Women's Studies

Like the field of black/African-American studies with which it is often compared, women's studies is in the rather uncommon position of an academic subject whose existence resulted from a political movement. While most scholars attribute the first women's studies program to San Diego State University in 1970, all the programs/departments of the early twenty-first century, no matter what their date of origin, credit feminism and the women's movement for their birth. Allison Kimmich, the director of the National Women's Studies Association, told Alison Neumer Lara in 2005, "Women's studies is an outgrowth of the feminist movement. It is the academic arm." Campus activism was widespread in 1960s, and forever changed the way knowledge and the political implications of intellectual work are viewed. The founding of Students for a Democratic Society and campus antiwar and civil rights movements set the stage for this new field of research, which "reconstruc(t)ed the traditionally fashioned women and men, denaturalized sex and sexuality, formulated subjective and social gender, modeled sex-gender systems, multiplied identities and oppressions, and problematized all such categories" (Davidow 2002, p. 166). Of course, this origin in political activism means that women's studies has had a somewhat vexed place at the academic table, as Jacky Coates, Michelle Dodds, and Jodi Jensen (1998) note, stating "the point is to change the world, not just to study it" (p. 333), and later asking rhetorically, "[i]f confined solely to the world of texts, does the work of feminist academics contribute any more than the work of other academics to concrete social change?" (p. 338). Certainly "theory" versus "activism" is a binary near and dear to many laboring inside and outside of academia, each believing that their work contributes more to the feminist (or other political) project. Yet, as Mary Evans echoes in her 1997 essay, "In Praise of Theory: The Case for Women's Studies," "belief and ideology … have critical effects on the lives of millions of people" and the "production of counter-ideologies may, therefore, be as much part of a struggle of the oppressed as any other" (p. 20).

Despite these debates, however, the growth of women's studies as a discipline has been swift. By 1969 the Modern Language Association had formed their Commission on the Status of Women, and by 1971 the journals PMLA and College English had published their first all-feminist issues. The growth of classes in the field (although a name was not yet decided, many were calling it "female studies") also moved rapidly from a barely institutionalized 100 or so courses in 1970 to more than 395 programs in the United States alone and more than 700 worldwide by the early twenty-first century. Though the field has not been free from its share of threats stemming from rising tides of conservatism and university budget slashing, this level of growth over the course of more than thirty-five years remains notable. And though most programs' goal at the outset included a desire to fuse activist concerns with academic knowledge, how each women's studies program actually worked then and in the early twenty-first century has everything to do with the individual institutions themselves. They range from freestanding departments with their own tenure lines to the far more common (and some would argue disenfranchised) "programs" with a few core requirements and the bulk of their courses offered through interdepartmental cross-listing.

In other words, women's studies (this term will be used until discussing the rise of gender studies specifically) can mean anything from the addition of women to course syllabi to a completely reconceptualized methodology and pedagogical practice. According to Marilyn Jacoby Boxer (1998), most women's studies programs began via a demand for topics, courses, and terminology that included women (a request that in the early twenty-first century seems quite modest—a testament to the field's growth). Soon though, she argues, "traveling beyond rediscovered foremothers and asking what women had done in the male-defined world they began to formulate new questions," wondering if they wanted only to "join the [higher education] parade or also to change its route and objective" (p. 52). Changing the route and objective could mean that those involved would engage in "radical attacks on the epistemological presuppositions, bodies of knowledge, and methodologies of the fields in which they were trained" (p. 56) as well as a questioning (and possible reformation) of the disciplines altogether.

