Women's Studies on the Edge

by Joan Wallach Scott (Editor)

At many universities, women’s studies programs have achieved department status, establishing tenure-track appointments, graduate programs, and consistent course enrollments. Yet, as Joan Wallach Scott notes in her introduction to this collection, in the wake of its institutional successes, women’s studies has begun to lose its critical purchase. Feminism, the driving political force behind women’s studies, is often regarded as an outmoded political position by many of today’s students, and activism is no longer central to women’s studies programs on many campuses. In Women’s Studies on the Edge , leading feminist scholars tackle the critical, political, and institutional challenges that women’s studies has faced since its widespread integration into university curricula.

The contributors to Women’s Studies on the Edge embrace feminism not as a set of prescriptions but as a critical stance, one that seeks to interrogate and disrupt prevailing systems of gender. Refusing to perpetuate and protect orthodoxies, they ask tough questions about the impact of institutionalization on the once radical field of women’s studies; about the ongoing difficulties of articulating women’s studies with ethnic, queer, and race studies; and about the limits of liberal concepts of emancipation for understanding non-Western women. They also question the viability of continuing to ground women’s studies in identity politics authorized by personal experience. The multiple interpretations in Women’s Studies on the Edge sometimes overlap and sometimes stand in opposition to one another. The result is a collection that embodies the best aspects of the intellectual and political stance that the contributors take to be feminism’s ethos and its aim. Contributors
Wendy Brown
Beverly Guy-Sheftall
Evelynn M. Hammonds
Saba Mahmood
Biddy Martin
Afsaneh Najmabadi
Ellen Rooney
Gayle Salamon
Joan Wallach Scott
Robyn Wiegman

Genres: Nonfiction, Gender Studies, Feminism, History

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Joan Scott is known internationally for writings that theorize gender as an analytic category. She is a leading figure in the emerging field of critical history. Her ground-breaking work has challenged the foundations of conventional historical practice, including the nature of historical evidence and historical experience and the role of narrative in the writing of history, and has contributed to a transformation of the field of intellectual history. Scott's recent books focus on gender and democratic politics. Her works include The Politics of the Veil (2007), Gender and the Politics of History (1988), Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (1996), and Parité: Sexual Equality and the Crisis of French Universalism (2005). Scott graduated from Brandeis University in 1962 and received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1969. Before joining the Institute for Advanced Study, Scott taught in the history departments of Brown University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Northwestern University, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Rutgers University.

Reviews

[Elevate Difference · Rating 3 out of 5]

Over the past few decades, Joan Wallach Scott, along with the nine other contributors to this collection of essays, have helped establish the academic standards of what we now know as women’s studies. The contributors are forthright, Ph.D. holding, respected professionals who play intricate roles in their fields at some of the best universities in the world. And, though I’m sorry to say it, these are the precise reasons that these ten writers should not have collaborated in writing Women’s Studies on the Edge, a series of essays examining the current state of the Women Studies major; they’re too educated and revered to be truly edgy.

Most of the essays, though very well-written and thought-provoking, are generally just asking the same basic question: what should the women’s studies major consist of? And while their critiques of the various subjects - such as the suggested inclusion of transgender theory into women's and gender studies and a sort of comparison of cultural studies to women’s studies - are interesting and rewarding in their own right, the juxtaposition of these essays put together in a collection makes it feel very rant-happy and somewhat abrasive. I felt the most successful of the essays belonged to Gayle Salamon, Wendy Brown, and Ellen Rooney, whose solutions rested within their soul and not within their professional status.

The lack of variation existing between each of the writers is a major hindrance to the overall purpose of Women’s Studies on the Edge, which is a very noble and needed effort. The women’s studies major is still an enigmatic venue of academia that greatly varies from college to college, and it would have been much more educational and valuable to receive insight from not only the very well-educated, but also from the activist professionals who have firsthand experience dealing with feminist politics and even some of the students who want to gain more from their women's studies curriculum.

Review by Sara Freeman

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid collection of essays on the state of women's studies in American universities. Quite a bit of hand-wringing, but that's to be expected.