Feminist Activism and the Feminist Studies Classroom

[Reprinted from Women and Social Change: Activism in Canada, Janice Ristock and Jeri Wine, eds., Toronto: James Lorimer, 1991] Feminists who have reflected on feminism in academia are deeply cognizant of women's studies' activist roots and its highly political orientation to change (e.g., Bunch and Pollack, 1983; Howe, 1975, 1983; Rich, 1975; Schniedewind, 1985; Treichler, 1986). Women's studies' happy, if somewhat precarious, position would not exist without activism in the women's movement. Indeed, the very existence of women's studies is one of the movement's major triumphs, perhaps the premier accomplishment that differentiates between this and earlier waves of feminism. In my feminist teaching over the years I have increasingly wished to foster the activist efforts of the women in my classes. I believe that the oft-mentioned gulf between academic and activist feminists is a false one, as do many other writers in this volume. There is danger, of course, of academic feminists becoming overly committed to the development of theory, or too focussed on a narrow slice of feminist scholarship and thereby neglecting the work of women seeking social change. As well, activists can become too focussed on immediate goals without developing a broader framework for understanding change. But women's studies would not exist without the women's movement; many feminists are both academics and activists; feminist academics must be activists in order to establish and maintain women's studies programs; many activist feminists come to academic feminist studies programs to ground their community work in the feminist literature and to gain credentials; and most Canadian feminist academics are activists in areas beyond their academic work (Eichler, 1990). The present chapter describes my three years of experience in teaching a graduate course entitled Feminist Organizing and Community Psychology. The course is part of a doctoral program in Community Psychology at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), but is open to masters level students and to students in other programs and departments in the institute. It is a course that I conceived as an explicit effort to bridge academia and activism, and in many respects it has been successful in doing so. Though it has been a highly rewarding course, it has also been the most difficult course I have taught in my 19-year teaching career in terms of tension and conflict between students and myself as instructor, far more so than any other feminist studies course that I have taught. In the chapter I take up two themes: (1) the contradictions involved in teaching a course that emphasizes feminist collective process and focusses on fostering feminist community change in the context of the hierarchical, patriarchal authority structure that is academe; and (2) the impact of the course on feminism in the community, presented through a description of some of the projects carried out by students in the course. Prior to launching into the themes, it is necessary to provide some description of the course and its context. The setting OISE is an institution affiliated with the University of Toronto; through that affiliation agreement it is the Graduate Department of Education at the university, and offers MA, MEd, PhD, and EdD programs. Within the institute, which has its own administration and governing structure, there are eight sub-departments that essentially operate as university departments. OISE is well known for its feminist scholarship, but it does not offer a unified feminist studies program. Rather, feminist studies is housed in differing ways in various departments; of eight departments, four offer some opportunity to do feminist studies. In the Department of Applied Psychology, feminist studies is offered under the rubric of the program in Community Psychology, which is a program staffed by left-wing men and feminist women. …

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.