Looking Toward the Future

In the 25 years since its inception, women's studies has been credited with revamping and revitalizing the major disciplines (especially in the humanities and social sciences) by challenging curricular and pedagogical practice, opening up the "canon," altering or blurring disciplinary boundaries, and introducing the social construction of gender as a major focus of intellectual inquiry. Women's studies over the past decade has experienced phenomenal growth, become institutionalized on many college and university campuses, hired faculty (typically but not exclusively with joint appointments with disciplinary departments), added graduate courses and degrees, generated a large body of print and nonprint resources, and provided the catalyst for the establishment of feminist research centers.

At the same time, women's studies faces a critical moment in its continued evolution. More recent academic developments, such as gay and lesbian studies, new ethnic studies programs, cultural studies, gender studies (including men's studies), and peace studies, raise complex questions about the future shape of women's studies in particular and curriculum transformation efforts in general. Difficult questions are being raised as the multicultural movement now under way at many campuses continues to develop. Feminist scholars believe that what women's studies has done to reshape the university over the past 25 years, multiculturalism will do over the next 20. Although women's studies has sometimes had links to programs in ethnic and African-American studies, and while feminist scholarship is beginning to address categories of difference in more profound ways, the question of the relationship of women's studies to multiculturalism has yet to be thoroughly addressed. It would also be a mistake not to take seriously the well-organized assault by neoconservatives and the New Right on feminism, the women's movement, and changes in the academy brought about by women's studies.

Catharine Stimpson's 1982 predictions about women's studies and the cultural context in which it would operate have turned out to be accurate, including her anticipation that the Ford Foundation would continue to be the field's most constant supporter. Stimpson anticipated greater interest in the development of gender studies; more sophisticated research about differences among women, the intersection of race, class, and gender in constructions of womanhood, and the experiences of minority women; a move away