia Sapiro Political Science/Women's Studies University of Wisconsin - Madison sapiro@polisci.wisc.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 14:22:28 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Judith F. Clark" Subject: Re: popular format vs. academic respectability Re Laurie Finke's response to the question concerning academic vs. commercial publishing--- Are folks deluded into beliving that that we who publish via the commercial/trade press route actually earn a living by so doing? I expect that most authors of nonfiction trade books (like myself) maintain at least a part-time job whereby the bills are paid....Like my academic counterparts, I have worked fulltime in university administration/public relations/publications while managing to crank out books and articles. In the 14 years that I've been publishing, I have only once earned royalties in excess of the modest (4-figure) advance normally offered by trade publishers. I have published eight books since 1983 and am still hoping that I can produce something truly commercial so that I can command a bigger advance "next time..." I am not complaining - I love the opportunities that freelance writing affords. It's just that if, as Laurie points out, the academician reaps symbolic capital which can, in turn, be parlayed into material capital (if lucky enough), where does that leave the non-academic whose single hope is for material capital at the outset. If that isn't forthcoming - then what???? Perhaps I should go back to school and complete my Ph.D., the pursuit of which I relinquished because there appeared to be little future in it as an American historian with an interest in women's history/19th & 20th century social history. What do you think, Laurie? Is there still time for me to get on the carousel and go for the brass ring of symbolic capital??!! Oops! Got too wordy. Sorry.... Judith F. Clark@dartmouth.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 11:34:52 -0800 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: SUE MANSFIELD Subject: NWSA CAUCUS & REGION REPORTS Miriam Harris, who edits the NWSA newsletter, NWSAction, has asked me to send this message: To all Coordinators/Representatives of NWSA caucuses & regions: A reminder that the deadline for sending in a report, for publication in the spring newsletter, on the activities/plans of your caucus or region, is MARCH 1ST. Please send your "article" (about 1000 words) to Miriam at P.O. Box 670-665, Dallas, TX 75367-0665 or you can fax it to (214) - 630-1169 Unfortunately, Miriam is not yet on e-mail! If you know the rep for your caucus or region, please pass the request along to them! Sue Mansfield SMANSFIELD@BENSON.CLAREMONT.EDU ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 15:13:23 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Judith F. Clark" Subject: Re: where do they learn Re Theresa's comments on how to reach undergraduate women: why not do more of a good thing - use the concept of "a very traditional women's "thang" e.g., the "tea," and figure out what its correspondants are in the galaxy of activities common to undergraduate women. Politely and in a politic manner "infiltrate," if you will, the very organizations and activities that the typical undergrad woman frequents. Depending on the campus these could be as varied as sororities, honors groups, special interest clubs, community service clubs, intramural sports groups, etc. Go to these "locales" and do the "tea" thing translated for the 18-22-year-old (I'm assuming traditional undergrads, not non-traditional, older undergrads). If it worked for gradns and faculty, it's bound to have some success at the entry-level. Judith F. Clark ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 08:50:25 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Gina Oboler, Anthropology & Sociology, Ursinus College" Subject: Re: I'm Not a Women's LIbber, But. . . .....e always heard the Re: "Bra-Burning" --I have always heard the perhaps apocryphal story that a women's group planned to do this in a demonstration against the Miss America pageant in 1970, but it never happened because they were unable to get a permit to have a fire near the Boardwalk. Does anybody know if this is true? Certainly, there was a brief period when there was much talk (and action) to the effect that "being a Liberated Woman means not having to wear a bra" -- I myself, found out that I hated NOT wearing a bra -- no social movement has only good ideas . But does anyone have any ideas as to why bras, of all things, have been such a key symbol to both feminists and anti-feminists? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 09:15:13 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Gina Oboler, Anthropology & Sociology, Ursinus College" Subject: Re: popular format vs. academic respectability Is it possible that one reason popular works get a bad press with academics is that frequently, in an attempt to make ideas simple and straight- forward enough for a popular audience, important qualifying material/ information gets left out, so that the position espoused ends up being more absolutist than most of us are comfortable with? The author might either do this to start with, or it could result from changes requested by a popularly-oriented editor. Another point to keep in mind: finding the precisely right level of prose for a popular audience is a special skill that not everyone has. It's not easy, as those of our colleagues who usually write more academic work but occasionally write for popular audiences can attest. Not everyone who tries to write a successful popular work can do it. Yet if you do it really well, the potential pay-off is great. So might there be an element of sour grapes in the academic rejection of popularizing? Are academics who put down works aimed at a popular audience (provided the works are well-researched, accurate, and not too over-simplified) just jealous because THEY didn't write that book? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 22:33:09 +0200 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Eileen Boris Subject: history of sexual harrassment I have a student researching state policies towards sexual harrassment in historical perspective and would appreciate any bibliography on the history of sexual harrassment earlier in the 20th century. We have enough sources for the present. The paper is comparative (US and Nordic countries) Please reply privately, especially since I'll be out of town for the weekend and will stop the list during that time. Eileen Boris Eileen.Boris@Helsinki.Fi Thanks in advance. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 13:16:56 -0800 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Harold Frank Subject: academic vs. popular publications "How do universities view publications in popular and other media ?" I read Judith Clark's posting shortly after coming out of a meeting in which the very same subject was discussed at great length and thought I would share with WMST-L what I could from that confidential discussion in view of the interest her posting has generated. The meeting was attended by senior faculty from several institutions, and included among them were women and persons of color. The key idea is that published work which has first been screened by widely acknowledged professional peers through a blind review process has the most clout. Universities like to have on their faculty people who do original and first class scholarship because such faculty tend over time to attract to the university other comparable faculty, better students, funds, and so forth, all of which contribute to the creation of new knowledge, the prestiege of the institution, and its economic health. There are institutions which do not view knowledge creation as their highest goal and as a consequence, typically do not make decisions about faculty tenure, hiring and promotion based on scholarly publication as a principal criteria. Another notion to keep in mind is that there are many more people with Ph.D.'s who seek an academic affiliation than there are academic positions where they may be employed full time. Some would go further and say that there are more people who have published in refereed journals, who can teach well and who will give service to the school and the community who want to be employed as faculty than there are positions. The result simply stated is competition, with original scholarship as the principal and first standard of measurement. A person's teaching capabilities, work on behalf of the school, consulting activities all contribute to tenure and promotinal decisions but refereed publications are the sine qua non for such decisions. In recent years the decision to increase the participation of women and minorities on faculties have resulted in decisons to grant tenure and or promotion based on publication criteria, but without subjecting those people to competition on equal terms with white males. Rather, the final decision has been to compare a woman to other women nationwide, a person of color to other persons of color, etc. Sometimes, the woman or person of color offered a position might not be the best person in her/his field available to an institution, but she will very likely be the preferred person, and better than many if not most men seeking the same position. I hasten to add that I have seen women applicants for faculty positions who are truly world class. Such women are often viewed the same way by several institutions and go, for the most part, to the institution considered most prestiegeous, or to one which will accommodate them in some other way, for example by finding employment for a spouse. Where do books and articles in magazines fit in? Work which has not been subjected to peer review is seen as less credible than referred work. Typically, the decision to publish an article in a popular magazine, or for a publisher to authorize a book is based primarily on the likelihood that doing so will enhance sales, not scholarship. I have a friend who has published more than a dozen books who has never earned tenure. I've read all his works. They are good and interesting. For the most part however, they do not contain original scholarship that would stand the test of debate, or withstand testing with established research methods. I know first hand that he is well liked. We have for years been trying to get him to publish in journals but he will not address his area of interest in a manner acceptable to recognized journals in his field. -- end++++++end++++++end++++++end++++++end++++++end++++++end++++++end+++ + Dr. Hal Frank hfrank@mizar.usc.edu + + University of Southern California hfrank@bcf.usc.edu + + P.O. Box 41992 Phone: (213) 254-1022 + + Los Angeles, CA 90041-0992 FAX: (213) 740-0001 + ****Spring is Coming************************************************* ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 16:03:46 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "linda l. anderson" Organization: Yale University Subject: Re: where do they learn In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 7 Feb 1994 16:21:00 EST from on a recent panel at yale entitled "what is feminism," subtheme, "what are it's uses, what is it good for," i mentioned the fact that in the early 70s in new haven, before women's studies was institutionalized here, the yale and new haven women's centers were one organization and took on what i think is an important enough project to be revived. at a unitarian church off campus for eight or ten weeks on a wednesday night, a series of lectures/discussions called "the new women's course" was held. this was free and at each meeting a presenter would talk about a particular aspect of feminism or the women's movement and then the group would break down into smaller groups and discuss the ideas. the church was always filled and all sorts of women turned out. my interest in reviving this model is to make feminism more accessible to women who cannot or do not wish to enroll in a formal women's studies program, and to give a chance for university students/faculty/staff to teach what we are learning in a broader scope. also, and this is particularly true for yale and some other ivy league/elite schools, it is a practical way of addressing class issues, town/gown splits, community "vs" university feminists. if anyone knows of a similar project now underway, please respond privately to: linda l. anderson (lla@yalevm.cis.yale.edu) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 17:12:00 EDT Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Joan Korenman Subject: Too many messages? Try the digest (User's Guide) Each month, I post sections from the WMST-L User's Guide to remind subscribers of the list's resources and procedures. If changes have been made since the last time a section was posted, the subject header will begin "Revision:". Here is one of the most important sections, describing how to cut down on the heavy mail volume by arranging to receive the digest or the index. Please note that the digest is NOT like the digest option available for most lists--it's much better! 5) "DOES WMST-L EXIST IN A DIGEST OR INDEX FORMAT?" Yes. If you choose the digest option, each day you will receive one large file containing most of the WMST-L messages of the past day (messages that should not have been sent to the list to begin with are omitted). On days when the mail volume warrants it, I'll break the digest into several files rather than one; you'll automatically receive them all. If you would like to receive the daily digest file rather than individual mail messages, you should send the following 2-line e-mail message to LISTSERV@UMDD (if your WMST-L subscription is under your Bitnet address) or LISTSERV@UMDD.UMD.EDU (if your subscription is under your Internet address): AFD ADD WMST-L PACKAGE SET WMST-L NOMAIL Note: If you've subscribed on Bitnet, the digest may arrive as a file rather than as an e-mail message. If you don't know how to receive a file, see section 11 of the WMST-L User's Guide or ask the computer support people at your institution. If you'd prefer to receive the digest(s) inside mail message(s), alter the abovementioned AFD ADD statement to read as follows: AFD ADD WMST-L PACKAGE F=MAIL . However, even if you receive the digest(s) as mail messages, YOU CANNOT REPLY AUTOMATICALLY! If you wish to reply to a message in the digest, you must start a new message and address it either to WMST-L or to the individual. Also, LISTSERV may ask you to set up an AFD password. You're best off not doing so. Finally, if at some point you wish to STOP receiving the digest, either temporarily or permanently, send LISTSERV a message that says AFD DEL WMST-L PACKAGE . If you find the amount of mail from WMST-L daunting, even in digest form, you can arrange to receive just an Index of the day's WMST-L messages; the Index includes the name/email address of the writer, the subject header she/he has provided, the number of lines, and a message number for each message. It is send out shortly after midnight (Maryland time) and looks something like this: Index Date Size Poster and subject ----- ---- ---- ------------------ 06154 02/26 8 From: JLONG@SUVM.BITNET Subject: lesbian reference work 06155 02/26 7 From: Amy Kastely Subject: Women's Centers 06156 02/26 40 From: dklein@TRITON.UNM.EDU Subject: Menopause refs 06157 02/26 19 From: Phyllis Holman Weisbard Subject: menopause 06158 02/26 17 From: P_CAPLAN@UTOROISE.BITNET Subject: library research vs asking the list Suppose you decide that you're interested in seeing the two menopause messages. You can tell listserv to send just those two messages, which are numbered (in the left-hand column) 06156 and 06157. To get these two messages, you have to FORWARD the entire index back to LISTSERV, with one line changed. Near the bottom of the Index, you'll see some lines that look like this: // JOB Database search DD=Orders //Orders DD * Select * in WMST-L.6153-6174 Print /* // EOJ The line you have to change is the one that says: Print You have to change that to read: Print 06156, 06157 Then forward the entire message back to listserv. (The reason you should use the FORWARD function rather than the REPLY function is that many systems add >s when you reply but not when you forward, and the >s confuse listserv.) Listserv will then send you the messages you specify; they will come in a mail message (if you're using Internet) or as a file called DATABASE OUTPUT (if you're using Bitnet). If you don't know how to "receive" a file, see section 11 of the WMST-L User's Guide or ask the computer support people at your institution for help. Contact them also if you have problems forwarding messages. To arrange to get the INDEX rather than individual mail messages (you can't get both--it's an either/or arrangement), simply send a message to LISTSERV@UMDD (if you receive WMST-L at a Bitnet address) or LISTSERV@UMDD.UMD.EDU (if you receive WMST-L at an Internet address) that says SET WMST-L INDEX . If you decide at some point that you want to stop the index, send a message that says SET WMST-L MAIL (if you want to go back to individual mail messages) or SET WMST-L NOMAIL (if you want no mail at all from the list). Joan Korenman Internet: korenman@umbc2.umbc.edu Bitnet: korenman@umbc ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 09:52:23 +1100 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Katrina Schlunke Subject: Voice Revisited I am also interested in 'voice' as a feminist concept and know that there was a small discussion running on the subject a little while ago and hope that the person who posted that kept a list of references and could send it on-Please? I am also interested in 1) The idea that the eye has been priveleged by masculinist discourse over the voice 2) How do women use their voices, linguistically and biologically 3) Womens use of radio and the other technical mediums used for the reproduction and amplification of voice Please help with anything you might think at all relevant-Whether you think it basic or not. Please post privately and I will release a list if anyone would like that Thanks Katrina k.schlunke@nepean.uws.edu.au ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 17:46:01 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Kathy Feltey Subject: Re: where do they learn In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 8 Feb 1994 15:13:23 EST from In response to Judith Clark's suggestion to infiltrate the undergrad groups, I think of it as being open to invitation into their world. For example, some students in a large intro to sociology class invited me to their sorority tea after I used sororities/fraternities as an example of group phenomenon -- they thought I'd like the opportunity to see it up close. I really enjoyed myself (a surprise) and they ended up paying more attention to what I was teaching. This group showed up later in my sociology of women class and, from their account, became known in their sorority as "those feminists." Anyway, one story to support being open to the world(s) of our students, as well as inviting them into our intellectual/political world. Kathy Feltey ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 17:12:00 CST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: LEA MAYBERRY Subject: Re: where do they learn In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue 8 Feb 1994 10:32:03 EST I wish to reply to Judith Clarks' reply. I am a doctoral candidate and also "openly" admitted feminist. The biggest reb uking that I receive is not from male colleagues nore instructors/professors; b ut from female instructors/professors. Such misogynism, I presume. In fact, I recently had to deal with a personal and professional dilemma--a women's studi es faculty member (they are found throughout the university and various depts.) admitted to me that she did not particularly like feminists. Her reasoning, wh en I probed as to why--they (feminists had tried to dissuade her from marrying) . I replied that many feminists are not anti-marriage, nor should any woman ma ke such personal decisions by what others think anyway--or maybe this is just m y personal view. I believe the biggest work for feminists here on this campus is to "educate" other women about what feminism is and what feminists do. Just my thoughts...lea mayberry:) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 19:06:27 -0800 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Brenda Brasher Subject: Re: I'm Not a Women's LIbber, But. . . In-Reply-To: <199402082035.MAA26394@chaph.usc.edu> from "Gina Oboler, Anthropology & Sociology, Ursinus College" at Feb 8, 94 08:50:25 am I have seen a film clip several times that looks like it was made sometime in the 60's & shows several female protestors tossing bras into a round metal trash container filled with burning debris. Has anyone else seen this clip? Do you know when & where it was taken? Since this clip is firmly lodged in my personal repository of startling visual images, I thought the phrase "bra burners" referred to this particular politically symbolic act. Brenda E. Brasher University of Southern California brasher@usc.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 16:34:03 +1300 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Adele Fletcher Organization: University of Canterbury, NZ Subject: Contractual vs "consensual" sex. RE: "Contractual" sexual relations. Someone told me about a distinction between "contractual" and "consensual" sexual relations. However they were not sure where they had got this distinction from. Has anyone seen literature using these concepts? It was possibly in an article or book on prostitution. It seems to me this might be a difficult distinction to apply in a male-dominated culture where women are defined as resources for men and are generally confined to roles of this nature. It might be a matter of manouevering towards consensual activities within a contractual relationship/environment. Please send any suggestions to phil024@csc.canterbury.ac.nz Thank you. Adele Fletcher, Maori/Religious Studies University of Canterbury, N.Z. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 19:44:52 PST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Laurie Zink Subject: the facts about bra burning In-Reply-To: <199402090024.TAA12101@umd5.umd.edu>; from "Gina Oboler, Anthropology & Sociology," at Feb 8, 94 8:50 am Re: "The Truth About Bra-Burners." I dug into my back issues of Ms. magazine to find an article I remembered reading a few years ago. Written by Lindsy Van Gelder, the title is "The Truth About Bra- Burners." In it, she confesses: I cannot tell a lie. I am the Mother of the Myth of the Maidenform Inferno." I saved this article in particular, because I knew I would want to use it in a class some day. Van Gelder explains how she was assigned as a reporter to cover the story of the protest planned against the Miss America Pageant in 1968, being organized by Robin Morgan. There was a plan to fill " a huge Freedom Trash Can into which we will throw bras, girdles, curlers, false eyelashes, wigs, and representative issues of Cosmopolitan, Ladies Home Journal, Family Circle, etc." There is some confusion in memory about whether there was ever a plan to burn anything, but the fact is, nothing was burned. Van Gelder, who found she agreed with everything the protesters were angry about, says she lost "all journalistic 'objectivity' in about 20 seconds." Van Gelder created the term "bra burning" for her article in the New York Post. To further quote from her Ms. piece, "In those days, Dear Reader, we did not wear sports bras, or cute little numbers from Victoria's Secret. Bras were white, underwireless, invariably padded, and looked like they had been designed by NASA, right down to the nose cones...." I recommend the article. See Ms. Sept./Oct. 1992, page 80. Laurie Zink zinkl@ucs.orst.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 06:04:00 GMT0 Reply-To: dbailey@cix.compulink.co.uk Sender: Women's Studies List From: Diane Bailey Subject: services@news.demon.co.uk Information re: Beijing 1995 UN Women's Conference To: support@igc.apc.org, wedo@igc.org, ngoforum95@igc.apc.org CC: (for information): wmst-l@umdd.umd.edu, soc.feminism and alt.internet.services An enquiry on WMST-L produced the information:- > There are a dozen or so conferences about the UN conference in Beijing > on Peacenet. You can find out about how to access peacenet by writing > to "support@igc.apc.org" > > Women's Conference in Beijing. Contact for information: > NGO Planning Committee-Forum '95; ngoforum95@igc.apc.org > Women's Environment & Development Organization (WEDO); wedo@igc.org I believe that APC conferences can be distributed by email to the wider internet. May I, as the woman who was personally reponsible for placing news from the last such Women's conference (Nairobi, 1985) on email, but was very frustrated that the nets were not then linked, ask if you will make information, and relevant discussion, on this important forthcoming international gathering available via the internet to all who may be interested but are committed or restricted to networks or hosts other than your own? Diane Bailey dbailey@cix.compulink.co.uk ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 00:47:01 -0800 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Harold Frank Subject: Glass Ceiling Reports Re: Glass Ceiling Research The U.S. Department of Labor through its Employment Standards Division produced two reports: "A Report on the Glass Ceiling Initiative" and "Pipelines of Progress: an update on the glass ceiling initiative, August 1992" when Lynn Martin was Secretary of Labor. She now has a major consulting project with Touche Ross --the accounting firm, to insure that women are in the appropriate pipelines from which top managers emerge. The reports contain some references including surveys conducted by executive search firms. The relative absence of scholarly citations suggest room for academic research. end++++++end++++++end++++++end++++++end++++++end++++++end++++++end+++ + Dr. Hal Frank hfrank@mizar.usc.edu + + University of Southern California hfrank@bcf.usc.edu + + P.O. Box 41992 Phone: (213) 254-1022 + + Los Angeles, CA 90041-0992 FAX: (213) 740-0001 + ****Spring is Coming************************************************* ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 12:00:00 GMT Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Kathy Ayers Subject: A conference in Toronto? Dear WMST-Listers, I am a post-graduate student at Queen's University, Belfast(So, no I don't know what Gerry Adams voice sounds like) working on a ph.d on women and the use of political coercion. But ther real reason I am sending this query is that one of my supervisor's is wondering about a conference in Toronto, in April(?). I believe this will be a conference on feminist political theory and something about reimaginaning the boundaries of the state. Does anyone have any information? If so, please tell me and I can score brownie points with my supervisors and look like a wonderful, hardworking and thoughtful post-graduate. And if you are wondering about the slang. I am orginally from the states./ Brownie points is not a phrase commonly used here in Northern Ireland. Thanks! m.kathryn ayers psg0004@v2.qub.ac.uk ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 07:23:38 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Jane Elza Subject: Re: I'm Not a Women's Libber, But... In-Reply-To: <199402080902.EAA12464@umd5.umd.edu> I have unfortunately forgotten where i read it, but i do remember reading an article written by a woman who said she attended the demonstration and indeed burnt her bra--or at least singed it. the polyester thing doesn't burn easily. On Mon, 7 Feb 1994, Kathe Davis wrote: > Susan Faludi uses the fact (?) that no bra was ever burned during the > womens' movement to illustrate (yet once more) that the press not merely > distorts in favor of vested interests (surprise), but that it has no > particular reliability at all, at least with regard to women's issues, > freely reporting events and statistics without any verification at all, > and coining memorable -- and damaging -- phrases, like "bra-burners," > that describe nothing more tangible than a patriarchal nightmare. > kathe davis@kentvm.kent.edu (Faludi is BACKLASH, of course.) > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 14:07:00 +0100 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Pirjo Elovaara." Subject: looking for info/women's history in Vancouver Hello! I'm writing this message on behalf of one my library clients. I'm working as a librarian at the Women's studies centre in Lund, Sweden. Now one of our junior scholars is looking for contacts in Vancouver. She needs a name of an university/person/institution in Vancouver who works with questions concerning women's history. Please answer privately! Ps. Thank you for you help already!!! Pirjo Elovaara e-mail:kvivet@gemini.ldc.lu.se ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 08:19:21 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Jo Freeman Subject: Re: the facts about bra burning In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 8 Feb 1994 19:44:52 PST from There was press on "bra-burning" even before the 1968 Miss American protest in response to the advance publicity. I believe thefirst reference to it was in a n Art Buchwald column. I will forward a message I sent privately re: bra burni ng since it now seems to be ofgreater interest. For more information see: a report by one of the participants in the1968 protest in Issue #4 of the Voice o f the Women's Liberation Movement, October 1968, (the first national newsletter ). "Confessions of a Non Bra Burner" byJoanna Foley Martin, Chicago Journalis m review, 4:11 (July 1971), and for context see the section on Media Hostility , pp.111-114 of my book THE POLITICS OF WOMEN'S LIBERATION (1975). ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 08:50:53 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List Comments: Resent-From: Jo Freeman Comments: Originally-From: Jo Freeman From: Jo Freeman Subject: Re: I'm Not a Women's LIbber, But. . . In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 8 Feb 1994 19:06:27 -0800 Those of you who "remember" seeing bras burned shouldn't assume it was done by us "libbers". If WE had wanted to burn articles of female underclothing as an act of symbolic protest, we'd have burned a girdle not a bra. Joreen. ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- re: bra burning..... Sometime in 1969 or 1970, when bra burning was a "hot" top ic in the media, a Chicago radio station did a promo for whichit hired models t o "burn" their bras to grat public amusement. It was definitedly NOT a movemen t event. A photo of it showed up next to a reprint of my article in a Sociolog y textbook. Some photo researcher obviously thought it was the real thing. If you look critically at the photo, it's obviously not a movement event: ther e are lots of men, and the women are well dressed, well coiffed and quite thin. They looked like models. They didn't look like us. Perhaps your film clip w as ofthisevent. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 08:09:36 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Susan Dinan Please remove me from your mailing list. Susan Dinan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 09:14:59 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Debra Cohen Subject: cancel sudscription I would like to be taken off your mailing list dc.8651 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 09:28:13 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Rebecca J Allen Subject: Re: The Glass Ceiling The Center for Advanced Human Resources Studies of the ILR School of Cornell University published BREAKING THE GLASS CEILING by Renae Broderick and Carolyn Milkovich in Oct. 1991. I don't know if they still have copies available or are continuing research in that area, but you might reach them by calling CAGRS at (607) 255-9358 or faxing (607) 255-9862. Becky Allen Cornell University rja1@cornell.edu >1994, Diane W Franklin wrote: > I am writing a white paper on the glass ceiling and would like > information about the following, if anyone on this list has it: > > 1. Recent papers summarizing research in this area and suggestions of > how to obtain them if they are not published and easily available. > > 2. Information on attempts made by corporations to deal with the glass > ceiling phenomenon, particularly programs that have been at least > partially successful. > > 3. Names of people doing research in this area and information about how > to contact them. > > Thank you very much. > > Diane Franklin dwf@world.std.com > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 10:19:38 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Judith F. Clark" Subject: Re: popular format vs. academic respectability Re Gina Oboler's comments on the popular vs. academic thread - This issue of envy may well be bigger than many of us realize. Case in point: Stephen Oates', biographer of MLK, Jr. "Let the Trumpet Sound," Lincoln "With Malice Toward None," etc. has been criticized by some historians for his approach to life-writing. Oates's books are extremely readable, very successful commercially, and yet are also (in the opinions of many) careful researched and well-documented. One wonders whether his recent difficulties (re ultimately unsubstantiated charges of plagiarism) stem, in part, from the envy factor. Judith F. Clark ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 10:59:46 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Seth Godin Subject: Where is bell hooks? As many of you know, we're creating THE INFORMATION PLEASE WOMEN'S ALMANAC & SOURCEBOOK for Houghton Mifflin. It'll be out this fall, more than 600 pages of facts, figures and articles about and by women. We're including about a dozen essays from leading thinkers on a number of issues, and we'd like to ask bell hooks for a short essay. So: --Do you know how to reach her? Email is best, but phone, fax or snail mail will do. --Any ideas on a short, powerful speech or article she's done that you'd like to see included? Thanks as always. Carol Markowitz Editor PS I can be reached by direct email at WITZZ@AOL.COM. Or this list is fine. Thanks. