Ph.D. Programs in Women's Studies Proliferate on the CampusesBut some scholars worry that choosing a 'non-traditional' field will limit students' prospectsBy ROBIN WILSON
Minneapolis The new Ph.D. program is
Rejecting a career in a more-traditional discipline was not a step the five women took lightly. "I applied to other Ph.D. programs, in sociology, geography, and anthropology," says Jodi Horne. "But I realized that wherever I went, there would be a negotiation about the boundaries of my work. Here, I'm not constrained by disciplinary tools and methods." Until recently, graduate students like Ms. Horne didn't have such a choice. If they wanted to teach women's studies, they had to earn a degree in some other discipline and do women's studies on the side. But with the advent of five Ph.D. programs in the 1990s, women's studies is becoming a graduate discipline in its own right. "Senior faculty in women's studies were all trained in another discipline," says Amy Kaminsky, a professor in Minnesota's program. "We learned by the seat of our pants to change the way we think. Now we want to turn out a generation of scholars that doesn't have to do that." The first doctoral degree in women's studies was established in 1969 by the Union Institute, a non-traditional university, based in Cincinnati, that has no required courses and links students with professors at universities across the country. Most of its graduates pursue careers outside of academe; only 10 per cent of its 110 Ph.D.'s teach in higher education. It wasn't until the 1990s that mainstream institutions started creating Ph.D. programs in the field. Emory University admitted its first Ph.D. students in women's studies in 1990, and Clark University followed two years later. So far, the two have turned out 10 graduates. This academic year has seen the most activity yet on the Ph.D. front. In addition to Minnesota, doctoral programs in women's studies have been established at the University of Iowa and the University of Washington. Other institutions hoping to join that list shortly include Indiana University, the Ohio State University, and the University of Maryland at College Park. Minnesota's is the only one so far to be called "feminist studies." The proliferation of doctoral programs "means we are moving into a new stage of women's studies," says Bonnie Zimmerman, president of the National Women's Studies Association and a professor of women's studies at San Diego State University. More job advertisements in academe now list women's studies as part of the teaching duties. And more women's-studies programs have become full-fledged departments, with hiring responsibilities. Both trends increase the attractiveness of graduates with a Ph.D. in women's studies, professors in the field say. Others who teach women's studies aren't so sure. They say the job market for professors remains tight, and they question whether the country really needs more Ph.D.'s. The skeptics, including Susan Stanford Friedman, also worry that doctoral recipients in women's studies won't be qualified for most academic job openings. "None of the traditional departments is likely to hire a feminist teacher-scholar who is not trained in a 'regular' discipline," Ms. Friedman wrote in the Summer 1998 issue of the journal Feminist Studies. She is a professor of English and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. The new Ph.D. programs are drawing more-pointed criticism from academics who have long viewed the field as an exercise in consciousness-raising rather than an academic discipline. Daphne Patai, a professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, says the new programs are likely to do little more than turn out feminist activists with a view of women as victims. She gave up a decade-long joint appointment with women's studies in 1995 because she felt that her ideas about the field and about feminism itself were unwelcome in the department. "I don't object to an emphasis on the study of gender," says Ms. Patai, whose latest book, Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism, was published this month (Rowman & Littlefield). "But in these programs, is it getting serious examination? Or is it an ideologically heavy-handed form of study?" Such doubts about women's studies, however, do not seem to have found their way up the academic hierarchy. None of the women's-studies departments with Ph.D. programs had trouble persuading their universities to go along. "We anticipated much more opposition than we got," says Helen Longino, a professor of philosophy and women's studies at Minnesota, who helped shepherd the new program through university channels. Although the Ph.D. program in feminist studies is similar to the others in women's studies, some here acknowledge that the word "feminist" gives it an ideological edge. "This shows our political commitment," says Amanda Lock Swarr, one of the five Ph.D. students. "Feminist ideologies inform our research, and we all focus on social justice." The new program was a natural one for Minnesota, says Jacquelyn N. Zita, head of the women's-studies department, pointing out that the university already is home to the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, the Center on Women and Public Policy, and the Center for Advanced Feminist Studies, which coordinates research by scholars from a variety of departments. In addition, for the past 15 years, Minnesota has encouraged Ph.D. students from other disciplines to minor in women's studies. The minor, which 80 students are currently pursuing, gave the women's-studies department a broad base of existing courses from which to launch its Ph.D. program. According to a guide for graduate students in women's studies at Minnesota, the doctoral program "emphasizes the interaction of social conditions such as class, ethnicity, race, sexualities, and national identity with gender." But asking people in the department exactly what feminist studies entails elicits a variety of responses. Norma M. Juarbe-Franceschini, a Ph.D. student in the program, says it is "the study of groups that lack power and resources." Ms. Horne, her classmate, says it involves "bringing together lots of different ways of knowing." Ms. Swarr offers a more personal explanation: "Feminist studies has helped to explain my life, my world, my relationships with people." Naomi Scheman, a professor of philosophy and