INTERDISCIPLINARITY AND THE ESSENTIALIST DEBATES

Such reformations across institutions led to a reinvigoration of the project of interdisciplinarity as key to the women's studies project, calling as it does for "an integration of disciplines to create a new epistemology" (Allen and Kitch 1998, p. 276). The influence of inter-disciplinarity remains, in a variety of forms, despite the fact that the 1980s and 1990s witnessed much fragmentation and debate over whether the field should view itself as an "interdisciplinary discipline, with theories, methods, and professional regimes of its own" or identify chiefly as a field that makes "strategic forays that disrupt and reconfigure the disciplines" (Hewitt and Lancer 1998, p. 236). Historically, these questions of inter/transdisciplinarity have a basis in the earliest discussions within feminist theory over notions of essentialism, that is, the question of whether or not women as a gender share some kind of intrinsic "essence." Just as advocates of inter/transdisciplinarity might argue that an analysis of gender requires more than one disciplinary inclination, "nonessentialist" feminists at the outset advocated moving beyond the singular lens of gender to get at what it means to identify as "woman" in a particular culture. Though much of the "essentialism debates" are overstated (no one seriously argues that women are all born with an identical kernel of "womanness"), feminism and women's studies do have to answer (as do most academic disciplines) for an early overemphasis on white (women's) experiences as exemplar. Theorists such as Gerda Lerner, Audre Lorde, Cherrie Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa, Barbara Hull, Barbara Smith, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, and bell hooks have issued wide-ranging correctives to such a perspective, leading the authors of the introduction to Oxford University Press's Feminisms to state (some might say overly optimistically) that in women's studies "monocausal and totalizing theories of patriarchy have been replaced by multifaceted explorations of the contingencies of identity" (Kemp and Squires 1997, p. 6).

Of course, moving beyond such totalizing theories means moving beyond simply the issue of race, class, and so on within national borders, giving rise to feminist postcolonial theory that aims to question western feminists' monolithic conceptions of "third world" women. In challenging hegemonic white, Western, and urban feminism, as well as a sexist "extremely selective rejection of Westernization" on the part of the colonized (Narayan 2005, p. 546), theorists such as Mohanty, Arjun Appadurai, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Uma Narayan, and Vandana Shiva have contributed to one of the most theoretically rich and engaging strains of feminist theory in women's studies of the early twenty-first century.

POSTSTRUCTURALIST EPISTEMOLOGIES

The "post" in "postcoloniality" relates to another oft-cited "post" in women's studies from the 1980s, that of "postmodern" and/or "poststructuralist" feminist theory, a wide-ranging intellectual realignment that has reshaped the field in profound (if contentious) ways. Although some have derided this development in the field as a "shift from things to words" (Kemp and Squires 1997, p. 8), others have argued that what is sometimes colloquially referred to simply as "theory" and includes "Derridian deconstructive readings, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and Foucauldian discourses of power and corporeality … [has] prove[n an] invaluable tool to feminist theorists across the disciplines" (p. 8). Incorporated under the somewhat vague "theory" rubric is what is similarly casually referred to as "French feminism," which includes the work of Luce Irigaray, Hélène Cixous, and Julia Kristeva, as well as their Anglo-American counterparts such as Jane Gallop and Juliet Mitchell and journals such as Signs, Feminist Studies, and Yale French Studies. French feminist theories ground deconstruction in psychoanalysis and the female body and have gained much (academic) currency, despite a backlash against what is perceived to be not only their theoretical blind spots but also their difficulty. Theorists have pointed out, however, that philosophical writing of all kinds are too-easily labeled "difficult" and removed from "real" life when "real life" means an anti-intellectual culture without equal education for all, especially at the higher levels. In speaking of this backlash in their introduction to Feminisms, the editors argue that "To assume that work which is difficult is elitist is to confuse the form with the context" (Kemp and Squires 1997, p. 5). Nevertheless, what might be a more valid critique of academic/French/poststructuralist feminist theory, also discussed in this anthology, is its continuing domination (with the exception of work explicitly labeled "third world" or "postcolonialist") by (white) Anglo-American and French writers.

