Foundational Conditions for Including Women's Studies in the Liberal Arts Curriculum + Joyce Quiring Erickson + Adjunct Instructor of English Seattle Pacific University Change of any kind in academe (perhaps everywhere) is difficult; curricular change is particularly difficult because it is resisted not only for disinterested reasons but also for "interested" reasons. Transforming the curriculum in ways that will include women's studies, whether in individual courses or "infused" throughout the curriculum, is an arduous and long-term endeavor that my experience suggests takes place in a three-steps-forward-two-steps-backward mode. I believe transformation of the curriculum requires certain foundational conditions to be part of the context of change. My reflections are based on my experience as a faculty member and administrator in church-related liberal arts colleges, though I suspect the conditions I refer to are also applicable to other settings in higher education. The Ultimate Aim of Curricular Transformation Is the Creation of a Campus Climate as Friendly to Women as It Is to Men To achieve this aim, not only the curriculum but also policies and attitudes affecting all women on campus (students, staff, faculty) need to be changed. The desired climate is not "anti-man" but is based on the assumption that women matter. Nor need it be assumed that to be 1 "pro-woman" is necessarily to be feminist. All feminists are by definition pro-woman, but not all people who are pro-woman would call themselves feminists or accept certain aspects of feminist analysis. Though we feminists hope eventually to persuade our colleagues that feminist explanations are coherent and compelling, my experience convinces me that people with widely different political views can come to agree that women deserve equitable treatment and commensurate opportunity. (And feminists also hold widely different, even widely divergent, political views.) The fact that most institutions are dependent on women students to maintain enrollments is a telling argument for the creation of a climate that attracts and retains women students. The appeal to institutional viability is related to but less idealistic than the second foundational condition. Changes in Policies and Curriculum Should Be Justified by the Institution's Ethos and Expressed Values In institutions that are self-conscious enough about their faith stance to call themselves "Christian," the tenet that women are created in God's image and redeemed by Christ is a powerful reason for assuming that women matter. But most institutions also hearken to a heritage and tradition that may be appealed to more particularly. For example, two of the institutions where I have served were founded by sponsoring denominations whose nineteenth-century forebears 2 gave women a much more predominant role than the surrounding culture because of their belief that the Holy Spirit spoke through women as well as men. At another institution, the college was founded by an order of nuns determined to provide working class and immigrant women an education of the same quality that middle class women and men received. In each of these instances, transforming the curriculum and creating a climate friendly to women can be viewed as a significant action to preserve the institutional heritage and distinctiveness. In addition to appeals to heritage, a perusal of most college's admissions viewbooks or catalogs provides additional grounds for argument. What institution does not claim explicitly or tacitly that excellence (ubiquitous word!) is one of its highest aims? Can excellence be possible if a large body of scholarship about women that has appeared in the past decades is ignored or unknown by faculty and students? Another ubiquitous claim-that institutions prepare students to be productive professionals and active citizens for the twenty-first century-lends itself to similar treatment. Most tellingly, if "all truth is God's truth," then understanding women's lives is part of understanding God's truth. Significant Curricular Change Must Be Based on Sound Scholarship Anything less than a strong commitment to scholarship will undermine both the credibility of the change agents and 3 the effectiveness of the curriculum. Women's studies is not a monolithic discipline; vigorous debate among adherents of varying perspectives is essential. Catherine Stimpson's summary of the development of women's studies notes four "overarching concepts" that shape questions in the field: (1) study of women includes study of gender arrangements; (2) sexism exists, but questions persist about its universality and the reasons for women's acceptance of or resistance to domination by men; (3) there are many ways of characterizing the societal relationships between women and men as the prevailing public-private paradigm is increasingly contested; (4) differences between women and men lead to questions about the extent, nature, and causes of the difference. Women's studies scholars have acknowledged their endeavor is not value-neutral (as is no scholarly endeavor), but they have often been more forthcoming of their biases than practitioners of more traditional disciplines. Like other multi- or interdisciplinary endeavors, women's studies is viewed suspiciously by those who have been trained as purists. In addition, feminist scholars have eschewed the false dichotomy between professional and personal in recognizing the impetus that individual histories provide in directing and focusing one's intellectual inquiry. All of the above will provide reasons for more traditional scholars to resist an inclusive curriculum, even those who are in sympathy with many of women's aspirations. Hence the need 4 for scrupulous scholarship. An Inclusive Curriculum Must Pay Attention to Other Shaping Aspects of Human Life and Culture Although differences in gender and sex are powerful shaping influences of personal identity, there is no "universal women" (or "universal man"). As white American middle-class women feminists have often been reminded, class, race, religion, nationality, and historical circumstances all play a part in the development of a sense of personhood, and there is no formula for assigning degree of influence by one or another category. Christians believe that human beings are created as unique individuals who are given the responsibility to make significant choices. This conviction should provide a caution against a deterministic application of theories of development or prospects for human possibility. Efforts to Change the Curriculum Must Be Coupled with Efforts to Change Pedagogy There is mounting evidence that women students do not receive the same encouragement and attention in the classroom that men students receive, whether the teacher is a man or a woman (Hall). In addition, it seems likely that many women approach learning differently than men and learn better in collaborative than in adversarial modes (Belenky). It would be ironic if an inclusive curriculum were taught in ways that perpetuated past inequities. Yet both women and men students need to be challenged to learn and function in 5 modes that are not "natural" or comfortable. Difficult as changing the curriculum is, even more difficult is changing pedagogy. Most of us teachers develop our classroom style by modeling the style of people who taught us successfully, even though those models may not be very effective with students who are less motivated or less prepared than we were. In addition, many college faculty in the liberal arts and sciences are skeptical about the value of research in education and assume teaching is a gift rather than a skill that can be learned and cultivated. Despite this, most faculty members also care deeply about their students and about helping them to learn. Since it appears that collaborative learning methods are more successful with underprepared students than many traditional methods, faculty have an additional incentive to re-examine their classroom practices. A number of flourishing writing-across-the-curriculum programs demonstrates that this is so; they also provide a model for infusing women's studies throughout the curriculum. The Ultimate Aim in Transforming the Curriculum Is to Make All Women's Lives Better Transforming the curriculum to include scholarship about women is necessary in order for contemporary North American institutions of higher learning to be responsive and responsible to the communities they serve. But for Christian institutions which also serve the church and God, a transformed curriculum must serve the global community by 6 providing advocacy and advocates for women who are not on campus: poor women in North American inner cities, Africa, Latin America, and Asia-women who are at the bottom of the resource pyramid. If we do not accept this as our ultimate aim, we are perpetuating a form of exclusion that belies the transformation we seek. Works Cited Mary Field Belenky, et al. Women's Ways of Knowing: the Development of Self, Voice, and Mind (New York: Basic, 1986). Roberta M. Hall, The Classroom Climate: A Chilly One for Women? Project on the Status and Education of Women (Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges, 1982). Catherine Stimpson, "Where Does Integration Fit: The Development of Women's Studies" in Bonnie Spanier, ed., Toward a Balanced Curriculum: A Sourcebook for Initiating Gender Integration Projects (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Pub. Co., 1984), pp. 11-24. 7