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Seth Godin Productions Inc. & SGP@SGP.COM Yoyodyne Entertainment, Inc. Making the world safe for interactivity ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 09:44:50 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Caroline Brettell Subject: Re: academic vs. popular publications In-Reply-To: <199402090230.VAA00777@umd5.umd.edu> Popular works may be less credible to an academic community that is attempting constantly to justify its existence, but they also communicate ideas to a broader audience and I think this is extremely important. It is also particularly important for feminism and women's issues to have some of us counter loud voices that are out there. Has anyone seen the latest issue of Time magazine?!!!! Frankly, I think that if you can write about research, a field, a body of insights in a readable and accessible way you deserve a medal! To second what somebody else on this list said, I too get very impatient with prose that I have to reread five times to make any sense of. I think we tend to think it must be brilliant if we cannot understand it. I have probably rankled some people with these comments, but I guess I am an advocate of clear writing above all else and of communicating ideas. Caroline Brettell ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 11:00:27 -0500 Reply-To: korenman@UMBC2.UMBC.EDU Sender: Women's Studies List From: Joan Korenman Subject: How to Unsubscribe (SAVE THIS MESSAGE) Thus far this morning, two people have needlessly cluttered everyone's e-mailbox by sending to WMST-L requests to unsubscribe. PLEASE DO NOT SEND MESSAGES ABOUT YOUR SUBSCRIPTION TO WMST-L. If you wish to sign off the list, send the two-word message UNSUB WMST-L (or SIGNOFF WMST-L) to LISTSERV@UMDD (Bitnet) or LISTSERV@UMDD.UMD.EDU (Internet). If sending to one of these listserv addresses doesn't accomplish what you want, try the other listserv address. Also, if you subscribe to the digest, you have to unsubscribe from that as well. Add a second line to the above message and say AFD DEL WMST-L PACKAGE . If you have tried both listserv addresses (i.e., both bitnet and internet) and you still haven't succeeded in unsubbing, write to me PRIVATELY at the addresses below. But please don't do that until you've tried both listserv addresses. Your time may be valuable, but so is mine. Many thanks for your understanding and cooperation. Joan Korenman Internet: korenman@umbc2.umbc.edu Bitnet: korenman@umbc ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 11:19:42 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Paula Gaber Subject: Re: Glass Ceiling Reports For those of you interested in information about the "glass ceiling", the inforM Women's Studies Database has two reports about that topic. The pathnames for these reports are: Women's Studies/Gender Issues/Glass Ceiling/Department of Labor Information Women's Studies/Gender Issues/Glass Ceiling/Merit Systems Protection Board Report If you want the full reports, download the files named "full text". To access the inforM database, telnet or gopher to INFORM.UMD.EDU. (If you do not know how to telnet or gopher, contact a local computer wizard, or try typing "telnet inform.umd.edu" or "gopher inform.umd.edu" at the main prompt of your computer account). Hit return to set the default terminal type or type "?" for a list of choices. Use either your arrow keys or number keys to select -> 4. Educational Resources 16. Women's Studies 7. Gender Issues The Gopher interface has a feature that allows users to send files to their e-mail accounts. Scroll to the end of the file and type "m", or at any time press "q" (for quit), then "m". The inforM system is also accessible by anonymous ftp. FTP to INFORM.UMD.EDU. Login as "anonymous", and use your mail address as a password. Choose the "inforM" directory by typing "cd inforM". The command "cd [directory name]" will change the directory. The commands "dir" or "ls" will display a list of files in that directory. Use the command "get [filename]" to download a file into your account. The directory pathname for the Women's Studies Database is "inforM/Educational_Resources/WomensStudies". Your local Gopher System may be set up to automatically link to the Women's Studies Database. Check the "Other Systems" or "Other Gophers" directory or ask your system administrator for help. Even if you do not have real Internet access, it is still possible to get files from inforM. If you are interested in this option, please email me and I will forward a file written by Mark Whitis that explains how to do this. Please remember that the system is case sensitive. Anything that appears in quotes must be typed exactly as it is here. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me. +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Paula Gaber inforM, Room 4343 Coordinator, Women's Studies Database Computer Science Center gaber@inform.umd.edu University of Maryland (301) 405-2939 College Park, Maryland 20742 =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 11:32:00 EDT Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Joan Korenman Subject: what to do if mail stops (User's Guide) Each month, I post sections from the WMST-L User's Guide to remind subscribers of the list's resources and procedures. If changes have been made since the last time a section was posted, the subject header will begin "Revision:". Here is section six, explaining what to do if mail from WMST-L suddenly stops (answer: give thanks! :-)): ************************ 6) "WHAT SHOULD I DO IF MAIL FROM WMST-L SUDDENLY STOPS?" Note: if you've arranged to receive WMST-L in digest form, skip to section C below. Otherwise, read on. A) If you receive a message from LISTSERV informing you that your WMST-L options have been set to NOMAIL, that means that mail from the list was repeatedly returned as undeliverable, probably because of a mail problem on your system. The fact that LISTSERV's notification reached you indicates that the problem was probably short-lived and is now resolved. You can set yourself back to MAIL by sending the message SET WMST-L MAIL to LISTSERV@UMDD (if you subscribed under a Bitnet address) or LISTSERV@UMDD.UMD.EDU (if you subscribed under an Internet address). If one address doesn't work, try the other. B) If you haven't received a notification, but you also haven't received WMST-L mail for a day, send the following two-word message to LISTSERV@UMDD (if you subscribed under a Bitnet address) or LISTSERV@UMDD.UMD.EDU (if you subscribed under an Internet address): QUERY WMST-L If you get back a message saying that you're not subscribed to WMST-L, send the QUERY WMST-L message to the other LISTSERV address (i.e., if you sent the message to LISTSERV@UMDD, try sending the same message to LISTSERV@UMDD.UMD.EDU). If your message is successful, you should get back a message from LISTSERV telling you how your "options" are set. The key part will look something like this: > > query wmst-l > Distribution options for Jane Doe , > list WMST-L: Ack= No, Mail= Yes, Files= Yes, > Repro= Yes, Header= Short, Conceal= No Your options may vary; the important part is Mail=Yes. If the reply from LISTSERV says Mail=Yes, contact your computer support staff to find out whether they're aware of a mail problem. If they don't know of any problem, contact me privately at KORENMAN@UMBC (Bitnet) or KORENMAN@UMBC2.UMBC.EDU (Internet). If the reply from LISTSERV says Mail=No, that means your subscription has been set to NOMAIL. The most likely explanation for its being set to NOMAIL is that mail started to bounce and so I or my assistant set your subscription to NOMAIL but the notification from LISTSERV bounced, too. In that case, contact your system's computer support staff to find out whether the problem has been solved. If it has, you can set yourself back to MAIL (see section A above). If they aren't aware of a problem, your best bet is to contact me privately. If you have questions or encounter problems, please write to me privately at KORENMAN@UMBC (Bitnet) or KORENMAN@UMBC2.UMBC.EDU (Internet). However, PLEASE TRY THE ABOVE STEPS FIRST!! Under NO circumstances should you send messages about your subscription to WMST-L. C) If you have arranged to get the WMST-L digest and you suddenly stop receiving copies, please write to Ira Gold at IGOLD@UMDD (Bitnet) or IGOLD@UMDD.UMD.EDU (Internet). In your message, tell him whether you receive your digests as files or as e-mail, and try to pinpoint as precisely as possible when you stopped receiving the digests. DO NOT SEND MAIL TO IRA GOLD UNLESS IT SPECIFICALLY CONCERNS A DIGEST PROBLEM! Messages about other problems should be sent to KORENMAN@UMBC (Bitnet) or KORENMAN@UMBC2.UMBC.EDU (Internet). ************************ Joan Korenman Internet: korenman@umbc2.umbc.edu Bitnet: korenman@umbc ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 12:20:18 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Sarah Elizabeth Chinn Subject: "town/gown" WS projects In-Reply-To: <199402082121.AA09529@mailhub.cc.columbia.edu> I found Linda Anderson's comment on the joint Yale/New Haven WS learning project fascinating -- what a fruitful and exciting idea. I know when I was an undergrad at yale in the mid-'80s, the lack of communication between the Yale women's center and the New Haven center was enormous; it wasn't until I workd at the New HVen Battered Women's Project, which was housed at the NH women's center that I found out all the services that were available. At the same time, an informal network k existed between Yale and New Haven feminists through the women's bookstore in town, at which a lot of women bought their WS course books and worked part time. But there was no official connection or communication between women's centers, which was a real shame, since each had a great deal to offer and learn from the other. Sarah Chinn ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 12:27:00 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: RHODA UNGER Subject: Re: academic vs. popular publications As someone who has written a number of texts I am concerned with the idea that original scholarship is the only criterion for hiring, tenure, and promotion decisions. This view leaves little room for either synthesis or theory. One of the biggest problems in social science (particularly psychology) is the proliferation of studies that collect data with no theoretical framework to explain the rationale for that collection nor what the findings mean. Thus, sex difference research which is still popular in psychology becomes explanatory in itself rather than being recognized as a description of effects which must then be explained. Another trend in traditional research is to use female populations in early studies that had been conducted only on males (this is known as the "add women and stir" school of research). These studies frequently pass peer reviews because they are methodologically rigorous even while they lack theoretical sophistication. They may not lead to a researcher being considered "world class," but they are often sufficient for him or her to be regarded as a competent professional. The other point I wish to make in this discussion is that writing a textbook can sometimes be regarded as a political act (we certainly do not do it either for the money or the academic prestige). Most students' acquaintance with our academic scholar- ship is filtered through their textbooks. Textbooks require a great deal of thought about what one would like students to know about a field and how to help them to understand complex ideas. Textbook writers often engage in complex negotiations with their publishers, reviewers, students, and themselves to deliver a package they can live with and respect. These efforts should not be dismissed because they are commercial. Rhoda Unger unger@apollo.montclair.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 10:19:38 PST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Theresa <60840883@WSUVM1.BITNET> Subject: Re: I'm Not a Women's LIbber, But. . . In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 8 Feb 1994 08:50:25 EST from Why are bras such a key symbol? I don't know, but I have always believed it st ems from their containment of women's most obvious signifier of gender: our bre asts. Also, did you ever wear one of those things they used to call a bra in t he sixties and fifties? They were not only uncomfortable, they tried to make y our breasts look like a Wagnerian Valkyri's: very pointed! Madonna has the onl y modern versions of them. I would've burned mine, too. And I still dislike w earing the damn things except when I jog or am otherwise forced by modesty or c omfort to put one on. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 13:47:35 -0200 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Cecilia Maria B Sardenberg Subject: Re: UN Conference/95 In-Reply-To: I have just received an Isis International/Fempress Bulletin on Beijing/95, and will pass some more information for those interested: - Names and Addresses of the Regional Representatives of the NGO Forum Planning Committees: Latin America and Caribbean Virginia Vargas Centro Flora Tristan Parque Hernan Velarde 42 Lima 1, Peru phone: (51-14) 330694 home phone: (51-14) 620443 Fax: (51-14) 339060 email: flora@geo2geomail.org New York Mary Power 866 United Nations Plaza, Suite 119 New York, NY 10017 phone: 212/756-3500 fax: (212) 756-3573 NGO Planning Committe-Forum 95 777 UN Plaza, 8th Floor New York, NY 10017 phone: (212)986-0987 fax: (212) 986-0821 GENEVA Irene Hoskins 20 Chemin Valerie CH 1292 Chambesy, Switzerland phone: (41-22) 758-1176 fax: (41-22) 758-0805 VIENA Ellen Kimmel-McDonnell Auhofstrasse 145 Apt.1 A-1120 Viena, Austria phone: (431) 822-8252 CHINA Yuying Wang 50 Denshikou Beijing, China 100730 phone: 861/512-7711-280 fax: 861/513-6044 Isis International has opened in Red de la Asociation for Progressive Communication, APC, Alternex, two electronic conferences: mul.beij95 - for general info. on the Conference mul.beij95.docs - for oficial documents of the COnference You may also contact: Isis Internacional Casilla 2067 Correo Central, Santiago, Chile phone: (56-2) 633-4582 fax: (56-2) 638-3142 email: isis@ax.apc.org or FEMPRESS Casilla 16637, Correo 9 Santiago, Chile phone: (56-2) 223-2877 fax: (56-2) 209-4360 I will post more information tomorrow to avoid overloading this message with so much. Cecilia Sardenberg NEIM/FFCH/UFBA Salvador, Bahia BRASIL cecisard@sunrnp.ufba.br ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 14:13:44 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Judith F. Clark" Subject: Re: I'm Not a Women's LIbber, But. . . Convulsed with chuckling and incredulity, I feel I must respond to Theresa's last comment on "bra burners." I never, until now, thought of the fifties and sixties as ancient history - but the suggestion that "Madonna has the only modern versions of them ["Old-style" bras]" definitely places me on the upper edge of the age scale, I guess. And I'm only 44. I not only remember those old-style bras, but have seen them recently, outside of Madonna's dressing room: my mother and grandmother still wear them.... Does anyone remember ironing 100% cotton bras to ensure that they were truly pointy (and not merely wrinkly) under our sweaters????????????????????? This has got to be an item for the Material Culture list on H-net. Judith ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 14:24:03 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Jane Hannigan Subject: Re: academic vs. popular publications Reading carefully through the messages in this thread I see a number of significant points: 1.) Hal explains the traditional, and I believe, male view of how academic tenure and promotion committes operate. But he fails to go on and raise the important question of whether this is the only appropriate approach. Yes, we have always looked for refereed publications, scholarly works, etc but should we continue to only seek this category of output. The academy is conservative at best but we are approaching a new century and we are in a networked environment and thus, it might be time to restructure (and even this term distresses me) the way we value the work of a colleague. I am not encouraging sloppy or poor work BUT rather suggesting that work written in comprehensible and even beautiful language should be valued. 2. Laurie raises a power/money issue which is indeed a real one. One can make a small amount of money writing (even academic stuff) but in real figues it is often under $2000. per year--but the point to made is why should anyone belittle this. I'm happy if an article I write earns me a check for $350. and even happier if the circulation of the journal is large an d I might reach more readers. 3. A tone of arrogance--we seem to imply that those who research and write in less obscure ways are in some way lesser--I do not want to perpetuatr the elitist views of Bloom and Hirsch and others--I want to see women reconsider our values on this issue. 4. I have a word of caution because I am a realist--women without tenure need to be sure what the expectations in their institution are--BUT those with tenure can work to interpret, change and even create new approaches. 5. Teaching is an essential part of our lives as academics and often in the selection of the materials we use in our classes we reveale our own perspectives and values. It is so eay to condemn someone's published work with the phrase "it's simplistic" --we need to reconsider our use of that phrase and replacement with pinpointing what is of value. Jane Hannigan@Zodiac.rutgers.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 19:29:00 GMT0 Reply-To: dbailey@cix.compulink.co.uk Sender: Women's Studies List From: Diane Bailey Subject: Information re: Beijing 1995 UN Women's Conference A system error gave the body of this message an incorrect Subject line previously. My apologies. Sent To - support@igc.apc.org, wedo@igc.org, ngoforum95@igc.apc.org CCd To (for information) - wmst-l@umdd.umd.edu, soc.feminism and alt.internet.services The 4th United Nations world conference for Women takes place in Beijing next year. As with the previous conferences (Mexico City 1975, Copenhagen 1980, Nairobi 1985) public information in advance is limited in many countries, despite the conferences: * providing a Forum to which non-official women from any country may attend to meet and network, both with each other and with the official national delegations * potentially being an "hook" upon which useful local iniatives for women might be advanced, if there were public awareness * being major official international UN conferences at which potentially valuable decisions and policies can be made, fully of the level of recent world Environment and Children's conferences, and from which the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and other international treaties, have already emerged. The previous conferences at least had the publicity of being part of the International Women's Decade (in the first place International Women's Year), but since 1985 there has been an increase in the "new media", which includes the internet. Having been deeply involved with attempts in the UK (which is a base for much of the world's news media) to publicise the 1985 conference, I have been becoming increasingly concerned at the lack of advance information and discussion of the forthcoming conference on the net (or in any media visible to myself, for that matter). Reading, as a result of an enquiry by another subscriber to the women's studies list, that UN bodies, and others, officially concerned with the conference have indeed being discussing the event, but that the "public" information has been apparently restricted to just one network, has led me to mail those concerned, as follows:- : An enquiry on WMST-L produced the information:- : > There are a dozen or so conferences about the UN conference in Beijing : > on Peacenet. You can find out about how to access Peacenet by writing : > to "support@igc.apc.org" : > : > Women's Conference in Beijing. Contact for information: : > NGO Planning Committee-Forum '95; ngoforum95@igc.apc.org : > Women's Environment & Development Organization (WEDO); wedo@igc.org : : I believe that APC conferences can be distributed by email to the : wider internet. May I, as the woman who was personally reponsible for : placing news from the last such Women's conference (Nairobi, 1985) on : email, but was very frustrated that the nets were not then linked, ask : if you will make information, and relevant discussion, on this : important forthcoming international gathering available via the : internet to all who may be interested but are committed or restricted : to networks or hosts other than your own? I would urge others to take an interest in this subject, as the lesson from previous conferences has to be that people find it impossible to grasp the significance of something of which they become aware only at the last minute. An examination of news converage in your own country of previous conferences might prove interesting. British coverage has always been virtually non-existent. Diane Bailey dbailey@cix.compulink.co.uk ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 14:55:09 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Delese Wear Subject: Re: academic vs. popular publications In-Reply-To: <199402091728.MAA10030@umd5.umd.edu> from "Caroline Brettell" at Feb 9, 94 09:44:50 am i think of bell hooks' marvelous essay in MS magazine, july/aug 1992, pp. 80-82 (vol.3, no.1).: "work by women of color and marginalized groups of white women...especially if written in a manner accessible to a broad reading public, even if that work enables and promotes feminist practice, is often delegitimized in academic settings. though such work is often appropriated by the very individuals setting restrictive critical standards, it is this work they most often claim is not really theory. it is evident that one of the uses of theory in academic locations is in the production of an intellectual class hierarchy where the only work deemed theoretical is abstract, jaqrgonistic, difficult to read, and containing obscure references. it is easy to imagine different locations, spaces outside academic exchange, where such theory would not only be seen as useless, but would be seen as politically nonprogressive." (p. 80). yep. delese wear dw@neoucom.uhura.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 16:02:48 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: Warning -- original Sender: tag was WMST-L@UMDD.UMD.EDU From: Marilyn Bonnell Subject: NEH Institutes & 2 job openings The following three announcements may be of interest to WMST-L readers: 1) 1994 NEH Summer Institutes 2) Instructor in Women's Studies (half-time) - SUNY College at New Paltz 3) Chair of Women's Studies - U. of Northern British Columbia (Canada) For more information, please contact the people named in the announcements, not WMST-L or me. Joan Korenman (korenman@umbc2.umbc.edu) ************************************************************ 1) NEH 1994 Summer Institutes The Division of Education Programs of the National Endowment for the Humanities is pleased to announce its 1994 Institutes for College and University Faculty. Institutes for College and University Faculty provide opportunities for intensive study of ideas, issues, texts, and historical periods relating to undergraduate teaching in the humanities. They take place in settings with resources suitable for research in the humanities, and they offer an environment in which faculty may examine significant material under the direction of a group of recognized scholars. They thus prepare faculty to return to their classrooms with a deeper knowledge of important scholarship in key fields of the humanities. Institutes are sponsored by colleges, universities, libraries, museums, and professional organizations. They are normally scheduled for a period of four to six weeks during the summer. Participation is open to full-time teachers in U.S. two-year and four-year colleges and universities, with twenty to thirty participants in a given institute selected in open competition by the institute's staff. The study program of an institute is designed to emphasize collaborative work under the direction of a group of scholars. Participants will receive stipends of $250 per week and an allowance toward the cost of travel, room, and board. Prospective participants should write or call the directors of the institutes in which they are interested. There is no need to communicate directly with the Endowment. The institute application deadline is March 1, 1994. The following institute may be of particular interest to subscribers of this bulletin board: Sappho and Lady Mary Wroth: Major Writers of Classical Antiquity and the English Renaissance University of Maryland at College Park May 30-July 1, 1994 Directors: Jane L. Donawerth, University of Maryland, College Park Judith Peller Hallett, University of Maryland, College Park Adele Seeff, Center for Renaissance and Baroque Studies, University of Maryland, College Park Information: Susan Jenson, Sappho/LMW Center for Renaissance and Baroque Studies Room 1120 Francis Scott Key Hall University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742 Phone: 301/405-6830 E-mail: aseeff@umdacc.umd.edu & sj26@umail.umd.edu To receive a complete list of 1994 institutes, on topics ranging from classical antiquity to contemporary philosophy and technology, e-mail a postal address to: nehedu@gwuvm/nehedu@gwuvm.gwu.edu Scholars interested in conducting an institute should contact the Higher Education in the Humanities Program at: Higher Education in the Humanities Division of Education Programs, Room 302 National Endowment for the Humanities 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, DC 20506 Phone: 202/606-8380 E-mail: nehedu@gwuvm/nehedu@gwuvm.gwu.edu *************************************************************************** 2) Instructor in Women's Studies (half-time) As the only comprehensive four-year and graduate public institution along the Hudson corridor, between NYC and Albany, The College at New Paltz has a special responsibility to meet the broad based educational needs of the rapidly growing region. The College has a long-standing commitment to broad educational access, to high academic standards, and to a pluralistic and multicultural student body. The College wishes to announce the following academic openings for FALL 1994. Unless otherwise stated, all positions are tenure-track and require an earned doctorate by September 1994. Salary is dependent upon qualifications and experience. Department of Women's Studies_Instructor. Half-time, one-year replacement. Master's degree, teaching experience & evidence of teaching effectiveness required; Ph.D. preferred. Teach introductory women's studies course & an additional course each semester. Review will begin immediately. Send letter, CV & 3 professional references. Clearly identify the job position you are applying for on the letter & envelope: HAB 902, SUNY The College at New Paltz, New Paltz, NY 12561. The College at New Paltz seeks to maintain a community of diverse scholars. Women and persons of African, Latino, Asian, and Native American descent are encouraged to apply. AA/EOE/ADA. From: The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 26, 1994 *************************************************************************** 3) Chair of Women's Studies The University of Northern British Columbia The University of Northern British Columbia, located in Prince George, BC, population 72,000, is a new Canadian university scheduled to open in September of 1994. This opportunity calls for a Chair of Women's studies, specializing in Feminism and Science, to join our academic team. Your academic background should include appropriate education at the doctoral level as well as one or more of: History of Feminism & Science; Feminist Sociology of Science; Feminist Critiques & Feminist Cultural Critiques of Science & Technology; and Ecological Feminism. Initial appointment will be at the rank of professor and Senior Associate Professors are encouraged to apply. Please forward your resume, quoting Competition No. 90-0115-GM by February 14, 1994, to: Director of Human Resources, University of Northern British Columbia, P.O. Bag 1950, Station A, Prince George, BC V2L 5P2. Fax (604) 960-5695. *Please forward the names and addresses of three references to Professor Deborah Poff, Dean of Arts & Sciences, at the address listed above, or fax this information to (604) 960-5543 IN ACCORDANCE WITH CANADIAN IMMIGRATION REQUIREMENTS, PRIORITY WILL BE GIVEN TO CANADIAN CITIZENS AND PERMANENT RESIDENTS OF CANADA. THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA IS COMMITTED TO EMPLOYMENT EQUITY AND WELCOMES APPLICATIONS FROM WOMEN, ABORIGINAL PEOPLES, PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES, AND MEMBERS OF VISIBLE MINORITIES. From: The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 26, 1994 *************************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 16:05:39 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List Comments: To: wmst-l@umdd.umd.edu Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: Warning -- original Sender: tag was WMST-L@UMDD.UMD.EDU From: Marilyn Bonnell Subject: women and whiteness results I'm posting this information to the list because I think many subscribers may find it useful. Here are the suggestions I received re: my Women and Whiteness research query to the list: Blee, Kathleen M.: _Women of the Klan_ Brady, Maureen: _Folly_ (novel--lesbian/race-relations) Caraway, Nancie: _Segregated Sisterhood: Racism and the Politics of American Feminism_ Erickson, Peter: "Profiles in Whiteness" in the _Stanford Humanities Review_ (Winter, 1993) Fowlks, Diana: _White Political Women_ Frye, Marilyn: essays in _The Politics of Reality_ (1983) Frye, Marilyn: _Willful Virgin_ Hall, Kim F.: in _Women, "Race," and Writing_ Hooks, Bell: "Representing Whiteness" in _Black Looks_ Kaye/Kantrowitz, Melanie: essay in _The Issue is Power_ Pratt, Minnie Bruce: _Rebellion: Essays_ (1991) Rich, Adrienne: selected essays from _Lies, Secrets, and Silence_ (1979) and _Bread, Blood, and Poetry_ (1986) Russo, Ann: essay "We Cannot Live without Our Lives" in _Third World Feminism_ Seagrest, Mab: _My Mama's Dead Squirrel _ Spelman, Elizabeth: _Inessential Woman_ (1988) Ware, Vron: _Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism, and History_ Welch, Sharon: _A Feminist Ethic of Risk_ 1990 Wilson, Barbara: _Murder in the Collective_ (novel--lesbian/race-relations) Young, Lisa: in _Women, "Race," and Writing_ Many Thanks to: Kim F. Hall, Debian Marty, Cynthia Nieb, Tiffany Hogan, Kathleen Barker, Marilyn Edelstein, Lisa Majaj and others whose names I may have misfiled.If anyone still has something to add, let me know privately. Giavanna Munafo gjm9u@darwin.clas.virginia.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 16:07:10 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: lucinda j peach Subject: Re: Recent Resources re Family Hi Liz! I couldn't resist responding to your post just to say hi, even though I'm afraid I'm not familiar with the literature you are trying to educate yourself on. Your guest-edited issue for Bev Harrison looks great--I imagine it took lots of time. I'm starting to gather materials for a women's studies course I'm teaching here at IU in the fall on "Sex, Politics and Law," so if I come across anything that looks useful for you, I'll forward it. Sorry not to see either you or Michael at the last AAR (and I almost always see at least Michael at the IU Reception!)--barely saw our mutual connection Jan Tarlin. Hope your teaching is going well. Please send my regards to Michael and tell him I asked how his dissertation is going! Are either of you planning to attend the AAR in Chicago this year? Best regards, Lucinda Peach Religious Studies IU, Bloomington ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 16:09:02 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List Comments: To: WMST-L@umdd.umd.edu Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: Warning -- original Sender: tag was WMST-L@UMDD.UMD.EDU From: Marilyn Bonnell Subject: Films: Fifth of Five Organizations with Women's Videos The following are organizations that provide women's videos or information on women's videos. Her Own Words (Women's History, Literature, & Art) P.O. Box 5264 Madison, WI 53705 608/271-70083 National Women's History Project 7738 Bell Road Windsor, CA 95492-8518 Phone: 707/838-6000 Fax: 707/838-0478 WAVE: Women's Audiovisuals in English: A Guide to Non-Print Resources in Women's Studies University of Wisconsin System Room 430 Memorial Library 728 State Street Madison, WI 53706 608/263-5754 Wolfe Video P.O. Box 64 New Almaden, CA 95042 800/6425247 Women Make Movies 462 Broadway, Suite 501 New York, NY 10013 212/925-0606 Fax: 212/925-2052 Gaea Honeycutt GaeaH@edc.org ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 16:19:01 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: STRETCH OR DROWN/ EVOLVE OR DIE Subject: Re: academic vs. popular publications I would agree completely with Rhoda Unger's remarks on textbook publishing and as the author of a textbook myself was not suggesting that we should be scornful of such publishing. I was trying to make a statement about some of the ways in which economics drive our [meaning the academy's] assessment of various forms of writing, not judging those forms. I myself think that all the various forms of writing we have talked about--scholarly publications, popular books, textbooks--serve different and important purposes. I use all of these forms in my teaching and even sometimes in my research. Laurie Finke finkel@kenyon.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 16:14:31 CST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: rebecca hill Subject: Re: "the middle class woman" I have been noticing recently that there's a trend among students (both grad and undergrad) to argue that middle-class white women are not only priviledged because of race and class but that they really are just "whiners" who should be glad to be living a life of leisure (one student's paper on Kate Chopin)..... I had not felt this way before, but it does seem to me that gender (when it's not a discussion of a "gendered representation" of, say, a steel mill) is slipping away as a category that even feminists take seriously these days. Has anyone else noticed this or am I just in a bad mood? -Rebecca Hill, hillx018@maroon.tc.umn.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 14:49:24 -0800 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Nancy Naples Subject: Re: I'm Not a Women's LIbber, But. . . In-Reply-To: <199402090611.BAA06555@umd5.umd.edu> Yes, In fact, I recently used the video "With a vengeance" in my women's studies class. It is a very interesting, brief review of the struggle for reproductive rights. I highly recommend it. Although it was produced a number of years ago (sorry I don't remember the date), it was well received by the students. It treats the issue of white bias within the movement. The film clip of the Miss Amer contest is included with the bra burning episode. Nancy Naples, UCI nnaples@uci.edu On Tue, 8 Feb 1994, Brenda Brasher wrote: > I have seen a film clip several times that looks like it was > made sometime in the 60's & shows several female protestors > tossing bras into a round metal trash container filled with burning > debris. Has anyone else seen this clip? Do you know when & where it was > taken? Since this clip is firmly lodged in my personal repository of > startling visual images, I thought the phrase "bra burners" referred to > this particular politically symbolic act. > > Brenda E. Brasher > University of Southern California > brasher@usc.edu > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 14:42:50 LCL Reply-To: RGINZBERG@EAGLE.WESLEYAN.EDU Sender: Women's Studies List From: Ruth Ginzberg Organization: Philosophy Dept., Wesleyan University Subject: "Which Publisher/Press" Thread Just an anecdote on the "whose books, published by whom, how valued" thread: A couple of years ago I wrote a book review for a widely circulated academic feminist journal. In the review, in which I reviewed 4 books, I mentioned that 2 of the 4 books had been published by one of the "less prestigious" presses (which, of course I named by name, as was required since it was a book review article), and that those were actually the better 2 of the 4 books. I went on to say that I thought it was important for us to remember whose values and interests were being served by the rankings of the reputations of one publisher/press over another, and that as part of our feminist scholarship, we MUST remember to evaluate a work on its merits and not on the prestige factor of the press out of which the work was issued. Well, I'm sorry to report that most of what I said on this point was edited, changed or omitted by somebody at the journal for which I wrote it, before it went to press. What actually wound up in print was a vague reference to judging a book on its merit, but it completely omitted everything I had said about the reputations for "prestigiousness" of various presses, and about paying careful attention to whose interests those reputations serve. Apparently there is too great a taboo against one Press printing anything potentially "damaging" about another Press, for such words to be able to make it into print. ----------- Ruth Ginzberg (rginzberg@eagle.wesleyan.edu) ------------ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 18:30:48 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Peggy Quinn Subject: Re: I'm Not a Women's LIbber, But. . . maybe -- I don't remember ironing bras, but we sure did mash them smooth when they came out of the dryer. It was the crumbly foam inside that really made them pointy and uncomfortable. Peggy Quinn ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 18:46:23 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Peggy Quinn Subject: Women with disabilities I am conducting a research project involving women who have disabilities. If you are, or if you know, such a person please ask them to contact me. I can send the survey on email or by snail mail. The purpose of the study is to learn more about the lives of women FROM the women themselves. Thanks in advance for your help. Peggy Quinn School of Social Work University of Texas at Arlington Box 19129 Arlington, TX 76019 email b408pjq@utarlvm1.uta.