Disciplining Feminism

Messer-Davidow Ellen Messer-Davidow

Description

How was academic feminism formed by the very institutions it originally set out to transform? This is the question Ellen Messer-Davidow seeks to answer in Disciplining Feminism. Launched thirty years ago as a bold venture to cut across disciplines and bridge the gap between scholarly knowledge and social activism, feminism in the academy, the author argues, is now entrenched in its institutional structures and separated from national political struggle.Working within a firm theoretical framework and drawing on years of both personal involvement and fieldwork in and outside of academe, Messer-Davidow traces the metamorphosis of a once insurgent project in three steps. After illustrating how early feminists meshed their activism with institutional processes to gain footholds on campuses and in disciplinary associations, she turns to the relay between institutionalization and intellectualization, examining the way feminist studies coalesced into an academic field beginning in the mid-1970s. Without denying the successes of this feminist passage into the established system of higher learning, Messer-Davidow nonetheless insists that the process of institutionalization itself necessarily alters all new entrants-no matter how radical. Her final chapters look to the future of feminism in an increasingly conservative environment and to the possibilities for social change in general.Disciplining Feminism's interdisciplinary scope and cross-sector analysis will attract a broad range of readers interested in women's studies, American higher education, and the dynamics of social transformation.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Americas

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 28 janvier 2002
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822383581
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Disciplining Feminism

Disciplining

Feminism From Social Activism to Academic Discourse

e l l e n m e s s e r - d a v i d o w

Duke University Press

Durham and London 2002

∫2002 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$ Designed by Rebecca M. Gimenez Typeset in Monotype Dante with Gill Sans display by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

To Wendy Lynn Jaeger and Michael Charles Jaeger

Contents

Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Knowing and Doing

1

Part 1. Confronting the Institutional-Disciplinary Order

1. Disciplining Women 19 2. Constructing Sex Discrimination

49

Part 2. Institutionalizing and Intellectualizing Feminist Studies

3. Articulating Projects 87 4. Formatting Feminist Studies 129 5. Proliferating the Discourse 166

Part 3. Crystallizing the Future

6. Remaking Change Agency 221 7. Playing by the New Rules 269

Notes 291 Works Cited Index 405

365

Acknowledgments

This book owes its existence to the support of many people. With un- abashed nostalgia, I thank its catalysts: Warren Bennis for introducing me to organizations, David R. Shumway for explaining practice until I finally got it, and David J. Sylvan for encouraging me to do fieldwork. Generous colleagues read draft chapters and the whole manuscript, sometimes more than once: Andrew Elfenbein, Judith Kegan Gardiner, Evelyn Fox Keller, Annette Kolodny, Bruce Lincoln, Jean O’Barr, Richard Ohmann, Diana Saco, Larry Shillock, David Shumway, and Madelon Sprengnether. The kind comments of sociologists, historians, and political scientists on parts of this book or my related work on social movement organizations assuaged my disciplinary fears: Paul DiMaggio, Stanley N. Katz, Elizabeth Long, Robert Pahre, and Dorothy E. Smith. Audiences who heard excerpts from the book in progress at conferences sponsored by the Modern Language Association, American Studies Association, American Association of Higher Education, and assorted universities sup- plied encouragement, and reviewers for Duke University Press made help- ful suggestions. Behind-the-scenes wizards made my research possible. Graduate re- search assistants cheerfully proofed the prose, checked the citations, and somehow kept track of the library books: Larry Shillock, James W. Maer- tens, Andrea Ghorai, Karen Roggenkamp, Megan Casey, and David Noon. O≈cials helped me obtain otherwise inaccessible materials: Alexander D. Crary (National Endowment for the Arts), John Hammer (National Hu- manities Alliance), and Kevin Lane (O≈ce of Sen. Paul Wellstone). Li- brary directors extended the usual and unusual library privileges: Chris- topher Loring (Director of Reference and Consulting Services, Wilson