Strategy Debates: What's in a Name?

The visionaries of the women’s studies program at UMass spent a significant amount of time in early planning meetings discussing whether they should strive to establish a separate department, whether it should be called Feminist Studies or Women’s Studies, and what role politics and social action should play in the program.⁸ There were at least two groups of women working on the possibilities of a Women’s Studies Program at UMass in the early 1970s. In the spring of 1972, a group of university women from several departments – faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates - held a Women’s Studies/Feminist Studies planning seminar.⁹ This seminar resulted in a questionnaire that was circulated to measure whether there was interest in a feminist studies/women’s studies program.

Some women who were interested in starting a program, especially those who identified as socialist feminists and who advocated for the radical transformation of the capitalist economy and society, feared that their alternative visions for liberation and education would be compromised if they had to work within the traditional structure of the university. Members of this group, which included one faculty member, Philosophy professor Ann Brentlinger (now Ferguson), preferred the name “Feminist Studies” because they felt that “Women’s Studies” could more easily be co-opted. They wanted to radically challenge the entire system of university education and the concept of learning more broadly. These ideas were in line with other alternative education efforts underway on campus, including free classes conducted by students and faculty in a yurt in the Southwest Residential area. ¹⁰

On the other hand, the group of faculty, staff, and students who knew they wanted to create a women’s studies program within the existing academic structure, for better or for worse, had to strategize about what language and approaches would facilitate the greatest likelihood that the University would recognize the legitimacy of their project. This latter group is the one that eventually submitted a proposal for a program to the Faculty Senate. Dedicated from the start to further the aims of the women’s movement for liberation rather than merely writing women into the existing records, WOST had to balance an evolving and not always unified political mission with the necessity of gaining recognition from the university as a legitimate academic program. The delicate art of compromise is woven throughout the history of WOST at UMass.

Another effort underway in the spring of 1972 provides a sense of the political climate on campus. A coalition made up of the Faculty Senate Women’s Caucus, the Student Senate Women’s Caucus, the Southwest Women’s Center, the Orchard Hill Women’s Center, and the Women’s Committee of the School of Education presented a proposal to the Committee on Buildings and Grounds requesting that UMass’s new library be named in honor of Sojourner Truth, the formerly enslaved abolitionist and women’s rights activist. The group states in their proposal, submitted in April, that “[t]welve buildings out of 132 [on campus] are named for women, none of whom are black. This is a miserable proportion.”¹¹ An article in the Collegian the month before states that a “Women’s Lib.” group wanted to name the library after Mother Jones, the radical labor organizer, who was white. One can speculate that perhaps in the ensuing month there were conversations about race, gender and politics, and that the organizers decided to propose Sojourner Truth rather than Mother Jones. Of course, eventually the library was named after W.E.B. DuBois, whose papers are now housed there. But the fact that this group attempted to amplify the history of women, particularly black activist women, using the very infrastructure of their campus, indicates that feminist organizers during this period felt that changing the way institutions confer legitimacy was an important organizing strategy.

⁸ AF papers, Box 6, Fem Studies folder, Women’s Studies/Feminist Studies Seminar document, March 8, 1972.

⁹ Seminar was attended by Nancy Akillian, Martha Amesbury, Dee Appley, Melanie Bennett, Paula Fortes, Paula Milner, Kristine Gudmand, Elaine Hitchcock, Cindi Hunter, Jeanne Klekotka, Mary McCall, Margaret Molloy, Marcia Naseck, Rosalie Norris, Donna Osowski, Frances Panzica, Betsy Peet, Debbie Sharp, and Pat Yates. AF papers, Box 6, Fem Studies folder.

¹⁰ Ann Ferguson interview, 1/21/11.

¹¹ AF Papers, Box 6, “Women – 1973/4 Political Docs Fem Studies Syllabi, etc. Folder”.