women's studies, says feminist studies involves examining "how oppressive systems work and can be changed." She says feminists need to ask, "Why does it seem to be the case everywhere you look that women are subordinate to men?" Doctoral students in the program here are given a great deal of latitude in their studies, but they must choose a concentration in one of four areas: feminist theory, literary studies, historical studies, or social sciences and public policy. The concentrations are aimed at giving students a specific expertise within women's studies, which is otherwise a very broad and interdisciplinary field. The requirement was instituted with an eye toward the job market, explains Ms. Zita, the department chairwoman, as a way of making the Ph.D.'s marketable in a variety of disciplines. Students at Minnesota also are required to take four core courses, including "Feminist Theory and Methods," a two-semester class in which four of the five women are enrolled this year. The course, taught by Ms. Zita, covers readings by a variety of feminist scholars, giving students a "map of feminist theory," she says. Each week, the students meet to discuss both the readings and the short papers they have written about them. One afternoon this month, the students struggled to interpret a chapter from an anthology, Theorizing Feminism: Parallel Trends in the Humanities and Social Sciences (Westview Press, 1994). In "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," Donna J. Haraway, a professor of the history of consciousness at the University of California at Santa Cruz, writes: "The cyborg is a creature in a post-gender world; it has no truck with bisexuality, pre-oedipal symbiosis, unalienated labour, or other seductions to organic wholeness through a final appropriation of all the powers of the parts into a higher unity." Exactly what does the author mean? Ms. Zita asked the students. They spent two and a half hours dissecting the work but came to no conclusions. "We call this D&C -- detect and critique," Ms. Zita explained, with a bit of a smile. The term "D&C" comes from medicine and refers to "dilation and curettage," a procedure used to clean out a woman's uterus, sometimes after a miscarriage or as part of an abortion. But Ms. Zita says she and the students like to go beyond tearing apart a work to find what's useful about it. In addition to Ms. Zita's class, the doctoral students must take "Feminist Pedagogies," "History of Western Feminisms," and "Feminist Research and Writing." They also must attend a weekly feminist-studies colloquium, in which graduate students and professors discuss their work. In one of this month's sessions, a graduate student in sociology explained her research on "intersexed" people -- those born with ambiguous sexual organs. In another session, two professors talked about how, as feminist scholars, they have made it their business to offer critiques of mainstream institutions, but now face the irony of being tenured by a major public university. Although the Ph.D. program here has just begun, some students are starting to carve out their dissertation subjects. Their interests touch on anthropology, geography, mathematics, philosophy, and international relations. Some of them focus more on women than others do. Ms. Swarr, for example, will look at transgenderism in Cape Town, exploring how race and class influence opportunities for gender expression in South Africa. Ms. Juarbe-Franceschini is interested in "transnational" families, in which parents leave their children behind to earn a living in another country. Sara Noelle Hottinger, who received a bachelor's degree in mathematics and women's studies from Beloit College and wants to combine those interests in her dissertation, is exploring similarities between feminist research methods and those used in mathematics. Similarities exist, she says, even though "the societal construction of mathematics is not feminist in nature." The presence of doctoral students has energized the women's-studies department, professors here say. "There is a new intellectual community that's exactly what I've been looking for," says Ms. Zita, who has been at Minnesota since 1980. "I feel like I've come home." Adding Ph.D. students to the mix has brought a new kind of sophistication to the department, faculty members say. Professors now search not only for their own research money but for funds to support students as well. Two of the students are supported by the department. The other three have won grants from the university's MacArthur Interdisciplinary Program on Global Change, Sustainability, and Justice, which provides up to four years of financial support for each graduate student. The doctoral program has helped Minnesota attract faculty members, too. Richa Nagar came here as an assistant professor of women's studies last year, after spending two unhappy years in the geography department at a university she does not want to name. "I felt starved," she explains. "They kept saying I could publish what I wanted, but they didn't know how to give credit for that work. I write about personal narratives, but that's marginalized in geography. You have to defend that methodology." All five doctoral students here are interested in academic careers, although they say they would also consider working with women's groups outside higher education. The big question is whether academe will be interested in them. If the handful of Ph.D.'s in women's studies who have gone before them is any indication, the outlook is mixed. One of the two graduates of Clark University's doctoral program landed a tenure-track job on California State University's Long Beach campus, and the other works in admissions at Simmons College, a women's institution. Of Emory University's eight graduates, only two have tenure-track jobs. The others are working off the tenure track or outside academe. Vivian M. May, an Emory Ph.D., was hired last year as an assistant professor of women's studies at Texas Woman's University. Eventually, she hopes, everyone who teaches women's studies will have to hold a Ph.D. in the field. And she's doing her part to insure that there will be places for graduates to teach. She has just helped her university launch a master's degree in women's studies, the first in Texas. A Ph.D. program, she says, is next. | ||||||
Copyright © 1998 by The Chronicle of Higher Education