The Politics of Women's Studies: Testimony from the 30 Founding Mothers (The Women's Studies History Series)

In this anthology of short, first-person accounts, we hear the voices of feminists exhilarated by the opportunities and challenges of creating women's studies programs in American colleges and universities, nurtured by the women's movement of the 1970s. Often teachers of literature and history, they recovered the writings of women invisible to those who determined what constituted the "canon." We learn that from the beginning, feminists taught about hierarchies of gender, race, and class and developed new teaching strategies to undermine the traditional authority structure inside the academy. But we also learn about the isolation, denigration, and maginalization faced by these pioneers, the price that many of them paid in terms of their own careers, and their own second thoughts. The more than 600 programs now in place testify to these women's success, and this history deserves to be remembered. For academic and public libraries with a women's studies constituency.DCynthia Harrison, George Washington Univ., Washington, DC
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