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 18:48:33 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Peggy Quinn Subject: email surveys For a month I have been sending out surveys over email. The response has been good - not excellent. Is there any literature about conducting research using internet, etc. Peggy Quinn b408pjq@utarlvm1.uta.edu: ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 21:32:27 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Sherry Linkon Subject: Feminists vs. non-feminists in classroom I had an interesting conversation with some students after class today, who told me they felt silenced by a small core of vocal, ardent feminists in the class. I have to agree that 2 students in particular made their attitudes known both vocally and in their facial expressions (and some side whispering during class) in a way that might easily make other students feel foolish or uncomfortable talking (in this case, putting down women who read romance novels -- some students enjoyed the one we read, but after thesecomments, they felt ashamed to admit it). The students who said they felt silenced pointed out that they do not have as much experience as other students do in classes that encourage people to share their opinions, and they feel shy in general terms. They said that they felt the class discussion was fairly balanced, but that they felt these students were creating an uncomfortable atmosphere, and I can see their point. Does anyone have ideas about how I ought to handle this? I don't want to silence either group, and I'm tempted to begin class on Monday with raising this issue, in hopes that some open discussion will help -- but I don't want to put those shy students on the spot or put down the more vocal ones. What do you think? Sherry Linkon, linkon@unix1.cc.ysu.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 21:36:22 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Christy Langley Subject: Re: "the middle class woman" In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 9 Feb 1994 16:14:31 CST from Forgive me for posing this question like this list in reply form, but I am a novice at e-mail and list-servs. Apologies to those offended. I am a female college student who was sexually harassed by an avid feminist and WOST professor at my university. Essentially, this professor and Iwere alone in her car at night. She had offered to give students a ride back to their car after class and I--being afraid to walk in the dark alone-- accepted. Just the second night of being in the car alone, she reached over and touched me on the knee. She had a sexual gleam in her eyes. I was "trapped" in her course at that time and was too scared and confused to tell anyone that the same professor who spoke out against women being harassed had done exactly that to me. She did other things, like brush up againtst me. Often when we were in conferences alone, she would flirt with me by tapping me on the leg with her foot. I thought I would die. I ended up reporting her and the EEO officer is taking it very light. She has done everything but laugh in my face. The whole experience has not left me disillusioned about women's studies, fortunately. I still am a feminist. Indeed, I have thoroughly enjoyed the discussions on this list. I was hoping that someone could refer some works--written in particular by women authors on the topic of sexual harassment--in particular female-female sexual harassment. I live in Bible Belt, NC and people tend to keep very quiet about this topic, particularly when the element of lesbianism is introduced. I appreciate any and all responses to my request. ********************* * Yours truly, Dawn * ********************* **************************************************** * Yours truly, |Technical Writing Program * * Dawn |ECU, Greenville, NC 27858-4353 * * |pslangle@vm1/pslangle@cis. ecu. edu* **************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 21:59:32 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Arnie Kahn Subject: repeating introductory material I'm teaching Psychology of Women right now. About 1/2 the students are WS minors and the other half have never had a WS course. It seems important, at least w/in the first few weeks, that we introduce, for the latter half, basic feminist consciousness (for lack of a better term. The WS minors find this frustrating. They've been there (in a number of courses) and would like to "get on with feminist psychology." One solution would be to require Intro to WS before taking Psychology of Women, but that would severely restrict the number of students, especially psychology majors, who could get into the class. Thoughts? Arnie ******************************************************************************** Arnie Kahn, Psychology, JMU, Harrisonburg, VA 22807 (703) 568-3963 - day fac_askahn@vax1.acs.jmu.edu (703) 434-0225 - night fac_askahn@jmuvax (703) 568-3322 - fax ******************************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 22:07:09 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Ann M. Woodlief" Subject: "Southern Women in Communities" conference The Virginia Humanities Conference will focus on "Southern Women in Communities" at its annual meeting this spring, for anyone interested in attending. It will be April 7-9 at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, VA. Lee Smith will be the keynote speaker and there will be sessions on "Healing Communities," "Conformity and Transgression," Southern Women and Feminist Theories," "Folk Traditions and Women," "Growing up FEmale in the South," "Teaching Women's Studies in the South," "Flannery O'Connor and Southern Spirituality," "Negotiating Community in Southern Women's Autobiography," "A Workshop on Colonial Virginia Women," "Communities of Virginia Women," "Nineteenth Century Diaries and the Whittle Sisters, "Women's History in the American South," "Southern Women in Film and Popular Culture," "Southern Women's Critique of Social Conventions," "Southern Motherhood," "Southern Gendered Space and the Land," "Crossing the Color Line in Southern Communities," "A Celebration of 'Outrageous' Southern Women, " "Retrieving Lost Traditions in Southern Women's Culture," "Southern Women and Music," "Women and Language," "Race and Class in Southern Women's Fiction," "Southern Women and Drama," "Social and Political Dis-ease and the Post-War South, "Voice and Narrative in Women's Literature in the South." There will also be dramatic, artistic, film, and musical presentations. For more information, contact Roberta Rosenberg at (804) 594-7149 or 594-7024. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 22:42:13 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Edwards, J. Michele" Subject: Need men & feminism bibliog. I am currently working with a student doing an independent study about self-identified feminist men in the music field (e.g., Fred Small, the Flirtations). I'd like to supply the student with a bibliography of about 6 books and articles which could be identified as major contributors to the discussion of men and feminism ("major" in terms of frequently cited or widely recognized or offering particularly innovative discussion on this topic). Please send citations to me privately and I will plan to post a composite bibliography. Thank you in advance for your assistance. Michele J. Michele Edwards (Music Dept.; Director of Women's Studies) 612/696-6521 Macalester College, St. Paul, MN 55105 Internet: edwards@macalstr.edu Bitnet: edwards@macalstr ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 23:58:00 EDT Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Joan Korenman Subject: 1 CFP, 2 jobs, 1 query The following announcements may be of interest to WMST-L readers: 1) CFP: American Women Writers of Color Conference 2) Job: Secondary Educ./Women's Studies (Towson State Univ.) 3) Job: Women's Resource Center Director (Dartmouth College) 4) Query: Amer. Women Writers of Polish ancestry - reply privately For more information, please contact the people named in the announcements, not WMST-L or me. Joan Korenman (korenman@umbc2.umbc.edu) ************************************************************** 1) Call for Papers: 4th National American Women Writers of Color Conference October 14-16, 1994, Sheraton Hotel, Ocean City, Maryland Focusing on African American, Native American, Asian American, and Latina Writers. We invite individual and panel submissions on all aspects of American Women Writers of Color with certain sessions focusing on the following issues: Literary Theory; Storytelling; Poetry, Drama, Autobiography; Race and Gender; Gay/Lesbian Issues; Family Relationships; Politics; Eco-feminism; Teaching Multi-Cultural Literature Send 300-word individual/panel abstracts by April 1, 1994, to: Connie Richards or Thomas Erskine Department of English Salisbury State University Salisbury, MD 21801 (410) 543-6445 FAX: (410) 543-6068 **************************************************************** 2) Position: Secondary Education -- Women's Studies Institution: Towson State University Location: Maryland Secondary Education/Women's Studies: Joint appointment in Secondary Education and Women's Studies. Assistant Professor, tenure track. Doctorate required. Salary competitive. The position requires a strong background in issues of gender and multiculturalism, knowledge of or experience in curriculum transformation work in higher education, and familiarity with curricular and pedagogical issues in public schools. Teaching would include Secondary Education courses in foundations and/or learning theory and/or general methods of instruction, and introductory and advanced courses in Women's Studies. The Women's Studies portion of the position will initially involve working in Towson's newly-created National Center for Curriculum Transformation Resources on Women. Send letter of application, curriculum vitae, and at least four reference letters to Professors Elaine Hedges and James Binko, Co-Chairs, WMST/SECN Search Committee, Towson State University, Towson, Maryland 21204, by February 15, 1994. Reference letters may arrive by March 1. The application letter should include a statement explaining the nature of your interest in the position and those qualifications that you think particularly fit you for the joint appointment. For further information write or phone Elaine Hedges, 410/830-2860. Towson State University is an AA/EO employer. Minority candidates are especially encouraged to apply. From: The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 9, 1994 **************************************************************************** 3) WOMEN'S RESOURCE CENTER Director Dartmouth College seeks to recruit a director for its Women's Resource Center. The director is responsible for the overall administration and programming of the Women's Resource Center. Works with and advises students, develops and implements programs that address the needs of all women at Dartmouth. Supervises, with the Director of the Student Health Center, the Coordinator of Sexual Awareness and Abuse Programs. Terminal degree with at least three years of administrative experience in the area & women's issues and gender-related concerns, preferably in an academic setting, or master's degree with five years' relevant experience, or the equivalent. Excellent communication and interpersonal skills. Demonstrated ability to create innovative programs and to relate to people of diverse backgrounds. Ability to exercise discretion and independent judgment in representing the Women's Resource Center and women at Dartmouth College. We will begin to review resumes on March 15, 1994. Please submit application and resume to: Ivy Schweitzer, Chair, Director of Women's Resource Center Search Committee, 6003 Parkhurst, Room 111, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755-3529. An Equal Opportunity Employer. From: The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 9, 1994 *************************************************************************** 4) NOTE: IF YOU REPLY TO THIS REQUEST, DO SO PRIVATELY, NOT TO WMST-L: For a research project, I am trying to identify American women writers of Polish descent. Because I am not a member of this list, please send names/titles to me at the address below or to the following E)Mail address: JWHITE@CMSUVMB.BITNET or JWHITE@CMSUVMB.CMSU.EDU. Thanks for any suggestions you can offer. Thomas S. Gladsky Department of English Central Missouri State University Warrensburg, MO 64093 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 00:29:56 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Robin Yaffe HPERD Subject: Re: repeating introductory material In-Reply-To: <9402100301.AA02245@moe.coe.uga.edu> from "Arnie Kahn" at Feb 9, 94 09:59:32 pm I recently took a Psychology of Women course that did not spend any time of feminist consciousness. I was very disappointed and it really limited many students' abilities to see broader issues, beyond the acceptance of the empirical psych. research presented in class. It was a real disappointment. Robin Yaffe ryaffe@moe.coe.uga.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 00:31:46 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Margaret Susan Thompson Subject: Re: repeating introductory material Why not turn this into a learning opportunity for the "repeat" students, by having them give presentations on the material (perhaps a panel or panels)--or dividing the class into small groups, mixing those familiar with some of the material with those who are new to it? These groups might be able to produce cooperative projects. Also, I recall the comment by a professor (who later became my dissertation advisor) during my first semester in grad school. I said I wanted to take his seminar but that I'd read a lot of the required books as an undergraduate. He say, "You can read them again." And he was right.... Peggy Margaret Susan Thompson thompson@maxwell.syr.edu Dept. of History, 145 Eggers Hall Syracuse University Syracuse, NY 13244-1090 315-443-5882, 443-2210 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 23:28:49 -0800 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: hcbolak@CATS.UCSC.EDU Subject: Re: repeating introductory material the way I try to deal with this problem is to address at an early time in the course both how a feminist perspective is crucial to psychology of women and how psychology is crucial to feminism. I keep this as an organizing focus throughout the course. I also do some processing around how information is power and how we need to use our different backgrounds to 'empower' others rather than to 'overpower' them. Sometimes, I have the WS students facilitate small group discussions in sections in areas which they feel strong and I try to give the same opportunity to psych students who might have a stronger methodological background. I always have a small group of more advanced students and I have them do special projects like writing a book review and an essay on how a psychological perspective has enhanced their feminist understanding of a certain issue. I hope this helps. it is a difficult issue! Hale ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 23:37:11 -0800 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: hcbolak@CATS.UCSC.EDU Subject: awp meeting The next AWP meeting is happening in Oakland between March 3 through March 6. As the (only self identified) feminist psychology Masters program in the country, the program at New College of California is interested in meeting interested students and faculty at our lunch get together on March 4, Friday between 12 and 1:30. The place will be announced in the supplemental program. See you there! Hale Bolak ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 10:03:00 GMT0 Reply-To: dbailey@cix.compulink.co.uk Sender: Women's Studies List From: Diane Bailey Subject: Re: I'm Not a Women's LIbber, But. . . Gina Oboler, Anthropology & Sociology, Ursinus College" wrote:- > Re: "Bra-Burning"... Certainly, there was a brief period when there > was much talk (and action) to the effect that "being a Liberated > Woman means not having to wear a bra" and Brenda Brasher replied:- > I have seen a film clip several times that looks like it was > made sometime in the 60's & shows several female protestors > tossing bras into a round metal trash container filled with burning > debris. Has anyone else seen this clip? but Laurie Zink helps:- > Lindsy Van Gelder... confesses... There is some confusion in memory > about whether there was ever a plan to burn anything, but the fact is, > nothing was burned. I too have seen film of this. Perhaps it was "recreated" in a movie, perhaps one made for television. Has anyone any idea which it might have been? Certainly, even if it has never been more than a myth, the idea and the phrase has been a mill-stone round the neck of the women's movement ever since; an instant key to trivialising arguments and turning attention to a woman's physical attributes instead of her rights. It would be interesting to trace the establishment of the story as legend. Diane Bailey dbailey@cix.compulink.co.uk ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 06:40:53 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Jo Freeman Subject: Re: "the middle class woman" In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 9 Feb 1994 16:14:31 CST from This is recent? That was the response when the moveemnt startedin the mid-sixt ies!!! Feminists have always been scapegoated for being middle-class, as thou gh that somehow undermined any claim forjustice. When was the last time a "male" moveement was criticized for being middle-class? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 07:40:20 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Nelda K. Pearson" Subject: Re: silencing students In-Reply-To: <199402100534.AAA25392@umd5.umd.edu>; from "Sherry Linkon" at Feb 9, 94 9:32 pm I have been doing alot of work on the issue of the "unvoiced" student in the classroom especially with regard to race, class, gender, sexual orientation leading to power differentials in the classroom. Yes, meet your feminists vs. nonfeminists (are you sure this is the case and not vocal /opinionated vs.nonvocal/less opinionated) with and open discussion on how you wish to hear *all* students and *all* viewpoints. Then solicit why people have not contributed, *listen* to them with respect, and thank them for their contribution to class. There are various specific techniques and strategies that we have developed in our diversity training for teachers but *attitude* is more important than any specific technique. You can not send the message that *you* think their position or statment is trivial, inferior, wrong, etc. Nelda Pearson npearson@ruacad.ac.runet.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 07:56:27 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Michelle Reynolds Subject: references on (identity) performance I am seeking references to feminist theory on the notion of "performance" in terms of performing identity, such as Judith Butler's work. Along the same lines, I am trying to gather work on, or using, "fiction-theory", originally from Quebec Feminists incl. Nicole Brossard. Any suggestions for reading would be very appreciated. Private responses can be sent to me at: reynolds@bosshog.arts.uwo.ca thanks, -michelle ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 08:24:49 EDT Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: nijole Benokraitis Subject: Re: "the middle class woman" Sure, if you are talking about social class, many middle class women (regardless of race) are "better off" than their working class counterparts. However, 1992 census data show that, as a group, U.S. women with a college degree earn about the same as men with a high school degree. If we compare middle class women to middle class men (regardless of race), the former have a lot to "whine" about--salaries, promotions, double days, getting credit, etc. etc. That's what often puts ME in a bad mood! For the student with the sexual harassment experience...Couldn't get through privately, but you might consider joining SASH (Sociologists Against Sexual Harassment). The moderator is Phoebe Staumbaugh (azpxs@asuacad.bitnet). The subscribers often give good advice, in my opinion. n. Benokraitis ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 09:11:20 EDT Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List Comments: Converted from OfficeVision to RFC822 by PUMP V2.2X Comments: Resent-From: "Linda Lopez McAlister " From: "Linda Lopez McAlister " Subject: Feminism and Peace--Spring '94 Hypatia ****Linda Lopez McAlister ****HYPATIA ****University of South Florida. SOC 107 ****Tampa, FL 33620 (813) 974-5531 *** Forwarding note from SWIP-L --CFRVM 02/10/94 09:08 *** Received: from CFRVM.BITNET by CFRVM.CFR.USF.EDU (Mailer R2.08 PTF008) with BSMTP id 3237; Thu, 10 Feb 94 09:08:44 EDT Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 09:07:21 EDT Reply-To: Society for Women in Philosophy Information and Discussion List Sender: Society for Women in Philosophy Information and Discussion List Comments: Converted from OfficeVision to RFC822 by PUMP V2.2X From: "Linda Lopez McAlister " Subject: Feminism and Peace--Spring '94 Hypatia To: Multiple recipients of list SWIP-L HYPATIA: A JOURNAL OF FEMINIST PHILOSOPHY SPRING, 1994, Vol. 9, No. 2 Special Issue on Feminism and Peace Guest Editors: Karen J. Warren and Duane L. Cady TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication To Rigoberta Menchu Introduction Karen J. Warren and Duane L. Cady Feminism and Peace: Seeing Connections Cheney Ryan The One Who Burns Herself For Peace Bat-Ami Bar On Meditations on National Identity and Friendship Carol Adams Bringing Peace Home: A Feminist Philosophical Perspective on the Abuse of Women, Children, and Pet Animals Barbara Andrew The Psychology of Tyranny: Wollstonecraft and Woolf on the Gendered Dimension of War Jane Caputi Unthinkable Fathering, Incest, and the Bomb Laura Duhan Kaplan Women as Nurturer: An Archetype Which Supports Patriarchal Militarism Larry May and Robert Strikwerda Men in Groups: Collective Responsibility for Rape Lucinda J. Peach An Alternative to Pacifism? Feminism and Just War Theory James P. Sterba Feminist Justice and the Pursuit of Peace Review Essays Alison Bailey Mothering, Diversity, and Peace Politics Book Reviews Lori Gruen Rocking the Ship Of State: Toward A Feminist Peace Politics edited by Adrienne H arris and Ynestra King, and Exposing Nuclear Phallacies edited by Diana E. H. Russell ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 09:11:48 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Myers, Joann" Subject: Re: "the middle class woman" In-Reply-To: In reply to your message of THU 10 FEB 1994 07:24:49 EST The movement in the US has tended to be made up of mostly middle classed women (oh, some where we forgot we were supposed to be a classless democracy), these are the women who had the education, time (?) to 'fight' the discrimination, working class women were too busy trying to make ends meet (subsistance living). But being middle class has its stigma--so much that one of the leading feminists once hurled the epitaph of "middle class professor" at me (the epitaph had nothing to do with the discussion we were having at that point). Also, if you survey most americans they will say that they belong to the middle class... Another interesting point is that the women's movements in other countri countries tend to be made up of working class women. I was talking with a woman from El Salvador and her resoning was that it was the working woman (legal and "illegal") who had the most to gain from the movement, the women who were middle class already had access to education, better jobs etc. Has there been research that supports this annecdotal theory? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 09:14:30 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: STRETCH OR DROWN/ EVOLVE OR DIE Subject: Re: repeating introductory material I really liked the idea of having the students themselves do the introductory material, calling on the more experienced to educate the less experienced. It might also work with some introductory psych material. That is if you are teaching a psych of women course and some students know psychology but not feminism and others know feminism but not psychology, you could have each review introductory material for the other. Another idea I saw when I sat inon the class of a colleague here who was teaching psych of women. She presented more or less introductory ideas about feminism but she did it developmentally. The class had some students in it whom I know from my own classes were sophisticated feminists and other students who might not have been. But she didn't couch the introductory material as such. Instead she talked about developmental stages feminists might go through,using an essay published inPsych of Women Quarterly (15 (1991) 181-201. Written by Adena Bargad and Janet Shibley Hyde, it was callled "A Studyof Feminist Identity DEvelopment in Women." As I reflect on the class, it strikes me as a wonderful way of introducing unfamiliar students to feminism while giving those already knowledgeable something new to think about. ,,, (o o) +-------------------------------oOOo-(_)-oOOo--------------------------------+ | Laurie Finke, Women's and Gender Studies, Kenyon College | | Gambier, OH 43022 phone: 614-427-5276 | | home: 614-427-3428, P.O. Box 731 mail: FinkeL@Kenyon.Edu | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ () () ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 08:35:00 CDT Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Virginia Sapiro Subject: Re: repeating introductory material In our Women's Studies program we are beginning to have to confront the issue of overlap among women's studies courses because of complaints from students. We actually have three intro courses (one oriented toward the humanities, one toward the social sciences which I teach, and one on biology/health/psychology). We have to be very careful not to make them too similar because students take more than one. But as our students track through the major especially, some note they encounter some of the same readings or concepts too often. (One student refcently told me, "If I have to read _This Bridge Called My Back_ one more time, I'll scream -- this is the fourth time!"] I think one problem for a lot of us is that because this is an interdiciplinary field with no longstanding categories and boundaries as most of our traditional disciplines have, we may in fact offer more overlap than we should. In our program we now receive each others' syllabi, which helps. But I suppose we also have to become more trusting that our colleagues have actually taught our students something! Virginia Sapiro Political Science/Women's Studies U. of Wisconsin - Madison sapiro@polisci.wisc.edu PS Pls excuse my modem's lack of intelligence ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 08:52:36 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Susan Harrison Subject: Re: I'm Not a Women's LIbber, But. . . RE: Brenda Brasher's recollection of women throwing bras into round metal trash can burner.... I, too, have an image like that in my head. I have been thinking i was remembering a still photo.... and thought it was representing the alleged bra-burning done at the Miss America pageant (that has here been dubbed bogus media hype). Course, it certainly is possible the media staged the picture.... Susan Harrison St. John's University Collegeville, MN -- ------------Susan Harrison-----SHarrison@CSBSJU.edu------------- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 10:18:54 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Jane Braaten Organization: College of Charleston Subject: Re: "the middle class woman" I think we mislead ourselves if we accept to uncritically the notion that we (feminist academics) are uniformly middle class, WASPish, etc. Many of us have been through a number of class experiences, acquiring survival skills that sensitize us to the experiences of the women who we teach and work with, even though as professors our incomes are (sometimes barely) "middle class." I too have had that epithet tossed my way once or twice, and I find it pretty irritating since I've had to work very hard to make my way in an institution (academia) in which it does tend to be assumed that one's behavior and assumptions will conform to WASP expectations. I'm uneasy when people from professional families, whose parents passed along to them the rules of the professional game, and provide them with trust funds or down payments on houses are uncomfortable with my own domestic and personal standards. This mutual discomfort wouldn't arise if we recognized that to call someone middle class is almost a tautology, and that it is untrue to our real experience. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 10:17:50 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Rosa Maria Pegueros Subject: Women in Latin America vs. U.S. Women, in theory The idea that working women in Latin America have more to gain from the women's movement than elite women is written about in Francesca Miller's *Latin American Women and the Search for Social Justice* (University Press of New England, Hanover, NH 03755. 1991.) Rosa Maria Pegueros (PEGUEROS@URIACC.URI.EDU) Dept. of History University of Rhode Island ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 09:58:29 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Susan Harrison Subject: Re: academic vs. popular publications RE: the relationship between scholarly writing and dense or obscure texts.... More than once i've heard here the assumption that clear writing does not get scholarly acclaim. Finally i must point out that that is a leap. ALL refereed journals do not turn down articles on the basis of the ideas being too clearly presented, although there are some referees who do. My husband is a film professor with a great deal of publishing success in both refereed and nonrefereed journals. Being a top notch teacher, he takes alot of pride in being a clear and precise writer, and since i (who knows little about film history, theory and criticism) edit all his work, he is constantly challenged by my need to understand every sentence. It is true that he has received criticism from an occassional critical annonomous reader that his writing is too "journalistic," but for every one of those there often are two who praise him for clear and accessble presentation. And once an editor chose to publish in spite of 2 rejections and only 1 acceptance, because his ideas needed to get out there and his article was almost camera ready. There are some terribly difficult texts out there. But i believe it's a copout to blame lack of publishing success on clear writing. If anything, as we all struggle with deeper and deeper levels of information overload, i predict clear writing is becoming more valuable! -- ------------Susan Harrison-----SHarrison@CSBSJU.edu------------- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 10:46:54 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Chris Jazwinski Subject: Re: Feminists vs. non-feminists in classroom > I had an interesting conversation with some students after class today, who >told me they felt silenced by a small core of vocal, ardent feminists in the >class. I have to agree that 2 students in particular made their attitudes >known both vocally and in their facial expressions (and some side whispering >during class) in a way that might easily make other students feel foolish >or uncomfortable talking (in this case, putting down women who read romance >novels -- some students enjoyed the one we read, but after thesecomments, >they felt ashamed to admit it). I deal with these kinds of issues all of the time when I teach Psychology of Women. During the first class meeting I talk about how the topic of psych of women is more emotionally involving than let's say learning and memory. I explore reasons for this, for example the fact that people have many unexamined assumptions and beliefs about what women are like, and what are appropriate roles for women in society. Because some of these beliefs may actually be false (e.g., there is research on gender differences in abilities, etc.), people may get defensive. They may also feel defensive if they hear that others have very different opinions from their own, which they believed were the "correct" beliefs. I then make the point that differences in opinion are expected and encouraged, and that controversy is valuable and even fun. I also clearly state that just because we disagree with someone doesn't mean that we can't still show respect to them. As a result of this preamble I find that I have few problems with intolerance. I also model tolerant behavior. I often disagree with students or point out what I think are holes in their arguments. They do the same to me, which I think is great (critical thinking is going on). All throughout we are respectful. However, (and this has never happened) I would probably be stronger in my response if students responded in oppressive ways to one another. I do always try to get the students to respond to one another first if possible. I think that I get a lot more learning and even attitude change with what I think is a more subtle approach. Chris Jazwinski Professor of Psychology St. Cloud State University St. Cloud, MN 56301 612-255-3271 JAZ@TIGGER.STCLOUD.MSUS.EDU ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 10:47:19 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Chris Jazwinski Subject: Re: repeating introductory material >I'm teaching Psychology of Women right now. About 1/2 the students >are WS minors and the other half have never had a WS course. It seems >important, at least w/in the first few weeks, that we introduce, for >the latter half, basic feminist consciousness (for lack of a better >term. The WS minors find this frustrating. >They've been there (in a number of courses) and would like to "get on >with feminist psychology." > >One solution would be to require Intro to WS before taking Psychology >of Women I have the same situation when I teach Psy of Women. I also have a number of human relations minors. I don't do an extended coverage of feminism. There is just too much psych to cover. I also require each student individually or in a small group to do a class presentation in which I require an awareness of feminism. What I tell the students at the begninning is that the course is made up of diverse students, and that I need to strike a middle of the road approach so I don't frustrate anyone too much. Then I tell them that I expect the women's studies students and the human relations students to help me teach the course by contributing their expertise to a feminist analysis of the psychological topics that we cover. And they do this and it's great. Chris Jazwinski Professor of Psychology St. Cloud State University St. Cloud, MN 56301 612-255-3271 JAZ@TIGGER.STCLOUD.MSUS.EDU ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 09:03:58 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Peggy Quinn Subject: Re: Feminists vs. non-feminists in classroom Sherry;, Your modeling of listening to both groups of students is a good start. I would also agree with you in bringing up the issue at the start of class. Reminding students that all opinions are valued -- even those you don't agree with. Feminism is supposed to involve inclusion. Peggy b408pjq@utarlvm1.uta.