Yeah, that's not.
Okay.
It's April 17th and I'm interviewing June Hawner about the history of the Women's Studies
program and her involvement in it.
I usually start out by asking people how they got involved in the Women's Studies program.
Of course, you were there before it was a program, but perhaps you could tell us some of
that history.
Okay.
Fall 1972.
Women's Caucus.
Meeting.
I was discussing the idea of women's studies and a subcommittee was going to be formed
to look into it.
And I volunteered.
Who was on the subcommittee?
I lived in Burns and Sylvia Barnard.
I had it.
Yeah.
And that's where the whole thing is.
So what happened?
Okay.
We tried to build courses.
That was the basic strategy.
Develop courses.
Encourage faculty to give courses.
Encourage the departments to have the courses.
And the strategy that I thought was the best so I do think it was the best was to try to
get these as catalog courses.
Up to this point, only the one course, a very nice one, literature course.
But it was general studies.
We didn't have catalog courses.
We had the equivalent, it was easier to get through on topics courses, which the university
does in Calthag the same way.
So you're going to go to a program, you have to have catalog courses.
Something that they could tell you would be there.
So that was a strategy.
We just built them up in various departments.
And fun quickly.
I tried to look at some old information to find out what was on the earlier course that you're interested in.
Yeah.
Because it was really...
How long ago?
We must tell you it was that in an accepted field.
So I guess the question legitimacy was a very issue.
I tried to justify women's studies, explain what women's studies was.
Justify the courses.
In certain departments, we must be more sympathetic than others.
I won't name names.
You could name names if you want to.
I won't name the ones that are really nasty.
Right.
There were certain ones...
Who were sympathetic to women's studies?
Which ones were sympathetic to women's studies?
At least we got some courses through places like history.
Anthropology wasn't bad.
Let's look at early courses.
Women in European history.
History women in the Americas.
Classic.
Women in antiquity.
Women in the drama.
Those are the catalog courses.
And the topics are women in the drama.
The regular women's rights movement.
Women in the peace movement.
Contemporary friends, women authors.
So there's a lot of sympathy in humanity.
And certain places in social science, like history, like anthropology.
One particular part was since it turned around.
But that time had just been recorded in blood betters.
And definitely unsupervised.
So that also brought up a program.
We could use a couple courses that are very existed of the department,
like Urban, Puerto Rican family.
But that was a strategy.
Try to have regular catalog courses to avoid the good old revolving syndrome.
Otherwise, it just turns that the others turns walk quickly.
For people, the courses are going in and out, going in and out.
So that was a goal of women's studies as a pro-presenter.
And it was recognized at a second field in the spring of 1973.
So there was an edge in core women studies.
In fact, Bruce Smith was dean of humanities.
He said she was very surprised that we had done that quickly.
Now many a second, we have looked at it.
But that's when it became an energy.
In fact, I even got the title of director, which was no money or time of the thing.
I thought you understand.
But at least there was something called women's studies.
I had a fight for money.
There was no real budget.
And I had to get money out of present.
I find a book that wrote this very good and put it up money to speakers.
But you need to establish a budget.
You need to establish a structure of some kind.
And that's what we worked on, just to get the idea of women's studies
to get people interested to encourage you over horses.
And it was all course volunteer labor.
Right, of course.
Half of the course.
And a number of students kept going up.
We did an outside activity that I mentioned, speakers.
We had two very good speakers.
They were the first ones who had the thing.
Well, Kevin Stimson, for example.
And girl learned.
Oh, yeah.
So top notch people who grew good audiences and who attract a lot of attention.
Oh, actually, I got a great learner.
I got Afro-American to share something.
I learned it was a vulnerable person.
When then chair of African was African.
I think it was one of the title of that film.
I think it was still off from titles change, you know.
I think it was Afro-American at that point.
So then chair said to me that he wanted to have somebody else on the panel
as a rebutter, we would term he used.
I said, I think she'd like it.
And boy, she wouldn't do him with that idea.
So that didn't get very far.
