Intersections: Race and Gender
In addition to
the predominant pattern of foundation-funded projects, another
pattern emerged: Colleges and universities began providing funds
from their institutional budgets to support new curriculum
integration projects. The University of Maryland at College Park
became the site of a comprehensive, institution-wide curriculum
development program incorporating the new scholarship in women's
studies and ethnic studies. The university allotted nearly $400,000
for a major faculty development effort to incorporate diversity
into the classroom. An unusual initiative, similar in mission to
curriculum integration projects, was the establishment in the early
1980s of the Ethnic and Women's Studies Department at California
State Polytechnic, Pomona.
Another
promising pattern is the growing number of states that have
provided support, usually under the auspices of their departments
of higher education, for curriculum integration projects sensitive
to race and ethnicity. Funded in 1986, the New Jersey Project:
Integrating the Scholarship on Gender, based at William Patterson
College and directed by Paula Rothenberg, was the first statewide
curriculum transformation project in the nation. It involves all
two- and four-year, public and private colleges in the state in
integrating issues of "women, and gender, race/ethnicity, class,
and sexuality into the curriculum." The project publishes a
journal, Transformations; sponsors ALANA, a support network
for women of color in higher education in the state; and conducts
workshops, conferences, regional network meetings, and a summer
institute for New Jersey college faculty and staff.
There have
been many conferences whose theme is difference, though not
always racial/ethnic difference. One in particular was "The Scholar
and the Feminist VI: The Future of Difference," a conference
sponsored by the Barnard College Women's Center in New York in
April of 1979, which indicates how long some feminists have been
grappling with the issue of difference. That conference produced a
book, The Future of Difference, edited by Hester Eisenstein
and Alice Jardine, which includes a thoughtful introductory essay
on the evolution of feminist scholarship. The early themes
of