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.
Author(s): Barbara Scott Winkler, Carolyn DiPalma
Year: 1999
Language: English
Pages: 288
Preliminaries......Page 1
Contents......Page 5
1 The Introductory Course A Voice from the Broader Field of Women’s Studies......Page 17
2 The Ideologue the Pervert and the Nurturer or Negotiating Student Perceptions in Teaching Introductory Women’s Studies Courses......Page 35
3 Conceptualizing the Introduction to Women’s Studies Course at the Community College......Page 51
4 Reading Women’s Lives A New Database Resource for Teaching Introduction to Women’s Studies......Page 63
5 Border Zones: Identification, Resistance, and Transgressive......Page 75
6 Revisiting the Men Problem in Introductory Women’s Studies Classes......Page 87
7 Is This Course Just about Opinions or What Scripted Questions as Indicators of Group Development in an Introduction to Women’s Studies Class......Page 101
8 Students Fear of Lesbianism......Page 113
9 When I Look at You I Don’t See Race and Other Diverse Tales from the Introduction to Women’s Studies Classroom......Page 125
10 Inter Racial Teaching Teams Antiracism and the Politics of White Resistance Teaching Introduction to Women Studies at a Predominantly White Research Institution......Page 137
11 Feminism in the Field of Local Knowledge Decolonizing Subjectivities in Hawai i......Page 151
12 Cybergrrrl Education and Virtual Feminism Using the Internet to Teach Introductory Women’s Studies......Page 165
13 Webbed Women Information Technology in the Introduction to Women’s Studies Classroom......Page 177
14 Reading Glamour Magazine The Production of Woman......Page 189
15 MY FATHER’S WASP Spelling the Dimensions of Difference......Page 197
16 Encouraging Feminism Teaching The Handmaid’s Tale in the Introductory Women’s Studies Classroom......Page 205
17 The Outrageous Act as Gender Busting An Experiential Challenge to Gender Roles......Page 215
18 Outrageous Liberating Acts Putting Feminism into Practice......Page 227
19 When Things Fall Apart......Page 239
References......Page 255
Index......Page 269
About the Contributors......Page 283