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 10:30:44 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Judith F. Clark" Subject: Re: Feminists vs. non-feminists in classroom Re Sherry Linkon's request concerning classroom discussion strategies: I have facilitated discussions among students, and other groups of people, whose points of view differ. Invariably, there are one or two folks who are inclined to forget their "good manners" and who tread very heavily on the toes of others in the group.... I try, at the outset, to post guidelines for discussion, e.g. use of "I" statements (rather than trhe more accusatory "you..."), remembering that we come together to share viewpoints and NOT to change (or attack) others' views, a reminder to challenge IDEAS rather than people. I guess in situations where one faction is being outright rude, it might help to speak to her/him/them privately, after or before class . It usually is the case that we don't intend to hurt the feelings of others - I hope. But sometimes people who are entrenched find it virtually impossible to admit that other positions may have validity for other people. Admittedly, it is real difficult to maintain an atmosphere that fosters discussion, however, when the group consists of people who won't "agree to disagree." Judith F. Clark ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 10:35:26 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Judith F. Clark" Subject: Re: "the middle class woman" Dear Dawn: How terrible for you to feel as though your concerns abou;unwanted attention were not taken seriously. I have no concrete suggestions except to say that there probably will be other times when you run into similar sexual and non-sexual harassment. Sometimes you can get it "taken care of," other times it's just another unwanted part of life - like dented car bumpers and broken promises. Someone (I forget who) once said, that which doesn't kill you will make you stronger." I think it's a useful word to keep in mind. Good luck and keep us posted on the list about how you're doing. Judith ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 11:30:49 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: ROHE000 Subject: Position Announcement: Psychology Message-Id: <10FEB94.12277206.0029.MUSIC@SLUMUS> Date: Thu, 10 Feb 94 11:22:03 EST From: ROHE000 To: Subject: Position Announcement: Psychology --------------------------- Original Message --------------------------- Following is a description of a job opening in Psychology. Inquiries should be sent to the address given; e-mail inquiries will not be accepted. Please feel free to forward this notice to individuals or to other lists. ===================================================================== Assistant Professor Personality Psychology St. Lawrence University A full-time, tenure-track position at the Assistant Professor level is available beginning in the Fall term, 1994, at St. Lawrence University. The position would entail teaching three courses per semester and conducting research with undergraduates. The courses would include Personality, Community, and Introductory, as well as a specialty course in an area such as Cross- or Multi-cultural Psychology. The Psychology Department has approximately 125 majors, 10 full-time Ph.D. faculty members, and one academic support person. All first year students at St. Lawrence participate in a First Year Program, an interdisciplinary, team taught, core course which emphasizes the development of writing skills and critical thinking. Teaching in this program is encouraged during one's tenure at St. Lawrence. The successful candidate should have a Ph.D. in Psychology by September 1, 1994, but an ABD with previous teaching experience will be considered. Applicants should send a letter of application, vita, teaching evaluations (if available), representative preprints/reprints, and three letters of reference to: Dr. Ronald Sigmundi Personality Search Committee Department of Psychology St. Lawrence University Canton, NY 13617 (fax: 315/379-5804) The closing date for applications is April 20, 1994. St. Lawrence University is an Affirmative Action / Equal Employment Opportunity employer. Women, minorities, and persons with disabilities are encouraged to apply. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% %% %% Robin O'Hearn *** *** %% %% Dept. Of Psychology ** ** ** %% %% St. Lawrence University ** ** ** %% %% Canton, NY 13617 * ** ** %% %% ** %% %% (315) 379-5118 ROHE@SLUMUS.BITNET ** %% %% ** %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 08:50:50 -0800 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Brenda Brasher Subject: Re: "the middle class woman" In-Reply-To: <199402101520.HAA08716@chaph.usc.edu> from "Jane Braaten" at Feb 10, 94 10:18:54 am While it may be true that not everyone in academic life comes from the middle (plus) class, I consistently find that higher education as an institution is structured upon the assumption that one has middle class economic, symbolic and etiquette resources at one's disposal. As someone who comes from a lower working class family background -- my grandparents didn't make it through grade school, my mother finally finished high school when I was half way through my BA, my father was a manual laborer -- I have found it an incredible struggle to get through the system even though I've been recognized as "bright" and "promising" & received a number of fellowships & awards. For instance, I'm interviewing right now for my first teaching post and at the school I like best I was told there was no money for moving expenses (though the school is located several states away from where I now live) AND that I wouldn't get my first paycheck until early October (although I'm supposed to be prepared to go in and teach three classes starting in late August). I guess if I had family money or outside resources, I could look upon this structured pay gap at a time of sizable expense as a regretable inconvenience...but as someone without such resources it seems like one more painfully high barrier that those whom the system was NOT designed around have to scale in order to become academics. Brenda E. Brasher University of Southern California brasher@usc.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 09:21:44 PST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Theresa <60840883@WSUVM1.BITNET> Subject: Re: "the middle class woman" In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 10 Feb 1994 10:18:54 -0500 from Jane Braaten makes the very good point that not all academic women are WASPS or will adhere to WASPISH values. In fact, so many women in my discipline now se em to come from blue collar backgrounds (or in some cases, no collar) that I wo nder how much the image of academe as WASPish is itself a myth perpetuated by t hose who want to keep academe elitist? Certainly English studies (my field) be gan as a rich man's field, and I do think most of the people in it are from the more privileged financial groups, but is that a university-wide phenomenon? I think also that in English, since so many women return to school (or attend col lege for the first time) later than most men and enter into fields where women might seem more acceptable, the demographics of at least these fields have bee n significantly altered. As for the epitaph of "middle class professor," that has never been an issue in my classroom for the 6 years I have been teaching... It helps to talk about class struggles both within and outside of feminist disc ourses. The toughest question I raise in class is the one about class: how do we determine class in a society where the myth is there is no class structure? My partner swears that my education has placed me firmly in the middle class. I think the fact that I was raised in a working class neighborhood and that my mother was a waitress (and many many more interesting life challenges like welf are and teen pregnancy) have forever shaped my thoughts into a working class po sition. So, how is class determined in academe? How is class to be understood in the U. S.? Theresa 60840883@wsuvm1.csc.wsu.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 12:36:33 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Connie Koppelman Subject: position at SUNY Stony Brook State University of New York at Stony Brook Stony Brook, NY 11794-3456 Constance E Koppelman Womens Studies 516 632-9176 10-Feb-1994 12:29pm EDT FROM: CKOPPELMAN TO: Remote Addressee ( _wmst-L@umdd ) Subject: position at SUNY Stony Brook Barbara Baskin Social Sci. Interdiscp. 516 632-7695 08-Feb-1994 10:32am EDT FROM: BBASKIN TO: Constance E Koppelman ( CKOPPELMAN ) Subject: Network Dissemination & Thanks The Social Sciences Interdisciplinary Program invites applications for a tenure track appointment at the assistant professor level, commencing in September, 1994. Duties: teaching undergraduate courses in the Child and Family Studies Program in 2 out of the following 3 areas: Public Policy Issues; Minority Child and Families; and/or Abuse and Neglect of Women and Children. Candidates should have Ph.D. and strong commitment to teaching and research. Competitive salary. Send letter of application, vita, and 3 letters of recommendation to Dr. Barbara Baskin, Chair of Search Committee, Child and Family Studies, State University of New York, N 533 Social & Behavioral Sciences Bldg., Stony Brook, NY 11974-4333. Closing date for application is Feb. 15, 1994.* Stony Brook is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer and educator. (*Just discovered original announcement didn't go through network.) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 10:28:25 -0800 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Betty J Glass Subject: Re: Extended time toward tenure In-Reply-To: <199402040350.WAA06161@umd5.umd.edu> A similar note: On a walking tour of Carson City, Nevada, a historian noted that indentured prostitutes were required to extend their time for pregnancy and their menstrual periods. Betty Glass Univ. of Nevada, Reno glass@UNR.edu On Thu, 3 Feb 1994, MARY E. FISCHER wrote: > It is interesting to note that women who were indentured servants were > required to extend their indenture for one year if they had a child. > ---:---:---:---:---:---:---:---:---:---:---: > > Mary E. Fischer > > Mary-Fischer@uiowa.edu > > ---:---:---:---:---:---:---:---:---:---:---; > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 13:37:58 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Rosa Maria Pegueros Subject: Working Class Academics Temple University Press is going to publish an anthology NEXT winter called, *This Fine Place So Far From Home: Voices of Working Class Academics* edited by Carolyn Leste Laws and Barney Dews of the University of Minnesota. The anthology consists of autobiographical as well as theoretical essays. I contributed an autobiographical essay. While it may be that there are now more working-class women coming into the academy, I believe that Paul Fussell in his book, *Class* points out that academia is one of the professions that draws in the brightest of the working class. The thing is that once you are in the academic profession, with all of the perks if not the salary of the middle-class, are you still truly working class? I think that the waters get pretty muddy at that point, although having had that class identification MAY make you sympathetic towards students who came from a similar background, and will certainly inform your scholarship. In terms of women's studies, I think what complicates matters is the tendency to look only to the writings of white middle-class women or women of color who echo the mainstream thinking, and a tendency to ignore more critical voices. Rosa Maria Pegueros, Dept. of History, Univ of Rhode Island PEGUEROS@URIACC.URI.EDU ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 10:51:16 -0800 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Nancy Naples Subject: Re: repeating introductory material In-Reply-To: <199402100550.AAA27628@umd5.umd.edu> I have also faced this problem in my upper division sociology of gender class. When the class size is small enough to permit, what has worked is to incorporate the "experts" (those with more background in women's studies, feminism) to assist in framing the background material. They feel their knowledge base is respected and feel directly included in shaping the early part of the course. It sometimes help to break into small groups to share stories about coming to consciousness around gender (an early assignment I use - gender autobiographies). Unfortunately, next quarter I'm scheduled to teach a large section of sociology of gender (200 students) and I don't know how it will work. We do have small discussions required and they could possibly serve the same function. Nancy Naples, UCI, nnaples@uci.edu On Wed, 9 Feb 1994, Arnie Kahn wrote: > I'm teaching Psychology of Women right now. About 1/2 the students > are WS minors and the other half have never had a WS course. It seems > important, at least w/in the first few weeks, that we introduce, for > the latter half, basic feminist consciousness (for lack of a better > term. The WS minors find this frustrating. > They've been there (in a number of courses) and would like to "get on > with feminist psychology." > > One solution would be to require Intro to WS before taking Psychology > of Women, but that would severely restrict the number of students, > especially psychology majors, who could get into the class. > > Thoughts? > > Arnie > ****************************************************************************** ** > Arnie Kahn, Psychology, JMU, Harrisonburg, VA 22807 (703) 568-3963 - day > fac_askahn@vax1.acs.jmu.edu (703) 434-0225 - night > fac_askahn@jmuvax (703) 568-3322 - fax > ****************************************************************************** ** > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 14:17:39 LCL Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Ruth Ginzberg Organization: Philosophy Dept., Wesleyan University Subject: Re: repeating introductory material >class. When the class size is small enough to permit, what has worked is >to incorporate the "experts" (those with more background in women's >studies, feminism) to assist in framing the background material. They >feel their knowledge base is respected and feel directly included in This can be very good, but especially in programs which don't have a well-defined progression, or sequencing, of WS courses, one might want to be attentive to how much the more advanced students are being asked to offer their expertise to others *rather than* being introduced to new material, themselves. I am not suggesting not to do this, but I am offering a caution not to let advanced students participation be more and more like TA-type work, to the point where they might well ask why they are paying, rather than being paid, to participate in those courses. I think this is a real problem in classes which may well have students with anywhere from 0 to 4 or 5 or 9 or 10 previous courses in the topic. It is almost impossible to teach in a way that the students with 0 WS courses prior to that one and the students with 7 or 8 WS courses prior to that one, both get equally challenging intellectual experiences out of the class. ----------- Ruth Ginzberg (rginzberg@eagle.wesleyan.edu) ------------ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 14:19:49 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Pat Murphy Subject: Intro to WS sequence problems From: UNO::MURPHY "Pat Murphy" 10-FEB-1994 11:03:36.67 To: IN%"listserv@umdd.umd.edu" CC: MURPHY Subj: Intro to WS sequence problems At our college we have a problem similar to the one being discussed in terms of psych of women. We offer around 20 electives for the minor and one required core course. While most electives are offered on a regular basis (1-2 times a year), the introductory core course is offered whenever someone can get release time from their home department to teach it. There is apparently no budget for staffing the course. We are working on solving this. Our other dilemma, is that the intro core course enrolls students who have already had 6 women's studies courses as well as students who have had no previous courses. Any suggestions? We also have limited funding for film rental or purchase. We are looking for a video that would be inexpensive to purchase that could be used in a variety of women's studies courses. Thanks for any assistance. Pat Murphy Murphy@uno.cc.geneseo.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 15:09:06 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Claire Alexander Subject: Re: Feminists vs. non-feminists in classroom In-Reply-To: <9402100229.AA13345@mace.cc.purdue.edu>; from "Sherry Linkon" at Feb 9, 94 9:32 pm >Does anyone have ideas about how I ought to handle this? I don't want to >silence either group, and I'm tempted to begin class on Monday with raising >this issue, in hopes that some open discussion will help -- but I don't want >to put those shy students on the spot or put down the more vocal ones. What >do you think? There is an article in a Dale Spender collection about education (sorry i don't have ref and my books are home and computer in lab) about a study: She gave a woman student a tape recorder and directions to be quiet. Then next day processed who had spoken in class. It was a mixed sex class and the 'conclusion' was that men talked a lot, made points, usupred the floor, etc, but women were alertr to who had spoken and took concern to see that all had a turn. Wonder if using that would help process not only the classroom you describe but problematize the two categories of how we communicate. claire alexander vva@mace.cc.purdue.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 15:37:00 EDT Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Joan Korenman Subject: Job/Conference Notice Policy (User's Guide) Each month, I post sections from the WMST-L User's Guide to remind subscribers of the list's resources and procedures. If changes have been made since the last time a section was posted, the subject header will begin "Revision:". Here is section twelve, dealing with the list's policy about job and conference announcements: ******************* 12) "MY UNIVERSITY HAS A JOB OPENING. CAN I POST AN ANNOUNCEMENT ON WMST-L?" WMST-L welcomes the posting of job and conference announcements, calls for papers, and the like, as long as the announcement has some connection to Women's Studies. Announcements without such a connection should NOT be sent to WMST-L. The wish to reach more female candidates, however laudable, is NOT adequate reason to post non-Women's-Studies announcements. Heavy mail volume is a persistent problem on WMST-L; the list cannot accommodate the increased volume that a more liberal posting policy would bring. (Keep in mind that each year, there are literally thousands of academic job openings. Most institutions wish to show that they have tried to reach female and minority applicants. Whereas some commercial publications charge hundreds of dollars to carry even a small ad, WMST-L is free. Thus, unless we restrict postings, the list is likely to be INUNDATED with job announcements.) ************************ Joan Korenman Internet: korenman@umbc2.umbc.edu Bitnet: korenman@umbc ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 13:45:16 -0700 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: joan gabriele Subject: Re: Feminists vs. non-feminists in classroom Regarding feminists vs. non-feminists in the classroom: you might also consider it talkers vs. non-talkers. When a few people seem to dominate the discussions repeatedly sometimes I take the time to talk with them after class and ask them to wait awhile before talking because some people have a slower response time than others. I emphasize that I do think what they also have to say is important but not to feel bad if I wait and (seemingly) ignore them if their hands are up. Otherwise, I might say right in the class to everyone: If you are a person who talks a lot, you might want to use some restraint sometimes and be conscious of the quieter people. If you don't talk a lot I hope the issues raised in here will encourage you to contribute to the discussion. I know that silence isn't equal to not having an opinion. Sometimes I just pick on people arbitrarily. All this usually occurs within the context of discussing the dynamics of small and large group discussions so no one seems offended. We also (in my women's lit class) frequently discuss silence and voice so it seems appropriate to consider our own habits and the classroom dynamic. It helps (if you run a discussion-oriented class) to start off the semester talking about this kind of thing. Frequently students bring it up anyway themselves in office hours or at other times. Joan Gabriele gabriele@spot.colorado.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 10:24:21 -0800 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Lynne Swackhammer Subject: religious abuse In-Reply-To: <9402100050.AA19901@tolstoy.u.washington.edu> Hello, all-- Has anyone any information about religious abuse? I am looking specifically for information pertaining to women being abused in the context of mainstream religion. Bibliography, perhaps? Please reply privately-- Lynne Swackhammer lynne@u.washington.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 17:00:52 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List Comments: To: WMST-L@umdd.umd.edu Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: Warning -- original Sender: tag was WMST-L@UMDD.UMD.EDU From: Marilyn Bonnell Subject: Re: women and mass media info request "Warning: The Media May Be Hazardous to Your Health" Produced by Media Watch. Very well done and recent video on violence against women and the media. 60 minutes available $40 for individuals, $150 for institutions (+$5 shipping) from Media Watch, P.O. Box 618, Santa Cruz, CA 95061-0618. (408) 423-6355 Hope that helps. Dawn Atkins Body Image Task Force spirit@armory.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 17:01:50 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List Comments: To: WMST-L@umdd.umd.edu Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: Warning -- original Sender: tag was WMST-L@UMDD.UMD.EDU From: Marilyn Bonnell Subject: Films: First of Five Several weeks ago, I began gathering women's film titles for postings on HandsNet. Those who responded asked that I share the lists on WMST-L. This lists mainstream films, the second lists documentaries and non-popular, the third lists WEEA films, the forth lists WEEA films distributed by others, and the fifth lists organizations that distribute women's films. Gaea Honeycutt GaeaH@edc.org -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mainstream Women's Films The following is a listing of mainstream/popular films with strong and/or memorable female characters found at your local video store or theater. HOME VIDEO Baghdad Cafe Beaches Camille Claudel Coal Miners Daughter The Color Purple Daughters of the Dust Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart Entre Nous Fried Green Tomatoes Gas, Food and Lodging The Getting of Wisdom The Handmaid's Tale Heartland I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings I've Heard the Mermaids Singing Lady Sings the Blues A League of Their Own Lianna Little Vera Little Women The Long Walk Home Marilyn Mermaids My Brilliant Career The Nasty Girl Norma Rae One Sings, the Other Doesn't Passion Fish Places in the Heart Prince of Tides A Room of One's Own Shame She's Gotta Have It Silkwood Steele Magnolias Stella Strangers in Good Company Tell Me a Riddle Terms of Endearment Thelma and Louise What's Love Got to Do with It Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown CURRENTLY AT LOCAL THEATERS Farewell My Concubine Heaven and Earth The Joy Luck Club Like Water for Chocolate The Pelican Brief The Piano Shadowlands Summerhouse ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 17:02:02 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List Comments: To: WMST-L@umdd.umd.edu Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: Warning -- original Sender: tag was WMST-L@UMDD.UMD.EDU From: Marilyn Bonnell Subject: Films: Two of Five Women's Documentary Films Many of the following women's documentary films may be obtained through your local video store or an independent video distributor. Judy Chicago: The Birth Project Killing Us Softly Maxine Hong Kingston: Talking Story Maya Angelou: Rainbow in the Clouds Slaying the Dragon (images of Asian American women in film) Speaking Our Peace (women in peace movements) Still Killing Us Softly Taking Our Bodies Back OTHER FILMS Gay Youth (40 minutes with accompanying study guide) Wolfe Video P.O. Box 64 New Almaden, CA 95042 800/642-5247 Running Mate: Gender and Politics in the Editorial Cartoons (47 minutes) First Run Icarus Films 153 Waverly Place Sixth Floor New York, NY 10014 800/876-1710 Fax: 212/989-7649 Women Seen on Television (10 minutes, 50 seconds) Letting Go Foundation, Inc. 02000 SW Palatine Hill Road Portland, OR 97219 503/635-7511 Gaea Honeycutt GaeaH@edc.org ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 17:02:16 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List Comments: To: WMST-L@umdd.umd.edu Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: W: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: Warning -- original Sender: tag was WMST-L@UMDD.UMD.EDU From: Marilyn Bonnell Subject: Films: Fourth of Five WEEA Films Distributed By Others With Silk Wings: Asian American Women at Work (4 videos) National Asian American Telecommunications Association CrossCurrent Media 346 Ninth Street, Second Floor San Francisco, CA 94103 415/863-0814 Attaining Equity and Excellence in Postsecondary Classroom Interaction of Deaf Students Barbara Bodner Johnson Gallaudet University Washington, DC 20002 202/651-5530 Disabled Women and Girls: Networking across the Generations YWCA/NYC 610 Lexington Avenue New York, NY 10022 212/673-4284 Mixed Messages: Teens Talk about Sex Romance, Education and Work Breaking Through: Portraits of Winners The NETWORK, Inc. Publications Department 300 Brickstone Square, Suite 900 Andover, MA 01810 508/470-1080 Competing Voices: The Administrative Interview Competing Voices: The Administrative Challenge Center for Educational Equity American Institutes for Research P.O. Box 1113 Palo Alto, CA 94302 415/493-3550 You Are the Game: Sexual Harassment on Campus Indiana University Field Services Department Bloomington, IN 47405-5901 812-855-8087 Breaking Stereotypes: Teens Talk About Raising Children Educational Equity Concepts, Inc. 114 East 32nd Street, Suite 701 New York, NY 10016 212/725-1803 Nothing But Options Math/Science Network 678 13th Street, Suite 100 Oakland, CA 94612 510/8936284 We All Count in Family Math EQUALS University of California Lawrence Hall of Science Berkeley, CA 94720 510/642-1823 Women in Science Videotape Series Agency Instructional Technology (AIT) Box A 1111 West 17th Street Bloomington, IN 47401 800/457-4509 Ms. 99-128: Theatre Arts for Female Offenders Institution Programs, Inc. P.O. Box 18583 Oklahoma City, OK 73154 405/752-2198 Positive Images: Portraits of Women with Disabilities Women Make Movies 462 Broadway, Suite 501 New York, NY 10013 212/925-0606 Just Between Sisters: Futures Unlimited Consortium for Educational Equity Rutgers University Livingston Campus #4090 New Brunswick, NJ 08903 201/932-2071 The Sooner the Better The Time Has Come Spectrum Media 58 Hovey Street Watertown, MA 02172 617/491-4300 Gaea Honeycutt GaeaH@edc.org ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 15:11:14 -0800 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Bryan Strong: Psychology / UC-Santa Cruz" Subject: Pop culture / family Christine DeVault and I are beginning to work on the new edition of our college textbook on marriage and the family and are writing on depictions of marriage, family, and personal relationships in popular culture and the mass media (TV, films, magazines, and bookss). We'd be interested in hearing about your teaching ideas or approaches, research, bibliographies, or anything else that might be of use ..... We'll post the material to the list when we get it together in intelligible form. Please send responses to bartleby@cats.UCSC.EDU unless you believe the list might also be interested. Thanks for your help ..... Bryan Strong Psychology Board of Studies University of California-Santa Cruz bartleby@cats.UCSC.EDU / bartleby@cats.UCSC.BITNET ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 16:21:46 -0700 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Ruth Dickstein, University of Arizona Main Library" Subject: WOMEN'S ECONOMIC SUMMITT Has anyone heard about the Women's Economic Summitt? A women named Gillan Rudd or Gillian Rudd was quoted last fall as announcing that there would be such a meeting. I have a faculty member who is trying to tack down this information. Thank you. Ruth ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 18:46:16 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: May Jafari Subject: subscribe subcribe may jafari ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 20:51:19 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Gina Oboler, Anthropology & Sociology, Ursinus College" Subject: Re: academic vs. popular publications I just wanted to point out something about Susan Harrison's response to this issue. Her husband writes very clearly and intelligibly, and for every editor who turns him down because his prose is too "journalistic", there are two who praise him for being clear and accessible. This implies that one- third of the editors he deals with do, indeed, discriminate against clear prose! As a firm believer that we ought to be able to express even difficult ideas in a way all intelligent persons ( I use my non-college-educated mother as my standard) can understand, and that far from being criticized for doing this, we should get extra credit for it, I'm appalled by such a statistic. Susan is making the case that clear writing IS valued in academe, but the evidence presented could easily be read as showing that it is devalued. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 09:56:59 +0800 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Lynne Alice Subject: Research on incest and hysteria and multiplicity A friend has asked me to post this for her. Please reply either to this address or by snail mail to her addresses below. Thanks. Sarah Jones : I am writing a Ph.D in the areas of incest, hysteria, madness and multiple personality syndrome. I'd like to communicate with others working in similar materials. I'm interested in the politics of producing texts that specifically do not acknowledge the link between these 'illnesses' and cerytain socio-familial practices. Freud's denial of real incest is a case in point. Two disparate aspects of my research will be to consider how philosophical texts mobilise metaphors of schizophrenia, madness etc along with looking at issues to do with women recovering from incest abuse. Sarah Jones School of Humanities Murdoch University Perth, Western Australia 6150 or : 73 McKimmie Road Palmyra WA 6157 Lynne Alice Sociology and Women's Studies Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia 6150 tel. 339.7097/360.2616 fax 310.1899 email alice@csuvax1.csu.murdoch.edu au ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 20:53:46 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: STRETCH OR DROWN/ EVOLVE OR DIE Subject: Re: "the middle class woman" While I think we do assume that all members of academia are middle class (and perhaps even many are if we look at salary) but I think there may be more working class refugees in academia than we let on. I remember I think an essay by Joan Scott on the history of the history profession (although I may be misremembering) in which she talked about the shift in history as a discipline as more an dmore people entered universities from other classes. Certainly after WWII through the gi bill more first time college students than ever entered the university. Terry Eagleton deals with class shifts within the English professoriate that followed wwi in England, so the issue of class in academia has not been unremarked. And any way how do we define class? A nurse is a professional and so is probably considered a member of the "middle class" Is a plumber? But doesn't a plumber make more money than a nurse? Isn't it generally true that women have to have more education to do jobs that tend to earn less than those men occupy? Aren't there many working class families in which the wife has a professional job (nurse, teacher,etc.)? I suspect the concept of class in this country is extremely muddled and not just because we all think we belong to the middle class (I think teh statistic someone mentioned is that 93% of all Americans consider themselves middle class). I just wanted to obfuscate the issue a bit. Laurie Finke finkel@kenyon.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 18:29:06 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: rebecca hill Subject: Re: "the middle class woman" On Thu, 10 Feb 1994 06:40:53 -0500 (ES, Jo Freeman wrote: >This is recent? That was the response when the moveemnt startedin the mid-sixt >ies!!! Feminists have always been scapegoated for being middle-class, as thou >gh that somehow undermined any claim forjustice. When was the last time a >"male" moveement was criticized for being middle-class? .. This was my thought exactly and it concerns me that it's returning with such ferociousness that I feel like assigning Christine Delphy's critiques of MLF (from Close to Home 1970!) to my leftist friends and students....the thing I wonder is whether it's possible to get beginning students of women's studies to understand race, class, and gender as anything but "add ons" or dichotomies of oppressor/oppressed that exclude all the attention to detail that the whole gender race AND class paradigm is supposed to install. Instead it seems like gender, race, and class means paying attention to race and class unless you're talking about white women etc etc etc AGGGGH. -rhhillx018@maroon.tc.umn.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 21:28:45 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Gina Oboler, Anthropology & Sociology, Ursinus College" Subject: Re: email surveys Members of the WMST-L, please forgive me for replying to the list, but I tried t o send my message to Peggy Quinn privately and for reasons I don't understand it was returned. I have also used E-mail for a survey. I sent a questionnaire about gender and readers' preferences to the SF/Fantasy Forum on Compuserve. The response was phenomenal. The obvious problem with this is that respondents are not a representative sample of anything. Even a random sample of such a population wouldn't be very useful, because there's every reason to believe, w ith the kinds of issues I was asking about, that a sm ample top-heavy with "computer nerds" would be systematically unlike a more general population. What I did, therefore, was use the Compuserve forum to test and refine a pilot questionnaire. When I had what I thought was a workable instrument, I used it with a random sample of SF/Fantasy readers taken in an environment likely to have a less obviously skewed population (a Con). I think issues of representativeness are the big problem with on-line surveys, though they have great potential for pilot studies. It would be a big mistake to generalize conclusions reached from a study of an on-line population to much of anything else. I'd love to discuss this issue more with Peggy or anybody else who's interested. Reply to me privately: roboler@acad.ursinus.edu roboler@acad.ursinus.edu (Gina Oboler) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 22:32:42 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Beatrice Kachuck Subject: Re: where do they learn In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 7 Feb 1994 10:21:05 EST from the "take your daughter to work" campaign is an interesting idea. however, it foregrounds an problem that comes up in various ways in feminist scholarship movement work: it's an interesting idea for middle-class women. it received a great deal of media attention, became a defining attribute of feminism. can we imagine women working in factories or fast-food shops, doing domestic work bringing their daughters to work? what of the daughters who work, illegally in many cases because they're under 14 in sweatshops or accompany their mothers there because it's the safest or only place for a mother to keep her young child. what a mockery the "take your daughter to work" campaign must be! can we think of a media-attracting campaign on behalf of daughters being channeled to the sticky bottom of the political economy? beatrice beabc@cunyvm.cuny.