Curriculum Development and Expansion

Meanwhile the curriculum was expanding. In the fall of 1980 Margo Culley, professor in the English department, developed and offered a new course, "Issues for Women of the 80s." It enrolled close to one hundred students and fulfilled a core requirement (the set of requirements that preceded general education). By the mid 80s the course had a new number and name, WOST 187, "Introduction to Women's Studies", general education requirement designations of I (interdisciplinary) and D (diversity), a capacity of 150 students, and two teaching assistants funded by the Provost's office. A few years later, the capacity was raised to 300 and the program was able to hire five teaching assistants. It was taught every semester to rave reviews and long waiting lists.

Courses addressing the intersection and race and class were expanded by an important grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE) written by Margo Culley and Johnnella Butler, chair of Afro American Studies at Smith College. The two-year faculty development project called Black Studies/Women’s Studies: an Overdue Partnership included a Five College Women’s Studies and Afro-American Studies faculty seminar which met bi-weekly for a year to discuss the points of connection and disconnection between the two fields and to develop courses that included perspectives from both fields. This project played a major role in solidifying important relationships that helped facilitate Women’s Studies ongoing attention to the intersections of race and gender.

In April 1983, the FIPSE project culminated in a landmark conference that brought together faculty from the Five Colleges and scholars from around the country in order to share with a wider audience the insights gained throughout the project and to encourage greater dialogue. Faculty had developed curricula, taught courses, and investigated issues of pedagogy and presented them in workshops throughout the day. More than 200 participants attended the conference, which took place at UMass. Bernice Reagon, June Jordan, Bettye Collier-Thomas, and Johnnetta Cole, then Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education at UMass, gave talks, and former Congresswoman and presidential candidate Shirley Chisholm gave the closing remarks. The registration fee was ten dollars, including lunch.

Another FIPSE grant in the 1980s brought women's issues to the Five Colleges. UMass women's studies faculty had been meeting with colleagues in the Five Colleges through the Five College women's studies committee since the beginning of the program to strategize about bringing courses and programs to their institutions as well as to discuss developments in the field. With enormous help from Lorna Peterson, the Associate Coordinator of Five College Inc., the committee wrote a successful grant for a series of five major conferences, each one held on one of the campuses but organized by committees of faculty with expertise in the area from all of the institutions. The conferences addressed vital areas of the new field, including gender and history, women and difference, sexuality, and activism. This very stimulating and intense interaction among Five College Women's Studies faculty over a period of two and a half years enabled the development of the Five College Women's Studies Research Center (FCWSRC). The Center opened in 1991 on the Mount Holyoke Campus and is dedicated to encouraging engaged, critical feminist scholarship from diverse perspectives. Along with hosting Five College faculty lectures, seminars, and conferences it accepts up to fifteen scholars and activists each year for three to eight months and provides a focal point for the more than 350 feminist scholars in the Five Colleges.