QUEER IS TO GAY AS GENDER IS TO WOMEN: QUEER THEORY AND THE GENDER STUDIES DEBATE(S)

While gay and lesbian studies was born around twenty years after women's studies, its issues, like its course offerings, often coalesce around similar questions, in particular "essentialism," that is, whether too much difference (of race and class for example) gets subsumed, this time under the rubric of sexuality. In response to both this critique and the influence of poststructuralism, queer theory emerged as a "contestation of social norms" and a "voluntarism of identity" (Auslander 1997, p. 11) that moved beyond the binaries of hetero- or homo-identity with an emphasis on the fluidity of (sexual) identity. Queer theory looks at sex and gender (and by implication, sexuality) as "ideal construct[s]" whose "materialization is compelled" (Judith Butler quoted in Davidow 2002, p. 177). Some theorists, such as Lisa Duggan (1992), argue for its superiority to traditional gay and lesbian theory and politics, which locates itself, like second-wave feminism, in a liberal politics that posits a unified gay identity implicitly coded as white and male. In contrast, she argues that queer theory and the queer community "[are] unified only by a shared dissent from the dominant organization of sex and gender altogether" (p. 20). Other feminist theorists such as Sheila Jeffreys (1994) have argued the exact opposite, that queer theory's emphasis on gender performativity and its invocation of endlessly floating gender signifiers is "feminism free." Similarly, Jacquelyn Zita (1994) claims that theorizing gender and sexuality from the perspective of postmodern performativity (a common rhetorical move) is a theoretical luxury that neglects the very real cultural and political repercussions that come from resisting sex and gender norms. While these debates continue, the profound influence of queer theory on women's studies cannot be denied, and not only at the level of knowledge formation but also in the term women's studies itself.

GENDER AND MASCULINITY STUDIES

Clearly, the postmodern critique of identity categorization has thrown a wrench into all sorts of academic discourse. But for a field such as women's studies, itself a result of a political movement (feminism) originating in a politics of (gendered) identity, the effects are particularly apposite. Theorists such as Wendy Brown (1997), for instance, taking off from queer theory and poststructuralism, have gone as far as to prophesize the "impossibility of women's studies," while writers as diverse as Eve K. Sedgwick, Judith Butler, and Judith Halberstam have pushed the field into looking at how gender and sexuality manifest themselves outside of a binary male/female framework. Exploring such topics as female masculinity, transsexuality, and intersexuality and their relationship to differences between women (or even whether a term such as woman has any intrinsic meaning at all) has led women's studies, in Robyn Wiegman's terms (2002), to more complicated analyses around "multiple axes of power and difference" (p. 32) beyond a simple oppressor/oppressed model. From this current have arisen such programs as the University of Chicago's Center for Gender Studies (not Women's Studies), whose stated mission is to "coordinate research and teaching in the field of women's feminist, gender, gay and lesbian, and queer studies as well as the study of masculinity" (my emphasis; Auslander 1997, p. 3). While many applaud this change as an evolution in scholarship that pushes one to consider both how "freedom from scrutiny has enabled the white middle class masculine norm to remain invisible" (Robinson 2002, p. 147) and to "account for the possibility of conditions under which men might productively fail to live up to phallic expectations" (Thomas 2002, p. 66), like the debates around queer theory and postmodernism, both the emerging field of "masculinity studies" and the name change to gender studies have occasioned critique and alarm within women's studies.

One of the most eloquent critics of the embrace of gender/masculinity studies is Tania Modleski, who, in Feminism without Women (1991), wonders why theorists would want to change a name that honors the field's roots in a political movement, especially because "the experiences of women are rarely studied in isolation" anyway (p. 47). Further, because, theoretically at least, gender studies does not necessarily have to focus on women at all, this potential erasure comes at a time when "those [i.e., women] who have fairly recently found a place in the discourse" are in threat of being erased (p. 49). Similarly, Rosi Braidotti (1994) argues that gender studies defuses feminism and "market[s] masculinity and gay male identity instead" (pp. 43-44). On the other hand, explicitly aiming to study masculinity might be the best way to get at a thorough understanding of the myriad ways in which "the repression of the abject vulnerability of the male body—a repression necessary for the construction of heteronormative masculinity—depends on a displacement of that vulnerability … onto the feminine" (Thomas 2002, p. 63). Nevertheless, despite a growing acceptance of the need to study both masculinity and femininity, the only PhD program calling itself "gender studies" as of 2006 is at Indiana University, Bloomington. While there are two officially titled gender studies doctoral programs in Europe (Central European University in Budapest and the London School of Economics and Political Science), the vast majority of programs, including undergraduate majors, minors, and certificates, and MA- and PhD-granting institutions continue to use the term women's studies, with some elaborating on it—"women's and gender studies" being the most common form of this expansion.