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 22:45:48 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Beatrice Kachuck Subject: Re: misunderstandings In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 7 Feb 1994 09:50:16 CST from yes, tannen's books on conversational style have useful analyses and suggestions. regrettably, "you don't understand" treats women as WOMAN, as tho all are alike; and proposes that conversational style is the whole of the basis of relationships. surely, we've come to the point of understanding that women vary along many dimensions and that no one factor, eg conversation style makes or breaks a relationship. important as conversation style is, other factors make take precedence, eg, age, race/ethnicity, class, size and situation, the various aspects of a situation. very important, too, is the power relation that's the context of a conversation: what someone will accept from a person (man or woman) in or considered to be a subordinate/superior will be hear and accepted differently from a person in the reverse position. we need more depth of analysis than we've had. beatrice beabc@cunyvm.cuny.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 00:08:55 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: David Greene Subject: feminists v. non-feminists in classroom In situations like that described by Sherry Linkon I have used annonymous feedback to begin discussion of the issue. Ask students to write what they think/feel about the classroom atmosphere (or the discussion of romance novels) w/o signing their names. You can then collect them in a box, shuffle them, and have each student pick one out (not their own) to read to the class (or you could take them home and read selected ones during the next class. This gives voice to everyone in a very safe way--usually leads to frank dis- cussion. David ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 00:29:24 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: David Greene Subject: middle class women I would recommend a book called "Strangers in Paradise: Academics from the Working Class" by J. Ryan & C. Sackrey (South End Press). It was good to hear that a new similar anthology is forthcoming since Strangers....., pub- lished in 1984 includes only one woman (the explanation was that female working class academics were rare. David ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 10:14:13 +0300 Reply-To: E.Binder@jk.uni-linz.ac.at Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Elisabeth J. Binder" Subject: WMST institutions in NYC, DC and Toronto I am working for a women's studies resource center at the Johannes Kepler University in Linz/Austria. One of my duties is to establish and maintain international contacts. Since I am planning a trip to the US and Canada (from March 25 to April 9) I would be very interested to get names, addresses and e-mail numbers of women's studies departments, resource centers, national associations etc. which are interested in international contacts and which could provide me with new ideas for my own work. Due to my traveling plans I am limited to New York City, Washington DC and Toronto. Please respond to me privately. Thank you for your help. Elisabeth J. Binder Interuniversitaere Koordinationsstelle fuer Frauenforschung Altenbergerstr. 69 A-4040 Linz Tel: +43-732-2468 9203 Fax: +43-732-2468 9212 E-mail: E.Binder@jk.uni-linz.ac.at ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 05:30:39 CST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: AMY KASTELY Subject: Re: Working Class Academics A recent collection of essays is Working Class Women in the Academy: Laborers in the Knowledge Factory, edited by Michelle Tokarczyk and Elizabeth Fay (Univ. of Massachusetts Press 1993). - Amy Kastely amy@vax.stmarytx.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 09:04:46 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Georgia NeSmith Subject: popular vs. academic (again!!) In regard to the discussion of the issue of "popular" versus "academic" writing -- I had a similar problem when I went to defend my dissertation last fall at U Iowa. Except this was not an issue of seeking to reach an audience of ordinary people, but rather an audience of academics whom a few members of my committee saw as "the great unwashed" -- notably, the vast majority of members of the History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, who have very little acquaintance with cultural theory or theories of history in general, much less feminist theory. The major thrust of my dissertation involved an effort to bring some of the main issues being discussed in feminist/cultural theory into the conversation. It was touch-and-go for a while as to whether such an effort could be considered adequate for a dissertation, especially from such an august institution as Iowa. However, as I argued in my defense, my choices were based on political strategy: I want to see more people in my field asking tougher and more theoretically informed feminist questions about the way history is done. For example, few of my senior feminist colleagues in the field have even read Joan W. Scott; many of those who have don't understand her or how to apply what she says to the field. Their knowledge of the ongoing, fractious theoretical debate among poststructuralists, postmodernists, and Marxists is even more limited. Many have begged me (as various portions of the diss. were parcelled out in conference presentations) to hurry up and finish so they could use my work. Well I passed. But I think a few of the committee members were disappointed that one of their star performers (Outstanding Doctoral Student in Research 1987) had chosen such a route. And this is in a department that constantly is on the defensive because it actually (oh my god) TEACHES JOURNALISM. Georgia NeSmith Communication Dept. SUNY Brockport gnesmith@acspr1.acs.brockport.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 09:05:07 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Kathy Ryder (ENG)" Subject: Re: religious abuse--Dublin's Mary Magdalenes In-Reply-To: <199402110515.AAA05503@umd5.umd.edu> Thought this might be of general interest: Re L. Swackhammer's request for info on religious abuse: An article in The Tampa Tribune (Tampa, Florida), 10/25/93, by Dick Polman describes the plight of the Mary Magdalenes, whose existence came to light when an Irish Catholic convent in Dublin destroyed the graves of 133 women to make way for a real estate development. For more than 150 years, until the early 1970s, thousands of Irishwomen were relegated to lives of unpaid servitude in Catholic convents, working as laundresses. They were hidden away, locked in at night, routinely told that society didn't want them, and frequently moved from laundry to laundry so relatives had a tough time finding them. The women were unwed mothers, orphans, prostitutes, and nonconformists. One young woman, orphaned in the 1940s, was sent to a convent (where she remained for 20 years) by a Galway priest, who said she was in "moral danger because she liked to stay out late." The Catholic Church suppressed the Magdalenes' existence--no birth or death certificates, no grave markers. Women simply vanished into the Magdalene system. In September, after developers discovered the graves, the convent cremated the bodies and shipped the ashes to a nearby cemetery without informing the relatives. An article in a Dublin newspaper caused a huge public outcry. Dozens of Magdalene relatives (and a few survivors) came out of hiding and began to tell their stories. Yet another example of the institutional and cultural silencing of women's social history. K. Ryder ryder@chuma.cas.usf.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 09:40:42 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: STRETCH OR DROWN/ EVOLVE OR DIE Subject: conversation styles There is an article in a Dale Spender collection about education (sorry i don't have ref and my books are home and computer in lab) about a study: She gave a woman student a tape recorder and directions to be quiet. Then next day processed who had spoken in class. It was a mixed sex class and the 'conclusion' was that men talked a lot, made points, usupred the floor, etc, but women were alertr to who had spoken and took concern to see that all had a turn. Wonder if using that would help process not only the classroom you describe but problematize the two categories of how we communicate. claire alexander I think I've mentioned this before on the list, but I'll say it again in response to the above posting. I think the most valuable concept in Deborah Tannen's book (You Just Don't Understand) is her distinction between high involvement and high consideration speakers. Interestingly enough, when she gets to the issue of interruption, she abandons her framework that men and women talk differently and argues that interruption styles are probably more affected by cultural context than by gender. High involvement speakers often and respond quickly. They like to think outloud and yes they do interrupt, but it turns out that most of us interrupt all the time (I have verified this by having my students tape and transcribe conversations). High involvement speakers are more comfortable with interruption; they see it as part of the give and take of conversation. In my experience high involvement speaking doesn't have much to do with gender. I am very much a high involvement speaker and am most comfortable with those who have a similar style. High consideration speakers frankly make me very nervous because I always think they disagree with me. High consideration speakers tend to respond more slowly. They like to think before they speak and tend to be uncomfortable with interruption. They might not talk much in class because they are always getting nudged out by the high involvement speakers. OFtentimes they will remark that they just couldn't think of anything to say at the time but maybe afterwards thought of something. It's important to note that both speaking styles are perfectly legitimate. I don't think either has much to do with attempts to dominate (which I would add does not mean I accept the cultural explanation for language differences; I do believe power can enter into to conversation, but not in any simplistic sense that would suggest that high involvement speakers want power and high consideration speakers don't. In some cultures not speaking--silence--is a form of power too). However, in a classroom the differences between these two speaking styles can create an unfortunately mix. I tend to perform best in classes that have large numbers of high involvement speakers. When I have high consideration speakers I can flounder,although at least now I understand what's going on. The difference between the two styles is,I think, largely the result of the kind of culture you grew up in. While midwestern German-Irish Americans aren't typically high involvement speakers, I grew up in a very large household (8 siblings) and had to learn to be aggressive to be heard (eldest/middle child too!). ,,, (o o) +-------------------------------oOOo-(_)-oOOo--------------------------------+ | Laurie Finke, Women's and Gender Studies, Kenyon College | | Gambier, OH 43022 phone: 614-427-5276 | | home: 614-427-3428, P.O. Box 731 mail: FinkeL@Kenyon.Edu | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ () () ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 09:56:24 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: STRETCH OR DROWN/ EVOLVE OR DIE Subject: Re: academic vs. popular publications I continue to get deeply disturbed about the notion that keeps cropping up in our discussion of academic and popular prose of "clear" writing. This concept, it seems to me, assumes that there is one, unequivocal, and universal kind of writing that will be immediately apparent to anyone reading it. That's nonsense. Writing always, repeat always, emerges out of a context and it's the context that defines whether or not the writing will be intelligible. Simple test. If I say WELL that is a perfectly intelligible, "clear" word but you don't have the slightest idea what I mean by that word. Why? there's no context. What often renders academic writing unintelligible to the "average person" (a construct, not a real person) is that individuals not deeply engaged in, say, the discipline of physics lack the appropriate context to decipher the language that physicists use to talk to one another. That doesn't make physicists bad people or even elitist necessarily because they develop a shorthand that makes it faster for them to communicate with each other. Most of us are not a part of the conversation. Academic writing develops in a context of certain conversations which the participants assume they are engaged inwith others who share certain knowledges. What we call "jargon" is an attempt to find shorthand ways to encapsulate difficult concepts which might take a lot of language to explain. By no means would I argue that this process is simply neutral and value free. Of course it's political. but it also is inevitable. No matter how hard I try to make my language simple, someone will not understand it because someone will constitute an audience I am not trying to reach (for instance someone who is illiterate won't understand my writing no matter how simple it is). When my students are reading difficult material I try to get them to see that the material was not written with them in mind as an audience. They are listening in and they must try to reconstruct the context that the intended audience might already have. Trinh minh-ha in her book Woman/Native/Other has a critique of the notion of clarity which she applies to the "third world" woman writer in which she says much the same thing. When we write we make choices about who our audience will be and we write in a way that images them reading it. When I was writing grants, my husband would give me advice that boiled down to "Imagine X (some person we both knew) reading this. How would you have to write to make them understand what you were talking about?" The answer would differ enormously depending on who X was. IF it was my mother I might write one way; if it was a grant panel of experts it might look very different. What I guess I'm saying is I need my jargon. I need terms that enable me to encapsulate ideas that may not be easily expressible in more mainstream and accessible ways. After all, isn't common sense also ideology? If we are challenging ideology aren't we going to have to challenge common sense? some other readings on this subject: Patricia Williams in Alchemy of Race and Rights has a bit at the beginning where she imagines trying to explain to her sister what she is writing about. also I always give my students George Steiner's essay "On Difficulty" which explains the different ways inwhich a piece of writing might be difficulty. sorry for the screed but I couldn't hold back the floodgates any longer. ,,, (o o) +-------------------------------oOOo-(_)-oOOo--------------------------------+ | Laurie Finke, Women's and Gender Studies, Kenyon College | | Gambier, OH 43022 phone: 614-427-5276 | | home: 614-427-3428, P.O. Box 731 mail: FinkeL@Kenyon.Edu | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ () () ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 09:54:55 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Kathy Ryder (ENG)" Subject: Re: clarity--academic vs. pop. publications In-Reply-To: <199402110807.DAA00520@umd5.umd.edu> Ruth-Ellen Joeres's fine editorial in Signs (Summer 1992) discusses the need for clarity in feminist academic prose. She points out that feminism from the outset has encompassed both movement and theory, has stressed the collective as well as the individual, has even in its academic form not ignored its origins in activism, and warns against the parochialism that separatist language (and attitudes) engenders. K. Ryder ryder@chuma.cas.usf.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 09:09:55 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: J D Ruelle Subject: Re: conversation styles Does anyone know where I might find copies of surveys used to measure differentiation in conversation styles? A friend is trying to recreate past surveys and is having trouble locating them. Please respond privately. Thank you. Joan D. Ruelle, Mankato State University ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 10:04:55 -0400 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Mary Roberson \\ 513/229-2166" Subject: feminists vs nonfeminists in class In terms of helping people who have less knowledge and experience talk in class in the face of articulate outspoken feminist students, I periodically borrow from the native american tradition of pass the talking stick. I explain the tradition of structuring a community discussion so that everyone has the chance to speak, especially when important decisions are being made. (We also discuss the issue of borrowing from traditions in this way.) In my case, someone gave me an amythest cluster, so we pass the crystal. I do this a few times: when it seems that people have been silenced or more vocal people are curious what others are thinking (like those silent men) and wrapping up a discussion on a powerful topic. Students like it; I even get comments on evaluations suggesting I do it more. It is not only the silenced who are frustrated. Roberson@udavxb.oca.udayton.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 10:10:14 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Myers, Joann" Subject: Re: middle class In-Reply-To: In reply to your message of FRI 11 FEB 1994 09:40:42 EST a thought: maybe middle class has nothing to do with $$$ (at least not on my vow of poverty courtesy of Marist) but with VALUES, and the perspectives that we view society. Since value-neutral is really an euphenism for hetpatriarchial values (as applied to public policy and its implementations), Maybe we should try and frame what we mean by middle class (values) and those values that we strive to teach...JAM (forgive me my typos for my fingers are just trying to keep up with my thoughts) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 10:08:40 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Kathy Feltey Subject: Re: where do they learn In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 10 Feb 1994 22:32:42 EST from Thank you Beatrice! The idea of taking your daughter to work is for most women about introducing her yet another setting where we are servicing others. Those of us who are privileged occupationally (e.g. our jobs have status and we have some control and autonomy in our work lives) might see taking our daughters to work as a neat socialization strategy, but the vast numbers of women are not in these positions. On the other hand, it might give daughters insight into what mom does to keep the family alive -- and that might be of value in and of itself. Kathy Feltey (R1KMF@AKRONVM) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 10:28:00 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: LAURA KRAMER Subject: Re: conversation styles One poster mentioned problems with Tannen's work, with a wish that others would produce analyses avoiding those probelms (this is a paraphrase, obviously). There are a lot of people doing critical and complex work on gender and conversation, but the media don't report it. A trip to the Abstracts (one or another) could help the interested person find these works. (I need to shovel literally and can't go digging for cites) One aspect I';ve seen in my very tangential exposure to that literature is the point, I think well taken, that one is speaker in a situation. To characterize an individual byconversational type (and presumably there can be more than two opposing types, right?) misses this point that I think most of us agree with, but often overlook when we get into that conversational conversation. REading this over, I think I need to clarify : I mean speaker-in-a-situation; in some kinds of situations I behave one way, in others another way,and so on. laura kramer@apollo.montclair.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 09:32:00 CST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: BARTLETT ANNE Subject: RE "working class academic women" Along with Laurie Finke, I'd like to obfuscate the "Class-ification" of women academics into various social strata. I've inhabited a range of class affiliations, myself: I grew up in WASP suburbialand, rejected this and tried a lot of other things before going back to college after a truly unfortunate marriage. Some of these things include working as a waitress, living in a tent in Southern Kentucky and getting food stamps, workig as a disk jockey, and working in an auto factory. My degrees are from state universities, and I now work at a private college with an inner city outreach mission (which I love). Aren't all of our stories as complicated as this? Why do we want to reify our rich diversity into a particular category? After I send off the book I'm finishing now, I plan to edit a collection of autobiographical essays that illustrate just this sort of reconceptualization of a layered class, sex, gender (etc) identification. Would anyone be interested in contributing a version of her own life that helps complicate our notions of what a woman academic is? I'm thinking (somewhat facetiously) of calling this project "But you don't look like a professor," since that's what I (and, I'm sure, so many of us hear from our students so often). I'm interested in hearing your feedback, either privately or on the list. Thanks, Anne Clark Bartlett. engacb@orion.depaul.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 10:38:00 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: RHODA UNGER Subject: Re: "the middle class woman" Franz Samelson (reference below) made a similar point about the changes in the kind of questions social psychology asked after World War II when large numbers of non-WASPS (Jewish, Italian, etc.) and European refugees entered the field. Samelson, F. (1978). From "race psychology" to "studies of prejudice": Some observations on the thematic reversals in social psychology. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 14, 265 - 278. Rhoda Unger unger@apollo.montclair.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 11:08:00 EDT Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Joan Korenman Subject: whorfian hypothesis and she/he WMST-L subscriber Mykol C. Hamilton (mykol@olin.centre.edu) is having difficulty posting and has asked me to post the following message. Joan Korenman (korenman@umbc). ************************************************************** In response to Harold Frank's question about linguistic relativity or the Whorfian Hypothesis: Some of the best support for the Whorfian Hypothesis has in fact come from research on sex biased language, masculine generic terms in particular. The evidence is pretty overwhelming that sexist language promotes sexist thought. However, a distinction is made between the strong and weak forms of the hypothesis. The strong form, which says that language determines thought, is unsupported (in sexist language research and research on language in general), but the weak form--'how you say it shapes what you think,' or 'language makes some things easier than others to think'--is accepted by many. In my own research I explicitly discuss the hypothesis, as do some other researchers the area of sexist language. See, for example, my 1988 article in _Sex Roles_, (Using masculine generics: Does generic _he_ increase male bias in the user's imagery? 19, 785-799). It's about the effects of _using_ masculine generics, on one's own mental imagery (it leads to more images of males than does use of alternatives (he or she, singular they, etc.). This article is based on my dissertation, which goes into even more depth concerning the Whorfian Hypothesis, both in relation to sexist language and in other linguistic areas. See also Hamilton, M.C., Hunter, B., & Stuart-Smith, S. (1992). Jury instructions worded in the masculine generic: Can a woman claim self- defense when "he" is threatened? In J. Chrisler & D. Howard (Eds.) _New directions in feminist psychology_. NY: Springer. This study looks at what happens when you hear someone else's use of masculine terms. In a mock jury study, we found that a woman's claim of self- defense was less believed when the judge's instructions on the self-defense decision contained masculine generics (a person has the right to defend himself if he believes he is in imminent danger...) than if the instructions contained "he or she" or "she." This is further evidence of language's effects on higher thought processes (and even on behavior). For further references on sexist language and linguistic relativity, write me privately at: mykol@olin.centre.edu Mykol C. Hamilton 600 W. Walnut St. Danville, KY 40422 mykol@olin.centre.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 11:18:00 EDT Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Joan Korenman Subject: getting a list of subscribers (User's Guide) Each month, I post sections from the WMST-L User's Guide to remind subscribers of the list's resources and procedures. If changes have been made since the last time a section was posted, the subject header will begin "Revision:". Here is section seven, which explains how you can get the names and e-mail addresses of other WMST-L subscribers: ************************ 7) "HOW CAN I GET A LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS TO WMST-L?" To get a current list of WMST-L subscribers, send the following message to LISTSERV@UMDD (Bitnet) or LISTSERV@UMDD.UMD.EDU (Internet): REVIEW WMST-L. You'll get back either a mail message with the subject heading "File: 'WMST-L LIST' being sent to you" or a message telling you that the list is being sent as a Netdata file (not a mail file); listserv apparently chooses which method to use. (See section 11 below for instructions on how to retrieve files sent in Netdata format.) Either way, the file contains a list of subscribers, arranged alphabetically by e-mail node (the part of the e-mail address after the "@" sign), not by subscriber's name. If you prefer to receive the list sorted more or less alphabetically by subscriber's last name, send the following command: REVIEW WMST-L BY NAME. ****************** Joan Korenman Internet: korenman@umbc2.umbc.edu Bitnet: korenman@umbc ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 11:44:25 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Elisabeth Gruner Subject: certifying w.s. courses Our Women's Studies Program is engaged in a self-study this year and we are trying to determine how we should "certify" courses for W.S. credit. If your program has a system for certification, we'd like to hear from you: do you review syllabi? texts? pedagogy? instructors' credentia ls? Please respond privately to gruner@urvax.urich.edu or gruner@urvax.bitnet. Thanks, Elisabeth Gruner Dept. of English University of Richmond ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 11:14:00 CDT Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Phyllis Holman Weisbard Subject: SISTER CARRIE I am posting this for a women's studies professor currently teaching in Thailand. She is looking for feminist criticism of Dreiser's SISTER CARRIE. I have looked through bibliographies on feminist literary criticism and on Dreiser, but have only turned up an essay by Susan Wolstenholme in AMERICAN NOVELISTS REVISITED: ESSAYS IN FEM. CRIT. (G.K. Hal, 1982). Does anyone know of anything else, preferably more recent? Please respond privately to pweis@macc.wisc.edu. ************* Phyllis Holman Weisbard (608) 263-5754 Acting Women's Studies Librarian pweis@wiscmacc (Bitnet) University of Wisconsin System pweis@macc.wisc.edu (Internet) Room 430 Memorial Library 728 State Street Madison, WI 53706 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 12:52:05 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Giavanna J. Munafo" Subject: Re: middle class In-Reply-To: <199402111550.KAA08007@umd5.umd.edu> I have to add that our discussions of middle-classness have been very quiet re: race. While I haven't extended my analyses to institutional discussions of 'the academy' like this one, I have been working on the ways whiteness underwrites dominant constructions of middle-upper class domesticity, the family, and property relations.I wonder how it's operating here? And, while I'm suspicious of the increasingly prevalent sense that in order to be truly opposiitonal one must be non-white and poor (and, in some circles, a sexual transgressor--non-heterosexual), sometimes even the most intellectually rigorous assessments of middle-classness start to sound like me-too-ness. Maybe I'm being overly critical since I certainly occupy a middle-class, white position and may tend to overcompensate. Giavanna gjm9u@darwin.clas.virginia.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 11:00:38 MST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List Comments: Converted from PROFS to RFC822 format by PUMP V2.2 From: Antony Atkins Subject: "The middle class woman" Following up Laurie Finke's remarks on this thread, I'd simply question whether "middle-class" is a useful concept, other than something that's so muddled it's a useful way to get discussions like this one going... It seems to me it's simply a way of distinguishing groups of people, but actually it's a complex mixture of different amounts of what Pierre Bourdieu calls economic, cultural and educational capital (see _Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Paris, 1979; Harvard, 1984). Bourdieu offers lots of material on the social, cultural and educational background of academics, and a critique of many long-standing notions of aesthetics - he shows how class- based notions of "quality" in the arts is, and how academics are particularly reliant on the acquisition of educational capital, although a large proportion of them also inherit a lot of cultural and economic capital from their parents. Those people who consider themselves "working-class" have begun from a certain position of cultural and economic inheritance, but their education has shifted them considerably into a different weighting of the various types of capital: much more economic and educational capital, and considerable changes in their notion of culture. Bourdieu shows that academics are actually a pretty homogenous group in terms of their musical, decorative, literary etc. tastes. But he was using data from the early 1970s, in France, with little gender differentiation, so one has to qualify its applicability for American feminism in the mid-1990s. Finally, someone asked when was the last time a "men's" movement was criticised for being middle-class. Well, I gather that this is exactly what happens within the "masculinist" movement a.k.a. "the men's movement". One surely expects these conflicts in such a broad church as feminism: whenever one sub-group speaks of "women", there's always going to be another sub-group that challenges the qualifications of the others to make generalizations. Female academics in the U.S. are perceived as a particularly Caucasian, "middle-class", and economically and culturally powerful group by other groups, hence the criticism. It's a question of the relative degrees and different permutations of sociological capital available to people. Apologies for length of this. A.Atkins, 3-5 Humanities Centre, Dept. of English, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada T6G 2E5. Tel (403) 492-7833. Fax 492-8142. Email: aatkins@vm.ucs.ualberta.ca ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 11:49:54 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Caroline Brettell A former student of mine who graduated last spring and who has been working this year for TARAL (Texas Abortion Rights Action League) as a volunteer coordinator as well as for the Ann Richards Reelection Campaign is moving to Indianapolis in the fall. She called to ask me if I knew of any Women's Centers, Women's Studies Programs, or other organizations in town that she could apply to or contact re employment. I told her I would simply send this out on the network for suggestions. Send them to me privately. Thank you. Caroline Brettell cbrettel@sun.cis.smu.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 12:15:52 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "HAL D. QUIGLEY" Subject: Gorilla Girls Students here asking for information on activist group(s) named "Gorilla Girls." TIA hal quigleyh@cs4.lamar.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 12:13:26 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Susan Harrison Subject: academic vs popular publishing To Gina Oboler: RE: clear academic writing IS getting published. Oh for heaven's sake. I didn't offer any statistic-- it was pure anecdote, the point of which is the fact that clear writing IS rewarded. Just think of all those obtuse thinkers who believe in dense-ness for it's own sake. THEY may feel they are discriminated against by all these upstart clear readers and editors. Why focus on lost opportunity, when no one, no matter what their writing style, will ever please all editors? Perseverence rewards in all publishing endeavors-- especially if the ideas are good. Hang in there. And good luck! -- ------------Susan Harrison-----SHarrison@CSBSJU.edu------------- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 13:26:48 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Gina Oboler, Anthropology & Sociology, Ursinus College" Subject: Re: academic vs. popular publications Laurie -- I agree with you, and I for one am not advocating that we abandon "jargon" (thou gh I might argue that there are those who go deliberately for jargon that obfuscates, when the same thing could be said in plain language using just as few words). What I'm critical of is not people using technical terms for an audience of other experts, but people who write in a non-communicative way that even another expert in their field has a hard time making sense of. Of course, much of understanding depends on shared context. A good writer, writing for a general audience, will provide a context through background information that it's not necessary to provide to an audience of other experts. My problem is with those who judge writing negatively because it does NOT use jargon, in situations where such jargon doesn't really accomplish anything (e.g. making it possible to use fewer words to make your point). Cheers. -- Gina ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 10:36:52 PST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Theresa <60840883@WSUVM1.BITNET> Subject: Re: conversation styles In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 11 Feb 1994 09:40:42 EST from Laurie Finke sets up a classification for speaking in class between high involv ement speakers and High Consideration speakers, carefully considering how each group is constructed by class, culture, family, etc....and how each perceives the classroom and its discussion patterns. In an undergraduate classroom, I th ink discussion patterns like these tend to be easier to work out, but what abou t the graduate seminar? In English seminar classes, our maximum student range is about 15. Over the past several years, I have noticed some grad. students r eally object to high involvement speakers and that there are relatively few hig h involvement speakers here where the graduate program has a 64% female populat ion. In fact, the biggest dissent among grad students usually seems to occur o ver who is and who is not talking in the seminar and whether their comments are well thought out or not. It can get very ugly! When I was taking classes, I tended to be a high involve ment speaker (and continue in this manner, I suspect, as my email testifies). I was severely chastised not by profs. but by my peers. I learned to think befor e speaking--most of the time. I am not certain this was a good thing. And I m ight add, I have heard very very few criticisms of male grads who were high inv olvment speakers. In fact, in the past two years since I stopped taking classe s, I have not heard a single complaint about a male talking too much in a semin ar, but there are three women who have been seriously criticized for this. Just some thoughts to further complicate the issues of involvement rather than consideration. ;) Theresa 60840883@wsuvm1.csc.wsu.