Right.
So there were some ideas here and there,
which he was talking about black women.
Yeah.
Which of course she'd work hard a bit off.
So then this is the kind of a star.
It was the courses, very mission, pushing for a budget.
And it's time to sign the push for actual align.
Or something that would be in women's day itself.
Right.
Right.
So now how long were you the nominal director?
I do.
For two years.
So that took us up to what?
74?
I'm trying to remember.
That's the 74.
Yeah.
I only did the thing.
Yeah.
So when did I go on to that?
I got to think about that.
I think that was the point.
I went on to back when Jones was a post-chief
and over and developed a much further.
Yeah.
So I want to get back to kind of the chronology later.
But who were the people who were involved?
I mean, you say you and Sylvia and Libburn were the initial ones.
Who else was involved?
Well, giving course over the period of time.
Well, I was the Jones Schultz, David Dames.
Do you federally just come to the University of that point?
And helping to plan courses and strategy and so forth?
Well, there was time to get, because the people don't give in course.
It's a Jewish star.
Yeah.
But it was, all the, I can't remember the students name.
It was a student who worked with us sometimes too.
But the students were very interested.
But it was, I know, we had one big meeting at my house,
my apartment rather, so it would be for rights.
I stopped and discussed the next day.
That was a really big meeting.
Everybody came, literally.
Because we think we needed a homecoming instruction course,
an instruction course.
That would be the next step.
I was going to doubt that.
We started the idea with that.
So I kept looking at all the names.
I'm sorry, can you let me check that out?
When you came back from your sabbatical,
and Joan was now doing the director.
I mean, I know you've continued to be active with the Women's Studies program,
because I've known you for so long, and worked with you in it.
Were you teaching courses?
Oh, yes, I put through this course.
History and the Americas, one of the first courses of Cala.
So I kept teaching that.
Right.
And some other, you know, I didn't mean to suggest we should do topical courses,
but that you couldn't build a program with schools,
or we had other topical courses until we all did.
Right.
But it's often a good way to try out a course before making a capital course.
So what other things, you know, over the years,
did you serve on committee?
Oh, sure.
Are there any that stand out?
It seems to me, in the earlier stage,
there was more connection with Women's Studies activities at other schools in the area.
We had a more regional thing.
Now I'm serving on some of that stuff.
Hux and Valley type of things.
Yeah.
It seems you were doing more of that.
And of course, we had the early meetings that tended to be, you know,
a free wheel and a combination of, you know, social and political,
without the structure that we now have.
Right.
Women's Studies were distinctive.
It wasn't another department.
Right.
Do you remember, well, I guess you don't, you said you don't remember the student's name.
I really don't.
Mm-hmm.
Because they can't just sort of come and go.
Yeah.
Right.
Even on that committee, we had one that would work with us in a little while and be gone.
I know.
They made the most student populations a different, in fact, the population.
Mm-hmm.
Of course.
Right.
Hopefully the faculty are here for a long, long periods of time.
What were the issues during those years?
The issues that, I mean, the major issues that kind of, you know,
kept everybody's attention.
Well, there was no, I mean, one thing I must say, we didn't have any issues dividing us.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, I would hear a story about other women's studies program elsewhere.
I think how fortunate we are, what a good group we are.
Mm-hmm.
Because it was basically to keep expanding women's studies, get something out of the university,
show how good we were.
Mm-hmm.
I see.
Yeah.
What about the present?
Now, women's studies have mature here at this university.
Of course.
And what are the differences that you see between the way it is now and the way that it was,
you know, 10 years ago, 15 years ago?
The women's studies now is a department.
The structures are completely different.
It's been a structure of a program and a department.
Mm-hmm.
This is a department has a committee structure, it has right to a meeting.
It's all business-basically.
Mm-hmm.
So some of the early enthusiasm is gone.
I mean, it's real.
It's been changed.
Mm-hmm.
Not the dedication, but the free willingness is all over.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
At one time, we had community involvement in a way that we don't have.
Exactly.
