scholarly journals Women’s Studies as Virus: Institutional Feminism, Affect, and the Projection of Danger.

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 929
Author(s):  
Breanne Fahs ◽  
Michael Karger
Keyword(s):  
Women's Studies ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Feminist Pedagogy ◽  
Male Students ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Women’S Studies ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Traditional Fields

<p>Because women’s studies radically challenges social hierarchies and lacks a unified identity and canon of thought, it often negotiates a precarious position within the modern corporatized university.  At the same time, women’s studies offers—by virtue of its interdisciplinary, critical, and “infectious” structure—cutting-edge perspectives and goals that set it apart from more traditional fields.  This paper theorizes that one future pedagogical priority of women’s studies is to train students not only to master a body of knowledge but also to serve as symbolic “viruses” that infect, unsettle, and disrupt traditional and entrenched fields.  In this essay, we first posit how the metaphor of the virus in part exemplifies an ideal feminist pedagogy, and we then investigate how both women’s studies <em>and </em>the spread of actual viruses (e.g., Ebola, HIV) produce similar kinds of emotional responses in others.  By looking at triviality, mockery, panic, and anger that women’s studies as a field elicits, we conclude by outlining the stakes of framing women’s studies as an infectious, insurrectional, and potentially dangerous, field of study.  In doing so, we frame two new priorities for women’s studies—training male students as viruses and embracing “negative” stereotypes of feminist professors—as important future directions for the potentially liberatory aspects of the field.</p>

Freire and a Feminist Pedagogy of Difference

1991 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 449-475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Weiler
Keyword(s):  
Women's Studies ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Paulo Freire ◽  
Feminist Pedagogy ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Knowledge Systems ◽  
Feminist Epistemology ◽  
Feminist Critique ◽  
Women’S Studies ◽  
Liberatory Pedagogy

In this article, Kathleen Weiler presents a feminist critique that challenges traditional Western knowledge systems. As an educator, Weiler is interested in the implications of this critique for both the theory and practice of education. She begins with a discussion of the liberatory pedagogy of Paulo Freire and the profound importance of his work. She then questions Freire's assumption of a single kind of experience of oppression and his abstract goals for liberation. A feminist pedagogy, she claims, offers a more complex vision of liberatory pedagogy. Weiler traces the growth of feminist epistemology from the early consciousnessraising groups to current women's studies programs. She identifies three ways that a feminist pedagogy, while reflecting critically on Freire's ideas, also builds on and enriches his pedagogy: in its questioning of the role and authority of the teacher; in its recognition of the importance of personal experience as a source of knowledge; and in its exploration of the perspectives of people of different races, classes, and cultures.

Placing Women in the Liberal Arts: Stages of Curriculum Transformation

1984 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 413-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marilyn Schuster ◽  
Susan Van Dyne
Keyword(s):  
Women's Studies ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Curricular Change ◽  
Traditional Curriculum ◽  
Women’S Studies ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Traditional Courses ◽  
Teachers And Students ◽  
Curriculum Transformation

Research on women has created a new body of knowledge that is reshaping our understanding of the traditional curriculum. The scholarship about women's experience produced in the last two decades has entered the curriculum primarily through women's studies courses. But what happens next? In the last five years, informed administrators and women's studies teachers have undertaken to transform traditional courses throughout the curriculum. Marilyn Schuster and Susan Van Dyne present a paradigm describing how teachers and students experience the process of curricular change. Their analysis suggests that teachers may move through a sequence of stages and try a variety of strategies in order to represent women and minorities,and thus a fuller range of human experience, in their courses.

Putting Feminist Pedagogy to the Test: The Experience of Women's Studies from Student and Teacher Perspectives

2000 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jayne E. Stake ◽  
Frances L. Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  
Women's Studies ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
The United States ◽  
Feminist Pedagogy ◽  
Teacher Perspectives ◽  
Women’S Studies ◽  
Participatory Learning ◽  
Positive Class ◽  
Political Understanding ◽  
Independent Thinking

Critics of women's studies (WS) have charged that WS teaching overemphasizes students' personal experience and is overly politicized. They claim further that WS classes discourage critical, independent thinking and stifle open, participatory learning, causing student dissatisfaction. This study provides empirical evidence of the process of WS teaching from the perspective of 111 teachers and 789 of their students from 32 campuses in the United States. Contrary to WS critics, WS faculty and students reported strong emphases on critical thinking/open-mindedness and participatory learning and relatively weaker emphases on personal experience and political understanding/activism. In addition, student ratings of positive class impact were higher for WS than non-WS classes. The results support the pedagogic distinctiveness of women's studies.

Introduction: The First Decade of Women's Studies

1979 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 413-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florence Howe
Keyword(s):  
Women's Studies ◽  
Women's Movement ◽  
Professional Associations ◽  
Schools Of Education ◽  
Women’S Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Women And Education ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Educational Movements

The scholarship in this special double issue, Women and Education, illuminates the vitality of women's studies a decade after its beginnings. We could not have had this issue until quite recently, at least in part because schools of education have been among the most resistant to the impact of the women's movement, which first touched the campus a decade ago. As the academic arm of the women's movement, women's studies has developed an area of research and curriculum focused on women as a distinguishable group to be studied from their own perspective and on gender as a significant issue in a democratic society founded and administered as a patriarchy. Like most educational movements of the past, this one has a political goal: to establish equity for women, which, as John Stuart Mill said more than a hundred years ago,would be as healthy for men as it was essential for women. Unlike most educational movements, this one has moved very rapidly, at least in higher education, to develop a body of knowledge and many of the elements of academic consequence, including degree-granting programs, professional associations, research institutes, journals, and special issues of journals like this one.

Women's Studies: Coming of Age in Psychology

1976 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 345-346
Author(s):  
ANNETTE M. BRODSKY
Keyword(s):  
Women's Studies ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Women’S Studies
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