Women's Studies Reflection: Past, Present, and Future

Companion to Women's and Gender Studies

Women's and gender studies is an ever-changing field of academic inquiry that was born out of Women's Movement organizing within and outside of Western colleges and universities in the late 1960s and 1970s. While women's organizing on behalf of the vote and other significant social and economic issues has a long history, the challenge to the androcentric or male/masculine-centric knowledge project of academia is more recent. The story surrounding the development of women's and gender studies is often told through a Western-or Northern-centric lens; but it is incomplete or, even misguided, without acknowledging the diversity of sites outside the West or North that helped shape the field both within and outside of the academy (see e.g. Beoku-Betts 2020; Mikell1996). This chapter presents an overview of shifts in naming, theoretical approaches, and topics covered in contemporary women's and gender studies. I introduce the Companion and highlight some of the key contributions of the authors as they variously discuss the construction of inequality, reproduction of the gender, as well as individual and collective modes of agency and resistance. Politics of naming Women's studies, as an institutionalized academic formation, began with the recognition of women's absence in canonical texts, research strategies, interpretation of findings, and many classrooms. With the support of students and women's movement activists and organizations, women faculty and students in different disciplines created independent studies and courses that were often informally taught on women writers, artists, and philosophers who were little known or appreciated. Since there were few publications available, feminist faculty shared mimeographed essays and other materials that formed the basis of these early courses. In response to student-led organizing, some of these courses were added to the curriculum and became the basis 1

The Science Of The Map Is Not The Territory , 2023

This work explores the extension of Women's Studies to include a focus on the formal and natural scientific aspects of this interdisciplinary field of study which has traditionally been associated with the humanities and social sciences that examines the intersectionality of gender, race, class, sexuality, and other social categories. By highlighting the formal and natural scientific methodology of the field, this expand its scope and provide new insights into gender and social inequality from a perspective that goes against the widespread trend which predominantly dominate Intellect of the last century that strictly constrain work of this nature to the domain of gender studies.

Contexts, 2013

Scholar Michele Tracy Berger examines the transformational role of women’s studies in higher education during the last 40 years. Women’s studies with its commitment to interdisciplinarity, and emphasis on scholarship, teaching and activism provides an important model for the academy.

Economic and Political Weekly, 2003

Women's Studies on Its Own, 2005

minds.wisconsin.edu, 2005

Women's Studies International Quarterly, 1978

Synopsis--Women's Studies is the intellectual examination of the absence of women from history; a fresh look in a non-Freudian way at the social psychology of women; the study of women in literature and the images of women in the Arts; the economic and legal history of the family; and speculation about 'androgyny', a state of society and a state of mind where sex-differences might be socially, economically and politically overcome.

Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 2013

Women's Studies International Forum, 1987

Synopsis-As part of a panel session on the state and status of women's studies, this discussion paper addresses the aims of women's studies and feminist scholarship. stressing their links with. and accountability to, the women's liberation movement. It considers the politics of staffing in women's studies, issues of content, and the place of theory. It challenges us to remember the revolutionary intent of women's studies.