Do you recall how, when that changed and how?
Gradual, just very gradual.
I can't remember any specific incident, I think we would say this is it, but...
The program has become academic.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
How did we bring in the community people initially?
I know that we brought them in, they brought themselves in.
I mean, I'm not too...
Deeper Jane is probably the one who's most now I spoke about that.
Mm-hmm.
And I know that she's felt that the change in structure.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, I think they were the demand or interest of community folkhauses for activity with the area where they are.
So I don't want to bring them in or them tell us that we should do something.
Yeah.
Right.
What do you think...
What do you see in the future for women's studies, both in general and here at the university?
Oh, you know, the stories have no crystal balls.
Do you have any ideas about where it may go?
Well, in the university that's retrenching.
I mean, we had it in the history department recently.
We had a recent issue.
We're going to be administrative pay their visits, you know, asking for our plans for the future.
This and that, one of the people in the department, you're such, you know,
how could we play for the future without any money?
So, are we, how could we play with the experience of a growth?
Stop chopping.
I said, then we'll talk about growth.
So I don't know.
I think in a situation like this, we're sure we're trying to get more ones to try and grow.
But also, we're worrying about, like, every other department, you know,
the 12th last year, about 4th mergers of the department.
That's 12th-seem speaks, you know, not heard this year.
So, let's take a lot of energy.
Well, what about the field, not just the local sort of climate?
Women's studies is basically accepted.
In the academic world, the way it's certainly wasn't 20 years ago.
So, good work is being done.
And something of our lip services being paid.
I'm not referring to that, you know, magic, triad, you know, race class and gender
that everyone's keep citing.
But I think there is recognition and acceptance.
Or at least, as some other areas, people don't say, you don't like it if they don't like it.
We seem to have, there seems to be a thrust in women's studies.
I don't want to put words in your mouth, you know, but I want to see if you think, for example,
whether women's studies will ever, you know, transform the curriculum and then die out
because the curriculum has been transformed.
Do you think that's a likely thing in the future?
Or do you think that's a life time?
Well, I wouldn't expect anybody to predict much further than that.
I think, as an area of our women's history, I've heard people voice the hope that that would happen.
But no one's expecting it to happen quite yet.
Do you think the women's studies has anything unique to bring to the question?
And I think it has made changes, but that it would no longer be, quote, needed.
I think that's going to take longer than I wish it would take.
Because sometimes it causes people just on sticking women into pre-existing pigeonholes.
Right, I'm rethinking things.
Well, have you any more thoughts on women's studies?
It's been great.
Personally, professionally, you know, intellectually, emotionally.
This is something that we committed ourselves to, and I think we did very well.
Looking back, I think it all has to accomplish.
Not there's a lot more to do.
Are there people, we're all fairly familiar with the people who are still here.
Are there people who are not here who were instrumental, perhaps too strong, who were it?
But who had an effect on women's studies, who have left the university for one reason or another, that you can recall.
It was interesting, a lot of people who were there at the creation are still here.
Sure, there were people who taught different causes, different things that got on.
But if you consider those people who've been chairs of the program, or everything, they're all here, I think.
The whole range.
From the very beginning until the full-fledged spot.
Well, I don't even know what else to ask you.
I've asked you most of the questions that I've been asking other people.
Try to think of...
I found article that I one time wrote for women's studies newswear, summarizing our early program.
We had eight courses in the fall 1972, which told us from 285 students.
For the fall 1973, we had nine courses, closed, held at Mollie section, and we got four out of sixty students.
I was roughly a growth.
That spring of 1974 semester, we added three more courses.
Ethnology women, women education, and spasley rise in the 20th century.
Yes, I'm a like gun. That's our color is gone.
And we have to anthropology people who come and go out until we teach somebody's courses.
I'm trying to get out of school.
Well Let me see who is我就.
Help me get out.
What?
I'm gonna pour all that into thefriedachment.
And with the cooperator some individuals with the university are being increased.
I'm calling from something that's dated, yeah, strange 74.