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 13:52:54 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Giavanna J. Munafo" Subject: sex and the professors I am posting this query for a colleague who is writing a history of sexual relationships between faculty and students, mentors and mentees, etc.. Please send references to depictions of such relationships in literature (any genre, period) or from other sources (film, for example) to me (privately) so I can forward them to her. Thanks, Giavanna gjm9u@darwin.clas.virginia.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 13:57:04 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Gina Oboler, Anthropology & Sociology, Ursinus College" Subject: Re: academic vs popular publishing Susan -- I'm sorry -- I didn't mean to offend you. I just thought what you said was inte resting in the context of the discussion. I t seems to me that we've actually been discussing two different issues: 1) whether pieces written for a general audience, where we deliberately make an attempt at an "easy reading" style, should be given credit for tenure and promotion purposes, and how much; and 2) whether there is an academic prejudice against a clear an unconvoluted writing style (some have suggested that there is -- I actually did not make this suggestion, though I did suggest that those who disdain writing for a popular audience as not a worthy effort may be those who don't do it well themselves.) If your husband has written quality articles and has them criticized as too journalistic (which was what I thought you said), I think that is wrong and shouldn't have happened to him. I'm on YOUR side. -- Gina (roboler@acad.ursinus.edu) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 12:59:06 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Linda Coleman Subject: sociology text query A friend in sociology has asked me to see if anyone on this list can assist her in locating a textbook. She recalls seeing a text in a publisher's brochure that was entitled something like Postmodernism and the Family. This was a year or so ago. If you have any ideas, please respond privately. Thanks. L. Coleman cflsc@eiu.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 13:59:04 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Joan Korenman Subject: Re: certifying w.s. courses Earlier today, Elisabeth Gruner wrote: > Our Women's Studies Program is engaged in a self-study this year and > we are trying to determine how we should "certify" courses for W.S. > credit. If your program has a system for certification, we'd like > to hear from you: do you review syllabi? texts? pedagogy? instructors' > credentials? > Please respond privately to gruner@urvax.urich.edu or gruner@urvax.bitnet. This topic has come up several times on WMST-L. At one point, I put several responses that addressed this issue into a file called CROSSLST POLICIES . To obtain this file, send the following message to LISTSERV@UMDD (Bitnet) or LISTSER@UMDD.UMD.EDU: GET CROSSLST POLICIES . Please note that CROSSLST has no "i" - filenames on IBM mainframes are limited to 8 characters per word. I am posting this to the list because the topic seems to be of perpetual interest, and MANY new subscribers have joined since the last time it was discussed. Joan Korenman Internet: korenman@umbc2.umbc.edu Bitnet: korenman@umbc ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 14:12:24 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: CROWDER@CORNELL-IOWA.EDU Subject: joint appointments and tenure Our WS program (NOT a department) is preparing a proposal for a tenure-track line, either in WS or a joint appointment with another department. We are a small liberal arts college, understaffed in many departments, and with a strongly "departmental" bias in terms of faculty positions. WS is staffed entirely by part-timers or full-time people released from their department. While WS committee would prefer a full-tim position in WS, there is great resistance to this. We will probably have to fall back to a more traditional joint appointment. Does anyone on the list have any concrete information (statistical studies, etc.) about the following questions? 1. Are people in joint WS-other appointments receiving tenure as often as others? 2. Do people in split appointments tend to get overworked, with both departments demanding more than 50% of their time? 3. In practice, what happens if WS votes for tenure and the other department votes against (or vice versa)? 4. Can those of you in small liberal arts colleges propose other models we might consider? PLEASE REPLY TO ME PRIVATELY-- CROWDER@CORNELL-IOWA.EDU. Thanks for all your help. Diane Griffin Crowder Cornell College 600 First St. W. Mt. Vernon, IA 52314 CROWDER@CORNELL-IOWA.EDU ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 15:51:40 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Sally L Kitch Subject: good speakers The Center for Women's Studies at the Ohio State University will celebrate its 20th birthday in 1995, and we are beginning the process of planning appropriate events. I would like some advice from others about speakers who have been particularly successful at bridging the interests of academic and non-academic feminists. We would especially like to identify speakers whose own work might be known by people in both groups. Please respond privately. Thanks in advance for any suggestions you can offer. Sally L. Kitch, Director, CWS, Ohio State sallyk@humanities1.cohums.ohio-state.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 13:22:03 -0800 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Marilyn Edelstein Subject: query about women's bodies/human rights A colleague of mine is looking for references to one or two fairly accessible recent articles linking theoretical work on "the body" (women's bodies in particular) and issues of human rights (particularly from an international perspective). If anyone has any references or suggestions at hand, please send them to me privately. Thanks very much. Marilyn Edelstein, Dept. of English, Santa Clara U medelstein@scuacc.scu.edu medelstein@scu.bitnet ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 16:18:17 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: STRETCH OR DROWN/ EVOLVE OR DIE Subject: Re: conversation styles Theresa's complication of the discussion of high involvement and high consideration speakers interested me greatly. I have have not ever taught graduate students (since my career has been primarily at small liberal arts colleges) and hadn't thought that the dynamic might be different in a graduate seminar. I'll have to ask my husband who does teach graduate students if he's noticed anything like what Theresa describes. Since the vast majority of students he teaches are women it would be interesting to compare. My own memories of graduate school have been blissfully repressed. I remember that I was always a high involvement speaker in classes and curiously my husband was very high consideration. In classes we were in togther I don't remember him ever volunteering anything. Though in private conversation I'd classify him high involvement, so probably Laura Kramer's post on the situational nature of this distiction is on the mark. What I remember most from graduate school is interminable seminar reports which bore a strong resemblance to the reading of papers at conferences. Individuals who would drone on endlessly without any regard for their listeners' comfort. But the reading of papers and giving of reports strikes me as a different thing from the give and take of class discussion. I loathed seminar reports as much as I now loath listening to conference papers. How aboutthose of you out there who do teach graduate students? Laurie Finke finkel@kenyon.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 16:24:08 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Caroline Brettell Subject: Re: repeating introductory material In-Reply-To: <199402101812.NAA28360@umd5.umd.edu> We have also had complaints with students about a good deal of overlap from one women's studies class to the other. Specifically they complain about seeing "Killing Us Softly" three times and hearing about Gilligan ad infinitum. The greatest overlap is between the introductory core women's studies class and the sociology class although the former uses lots of literature. But when you get to issues everyone talks about sexist language, rape, sexual harassment, the glass ceiling and comparable worth, sex differences research, etc. Recently the profs for the intro course got together with the prof for the sociology course and we went methodically through our respective syllabi. Where we had overlap we discussed whether it was useful to hear it twice, whether one course could adopt one angle and the other another, how to branch out in reading materials, etc. It was a fruitful discussion. I am not sure that we have eliminated all the overlap but we went away agreeing to think about it more and meet again before we do final preparation on fall syllabi. Caroline Brettell Director, Women's Studies, SMU ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 17:30:23 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Catherine Francis Subject: Re: Gorilla Girls I believe they might mean the Guerilla Girls, who protest women's treatment in the art world. There was a short blurb about them in Ms. last year; also, I think a documentary has been made about them. They're great -- combo of fishnet stocking and gorilla masks! Catherine e7w8fra@toe.towson.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 19:29:46 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Beatrice Kachuck Subject: Re: where do they learn In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 7 Feb 1994 10:16:37 -0700 from in a period of backlash against feminist thought, women's studies, and women's progress toward justice, constance's comments raise important questions. I do wonder, of course, if there is competition for students between American Studie s, which she teaches and Women's Studies. On the matter of postmodernism, which she teaches and is or ought to be in equivalent courses on feminist theory: postmodernism challenges universalist truths, thus the multiple voices with which she's concerned, including the voices of women of color, would be germane. the problematic of gender in modern and postmodern thought is appropriate in both american and women's studies, for both 20-something student s and older ones. whether or not the particular subjects addressed are seen by students to apply to their lives depends on the readings, the conduct of class discussions, and/or students' willingness to think thru applicability. Yes, the work of Paglia mite be included; it may or may not apply to students' lives it bears analysis as one example of contemporary cultural work that begs a return to universal definitions of women while contesting the ground of change. it does seem odd to describe women's studies as conservative, since the contents and its very existence challenges the conservation of traditional knowledge and the construction of knowledge. is that what you mean, constance, by a "party line?" that's the sort of term that raises hackles, flashes a red red herring to fear, without being specific. it is useful to keep in mind that what seems radical and what conservative varies with the beliefs of observers. if charges are to be made, and i have no doubt that there are reasonable criticisms of women's studies and feminism (just look at feminist literature), specificity rather than vagueness is helpful. beatrice beabc@cunyvm.cuny.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 19:56:35 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Beatrice Kachuck Subject: Re: "the middle class woman" In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 10 Feb 1994 10:18:54 -0500 from class, its existence in the u.s. denied in some circles, is a blend of income, aspiration, identity, education, access to and use of social goods, etc., according to sociologists. marxists, of course, define class differently. and class works differently along lines of race, ethnicity, and probably religion. so to be african or jewish american or muslim, e.g, makes a difference whatever "class" you're in. as faculty, we're in and perceived to be middle class and we may not have the same aspirations or experience as some of our students whatever our personal histories of poverty, welfare, etc. we have to deal with that. yes, we might have worked hard to achieve our current status (and i speak from experience of past hardships) but we're seen as where we are. we should also keep in mind that the plea of having worked hard doesn't negate the facts of privileges we might have had (e. g., race) in getting here. at the same, the epithet of "middle class" has been hurled at feminists by the left (divisiv in the class struggle) and is likely to come up in classes where open discussio n is invited. - and should be discussed. beatrice beabc@cunyvm.cuny.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 20:30:04 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: ruth parlin Subject: Where do they learn? Sorry to be late in picking up this thread. I was struck by several early responses stating that some students reject feminism for fear of being labeled lesbians, among other reasons. I don't teach women's studies, and haven't been confronted with that particular facet of anti-feminism. I'm very curious about what you say to a young woman who expresses fear of being thought a lesbian. This issue comes up in sports all the time - my personal favorite was the Sports Illustrated article about famous athletes having babies so no one would think they were lesbians (as if lesbians don't have children). Do you make clear to young women that men use this labeling process to limit women's options? Do you say something along the lines of, "You can't care what strangers think about you; those who know you know whether you're a lesbian, and the opinions of those who don't know you aren't worth much"? Does anything you say make any difference? I just hate the idea that young women are rejecting feminism, sports, or anything else for fear of being thought lesbians. Some of us are, in fact, proud to be both lesbians and feminists - yet another option. In curiosity, Ruth. Ruth Parlin University of Miami Law School Library P.O. Box 248087 Coral Gables, FL 33124 305/284-3585 rparlin@umiami.ir.miami.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 17:34:21 PST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Dawn Atkins Subject: Re: "the middle class woman" This is another stereotype that makes me feel invisible. I am second generation feminist. My mom joined the Women's Movement when I was 12. We are not "middle class." We are working class. My father worked in a factory producting road equipment and when he died, my mother returned to work as a secretary. I know a lot of feminist women who come from working class backgrounds. My family actually wavered back and forth between working class and "poor." I remember stealing food because I was hungry when I was five. My experience is often invisible in the discussions of feminism as a middle class movement. Dawn Atkins spirit@armory.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 20:34:35 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Beatrice Kachuck Subject: Re: RE "working class academic women" In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 11 Feb 1994 09:32:00 CST from and, my jobs after high school were teaching: day care, community and parent coops and public schools - learned a lot working mostly with people different from myself and, perhaps as a result of what i learned at home and the secular jewish school i attended afternoons and weekends, learned social conscience - have been involved in communty activism most of my adult life, more than i can ever remember at one time. beatrice ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 22:25:36 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Gary Daily Subject: Re: conversation styles > From: STRETCH OR DROWN/ EVOLVE OR DIE > Subject: Re: conversation styles > Theresa's complication of the discussion of high involvement and high > consideration speakers interested me greatly. > > Laurie Finke > finkel@kenyon.edu I'm sorry to have missed the early posts on this thread. Are the terms "high involvement" and "high consideration" speakers both considered positive styles of conversation? I'm not familiar with the lingo. (And, by the way, do these terms qualify as "academic" or "general public" vocabulary in reference to _that_ ongoing thread?) gary daily hidaily@ruby.indstate.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 22:51:58 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Gary Daily Subject: Re: repeating introductory material The approach taken by Caroline and her colleagues at SMU seems reasonable and helpful. While there are concerns in regard to articulation in all fields, we shouldn't be apologetic if some basic concepts and TRUTHS appear regularly in WS courses. In the ed biz, most major fields of study call this reinforcement and go on about their business. (Take a close look at some of the fifty to seventy credit hour majors offered in Schools of Business. Do you think we have a problem with overlap!) As for overlapping use of books, films, etc., there the problem is often one of making students fully aware of how the same document can be "questioned" in a variety of ways. That Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" can yield equally, though very different, insights and information in a literature and a history course is a truism many undergraduates need to be taught. gary daily hidaily@ruby.indstate.edu > Where we had overlap we discussed whether > it was useful to hear it twice, whether one course could adopt one angle > and the other another, how to branch out in reading materials, etc. It was > a fruitful discussion. I am not sure that we have eliminated all the > overlap but we went away agreeing to think about it more and meet again > before we do final preparation on fall syllabi. > > Caroline Brettell > Director, Women's Studies, SMU > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 22:13:33 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: rebecca hill Subject: Re: conversation styles I don't teach graduate students, but I am one - and a "high involvement" speaker as well. I have certainly felt I was resented for speaking in class. In my experience it's been related to anti-Semitism. Also, I think it has to do with the anxiety people feel in graduate school over competition with other students for money/jobs/grades etc - it's sort of comforting to know that others have hated their seminars too. -rh hillx018@maroon.tc.umn.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 22:17:25 CST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Judy Kaufman Subject: Re: Gorilla Girls The Guerrilla Girls are/is a guerilla group who often wear gorilla masks and call themselves the "conscience of the art world" and do art asxx actions. They can be reached at Box 1056, Cooper Station, Ny,NY 10276. Judy Kaufman Oklahoma State University ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 22:43:46 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: rebecca hill Subject: Re: middle class This has been fascinating reading! One of the things that worries me often though is the way that class becomes a "cultural" definition relating to personal identity, (which it obviously is)...but this also removes class from its context in discussing particular systems of oppression. When you are thinking about capitalism as a system of relations of production, it may not be that class has to do with money, but it does have to do with ownership, professsionalism, labor, who profits etc.. class has to do with where you fit in that chain no matter what your values are... I'm not willing to give up middle-class as a term, or to look for one unifying "woman's experience," I just want to be able to talk about the way that women are affected by gender systems (perhaps different in each cultural situation) because lately all I hear is that middle-class women aren't oppressed because they are viewed as if their class position was the same as middle-class men's! and the question - is feminism losing gender as an analytical category? However, to repeat.... this is my first couple of days on this list and I am impressed at how this discussion has changed and changed. Cool! - rh hillx018@maroon.tc.umn.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 00:34:49 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Liz Gold Subject: academic vs. popular publications I loved the bell hooks quotation (thanks!). Jane Tompkins similarly attacks some of the assumptions we make about academic writing in "Me and My Shadow," in Worhol & Herndl, eds, *Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism* (Rutgers, 1991). While acknowledging the power of theory, Tompkins also notes that, as it is usually written (i.e., abstract, jargonistic, etc.), theory also has a "price"--that it may, in fact be a "patriarchal gesture." Some excerpts: _______ "I'm tired of the conventions that keep discussions of epistemology, or James Joyce, segregated from meditations on what is happening outside my window or inside my heart. The public-private dichotomy, which is to say, the public-private *hierarchy,* is a founding condition of female oppresion. I say to hell with it.... "It is a tenet of feminist rhetoric that the personal is political, but who in the academy acts on this where language is concerned? We all speak the father tongue, which is impersonal, while decrying the fathers' ideas. All of what I have written so far is in a kind of watered-down expository prose. Not much imagery. No description of concrete things.... "This little lecture pretends to something I no longer want to claim. The pretense is in the tone and level of the language, not in what it says about post-structuralism. The claim being made by the language is analogous to what Barthes calls the 'reality effect' of historical writing, whose real message is not that this or that happened but that reality exists. So the claim of this language I've been using (and am using right now) lies in its implicit deification of the speaker.. Let's call it the 'authority effect.' I cannot describe the pretense except to talk about what it ignores: the human frailty of the speaker, his body, his emotions, his history; the moment of intercourse with the reader--acknowledgment of the other person's presence, feelings, needs.... The female subject *par excellence*, which is her self and her experiences, has once more been elided by literary criticism...." ________ There is not really space to do justice to it all, but Tompkins herself experiments in the essay with writing in a more direct, more personal way, attempting to tap into the personal and into feelings--in particular, the feelings that actually motivate feminist scholars (but are never discussed), such as anger at men for writing women out of their language). Tompkins concludes by criticizing any knowledge that is founded in the denial of emotion. There are problems with some of her arguments, but overall it is a brave attempt to grapple with a difficult subject without assuming that the level of abstraction in one's writing is necessarily equivalent to one's intelligence, sophistication, etc., etc. I'm happy to see other people wrestling with these issues. Liz Gold lizgold@utxvms.cc.utexas.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 08:13:05 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Jane Elza Subject: Re: "the middle class woman" In-Reply-To: <199402110128.UAA00393@umd5.umd.edu> in voting studies, it's been found that americans divide themselves into middle and working class, but it has nothing to do with income. a plastic surgeon who thinks of herself as working class votes working class attitudes. a janitor who thinks of himself as middle class votes middle class attitudes. class is largely a thing of the mind. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 08:43:04 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Jane Elza Subject: Re: academic vs. popular publications In-Reply-To: <199402112041.PAA17345@umd5.umd.edu> clearly written books in academe may become popular, may win prizes, may be written about in time,newsweek. densely written books don't become popular. clearly written popular books may be incorporated into academe ie backlash. densely written books don't become popular so can't make the transition. the same istrue for articles. the exception to this seems to be computer manuals. they are popular, densely written books--perhaps by default. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 09:46:39 -0500 Reply-To: "Giavanna J. Munafo" Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Giavanna J. Munafo" Subject: high involvement speakers I too was always a high involvement speaker in classes, when I was taking them. I think that this behaviour prompted both negative and positive responses from other class memebrs. Some people found me intimidating to be sure. I felt pressure to quiet down and 'make room' for others, and I tried to be aware of that much more as time went by than I did in the first year of my graduate studies. I'm afraid that by then I already had a bit of a reputation for it though. On the other hand, I also got feedback that expressed peoples' appreciation for my contributions and interest in following through on them outside class. It seems that faculty are much more willing to use activities that include all participants--like passing the talking stick or something based on that--in undergraduate classes. I can't remember ever participating in such an activity (other than having to give presentations which is not the same) in graduate courses. Why is that? Actually, now that I think about it, once, in a grad. seminar tought by a WS faculty on women's novels and feminist theory, we did do 'wrap up go rounds' so that every person had a chance to make final comments, respond to others, raise questions, etc.. It was really productive in many ways. I'd love to hear more about people's strategies for involving high consideration class members. It seems to me that the email class list can enable such students' participation. I know I get input from students who never speak up in class on the list and sent to me personally. Giavanna gjm9u@darwin.clas.virginia.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 10:48:00 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: RHODA UNGER Subject: Re: "the middle class woman" I am more than a little concerned about the idea that "class is largely a thing of the mind." This is almost akin to saying that the important as- pects of gender are all in one's head. On the contrary, class is a system of social categorization that is primarily under the control of others although one may internalize the category system and apply it to oneself. The fact that most Americans classify themselves as middle class does not make it true in terms of the way they themselves are treated by the class system. Class categories are defined by a variety of criteria as has been indicated by some of the other recent responses on this theme. Occupation rather than salary is part of the class criteria which is why plumbers' children may prefer to become white collar workers even if they do not make as much money. It is also defined by "tastes" and by clothing and language usage. Although we have learned more about linguistic categorization in England (largely through the Monty Python Show), this kind of categorization exists here as well. I will use an example from my own experiences of class mobility. My father was a truckdriver and neither of my parents finished primary school whereas I have a Ph.D. from Harvard. I laboriously worked to get rid of my working-class Brooklyn accent (mostly successfully although I still have something of a NY one) because I recognized that an educated vocabulary would not be enough for me to "pass." an This is getting kind of long, but I would also like to add another thread to the dialogue on class. It occurs to me that until recently women did not really have a "class" of their own. They acquired it from their fathers and transferred to their husbands' class when they married. Thus, allegations of "middle-class" for women requires analysis. Are they based on the purported class privilege of women due to familial relationships? If so, feminists need to clarify that women do not have the same class privileges as men (this is a gendered analysis) nor are they necessarily in such relationships (thus exposing some heterosexual assumptions as well). I hope this is clear, the idea just occurred to me and I think it is an interesting one. Rhoda Unger unger@apollo.montclair.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 07:58:21 -0800 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Tova Stabin Subject: Re: "the middle class woman" In-Reply-To: <9402121313.AA24752@tolstoy.u.washington.edu> class may have some thing to do with attitude,b ut i'd hardly say it's "a thing" of the mind. it certainly isn't when you are waiting around to see if they will approve your food stamps, or waiting on line at the dumpster because you got there too late and there's already a line up by the best one in town or....hardly a thing of the mind. i think calling it that is just letting into the myth the u.s. perpetuates about this being a classless society. On Sat, 12 Feb 1994, Jane Elza wrote: > in voting studies, it's been found that americans divide themselves into > middle and working class, but it has nothing to do with income. a plastic > surgeon who thinks of herself as working class votes working class > attitudes. a janitor who thinks of himself as middle class votes middle > class attitudes. class is largely a thing of the mind. > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 12:02:15 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Sherry Linkon Subject: feminist vs. non-feminists Thanks for those who wrote with suggestions and advice. I thought I'd send back out what I've now planned to do, and I'll report in later about how it went if people are interested. First, a bit more explanation. I DO spend a lot of class time emphasizing the importance of open discussions, and even in this case, we have had a fair amount of free exchange of ideas. The 2 feminists are not people who regularly dominate discussion, and they have been polite in terms of not attacking anyone in the class or even the women we read about in Jan Radway's study of romance novel readers. I have spent much of class discussion challenging their position and suggesting a variety of ways of reading romance novels. I told the class that in previous classes, students have split between those who hated the romance novel, those who loved it, and those who both love and hate it (this assignment always generates strong responses). In other words, I've already done a lot of what people suggested. My main concern here is not classroom atmosphere, which is generally good, but pushing this particular discussion toward a more complex, thorough analysis. So here's what I'm going to do: Students wrote short essays describing and analyzing their own responses to the novel. I'm going to create a handout with excerpts from these papers (anonymous, of course), and ask students to work in small groups (where we have had the best interactions in this course) to analyze the class's responses in relation to those of the women Radway studied. Seeing the variety of responses from class members ought to make everyone think about her own position, and since the class IS, as usual, divided, we will have to examine more closely the idea that romance novels are "obviously" dangerous to women as well as the idea that they are "just a harmless fantasy." We'll move from small group discussions, where students always feel safer saying what they think, to the large class discussion. Hopefully, the small group experience will have given everyone a chance to develop her ideas and gain a level of comfort, since others in each small group are likely to share any one's feelings. We'll see what happens. I have a lot of faith in this class, since they've been through at least one "difficult" discussion before (just try having a critical discussion of representations of women in the Bible and in prayer with a class dominated by Catholic womem who are still quite tied to their parents and churches -- it was a very quiet day). --Sherry ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 12:15:37 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Sherry Linkon Subject: Working Class Studies I'm working on a committee to organize a national conference called Working Class Lives/Working Class Studies, and we're seeking suggestions about people to invite as keynote speakers and others to add to the mailing list for our call for papers. If you have suggestions, please e-mail me privately at linkon@unix1.cc.ysu.edu. Thanks--Sherry ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 12:30:56 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Myers, Joann" Subject: Re: "the middle class woman" In-Reply-To: In reply to your message of FRI 11 FEB 1994 18:58:21 EST Is class then a construct of the hetpartiarchy that is another way of immobilizing people? I am referring to people of color who consider themselves middle classed, gays and lesbians who also adopt that label (A Place at the Table's author for instance). Or have they just been internally colonized by the hetpatriarchy? And, then if women want to construct a more inclusive and equal society, how do we reach/teach without students feeling so defensive that they do hear what is being said, only the threat to their world...this is a problem I face teaching a graduate class in Public Policy (MPA program): how do I reach thoses students who don't see how the public policy being analyzed or implemented is sexist/racist/ classist...JAM (JZLY@MaristB.Bitnet) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 11:56:01 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Barbara J. Peters" Subject: Re: "the middle class woman" Date sent: 12-FEB-1994 11:47:51 My experience is often invisible in the discussions >of feminism as a middle class movement. I think this is a the heart of discussions on class. I, too, remember feeling from day one in college as an udergraduate and a graduate student that my experience was often invisible. Class is a in many ways, a way of knowing the world. To decide that one will turn away from a middle-class life to "do" poverty does not make them come from the poverty class. There's choice involved. For example, two of us had the same income. We both had two children, we were both divorced. Her home looked like the Cosby's, but shoved together in a small space. She knew different things and ended up marrying a wealthy man. My home looked like Roseanne's poor relation. But, my neighbor asked me how to get rid of the "stuff" around the side of the toilet. Different knowledge. I knew stuff from having come from poverty. I was trying to work my way "up." She had come down and was trying to get back where she "belonged." No matter how much education I have obtained, I don't have the knowledge base to "belong." But, there's a whole bunch of students out there with the same knowledge base as me, and we know each other. BARBARA PETERS University of Wisconsin Oshkosh Dept. of Sociology Oshkosh, Wisconsin 54901 (414) 424-0848 Bitnet Address peters@oshkoshw.bitnet Internet Address peters@vaxa.cis.uwosh.