Engaging Feminism

During recent years the field of women's studies has emphasized the growth of new scholarship on women as scholars began to recover women's history, women's literature, and both qualitative and quantitative data about women's lives in disciplines as diverse as classics and psychology, religion and medicine, philosophy and sociology. As a result, argue O'Barr and Wyer in this work, the amount of new material in women's studies is nothing short of staggering. Yet, work that addresses itself to the question of delivering this information in the classroom is scarce. We must begin again to examine our early pedagogical commitments, this time in light of the expectations of 1990s women's studies, students and their campus environment. Jean O'Barr and Mary Wyer draw from journals kept by students both undergraduate and graduate, in the women's studies programme at Duke University, a programme O'Barr has directed since its inception. The journal selections are organized into nine chapters with introductions by the editors to show the multiple ways that students engage ideas in the women's studies classroom. The table of contents reflects a familiar concept in women's studies - a learning process that moves from individual emotional experience toward collective action. The writings begin with emotional impact, then move to reconsidering relationships, developing a feminist identity, assessing the classroom and campus environment for women and teaching and learning within the women's studies environment. Three documents end the book to record students' efforts toward activist change.