All in all, if the most general goal of women's studies (or gender studies) has been to bring gender as a key aspect of knowledge to the forefront of a range of disciplines, it has inarguably been achieved. This achievement, despite all the debates and institutional roadblocks discussed here, must seem nothing less than remarkable from the perspective of its founders in 1970. Women's/gender studies has brought about nothing less than the veritable end to a casual biological determinism (beginning with Shulamith Firestone and continuing with the work of scholars such as Butler today), as well as a reconfiguring of the sex binary as not natural but a "knowledge problem." Perhaps most compelling of all, the notion that gender is a "social, subjective, and symbolic formation" (Davidow 2002, p. 171) has permeated across almost all academic disciplines, thanks in no small part to a field that itself has been devoted to an interrogation of the terms of those very disciplines. The advent of the "third wave" of feminists entering the academy, and the continued growth of women's/gender/feminist studies, suggests a long future for the vigorous debates and theoretical development of which this entry only scratches the surface.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Allen, Judith A., and Sally L. Kitch. 1998. "Disciplined by Disciplines? The Need for an Interdisciplinary Research Mission in Women's Studies." Feminist Studies 24(2): 275-299.

Auslander, Leora. 1997. "Do Women's + Feminist + Men's + Lesbian and Gay + Queer Studies = Gender Studies?" Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 9(3): 1-30.

Boxer, Marilyn Jacoby. 1998. When Women Ask the Questions: Creating Women's Studies in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Braidotti, Rosi, with Judith Butler. 1994. "Feminism by Any Other Name." Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 6(2-3): 27-61.

Brown, Wendy. 1997. "The Impossibility of Women's Studies." Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 9(3): 79-101.

Davidow, Ellen-Masser. 2002. Disciplining Feminism: From Social Activism to Academic Discourse. Durham: Duke University Press.

Duggan, Lisa. 1992. "Making It Perfectly Queer." Socialist Review 22(1): 11-31.

Evans, Mary. 1997. "In Praise of Theory: The Case for Women's Studies." In Feminisms, ed. Sandra Kemp and Judith Squires. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Goodloe, Amy T. "Lesbian Feminism and Queer Theory: Another 'Battle of the Sexes'?" Available from http://www.lesbian.org/amy/essays/lesfem-qtheory.html.

Hewitt, Nancy, and Susan S. Lancer. 1998. Preface to Feminist Studies 24(2): 275-299.

Jeffreys, Sheila. 1994. "The Queer Disappearance of Lesbian Sexuality in the Academy." Women's Studies International Forum 17(5): 459-472.

Kemp, Sandra, and Judith Squires. 1997. Introd. to Feminisms, ed. Sandra Kemp and Judith Squires. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lara, Alison Neumer. 2005. "Who Studies Women's Studies?" Chicago Tribune, September 7.

Modleski, Tania. 1991. Feminism without Women: Culture and Criticism in a Postfeminist Age. New York: Routledge.

Narayan, Uma. 2005. "Contesting Cultures: 'Westernization,' Respect for Cultures, and Third World Feminists." Feminist Theory: A Reader, ed. Wendy K. Kolmar and Frances Bartkowski. 2nd edition. Boston: McGraw-Hill.

Robinson, Sally. 2002. "Pedagogy of the Opaque: Teaching Masculinity Studies." In Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory, ed. Judith Kegan Gardiner. New York: Columbia University Press.

Thomas, Calvin. 2002. "Reenfleshing the Bright Boys; or, How Male Bodies Matter to Feminist Theory." In Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory, ed. Judith Kegan Gardiner. New York: Columbia University Press.

Wiegman, Robyn. 2002. "Unmaking: Men and Masculinity in Feminist Theory." In Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory, ed. Judith Kegan Gardiner. New York: Columbia University Press.

Zita, Jacquelyn. 1994. "Gay and Lesbian Studies: Yet Another Unhappy Marriage?" In Tilting the Tower: Lesbians/Teaching/Queer Subjects, ed. Linda Garber. New York: Routledge.

                                             Jennifer Maher