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 11:56:34 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Dorothy Dean Subject: Re: "the middle class woman" In-Reply-To: <199402121556.KAA20861@umd5.umd.edu> In the context of voting behavior, Jane Elza (I believe) was simply saying that voters self-define their class not by their income but by other, as yet in this discussion, undefined criteria. Voting behavior is substatially different than some of the excellent examples provided in your post and other posts by other people. (waiting in line for food stamps, etc.) People who vote are already a self-selected minority of the population who are politically aware and active enough that they vote. Trying to draw more out of this one example than what I outline in the first paragraph is expecting too much of the example. Dorothy ddean@csd4.csd.uwm.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 14:39:42 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: doug hord Subject: more on "middle class" more on middle class It would be hard to argue that Marx, Engels, Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Elenor Marx, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Nelson Mandela who, with their middle class upbrining and never having worked in a factory or in the field in their lives, thereby made no contribution to the working class point of view on modern class society. It needs to be militantly affirmed that all forms of baiting, whether class-baiting, gender-baiting, or race-baiting -- all have the effect of stifling independent thinking and therefore contribute to the continuing predominance of the institutionalized ideas, ideas that are anti-working class, anti-woman, and racist, and in the final analysis rely on force and complusion to make their way in the world. The key to objectivity lies in analysis of the class basis of all cultural representations, ranging from Hollywood to Harvard University Press. The working class point of view in modern society is articulated by Marxism. That's how it has been since the rise of the modern working class, and that is how it will be as long as the working class exists as a distinct historical fomation. The seminal works of the social theorists that continue to define the background assumptions of Western academic social thought -- Comte, Durkeim, Weber, Parsons, Popper, to name a few -- are consciously anti-Marxist from the very first sentence. These individuals were ideologues in their day. And so are their adherants today. The point is this has little to do with individual class origins. It is a question of the root nature of what passes for "science." (A masterful work from this point of view is "Sexism and Science" by Evelyn Reed.) To raise the class origins of this or that individual and to imply that this is the end of the discussion is naive at best, most often self-serving, and always obscurantist. dhord@world.std.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 14:45:43 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: LADY OF MANISHEVITZ Subject: Re: conversation styles rh mentioned that she felt the resentment for her high involvemnet (read talking a lot in seminars) was due to anti-semitism (unless i misunderstood). I was in a seminar (under grad) last semester and an african american female student and I seemed to participate and interrupt a lot, interrupt the prof. who also interrupted us. Then one day we were talking out of class noting that we had participated and interrupted a lot that evening and wondered if people thought we were rude. Or pushy. We came to the conclusion that it was both a "black thing" and a "jewish thing" to interrupt and not a rude thing at all. I am in Laurie Finke's seminar this semester doing the same thing. It seems to me that some seminars aspire to a very certain "civility" which may be coming from a particular way of behaving, a particular culture that may not represent the way everyone feels comfortable communicating. feldmanr@kenyon.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 14:04:25 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Theresa C Conefrey Subject: women, language and science Does anyone know of any research on women and language in the sciences? In particular, I'm thinking of studies using discourse analysis or conversation analysis to look at everyday talk in labs, or studies of sexist language usage in different hard sciences. Please send mail to me and I'll compile a list of sources for others who are also interested in this topic. Thanks, Theresa Conefrey (tccg0456@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 14:37:00 CST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "M.J. Larrabee" Subject: Re: WOMEN'S ECONOMIC SUMMITT Contact Maggie Oppenheimer, Economics, DePaul U. in Chicago. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 15:04:00 CST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: BARTLETT ANNE Subject: Women with Class(es) I have to disagree with the notion that examining the construct of Class through the experiences of individual persons is naive and counterproductive. It may well be "obscurantist," but not in the sense of mystification, but rather toward the end of resisting the norms (theoretical, experiential, institutional)that seek to press us into subjection to a particular economic category. Why do we need to follow an intellectual and activist lineage of "seminal" thinkers when we can hold multiple positions and contribute to all sorts of discourses? The idea of a unified subject fixed in a class position is a constraining one, in my opinion, and I haven't seen it do anything useful for the women I know, who are virtually always resisting cultural imperatives to fit into some category or other. Bnne "anarchist Also, thanks for the many wonderful replies that I've been receiving from myquery the other day about an anthology of women's autobiographical essays. My current book needs to be off to the publisher around March First, and then, I'll have some time to get this project off the ground. If anyone wants to write to me in greater detail about contributing to this, I can be reached at the Dept. of English, DePaul University, 802 W. Belden Ave., Chicago, IL 60614-3214. Thanks very much. "engacb@orion.depaul.edu" ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 15:33:22 CST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: JANE EYRE Subject: defining feminist in academia I'd appreciate some help from other programs. Iowa State is proposing (at last) a formal undergraduate major. On the first page of our proposal we define Women's Studies thusly: "Women Studies can be defined as the critical and scholarly pursuit of knowledge about women from a multicultural and interdisciplinary feminist perspective." The College committee that has to approve our proposal has asked us to remove the word "feminist" because "We [the College committee members] suspect that most people, even most University faculty, associate feminism mainly, if not exclusively, with the promotion of a particular sociopolitical program. To them, 'the pursuit of knowledge . . . from a . . . feminist perspective" is as inappropriate in academia as is the pursuit of knowledge from a "conservative Republican" or "liberal Democratic" perspective." Naturally, we do not want to remove the word feminist, so our compromise has been to try to define it in such a way that it is clearly a philosophical rather than political standpoint. Can this be done, do you think? Any suggestions for a brief few words that might set this straight? What definition of Women's Studies and/or feminist have you used in your academic mission statements, rationales, p.r., etc.? Notice, I am not asking for a debate on whether to remove the f-word or not, but rather for suggestions on how to gloss it for this audience. Thanks in advance. Kathy Hickok, Iowa State (KHICKOK@iastate.edu) OR (S2.kkh@isumvs.bitnet) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 14:20:21 -0800 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Susan Ervin-Tripp Subject: In Memoriam: Marija Gimbutas Date: Wed, 9 Feb 94 10:29:19 +0000 From: Michael Everson Subject: Marija Gimbutas Original sender: Andris Prieditis, aprieditis@delphi.com >From the newswires. Copyright pf Reuters and Associated Press. APn 02/07 1605 Obit-Gimbutas Copyright, 1994. The Associated Press. All rights reserved. LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Marija Gimbutas, an archaeologist who challenged conventional views by concluding that women were worshiped in Stone Age-Europe, is dead at age 73. Gimbutas died of cancer Wednesday at UCLA Medical Center, said her friend and editor, Joan Marler. A professor emeritus of European archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles, Gimbutas authored 20 books. Her more recent works, including "Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe," "The Language of the Goddess" and "The Civilization of the Goddess," challenged archaeological convention. She referred to European cultures dating back 6,000 to 8,000 years as "true civilizations" without war, boasting organized cities that were run by women. Based on thousands of female images from those cultures, she concluded that women were worshiped and that the primary deities were goddesses. She maintained that life was peaceful until the worship of warlike gods was imported by Indo-Europeans. Her work was praised by feminists and colleagues such as mythologist Joseph Campbell. A native of Vilnius, Lithuania, Gimbutas received a doctorate in archeaology in 1946 from Tubingen University in Germany. She immigrated to the United States in 1949, did research at Harvard University and joined the UCLA faculty in 1963. She retired four years ago. Survivors include three daughters. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Date: Wed, 9 Feb 94 16:52:46 +0000 From: Michael Everson Subject: BALT:4348 A memory of Marija We have lost a great scholar in Marija Gimbutas. I was lucky to have worked with her for three years while I was at Los Angeles. Marija had a powerful affect on everyone she met; it was always a joy to be with her, in an academic setting or a less formal one. My coming here to Ireland land at all is due to Marija, and I owe her much. Laima has spun the last of Marija's thread. Those of us who knew her, and those of us who knew her work, are fortunate that our threads have been interwoven with hers. The tapestry of our lives is much richer for it. Let us not mourn Marija's passing, but rejoice in all she taught and brought us. Ji yra girtina! Michael Everson School of Architecture, UCD; Richview, Clonskeagh; Dublin 14; E/ire Phone: +353 1 706-2745 Fax: +353 1 283-8908 Home: +353 1 478-2597 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 17:15:09 LCL Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Ruth Ginzberg Organization: Philosophy Dept., Wesleyan University Subject: Re: defining feminist in academia >The College committee that has to approve our proposal has asked us to >remove the word "feminist" because "We [the College committee members] >suspect that most people, even most University faculty, associate >feminism mainly, if not exclusively, with the promotion of a >particular sociopolitical program. To them, 'the pursuit of knowledge >. . . from a . . . feminist perspective" is as inappropriate in >academia as is the pursuit of knowledge from a "conservative >Republican" or "liberal Democratic" perspective." Try this: "One of the aims of the Women's Studies Program at ______ is to replace incorrect popular notions about feminism with a solid educational program which explores its many intellectual, historical, cultural, and theoretical grounds. For this reason, we believe that the fact that 'most people, even most University faculty, associate feminism' ---incorrectly--- with something which it is not, does not constitute a good reason to leave the word 'feminism' out of the description of the major. Analogously, the mere fact that most people incorrectly associate metaphysics with astrology would not constitute a good reason to omit it from the philosophy department's description of the major, nor would the fact that most people associate the wrong things with courses in mechanics offered by the physics department. These misconceptions pinpoint educational opportunities, not terms which the University should elect not to use in its descriptions of major programs. "The specification of a feminist perspective, which is typical of many academic Women's Studies Programs in the United States, is not intended to deliniate particular political position. Rather it is the designation of a boundary on the subject matter of the discipline. Specifying the subject matter of Women's Studies as 'the critical and scholarly pursuit of knowledge about women from a multicultural and interdisciplinary feminist perspective' is no different from similar statements which might be made distinguishing chemistry from alchemy or astronomy from astrology. It merely delineates the subject matter of inquiry within this major, as contrasted with other subjects which theoretically might be worthy of pursuit in their own right, but which fall outside of the scope of this particular program." ...or something like that... ----------- Ruth Ginzberg (rginzberg@eagle.wesleyan.edu) ------------ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 16:08:53 +0800 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Helen Shoemaker Subject: Re: "the middle class woman" I agree with the statement that "No matter how much education I have obtained, I don't have the knowledge base to "belong". IMO, it has more to do with figuring out the languaging of the knowledge base - the translation into the jargon of the "other" whoever that other is -- as a woman who returned to higher ed. in midlife and ended up teaching in the same department I received my BA from, I have encountered many subtle indications that I will never be accepted as a full colleague - I do not speak the language - Ireact in many ways to this experience-- but mostly I keep trying to find a place -- strangely enough this experience is not with those who were once my teachers, but rather from administration who would rather bank on an unknown from some other place Well-you got me going! I do not have much of an editor (either on the screen or in real life) so please overlook the typos, etc. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 18:11:00 CDT Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Virginia Sapiro Subject: Re: defining feminist in academia The most interesting point about the objection to the word "feminist" is that they are worried about what "most people" think the term means or what it involves. It would be interesting to find out what "most people" think physics means or mathematics or sociology or any other field and how that perception compares with what its practitioners mean. I think the only answer must be in terms of a body of research and theory that defines and approach to research and teaching. This battle is a common one! Virginia Sapiro Political Science/Women's Studies University of Wisconsin - Madison sapiro@polisci.wisc.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Feb 1994 10:14:58 +0800 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Lynne Alice WMST-L INDEX Lynne Alice Sociology and Women's Studies Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia 6150 tel. 339.7097/360.2616 fax 310.1899 email alice@csuvax1.csu.murdoch.edu au ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Feb 1994 21:12:37 +0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Karen Weyler Subject: Stopping the Tenure Clock In-Reply-To: <199402130030.TAA03781@umd5.umd.edu> Sorry to reply to the list, but I forgot the name of the original poster. I just saw in the paper that UNC-Chapel Hill is considering a "stopping the tenure clock" proposal. It was supposedly to be voted on by the Board of Governors this week, but that mtg. was posponed due to bad weather. It has already been approved by the Chancellor and the Board of Trustees. The gist of the policy seems to be that it will allow tenure track facultry members to stop the clock for a year in the case of child birth, child care, or poor health. Although the policy was designed for female faculty members, there seems to be a possibility that it might apply to men in the future. For more info, you might want to contact the UNC Faculty Council or the office of the Chancellor. Karen Weyler UNC-Chapel Hill Weyler@gibbs.oit.unc.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Feb 1994 13:56:48 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Myers, Joann" Subject: admission stats I'm working on my final draft of my response to the admissions officer and need some assistance. I have found out that Marist's incoming classes have been predominantly female (56-61%) since 1987. Since the person in question is a businessman who is charged with pulling in the numbers, I thought I'd also add that the overall number of females going to college has increased, and thus we are competing for this pool of students with other colleges, but I need facts to back this up. Do any of you have admissions breakdowns for your schools? Much appreciated. Also, the conversation re: inclusing feminist in the definition of women's studies resounds of the issue of women scholars not being taken seriously unless they are echoing the traditions...feminist theory is scholarship...it does allow for the examination of lives from a critical perspective (Socrates definition of liberal arts education, paraphrased of course). JAM JZLY@Maristb.bitnet ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Feb 1994 14:39:50 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Michelle Reynolds Subject: Lesbian Autobiography Does anyone know if a paper by Jane Gurko Krieger, titled "The Shape of Sameness: Contemporary Lesbian Autobiographical Narratives," presented at the MLA conference in Houston, 1980 was ever published - perhaps revised and/or retitled? Private responses can be sent to me -> reynolds@bosshog.arts.uwo.ca thanks, michelle. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Feb 1994 16:02:20 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Kathleen Garay Subject: A MEDIEVAL FILM A group of women medievalists at McMaster University, Canada, has recently completed a 42 minute VHS video: DEVOTIONAL LITERATURE OF THE LATER MIDDLE AGES, Three Manuscripts in the McMaster University Library, Hamilton, Canada. The video, the first in a series, fetures a "guided tour" (with contemporary music) of French, Dutch and Italian manuscripts from the fourteenth and fifteenth century. Next in the series (available by April): FROM MANUSCRIPT TO PRINTED BOOK (The history of the development of the book). Price:(each film in the series) Institutions $99.00 (plus tax and postage) Students $49 (plus tax and postage) From: Titles, Mcmaster University Bookstore, P.O. Box 1022, Hamilton, Ontario, L8S 1C0, Canada Phone: (905) 525 - 9140 ext. 24751 Fax: (905) 572 - 7160 e-mail: BOOKSTR@McMASTER.CA ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Feb 1994 16:11:51 CST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: AMY KASTELY Subject: More Chicano/a Texts Others have sent recommendations in response to my request for texts by Chicano/a writers exploring marginalization and related topics. Thank you. George Sanchez, Becoming a Mexican-American Richard Rodriquez, Hunger of Memory Days of Obligation: An Argument with my Mexican Father Terri de la Pena, Margins Amy Kastely amy@vax.stmarytx.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Feb 1994 17:47:13 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Laura Hunt Subject: W.S./Internet From: Laura Hunt E-mail: lahun@umich.edu February 1994 I would like to announce the availability of a Guide which I have been compiling since the Spring of 1993. It is called A Guide to Sources for Women's Studies and Feminist Resources on the Internet, and it is available in two locations on the Internet. It is accessible to Gopher, Telnet, E-mail File Transfer, and FTP. The guide reads somewhat as an encyclopedic treatise on the resoureces available on the Internet which might be of interest to those in Women's Studies or those interested in feminist issues. It contains brief descriptions of what sort of "tools" are available on the Internet, as well as sample addresses/contacts for many of these resources. The bulk of the guide consists of the great variety of listserv addresses available for women's (and men's) electronic discussions. It is available through the University of Michigan's Clearinghouse of Subject- Oriented Internet Resource Guides. Anonymous FTP host: una.hh.lib.umich.edu path: inetdirsstacks file: women:hunt Gopher => University of Michigan => Library Resources => Clearinghouse of Subject-Oriented Internet Resource Guides => Guides to the Social Sciences Gopher-link File Name= Women's Studies, Feminism, L.Hunt, v3 2/94 Type= 0 Port= 70 Path= 0/inetdirsstacks/women:hunt Host= una.hh.lib.umich.edu It is also available through the University of Maryland's InforM Gopher Women's Studies Database. Telnet or Gopher to INFORM.UMD.EDU Use either arrow or number keys to select => 4. Educational Resources => 16. Women's Studies Then follow the path: Computing Resources/Guides to the Internet/guide by hunt The gopher interfact has a feature that allows you to send files to your e-mail account. When you are in a file, type "q" (for quit), then "m" (for mail), and provide your e-mail address. The file will come to you as an e-mail message. FTP to INFORM.UMD.EDU Login as "anonymous" and use your e-mail address as a password. Choose the InforM directory by typing "cd info". The commands "dir" or "ls" will display a list of files in that directory. Use the command "get " to download a file into your account. The directory path name for the Women's Studies Database is "inforM/Educational_Resources/WomensStudies" I intend to continue to update this guide, and would appreciate any new resources which I could include in the next version. I welcome everyone to download and distribute the guide, I ask only that you leave my name on it and contact me to let me know what you wish to use it for. I also welcome and comments or suggestions for the formatting and content of the guide. Thank you, Laura Hunt lahun@umich.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Feb 1994 21:34:35 -0300 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Cecilia Maria B Sardenberg Subject: Re: "the middle class woman" In-Reply-To: <9AEC69F340014C16@brfapg.bitnet> I don't know about El Salvador (though I think it is interesting that working class women there think the movement benefits them most), but in Brazil, feminism is something new for working class women. Even though working class women here have been very active in different social movements, including the women's movement, few identify themselves as 'feminists'. Here in Salvador, Bahia, Brasil, until fairly recently, the only self-proclaimed autonomous feminist group was Brasil Mulher, and it was composed almost entirely by professional middle-class women (or women who had some type of university degree), but from the 'left'. I have been a member of Brasil Mulher (or 'BM', as it is locally known) for almost ten years, so I know... THe point I want to make is that even though we have a fairly active women's movement in Brazil, that includes women from different working class sectors and active in different social movements (black women's movement, poor neighborhood movements, union leaders, etc.), they do not necessarily identify themselves as feminists. That goes for women in academia as well... Cecilia Sardenberg cecisard@sunrnp.ufba.br ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Feb 1994 19:42:51 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Carolyn Sharp Organization: HexaCom Info Services Subject: GORZ Doing research on full employment, I keep running into the work of Andre Gorz (the French sociologist). A fair number of (male) community based activists and intellectuals seem quite enamoured of his theories, a feeling I don't share but must deal with. I am particularly perturbed by his discussions of the limits of economic rationality as pertains to the private and public spheres in his Metamorphoses du travail, Quete du sens. I would appreciate hearing from anyone who has a reference to a feminist critique of his work. Also since he relies heavily on Ivan Illich's book on gender, which he uses as the basis for his straw dog radical feminism, I'd also appreciate any references to critiques of Illich. Also can anyone say whether Gorz's influence is found where they are or whether it is merely a reflection of our francophone context. Many thanks. My address is Carolyn.Sharp@qel.hexacom.montreal.qc.ca Au plaisir de vous lire. Carolyn. ack ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Feb 1994 19:21:00 PST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Bobbi Mitzenmacher Subject: GENDER AUTOBIOGRAPHIES In a message a few days ago,someone (I think from UC Irvine) wrote theat they did gender autobiographies in their class. Could that person and others who do such assignments write me with details of what directions they give for this assignment. I will compile this and send it back in an organized manner to the list. Bobbi Mitzenmacher rmitzen@beach1.csulb.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 07:35:11 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Jo Freeman Subject: Re: I'm Not a Women's LIbber, But. . . In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 10 Feb 1994 08:52:36 -0600 from Don't confuse the trash can with burning. The trash can was part of the action at the 1968 Miss American contest. Burning was not. See Issue #4 of the Voic e of the Women's Liberation Movement; "Confessions of a Non-bra Burner"by Joan na Foley Martin, CHICAGO JOURNALISM REVIEW 1971: section on Media Hostility in THE POLITICS OF WOMEN'S LIBERATION, pp. 111-114, (1975); section on Ridicule in REBIRTH OF FEMINISM, pp. 228-230, also pp. 123, 136, 266,408. If this does n't coninvce you, the people who were there are still alive. Try a little fiel d research and less speculation. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 08:46:18 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Jo Freeman Subject: Re: academic vs. popular publications In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 11 Feb 1994 09:56:24 EST from I've tried to resist pluning into the debate on academic vs. popular writing, b ut I can't any longer. There's too much muddle. I was a journalist before I w ent to graduate school so I learned early that the primary purpose of writing i s to communicate. For that one needs to understand and write for a specific au dience. Jargon may or may not be appropriate for that audience -- it certainly is a shorthand form which may speed up exchanges -- but the use of jargon is n ot the same as academic, or unclear, writing. Jargon can also be used when aimi ng at more general audiences if one explains it first. Poor writing is another problem, but it is one which plagues academic prose. M ostacademics have nevefbeen taught to write. It is the rare academic which has even had a good editor. I've been editing introductory textsfor 25 years, and few of my authors turn in decent first drafts. They KNOW they are writing for undergraduates, but it is still hard to understand what they mean to say. The most recent editition of WOMEN (5th, due later this year) required over 300 pages of letters (from me) plus comments on thedrafts before I was ready to sen d the chapters to the copy editor. As I review the letters I realize that I've spent the last three years teach academics how to write. And I mean basic stu ff, like One Thought per Paragraph; the lead sentence should state the main tho ught for that paragraph. Most academics have never been compelled to clarify their writing (by their professorswhile students) and don't understand why they should do so once they have their degrees. As reviewers for journals they judge others by the same standards they learned, and those standards don't include good prose. Instead they have turned reality into virtue by criticizing those who do write clearly as "journalistic". They confuse simplicity of style with simplicity of thought. Thus those that write clearly are assumed to be in the same category as those who write clearly for popular (i.e. non professional) audiences. And those who pander to the popular passions are obviously not of the same calibur as those articulate subtle nuances forthe intellectually sophisticated. All this means that those of us who want to publish for different audiences must change our style, as well as ouruse ofjargon, to fit our audience's conce ption of what's good. We must write clearly for popular audiences and less cle arly for professional ones. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 09:13:57 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Von Bakanic Organization: College of Charleston Subject: Help finding out the "real" story This morning our local paper had an eye catching headline: FEMINISTS BACK VMI. The story quote Elizabeth Fox-Genovese as supporting the separate but equal alternative to VMI. I live in Charleston, S.C. (the Citadel is here) and teach women's studies at the College of Charleston. To say that my students are confused and upset at the headline is an understatement. I need to calm them down and explain the situation. Does anyone know the context of those remarks, or the logic behind them. Von _____________________________________________________________________ Von Bakanic (803) 953-7105 Dept. of Sociology internet address: College of Charleston bakanicv@cofc.edu Charleston, S.C. 29424 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 09:40:17 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Jennifer Alabiso Subject: Fear of Labels In-Reply-To: <199402120357.WAA16407@umd5.umd.edu> from "ruth parlin" at Feb 11, 94 08:30:04 pm I think it is important to remember that for younger women, there is a general fear of labels, not just lesbianism, but man-hating, separatist, etc. I have found that a good approach, (and again, these are tough issues to address, so any input/ideas are helpful) is to be as non-confrontational, and non-accusatory as possible. Women who fear being affiliated with homosexual groups, also are not ready to hear about the evils of men (read: as a society). I try to explain that homosexuality is not contagious, that it is simply a way of loving other people, that they may have not been exposed to before. I have been surprised by the number of women who argue this with me. It's sad, but we really need to re-educate this population about what it means to be gay/lesbian, and (maybe more importantly) what it doesn't mean. Start slowly, and do not make any assumptions about where they come from politically. It's one of the most painful issues for feminists to address because the lesbian movement has been so tied to the feminist movement, and beneficially so, and it is awful to think about what I see as the level of fear and ignorance (ignorance in it's most literal sense, they honestly do not have any exposure to/ knowledge of the gay/lesbian population.) that exists for younger women. It's also important to remember that soooo many of these women are struggling with their own sexuality, so this is a vulnerable time for them. Dating is very important to them, and for a lot of them men are part of that. Therefore, any male bashing (no matter how innocuous it seems to you) will not go over well. Again, the disclaimer that this is all just trial and error opinion stuff for me. Any other thoughts??? Jen Alabiso UPENN jalabiso@ccat.sas.upenn.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 09:43:07 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Jo Freeman Subject: Re: conversation styles In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 11 Feb 1994 22:25:36 EST from On Fri, 11 Feb 1994 22:25:36 EST Gary Daily said: >> From: STRETCH OR DROWN/ EVOLVE OR DIE >> Subject: Re: conversation styles > >> Theresa's complication of the discussion of high involvement and high >> consideration speakers interested me greatly. >> >> Laurie Finke >> finkel@kenyon.edu > >I'm sorry to have missed the early posts on this thread. Are the >terms "high involvement" and "high consideration" speakers both >considered positive styles of conversation? I'm not familiar with >the lingo. (And, by the way, do these terms qualify as "academic" or >"general public" vocabulary in reference to _that_ ongoing thread?) > >gary daily >hidaily@ruby.indstate.edu "High involvement" means talkative and "high consideration" means taciturn, or even reticent. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 09:52:37 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Irene Isley Subject: exclusivity Help: on this campus, we have a "women teachers group"--so named because it includes teaching academic staff, not just faculty, and because, more obviously, it serves women only. The exlusivity in question is not (at this posting) in regard to the men. It is in regard to the women who are non-teaching academic staff. They have not been invited. They were not invited as regular members (although we always have mentioned the desire to invite them to a meeting or two to discuss academic issues), because the group was convened by teachers for teachers on this campus. Our librarian (a member of the non-teaching ac. staff) confronted me with the issue of exclusivity last Tuesday, the 10th. When I had explained what I thought was the group's position, she said the damage was too deep and it was too late to remedy. However, I (as the coordinator for the group) put the item of campus relations on our agenda ("1. Men, 2. Non-teaching academic staff"). Today, each member of the group has a memo in her mailbox from a *sometime member of the group* (I think she's been to 4 meetings in a year of monthly meetings). The memo again suggests we are being divisive on a small campus, misuses a quotation from our advertisement for a reception for students (a q. that says our purpose is to support students) to bolster her claim that it is in the interests of the institution to include all the staff and certain of the classified. We seem to be disintegrating from within, and there are only 15 women in the group. We need each other. But several forces seem to be at work to pull us apart. We are becoming politicized--just like a collegium or a senate, or any other of the traditional patriarchal structures. Any suggestions on dealing with the charges? Isn't it OK for teachers to have their own group? Must we be all things to all people, just because they're women and just because the staff here feels unappreciated (just as does the faculty)? Irene Isley iisley@uwcmail.uwc.