Brief, A-Mazing Movements: Dealing with Despair in the Women\u27s Studies Classroom

Women\u27s studies majors at the University of Minnesota are required to take two quarters of a course called Women\u27s Studies Seminar some time in their junior or senior year. While the theme of the seminar varies from quarter to quarter , its underlying purpose is constant: to allow students to direct knowledge and methodology gained from courses and experience toward topics of an interdisciplinary nature with a focus on women. The variant that I taught in the fall of 1978 was called Feminist Learning: The University and Beyond. Its intent was to help students become conscious of the learning process and shift their focus from content to method, from what to how and why. It is a difficult transition to make, particularly in a university where passive lecture courses are the norm. The lack of tangible subject matter can be troubling, and it takes time to get used to the teacher\u27s function, which is not to pass on information, but to guide, provoke, and challenge, often from the sidelines

Feminism at a Rural University: A Report from the University of Idaho

Moscow, Idaho, the dried pea and lentil capital of the world, is situated between Potlatch and Genesee, 85 miles southeast of Spokane, Washington. Its population is 13,000, a figure that must include a good share of the 7,000 students at the University of Idaho. It is not listed in national feminist catalogs—a lack that is due less to the failure of local feminist efforts than to the urban bias prevalent in the women\u27s movement. In my two years with the University of Idaho Women\u27s Center, I watched—and, I hope, helped—a new spurt of feminism take hold in Moscow. I spent the first year trying to transplant my urban feminist experience in alien soil and the second trying to learn what form feminism ought to take in a rural environment

Letters to the Editor

Dear Friends, Although she warned severely against condescension, the writer of the article reporting on feminism at the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho (Women\u27s Studies Newsletter, Summer 1974) struck me as having enough of that quality and a good deal to spare, when it comes to the state of things there. Just a little swat such as U.S. 95, the only federally numbered goat trail in the country struck a pretty sour note, and of course she is not even accurate (unless county was intended instead of country ) and certainly conveys no image of the situation in Idaho, where there are many magnificent roads . . . . I am not surprised that zap actions, guerilla theatre, and protest demonstrations would not get feminism\u27s new wave very far there—they wouldn\u27t on the street where I live, in the already urbanized, radicalized, feminized (!?) East

In the Mirror: The Legitimation Work of Globalization

This essay examines the legitimation work of globalization by bringing into dialogue the authors' research on immigration, finance, and intercountryadoption. It is concerned with the practices that produce, define, and preclude both movement and connection, such as "naturalizing" some border crossings while criminalizing others; denying the histories and policies that allow some parents to "choose" babies while others must abandon them; and challenging the practices through which small states tweak transnational financial systems while allowing multinational corporations privileges denied small states. Legitimation work (re)configures jurisdictionality, transparency, and sovereignty - the constructs on which debates over globalization's consequences hinge. Examining how these constructs order, include, and exclude persons, goods, and practices sheds light on the boundaries, slippages, and connections between the legitimate and the illegitimate within global processes