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• 1 2020-12-09T11:32:36-08:00 Founding of WGSS at Barnard 7 Academic Feminism plain 2021-06-14T13:34:49-07:00 The decades of the 1960s and 1970s saw much activism around women’s rights and feminist issues in the United States. One outgrowth of this activism was the transformation of higher education and the creation of Women’s Studies departments in universities across the country, with the founding of the Women’s Studies Program at San Diego State University in the Fall of 1970 being the first. As with the founding of BCRW, the creation of Women’s Studies as a major also came about as a result of a coalition of students and faculty: A 1975 entry in the Barnard Bulletin entitled “Scholars and Feminists” bemoans the lack of this major and the marginalization of courses about women under the heading “Special Concerns about the Education of Women.” Describing Barnard’s offerings at the time as “token courses in a few departments,” the article advocates for the creation of Women’s Studies as a degree-granting program at Barnard, arguing that “students should demand the establishment of a women’s studies program as a first step toward drawing our education away from the straight and narrow path of standard academia and pushing for a curriculum which, through its particular approach and perspective will enable us to come to terms with ourselves as women and as scholars” (Bulletin, 4/17/75). While there were calls in the early 1970s for the creation of a Women’s Studies curriculum at Barnard, the view of this program as necessary was not shared universally, with former Barnard President Martha E. Peterson arguing in 1971 that “there would be so much variety in a women’s studies major that I don’t think it would contribute much” (NYT 5/23/71). Nevertheless, April 1973 saw the creation of a “Proposal for a Three-Year Project on the Future of Scholarship in Women’s Studies” at Barnard. Reframing the issue of disciplinary variety noted by President Peterson as a positive addition to a Barnard education, the proposal points to interdisciplinarity within women’s studies as a key strength: “It is becoming increasingly evident that scholarship on women in any field can best be approached in an interdisciplinary context. In the absence, for example, of easily definable historical or literary sources, scholars must draw on the materials of several disciplines.  This necessitates an understanding of the methodology used in the fields outside of one’s own scholar specialization.” 
  
  This 1973 proposal also notes the necessity of collaborative intellectual work and feminist intervententions at all levels of education, arguing that “the best way to meet the growing demand for objective textbooks in women’s studies is through cooperative editorial projects, undertaken by teachers and scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, who are aware of the decisive impact of the attitudes and assumptions embedded in textbooks on all education levels, from elementary to graduate school.” To this end, BCRW’s archives also contain a report entitled “Women’s Work and Women’s Studies,” outlining a wide range of “women’s issues” with a table of contents ranging from “Bodies” to “Literature, Arts, and Media.” Featuring a total of 1445 resources, this report demonstrates the Center’s capacious approach to knowledge-production and resource-sharing. One subheading in this report, “Stereotyping in Children’s Literature,” notes that its creators “have included not only the year's studies of stereotyping in children's literature, but also bibliographies of non-sexist children's literature, feminist presses that print such literature and feminist bookstores that sell such literature.” As an example of the material within this section, consider the entry for the text entitled “Sexism in Picture Books” (1971) which found that selected texts from 1950-1970 “showed...boys portrayed as resourceful and independent while girls take care of younger children and compete with other girls. In only one book was a girl treated in an unstereotyped way.” This deep dive into BCRW’s archives provides important perspective, allowing for a comparison of this state of affairs with the Center’s contemporary engagement with children’s literature: BCRW’s 2020 partnership with the KWELI “Color of Children’s Literature” conference featured as part of its programming a panel entitled “Publishing Track: Intersectional Identity,” in which authors lean[ed] in on intersectionality and matters of race, class, gender, and identity explored in their works of art.” This session serves as an example of both the progress made vis-a-vis gendered depictions in children’s literature and BCRW’s continued investment in naming and troubling gender norms.