Teaching Introduction to Women's Studies: Expectations and Strategies

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This edited collection addresses the institutional context and social issues in which teaching the women's studies introductory course is embedded and provides readers with practical classroom strategies to meet the challenges raised. The collection serves as a resource and preparatory text for all teachers of the course including experienced teachers, less experienced teachers, new faculty, and graduate student teaching assistants. The collection will also be of interest to educational scholars of feminist and progressive pedagogies and all teachers interested in innovative practices. The contributors discuss the larger political context in which the course has become a central representative of women's studies to a growing, although less feminist-identified, population. Increased enrollments and changes in student population are noted as a result, in part, of the popularity of Introduction to Women's Studies courses in fulfilling GED and diversity requirements. New forms of student resistance in a climate of backlash and changes in course content in response to internal and external challenges are also discussed. Evidence is provided for an emerging paradigm in the conceptualization of the introductory course as a result of challenges to racism, heterosexism, and classism in women's studies voiced by women of color and others in the 1980s and 1990s. Sensationalist charges that women's studies teachers, including those who teach the Introduction to Women's Studies course, are the academic shock troops of a monolithic feminism are challenged and refuted by the collection's contributors who share their struggles to make possible classrooms in which informed dialogue and disagreement are valued.

Reviews

"A thorough introduction to the teaching of Women's Studies in the contemporary academy, Winkler and DiPalma's edited book is actually much much more: it documents the vivacity of women's studies as multiple feminisms approach the new millennium, richness of content, the diversity of pedagogy, and especially the interdisciplinary nature of course offerings. As a professional educator and feminist philosopher of education, I am particularly delighted by the inclusionary portrayal of the field of women's studies: so many of us share common sources, struggles, strategies and, as exemplified herein, surely success as well."-Lynda Stone University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Editor, The Education Feminism Reader
"The essays in this highly readable volume are filled with specific teaching strategies, course content recommendations, and thoughtful examinations of the challenges that surface when teaching women's studies. An important resource for both experienced and first time teachers, it would be impossible to read these essays and not come away with new ideas as well as renewed excitement about the value and variety of feminist pedagogy."-Paula Rothenberg The New Jersey Project on Inclusive Scholarship, Curriculum, and Teaching William Paterson University Wayne, New Jersey
.,."adds to the discourse that is creating our community of women's studies, individuals who share some commonality of history, expectations and continuing challenges, especially the persistent question of the meaning of learning and teaching about women and gender."-Association for Middle East Women's Studies
...adds to the discourse that is creating our community of women's studies, individuals who share some commonality of history, expectations and continuing challenges, especially the persistent question of the meaning of learning and teaching about women and gender.-Association for Middle East Women's Studies
If you want to know what instructors of introductory courses are doing today...read Teaching Introduction to Women's Studies.-NWSA Journal
"If you want to know what instructors of introductory courses are doing today...read Teaching Introduction to Women's Studies."-NWSA Journal
..."adds to the discourse that is creating our community of women's studies, individuals who share some commonality of history, expectations and continuing challenges, especially the persistent question of the meaning of learning and teaching about women and gender."-Association for Middle East Women's Studies

Author Bio

BARBARA SCOTT WINKLER is Director of Women's Studies at Southern Oregon University. She has been teaching introductory courses in women's studies since 1993 and has published numerous articles on feminist pedagogy. CAROLYN DIPALMA is Assistant Professor in the Department of Women's Studies at the University of South Florida where she teaches courses in feminist theory, political theory, women's health, and human sexual behavior./e Her current research addresses the challenge for feminist theory to discuss race and sex at the same time.