1990: The Program and the Field Continue to Grow

On the technological front, Women’s Studies got its first computer, an IBM, in mid 80s, and two years later the first newsletter was produced on it rather than on a typewriter. Enrollment continued to grow during this period. In 1990 there were 579 students on the waiting list for the introductory course and 51 majors. There was also a resurgence of student activism on campus, and Women’s Studies students were among the leadership of groups like the Lesbian Bisexual Women’s Union, the Progressive Organization for Women’s Rights – POWER, and People for Choice. ³⁹

In January 1990, on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of the program, Women’s Studies Chief Undergraduate Advisor Karen Lederer interviewed Women’s Studies core and associated faculty members on where they thought the field and the program were going. Leila Ahmed, Arlene Avakian, Sandi Morgen, Lee Edwards, Kathy Peiss, Jan Raymond, Joyce Berkman, Margo Culley, Ann Ferguson, Sara Lennox, and Lorna Peterson (Five Colleges, Inc.) all weighed in about the past, present, and future of Women’s Studies at UMass and beyond. Their responses contained “threads of both pessimism and optimism.” One thing that was clear was that women’s studies had grown enormously in the eighties, both on campus and nationally. According to the narrative Lederer crafted from the interviews and published in the spring 1990 newsletter, the decade had begun with 200 programs and ended with 500. Women’s studies had begun primarily in the social sciences and English and had spread out to permeate and transform all corners of academia.⁴⁰

Another theme that ran throughout the interviews was institutionalization. Lederer noted: “As Women’s Studies becomes more and more institutionalized and traditional models of academic success are followed, the programs have less of a connection to community groups outside the University.” She went on, “Will Women’s Studies change the institution, or the institution change Women’s Studies? Both things will no doubt happen, and in a strange way, these dilemmas mark our success.”⁴¹ All of Lederer’s interviewees also mentioned the attention UMass Women’s Studies had paid to issues of race, class, culture, ethnicity, and sexual preference. This emphasis had made the program a host of important allies in departments across campus and the country. Women’s Studies had also just hired Joy James for a position in Black Women’s Studies, a move that some of the respondents thought further demonstrated the program’s commitment to emphasizing race.

Enrollment in Women’s Studies courses had also skyrocketed. As of 1990 the program had more majors and minors than ever before and students in other majors were taking Women’s Studies classes in unprecedented numbers. This fact brought new pedagogical issues to the surface. Faculty wondered about how to teach a group of students that included both those who had enrolled out of genuine interest and those who were there simply to fill requirements. Also, according to Lederer’s narrative, Women’s Studies students at this time came to the program already possessing more political and scholarly knowledge of feminism than they had in the past. They were engaged with all kinds of activism, from abortion rights to organizing against budget cuts.⁴² Faculty respondents predicted that this trend of student activism would continue into the future as the campus continued to struggle with major budgetary issues, and the sense of apathy that had dominated in the eighties gave way to what felt like renewed vigor on several important fronts in the early nineties.

³⁹ WOST newsletter Spring 1990.

⁴⁰ WOST newsletter Spring 1990, p. 6.

⁴¹ WOST newsletter Spring 1990, p. 7.

⁴² WOST newsletter Spring 1990, p. 8.