No, without library resources, no talking to the developer.
How happened to Washington that way of library?
Did you have some kind of a liaison at the library?
Was there a librarian that you worked with?
At that point.
It was no particular individual.
But I mean, for a most library the women interested, aren't they?
So you need a women's study as librarians to get things watered?
Right.
Well, I know that I'm just not sure before I came who was from the library was involved
because I wasn't around to be a writer.
There's been a lot of trial for the library.
I think more than among the faculty.
So I can't remember all the day and didn't people I work with at different times.
But that's where the lot of trial was.
Not even till I've very low on how my side office turns off.
Right.
I guess I should have kept wonderful records on everything and everybody else.
Why should you do nobody else?
At the time when Joan took over I just had her all the papers literally.
So I had just all things like this until I actually printed up and published.
Let me turn this off now.
It's beautiful.
I remember the enthusiasm, the excitement of creating something new.
It was a good feeling.
It was a kind of a solidarity, a great feeling.
Not just with women's studies, women's caucus.
There was a combination.
There was a spread.
Women's studies was not just an academic isolated energy.
Those were good years.
Perhaps because we were younger and more energetic.
But there was, and I said, a solidarity, a feeling of accomplishment, of excitement, of
creating something new.
And also of a good hard fight because administration sometimes wouldn't even give you a rip.
So it was a long, long, real attention.
But having loosened it, the first movement that had any kind of a serious idea of position
on your work was very supportive.
And that made it different.
Somebody finally cared a little bit.
But we had meetings not just on women's studies, but on everything.
And there was an openness.
There was a friendliness.
Well, those were the worst stories I've got there.
But there was a feeling that, there also be, I remember some afternoon, I pray.
And so it dropped in sociability, it was lost that.
You knew you could find people who were sympathy, who were talked to on wine with.
There was interconnection among women's faculty at St. Louis.
And the university where the connection was very poor at the beginning of it.
It's gotten worse.
Definitely got worse.
Look at this building when you came in now.
All the doors are always shut.
It's still all the time in social science, but they shut more than they used to be.
I mean, it might feel much more isolated when you used to be.
I just thought women told me that everything.
Women's studies is probably one of the most open places in our campus.
But there is a difference from the free-wheeling, sort of, informed or loosely formed to the
structure.
What university's function on structure basis is, is, consider progress anyways.
Right.
Right.
We're talking about women's studies.
In the early days, we're talking about teaching.
We're not talking about research.
There wasn't really much of any emphasis on research.
That's come later on.
I know I was doing publishing.
I was just a publishing.
We were just talking about publishing at that point.
But most people have done a lot since all women's studies.
The publishing area were not at that point.
In fact, a certain meeting I remember.
I guess it was right when Chris was becoming chair.
Even Tom Lee said that teaching is feminine and publishing is masculine.
So that's one thing that has changed in the emphasis.
There is now much more of this academic emphasis on publishing, on research.
Where the beginning, we were interested in teaching.
We were interested in, you know, in the activists in many ways.
But the stress was not on publication.
Do you suppose that the move to teaching graduate level courses, which comes first, the chicken
or the egg?
I think also the egg is getting older.
I think as some people, at that point myself, I was just a young assistant.
I was just a young assistant, a tenured professor.
But I was getting interested in research on women, the same power, interested in teaching.
To me, it all went together.
But my first publication said nothing on women because when I did, I graduated work,
there was no such thing as a women's history.
So I think it feels all developed at the same time.
So it's chicken and egg and soup also.
Right.
But that is a difference.
That is a difference between earlier and later.
That is a difference.
Not just structure, but the emphasis too.
Not the teaching, becoming less important, but research, as an A, was research and publication
was not part of the early emphasis.
I think one of the reasons I was actually able to be pretty effective as someone to help develop the program
was because I did have some publications and the boys couldn't sneer at me for that.
It was kind of useful because they were trying that.
They were trying that.
I think it was useful for us to the program.
We got that point later on, but at that point we decided off.
That's a good point.
