The
Origins and Institutionalization of Women's Studies
The
integration of women's studies scholarship within and across
disciplines has initiated a far-reaching and perhaps revolutionary
transformation of traditional knowledge. Not only are women
becoming part of the subject matter of disciplines where they were
previously ignored, but research questions, methods of analysis,
and traditional theoretical frameworks are being challenged. The
very canons of literature, art, the natural sciences, and the
social sciences are called into question as women's studies
scholars expand the boundaries of their fields of inquiry and as
integration efforts bring this new scholarship into traditional
courses.
Bonnie
Spanier, Alexander Bloom,
and Darlene
Boroviak
Toward a
Balanced Curriculum
Two of
the most important challenges and contributions to the American
academy over the past three decades have been the emergence of
black studies/ethnic studies (American Indian studies,
Chicano/Latino studies, Asian-American studies) and women's
studies. These new interdisciplinary fields have added enormously
to our body of knowledge, offered critiques of traditional
disciplines, and in recent years provided the catalyst for heated
debates in the national arena, within and beyond the academy, on
issues of cultural diversity, multiculturalism, and "political
correctness." In January 1991, The Chronicle of Higher
Education stated that "curricular reform is... as high a
priority as ever" and that "higher education is in the midst of a
widespread reform movement." Also in early 1991, Change
magazine, in an issue that focused on "The Curriculum and
Multiculturalism," included two paradoxical assertions about the
present situation in the academy:
Some say the
college curriculum has been largely impermeable to
multiculturalism: that it remains unalterably "Eurocentric,"
ignoring—or, at best, marginalizing—diversity concerns.
Others counter that higher education has sold its soul in the name
of multiculturalism: that the academy currently is purging the
curriculum of its historic Western canon and replacing it
willy-nilly with non-Western, ethnic, and gender studies.