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 09:54:25 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: A Deborah Malmud Subject: Re: Fear of Labels In-Reply-To: <199402141441.AA15131@mailhub.cc.columbia.edu> On Mon, 14 Feb 1994, Jennifer Alabiso wrote: > I think it is important to remember that for younger women, there is a > general fear of labels, not just lesbianism, but man-hating, separatist, > etc. I have found that a good approach, (and again, these are tough > issues to address, so any input/ideas are helpful) is to be as > non-confrontational, and non-accusatory as possible. Women who fear > being affiliated with homosexual groups, also are not ready to hear about > the evils of men (read: as a society). I try to explain that > homosexuality is not contagious, that it is simply a way of loving other > people, that they may have not been exposed to before. Gee, I never realized homosexuality was so "simple" as all that. > I have been > surprised by the number of women who argue this with me. Don't be. It's sad, > but we really need to re-educate > this population about what it means to be gay/lesbian, and (maybe more > importantly) what it doesn't mean. Yeah, just exactly what does and doesn't it mean? And who, exactly is the "we" that is doing this this educating? Start slowly, and do not make any > assumptions... Seems like you should follow your own advice. > (ignorance in it's most literal sense, they honestly do not have any > exposure to/ knowledge of the gay/lesbian population.) just what is *the* gay/lesbian population? does it bear any resemblence to *the* black community, or *the* jewish community, or *the* straight community? deborah malmud columbia university adm1@columbia.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 10:04:45 CST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Stephanie Riger Subject: where was first NWSA held? To complete a citation in a reference list, I need to know the name of the city where the first NWSA meeting was held in May, 1979. Please reply PRIVATELY, with thanks, Stephanie Riger Women's Studies Program (M/C 360) Univ. of Il. at Chicago 1022 Behavioral Sciences Building 1007 W. Harrison St. Chicago, Il. 60607-7137 Bitnet: u29322@UICVM Internet: Stephanie.Riger@uic.edu Fax: 312-413-4122 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 11:04:41 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Jo Freeman Subject: Re: admission stats In-Reply-To: Message of Sun, 13 Feb 1994 13:56:48 EST from The documents section of your library should have the latest volume of the Dige st of Education Statistics. It should have a lot of data you can use. If you need something that isn't broken out quite the way you want it, the National Ce nter for Education Statistics has an 800 number (get it from 800 information), The Office of Educational Research Information puts out lots of bulletins with information which eventually ends up in the DES in different form (plus BLS and other data). ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 08:05:28 -0800 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Shirley Lim Subject: Re: repeating introductory material In-Reply-To: <9402101435.AA20975@ucsbuxb.ucsb.edu> Virginia: a thought on overlap in readings. I have often thought that the emphasis on the same texts in course after course rises from a deeply embedded indifference to issues of difference, including ethnicity and class. Reading This Bridge is about all that is necessary to understand women of color, right? Wrong! Often, feminist scholars who sepnd enoromius amounts of time reading theory and following the most recent developments in debates on social change, etc, do not find the time or make the ffort to follow the evolving debate on women of color positions. It's a form of tokenism in feminist scholarship which is particularly repugnant. Shirley Lim, Women's Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, Ca. 93106. E-mail: slim@humanitas.ucsb.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 11:10:20 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Evan Harrington Subject: Re: academic vs. popular publications In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 10 Feb 1994 09:58:29 -0600 from On Thu, 10 Feb 1994 09:58:29 -0600 Susan Harrison said: > RE: the relationship between scholarly writing and dense or obscure > texts.... > > More than once i've heard here the assumption that clear writing does > not get scholarly acclaim. Finally i must point out that that is a > leap. ALL refereed journals do not turn down articles on the basis of > the ideas being too clearly presented, although there are some referees > who do. I'd like to quote one of my professors, Ralph Rosnow at Temple University: "Think Yiddish, write British." This is the way in which social science is thoughyt about and then how it is written in the journals. As you might guess, they are not easily trans- lated. He has written eloquently on this problem. See his book, _Paradigms In Transition_. Evan Harrington Cannibal@vm.temple.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 11:05:17 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Kathryn Cirksena Subject: Looking for speakers: new technologies and Bosnia For two separate events we are trying to locate speakers, one on Women and the New Communications Technologies and the other on Women and the War in Bosnia. These would both be for spring. For the Technologies speaker, we are thinking of author Sherry Turkle. Does anyone know how to contact her, have suggestions of other speakers, or an opinion on her suitability. We would hope to offer a talk that would be of interest to the general public as well as the campus community. For "women and the war in Bosnia" we were thinking of Slavenka Drakulic. As above, contacts, opinions, suggestions would be welcomed. Russell Sage College is small liberal arts women's college near Albany NY. Please respond to me privately: Kathy Cirksena, Director Communications Program INTERNET: cirksena@uacsc1.albany.edu BITNET: cirksena@albnyvms phone (518) 270-2407 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 17:21:40 +0000 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Orla Morrissey Subject: Resources re Family I suggest you take a look at Rethinking the Family:Some Feminist Questions edite d by Barrie Thorne and Marilyn Yalom, 1992, Northeastern Univ. Press >From Orla Morrissey at omorrissey@ucc.ie ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 10:20:25 PST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Bethania Gonzalez Subject: position announcement Women's Studies: Assistant or Associate tenure-track position. Candidates must be well grounded in feminist theory, with strong commitment to teaching, and the ability to teach Women's Studies courses in the area of the humanities (e.g. American Women in Media and the Arts, Women and Art, and Feminist Spirituality). Candidates should be able to teach introductory courses as well as courses in at least one of the following areas: women and health, methodological issues in Women's Studies, and/or issues affecting women of color. In addition, candidates should be actively engaged in feminist scholarly and creative activities and be able to develop additional courses (as required) in their areas of expertise. All Women's Studies courses at CSUS are upper division (and many are part of the General Education Program). Send letter of application, Vitae, names of three references, proof of doctorate (ABD's considered with certification that completion can be achieved within one year of appointment), and samples of syllabi to: Dr. Bethania Gonzalez, Coordinator of Women's Studies, CSUS, Sacramento, CA 95819-6035. Review of applications begins on March 10, 1994. Position will remain open until filled. AA/EOE. Phone (916) 278-6817. Fax (916) 278-7582. Please help us pass the word around. Thank you. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 13:54:02 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Connie Koppelman Subject: Gorrilla Girls State University of New York at Stony Brook Stony Brook, NY 11794-3456 Constance E Koppelman Womens Studies 516 632-9176 14-Feb-1994 01:33pm EDT FROM: CKOPPELMAN TO: Remote Addressee ( _wmst-l@umdd ) Subject: Gorrilla Girls A week or so ago someone answered the request for the Guerrilla Girls address with a Cooper Station address which was not accurate last year when we invited the GG to Stony Brook. The address I used to reach them is 532 La Guardia Place #237 New York, N.Y. 10012 CKoppelman@sbccmail ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 14:09:24 -0500 Reply-To: "Giavanna J. Munafo" Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Giavanna J. Munafo" Subject: VMI & Eliz. Fox-Genovese In-Reply-To: <199402141619.LAA15075@umd5.umd.edu> I think Von's inquery may be of concern to many of us--in the classroom and personally. So, I'm responding to the list. Hope that seems appropriate. Look, for example, at a recent story in Vanity Fair, of all places, about Fox-Genovese and her husband entitled "Radical Pique" (Feb. '94, 32-35). My take on the VF article and on F-G's support of VMI is that finding someone 'inside' the ranks of 'feminism' to attack it for you works. F-G is complicit, of course--not being appropriated per se. Nonetheless, in any intellectual tradition you'll find individuals who construct themselves as one of that tradition's founding influences and who, for various reasons, now bemoan its state. Giavanna gjm9u@darwin.clas.virginia.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 14:07:11 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Connie Koppelman Subject: United Nations and Women State University of New York at Stony Brook Stony Brook, NY 11794-3456 Constance E Koppelman Womens Studies 516 632-9176 14-Feb-1994 01:57pm EDT FROM: CKOPPELMAN TO: Remote Addressee ( _wmst-l@umdd ) Subject: United Nations and Women A student of mine is working on a project requiring bibliographic information concerning the origins of International Women's Day, the United Nations conferences on Women in 1975, 1980, 1985 and also the U.N. decade for women. The librarian helped her to find short encyclopedia entries, and the U.N. sent a list of dates, but I can't believe that there isn't a great deal more out there. If anyone has a suggestion, I'll pass on the information. Thanks CKoppelman@sbccmail ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 14:11:49 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Jane Mold Subject: Re: exclusivity Here's an idea - keep the group as is, stating that you deal with teaching issues, but periodically hold meetings (announced well in advance) where you invite other staff and discuss ways in which their work impacts on your teaching. You can call them guest input sessions or something. Jane ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 11:54:00 CDT Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Phyllis Holman Weisbard Subject: exclusivity and academic staff I would like to respond to Irene's posting about the 'women teachers group' on her campus and the complaint from the librarian that the group should include non-teaching acad. staff women. As a general suggestion I wonder why the group couldn't be open to faculty and acad. staff but have an agenda sent around in advance. People could self select issues or topics of interest to them or to which they would like to contribute. A higher proportion of classroom teachers would then presumably turn up for pedagogy-related topics. But maybe some of those acad. staff women are also part-time returning students or former students who could offer their perspectives in a safe environment for such discussions. And specifically I would like to add that most librarians, particularly those in public services areas, engage in "teaching" on a daily basis -- both one-on-one and in group "bibliographic instruction" sessions, to use our professional jargon. Many of us think about if/how/when we incorporate feminist pedagogy and values into our instruction and we need ongoing support for and growth in our abilities to do so, too. Phyllis Holman Weisbard (608) 263-5754 Acting Women's Studies Librarian pweis@wiscmacc (Bitnet) University of Wisconsin System pweis@macc.wisc.edu (Internet) Room 430 Memorial Library 728 State Street Madison, WI 53706 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 11:30:25 -0800 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: ELLEN CRONAN ROSE Subject: Re: exclusivity In-Reply-To: <199402141758.JAA02809@post-office.nevada.edu> The problem Irene Isley discusses is similar to a problem we recently dealt with here. Some women faculty expressed the feeling that the WS Program was being "exclusive" and "in-groupy." Like Irene, the members of the Steering Committee and I did not feel that the WS Program had to be all things to all women (we have an active Women's Center on campus, and a very busy Status of Women committee)--but we did not want to foster factionalism either. What we did was encourage groups of women who shared common interests to form their own informal groups (there is now a group of women, not all of them formally associated with WS--i.e., not teaching in the program--who get together monthly to provide suppport for each other's research and to discuss pedagogical concerns; there is also a bi-weekly table at the Dining Commons, where any woman who wants can take her tray and socialize with other campus women), which we will publicize in the WS Newsletter and which, as "me" and not as "Director of WS," I will sometimes be involved in (as I am, for instance, in the pedagogy group). I would be interested in the ways others have found to discourage factionalize and promote solidarity among women on your campuses. Ellen Cronan Rose ecrose@nevada.edu On Mon, 14 Feb 1994, Irene Isley wrote: > Help: on this campus, we have a "women teachers group"--so named because it > includes teaching academic staff, not just faculty, and because, more > obviously, it serves women only. > The exlusivity in question is not (at this posting) in regard to the men. It > is in regard to the women who are non-teaching academic staff. They have not > been invited. > They were not invited as regular members (although we always have mentioned > the desire to invite them to a meeting or two to discuss academic issues), > because the group was convened by teachers for teachers on this campus. > Our librarian (a member of the non-teaching ac. staff) confronted me with the > issue of exclusivity last Tuesday, the 10th. When I had explained what I > thought was the group's position, she said the damage was too deep and it was > too late to remedy. However, I (as the coordinator for the group) put the > item of campus relations on our agenda ("1. Men, 2. Non-teaching academic > staff"). > Today, each member of the group has a memo in her mailbox from a *sometime > member of the group* (I think she's been to 4 meetings in a year of monthly > meetings). The memo again suggests we are being divisive on a small campus, > misuses a quotation from our advertisement for a reception for students (a q. > that says our purpose is to support students) to bolster her claim that it is > in the interests of the institution to include all the staff and certain of > the classified. We seem to be disintegrating from within, and there are only > 15 women in the group. We need each other. But several forces seem to be at > work to pull us apart. We are becoming politicized--just like a collegium or > a senate, or any other of the traditional patriarchal structures. Any > suggestions on dealing with the charges? Isn't it OK for teachers to have > their own group? Must we be all things to all people, just because they're > women and just because the staff here feels unappreciated (just as does the > faculty)? > Irene Isley > iisley@uwcmail.uwc.edu > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 13:47:19 LCL Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Ventis Deborah G Subject: Art History Courses I was recently confronted by a male colleague in art history who questioned me about a discussion he had heard about the "white male curriculum" and stated that he didn't believe he was teaching such a curriculum. In fact, many students have commented that our art history courses are not very inclusive and I tried to discuss the issue with him. Given my complete ignorance of the field I was only able to raise a few questions concerning the artists represented or not represented and the way in which art is defined and evaluated. Needless to say I need help in providing some concrete, constructive suggestions for transforming art history courses. Please respond privately unless you think your response will be of general interest- - I will compile a list of any suggestions I receive. Thanks--Deborah G. Ventis, Coordinator of Women's Studies, William & Mary DGVENT@mail.wm.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 13:38:15 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: blake debra j Subject: Re: Women with Class(es) In-Reply-To: <199402122111.QAA16574@umd5.umd.edu> Hi Anne Just saw your message on the wmst list today and thought I'd drop you a line to say hello. How are things going for you? Also have some suggestions on autobiographical essays. Two anthologies by women of color: Making Face Making Soul, ed.Gloria Anzaldua; This Bridge Called My Back, ed. Cherrie Moraga. Both of these authors have collections of essay published: Borderlands/La Frontera, Anzaldua; and Loving in the War Years and The Last Generation, Moraga. I'm working with the writings of these women in my dissertation on violence and desire in Chicana literature. Debbie Blake djblake@umaxc.uiowa.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 11:47:55 PST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Bethania Gonzalez Subject: position announcement Women's Studies: Assistant or Associate tenure-track position. Candidates must be well grounded in feminist theory, with strong commitment to teaching, and the ability to teach Women's Studies courses in the area of the humanities (e.g. American Women in Media and the Arts, Women and Art, and Feminist Spirituality). Candidates should be able to teach introductory courses as well as courses in at least one of the following areas: women and health, methodological issues in Women's Studies, and/or issues affecting women of color. In addition, candidates should be actively engaged in feminist scholarly and creative activities and be able to develop additional courses (as required) in their areas of expertise. All Women's Studies courses at CSUS are upper division (and many are part of the General Education Program). Send letter of application, Vitae, names of three references, proof of doctorate (ABD's considered with certification that completion can be achieved within one year of appointment), and samples of syllabi to: Dr. Bethania Gonzalez, Coordinator of Women's Studies, CSUS, Sacramento, CA, 95819-6035. Review of applications begins on March 10, 1994. Position will remain open until filled. AA/EOE. Phone (916) 278-6817 Fax (916)278- 7582. Please help us spread the word. Thank you. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 13:58:08 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: CROWDER@CORNELL-IOWA.EDU Subject: definition of feminist I'm sending this to the list as well as to Kathy Hickok because it might be useful to others. Kathy asked about definitions of "feminist" acceptable within a WS program but which did not evoke the spectre of being "ideological". While, of course, feminism is ideological, we have to work within academic freedom boundaries. At Cornell, we adopted the following wording in our policy for accepting cross-listed courses: "Courses approved for inclusion in the Women's Studies program should reflect a feminist approach and content. For purposes of this document, 'feminist' shall be understood to include the belief that women are human beings possessed of equal value and importance to that of men and that the study of women and women's concerns is a valid pursuit in its own right." This is clearly very broad, but was acceptable to all. Later, in 1987, we proposed to the faculty a policy requiring at least familiarity with feminist scholarship. To our amazement, it passed. Here is the definition of "feminist scholarship" included in that policy: "'Feminist scholarship' may include the following types of scholarly works: (1) works whose primary focus is on women, treating women as a subject of inquiry of inherent interest, rather than as an adjunct to men; (2) works examining a question from a feminist perspective; (3) works which examine the impact of gender upon the epistomology, paradigms, methodologies, research topics and/or data of a given discipline; (4) works which uncover previously unknown or neglected contributions by women to any aspect of the human endeavor; (5) works which examine pedagogical questions of teaching a given subject to men and to women." I hope these prove useful to others. I should add that the policy on familiarity with feminist scholarship also applies to minority scholarship(s). By putting all of this into a context of requiring faculty members to "keep up" in their fields, we argued that few if any disciplines had produced NO works fitting into one of these five categories, and that therefore even the physicists had some responsibility to at least be familiar with the broadest outlines of feminist work in their field. Diane Griffin Crowder Cornell College 600 First St. W. Mt. Vernon, IA 52314 CROWDER@CORNELL-IOWA.EDU ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 13:11:00 -0700 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Karen Kidd Subject: Re: exclusivity Irene Isley raises an important question when she asks "Isn't it OK for teachers to have their own group? Must we be all things to all people, just because they're women and just because the staff here feels unappreciated (just as does the faculty)?" Unfortunately, to my ears, this echoes the familiar refrain of white male colleagues who feel status-deprived and insecure and want to maintain at least some small bit of inviolable turf. I know that was not the spirit in which Irene raised the question; but I have to hear it from my own perspective as a woman who labored in the "pink collar ghetto" of an academic library for many years, and often felt the dismissive sting of elitism and exclusion from the women's studies faculty of that institution. I was working on my M.A. at the time, commuting weekly (200+ miles RT) to get a degree not offered by my "home" institution, and headed on for a Ph.D. I had much to contribute (more, I daresay, than some of those whose involvement was actively courted); but my expressions of interest were consistently rebuffed. The school I attended had no female faculty in my field, and I felt a real need to connect with somebody, somewhere, who could give me some moral support. My friends, family, co-workers--they all thought I was crazy to go back for more educa- tion. And it was made abundantly clear to me that the women's studies faculty had no interest in clericals, whatever their circumstances or aspirations might be. Had I been a student enrolled at that school, these same female faculty would've been falling all over themselves, rushing to be my "mentor." But, as a clerical employee, I was simply invisible--no matter how many times I said "Look, here I am--I'm willing to work and do whatever I can to help out." Obviously, from the way I'm running on about this, I have not yet gotten rid of the hurt. Isley's question re-opened a wound, I guess. So I have to side with Jane Mold, Phyllis Weisbard, Ellen Rose, et al., in suggesting that you develop some alternative strat egies and allow people to self-select. No, you don't have to be all things to all people--but you do have to recognize that (as faculty) you have access to resources/privileges (however miniscule they seem to you) that others simply do not have. And you do not deplete those resources/privileges when you share them--because your power grows right along with the size of your constituency. -- Karen Kidd, The Claremont Graduate School KKidd@rocky.claremont.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 13:38:09 PST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Theresa <60840883@WSUVM1.BITNET> Subject: Re: conversation styles In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 12 Feb 1994 14:45:43 EST from Feldman says that she and another woman agreed that it may be "a black thing" a nd a "Jewish thing" to interupt a lot in class. Then what is my excuse? Perha ps it is also a working class thing, since many working class background studen ts here are high involvement speakers also? There seems to be some need for a study to be done. Who is doing all the talking? Theresa ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 14:13:09 -0800 Reply-To: Fran Michel Sender: Women's Studies List From: Fran Michel Subject: starting a major In-Reply-To: <199402141257.HAA25841@umd5.umd.edu> We currently have a WS minor, and several students have petitioned individually for special majors in WS. Recently, a number of WS minors and majors have begun circulating a petition asking for the establishment of a regular WS major. Has anyone had similar experiences at their institutions? What kind of resources and support should we be asking for from the college? We are a small, private liberal arts college. The minor has no official budget; we rely on participating departments donating our time and minor funding (photocopying and so on). Please respond privately to fmichel@jupiter.willamette.edu Thanks Frann Michel Willamette University Salem, OR ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 16:38:16 -0600 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Karin Herrmann Subject: New Course I was asked to teach a new course in the English department called "Women in Literature" on the 3000 level. I'd like to make it as multi-cultural as possible while also giving the students the "canon." Since I usually teach in the German department I'd like to ask your help in putting together a syllabus. (We are on a sememster schedule). Any insights you could give me into making this a really interesting course would be greatly appreciated. Please respond to me in private. Many thanks in advance. Karin Herrmann Kherrman@comp.uark.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 19:00:14 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Jane Hannigan Subject: Re: exclusivity and academic staff Phyllis is right on target and what a wonderful thing to share a vareity of perspectives in the educational process. Manuy of us with years of experience in academe kow that it is the academic staff and often the librarians who hear a gret deal about our teaching and our interactions with students. If all women are valued in such a group then each will actually be a support person for the other. Phyllis suggests the use o f an agenda and that seems a sound approach as does the suggestion of a common reading/viewing that becomes the focus of the session. Jane ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 18:20:00 CST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Donna Ekart Subject: Re: Fear of Labels In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon 14 Feb 1994 09:54:25 -0500 In response to Deborah Malmud's 2/14 response to Jen Alabiso: Its hard to miss the note of hostility in your response, Deborah. From what I've read of Jen Alabiso's postings, she's on your side. She has voiced issues of concern that have real resonance with me. The fear of feminism _as it has been stereotyped_ is very real, as is a general ignorance of issues relating to lesbians. What Jen seemed to be saying (pardon me, Jen, for putting words in your mouth) was that as a thinking, caring individual she was doing what she could to be a decent role model/mentor to women younger than she. I hardly think it was necessary to intersperse quotes from her posting with snotty comments, especially as the comments were too brief and vague to serve any con- structive purpose. The reason I chose to post this to the list rather than respoding privately is that this isn't the first time I've seen it happen. And it fairly reeks of the kind of bitchy backstabbing that scares many women my age (27) and younger away from feminist ideas. I am a grad student currently enrolled in an undergrad seminar in feminist theory and the question has repeatedly been asked "why do feminists criticize each other so much/so vehemently?" I don't have an answer. But here we are, talking to each other in this nifty new format, able to create a world in any shape we choose, and we choose to be divisive and bitch. Too bad. For us and our daughters. Sorry for the length and preachy tone of my posting, but I'm sick to death of finding feminists squabbling everywhere I look. Donna Ekart dfe@ksuvm.ksu.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 19:48:23 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: A Deborah Malmud Subject: Re: Fear of Labels In-Reply-To: <199402150044.AA01097@mailhub.cc.columbia.edu> On Mon, 14 Feb 1994, Donna Ekart wrote: > In response to Deborah Malmud's 2/14 response to Jen Alabiso: > > Its hard to miss the note of hostility in your response, Deborah. Nor in yours, Donna. > I've read of Jen Alabiso's postings, she's on your side. Just what "side" do you think I am on? I didn't realize that pointing out the dangers in making blanket statements about a group of people or presuming to speak "for" an entire group was a "side." > What Jen seemed to be saying (pardon me, Jen, for putting words in > your mouth was that as a thinking, caring individual she was doing what she > could to be a decent role model/mentor to women younger than she. Ya know what? That's what I was saying too. I hope all those "younger" women out there read the posts and learned something. I hardly > think it was necessary to intersperse quotes from her posting with snotty > comments, especially as the comments were too brief and vague to serve any con- > structive purpose. Perhaps they were "too brief and vague" for you. Personally, I think they got right to the point. > > The reason I chose to post this to the list rather than respoding privately is > that this isn't the first time I've seen it happen. And it fairly reeks of the > kind of bitchy backstabbing that scares many women my age (27) and younger away > from feminist ideas. I am a grad student... You see, here's the problem. How can you say that what I've written is scary to women in their 20s? I'm in my 20s. It doesn't scare me. I'm a grad student too. Small world. > But here we are, talking to each other in this nifty new format... At last, we agree. It is a "nifty new format" and I, for one, have just learned how to use my text editor. > a world in any shape we choose, and we choose to be divisive and bitch. Well I certainly hope "our" new world includes divisiveness and bitchiness, otherwise, let me off at the next stop. > Sorry for the length and preachy tone of my posting, but I'm sick to death of > finding feminists squabbling everywhere I look. Yeah, it was a lot easier when all we did was smile and look pretty. deborah malmud columbia university adm1@columbia.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 21:04:05 EST Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Dee Quaranto Subject: Re: United Nations and Women There is a videotape of the Nairobi conference called "Speaking of Nairobi." If you are interested in particulars, send me an e-mail and I'll find out for you. Dee Quaranto West Virginia University President's Office for Social Justice 304-293-7503 daq@wvnvm.wvnet.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 21:23:18 -0500 Reply-To: "Giavanna J. Munafo" Sender: Women's Studies List From: "Giavanna J. Munafo" Subject: Re: conversation styles In-Reply-To: <199402150013.TAA03158@umd5.umd.edu> A 'black thing,' a 'jewish thing,' a 'working class thing'? It may be that speaking up and out may indeed, for some of us, have ties to cultural traditions/forms. For others, though, behaviour which may seem 'the same' derives from plain old assertiveness, confidence, egocentrism, or whatever. I say this, not to discount others' sugestions, but to register my skepticism re: finding any one or cluster of identity 'ingredients' to explain 'high involvement' characteristics. I've got them and my cultural inheritance is solidly upper class, white/Italian-American (thoroughly assimilated), Catholic. Biologically I'm Irish/French-American. While I can imagine tracing my vocalness to, say, some aspects of Italian and Italian-American culture, my brother, also adopted, does not share it. He's much more 'high consideration.' Go figure. Giavanna gjm9u@darwin.clas.virginia.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 21:24:58 -0500 Reply-To: korenman@UMBC2.UMBC.EDU Sender: Women's Studies List From: Joan Korenman Subject: Please criticize privately Hi. I'm writing to ask that further discussion of "bitchiness" and criticism of individual subscribers be conducted privately, not on WMST-L. The list's mail volume is simply too heavy to accommodate publicly aired personal criticism and response. I might also point out that quick retorts and critical comments that might be effective in face-to-face conversations often take on a more inflammatory tone when they're sent as public e-mail messages. I would urge everyone to be a bit SLOWER to reply and to try to imagine how your message will be received by 2500 other people who don't know you. Finally, if you feel you must criticize someone, please do it privately, not via WMST-L. Many thanks for your understanding and cooperation. Joan Korenman Internet: korenman@umbc2.umbc.edu Bitnet: korenman@umbc ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 21:41:10 -0500 Reply-To: Women's Studies List Sender: Women's Studies List From: Sherry Linkon Subject: feminists vs. non-feminists I'm back, and I'm pleased to report that things went mostly well in class today. I began by emphasizing the importance of respecting other people's ideas, and I posed the central question for the day: why did we, as a class of intelligent, educated women, have such a wide range of responses to the romance novel? I pointed out that in an early survey of the course, over 50% of students identified themselves as feminists, while only 33% disliked the novel, so the answer wasn't as easy as "women who know better don't like these books." I gave students copies of a handout with quotes from their papers and put them in small groups. I had to remind them several times not just to look at their own positions onthe book but to consider the full range. Then we pulled out to the large circle for full class discussion. There were a few tense moments, but for the most part it worked. We were able to consider a wider range of options, more voices were heard (if only in written form on the handout), and most people felt better. I talked with both of the vocal feminists after class, and they felt regret at their own behavior but a better understanding -- so they said -- of themselves and the others. As one of them put it during class discussion, "sometimes I have a knee-jerk feminist reaction, and maybe I need to look again." In other words, I think everyone, all across the spectrum, was challenged to consider her own and other people's responses more carefully. I'm relieved and a little proud of myself (I must admit), but I also want to say again how much I appreciate the suggestions I received from WMST-L folks. You gave me some ideas, some reinforcement, and a sounding board. Thanks--Sherry