Okay, well, the one is Linda Nicholson and I are here.
It's April 7, 1997 and we're going to talk a little bit about the Women's Studies Program
Flash Department of Linda's involvement in it and her memories of what went on.
So why don't I start by asking you how you got involved with Women's Studies?
Okay, let's see, I came to the university in the fall of 1974.
And I, early on, got to know some of the people who were involved in Women's Studies.
But I wasn't exactly sure about how one became involved.
I think it was a couple of years when I went by and I'm not very well very fuzzy.
It might have been a year, I can't remember exactly until I got something like a formal invitation or somebody invited me.
That was my sense of how it happened.
And I went and then I went and I remember the meetings at those times.
Most meetings, I can't remember seeing a lot of the opportunity at Joan Pau in her living room.
I remember being assigned or volunteering for a committee that was the program committee and working with Lib Byrns.
But we were sort of, I remember the committee were kind of in a talk a little bit about what we were supposed to do.
I certainly was in the talk.
And I can't remember what we actually did do.
And in those the early years, mostly I remember meetings which were in Joan's living room.
Every couple of weeks.
But we're sort of like festive social events as well as meetings.
A very important turning point for me came.
I think I can't remember when it was.
But my sense of that has been here a few years.
It might have been as early as 76, maybe it was a few years later.
I can't remember.
The duty federally asked me if I'd like to teach one of the course, well I don't know what it was, core then.
But as me there was a course that people were thinking about called feminist social and political thought.
And asked me if I'd be interested in teaching it.
And I said I would be.
Luckily I was in a department at that time, foundations of education, where department chair Mark Berger was a lecture book, a nice guy.
So let me do stuff like this.
I didn't have it for the point that was within studies at the time.
So I did it.
And teaching that course, it was exciting for me.
It was very useful for me intellectually.
It really enabled me to make the conceptual link between my past work, which is political philosophy, and my political interest in feminism.
I began to think about feminism as political philosophy.
That we worked on that course.
In fact that was the working title of my first book.
And it was a political philosophy.
It later became a different type of history.
But I think the ideas for it came out of that teaching that course.
It was very exciting.
And I remember the first couple of sessions.
I remember Judy being there, Joan coming to the first couple of sessions in class.
It was a very good event.
I think that teaching that course, and I think having taught that course, that really involved me more in terms of the department of the program.
I felt more like a core person.
More modest, a marginal.
George can serve as a continued, when you run out, I'll let you know that.
Certainly a core or important transition in terms of my involvement in the studies took place in the 1980s.
1982 I came up with a tenure.
In the department of foundation and education at that time.
And the department had recently lost a PhD program.
And there was a recession.
And the budget had been cut.
And there was a lot of talk about the transfer.
And the sense was that our department was very high on the list.
And I went through a very problematic tenure year.
And because, I mean, everybody said I was wonderful.
And I got enanced both.
But it was clear that President-elect Denonio tenure on budgetary grounds, which made the whole process very, very tense.
And in fact, it was, I didn't, wasn't notified.
The time when most people notified, in which my, I think my, the formal proceedings were finished.
I, I guess, my sense was I never really saw my other branch.
But I didn't hear, I actually ended up not getting official letters until the end of July.
And I didn't hear the President call me into his office until Mary to say that he could deny that, that again, that it wasn't a question of marriage.
That's for budgetary reasons.
He might have passed a right-by tenure.
And he could do it right now, or it could see what happened.
And he was, I think, sort of getting, standing mind through official permission to let it drag on.
And I said, of course, I'm not sure I'd write it right until there was a possibility.
I ended up getting a theme in the June-Law.
And that was, and lots of people thought that there was one of the important groups that did this work.
Who went to talk to me basically.
He said, so you're basically asking for a hand-on study.
So you said, yeah.
It was a game-tea-year.
And nothing happened then for about another year.
I went at this time, we're going to set the record straight, because some people say that I immediately went to a study, that's not what happened.
What happened, because, actually, nothing happened.
It was only about a year after that that there were just decisions about eliminating that department with people going into different departments.
And half, there was a six-person department, half-person.
Went into one department on school education, half-life.
But I saw that as an opportunity, and it's really voluntary, that I had some leeway people who were being asked to choose where they wanted to go.
So I saw this as an opportunity to gain some resources for women studies, to move myself over, which would give me flexibility in terms of teaching women's studies courses.
And it would be loaned out as a phase of the management.
So, I officially requested that the campus, the Department of Education, the administration, also said that the campus in respect to that request was granted to an official half-time staff.
Our first non-director, core faculty member, is that, if I remember right, that was in my senses that that was 83.
Over the years, you've been very active in, and it's not really curriculum for that, but it's an academic curriculum for the future working on the master's program.
Did you work on the certificate?
Yeah, and you talk a little bit about those experiences, because I think, to get that in the record.
On the certificate program, that went on for years, and it was under John Schumacher, who was being a college of humanities by now.
And some of the certificate programs became, he was very into it, being new things and new gimmicks and new ways of doing this, a real entrepreneur, and administrative.
So, women's studies thought, aha, we could get a certificate program.
We would probably not be successful in getting a master's program, but we could develop a certificate program.
And this would be a way of beginning developing graduate work.
And there was also at that time, in the year of the year, just a later on in the evening, where this university was using, putting the word public policy or policy after everything, and everything became the department of physics and policy.
And also because there was a strong ethicist, a lack of a college, a lack of a college student, a strong graduate program.
And we thought we could be able to graduate programs, school education, and also graduate programs, because it's such a scientific, sociology.
So, we thought this would be a good idea to develop it. And it was a really an opportunity also to pull people who were involved in the study of the lack of a college to also work with the best people.
We met for years and finally had an after-year proposal.
What are the people?
The people were carried down, carried the study of Helen DeFausses. I think Iris Berger was involved for a little while, I think, never.
And people who are no longer here, who were involved with the Center for Women and Governments.
I can see their faces, but I can't remember their names. The president, the woman who was then head of the Center for Women and Governments,
the historical record, one of our early graduates of one of our early recipients of these certificates is Judith Sydel, who was now presently head of the Center for Women and Governments.
In fact, two of us, two of us, my pleasure.
I remember two of us as well, but I didn't know anything else.
Did you have a scholarship?
Yes, yes, you are.
That's very difficult.
Well, once that got developed, then we went on to the matches program.
Another thing that has taken years and years ago, before anything had happened,
it has to go through a million years of the comedies and women's studies, discussing every aspect.
And that certainly happened in the last few years.
And we had many, many years of some of the other culture.
I mean, it feels like many years of the committee meetings.
And before we were able to get a proposal together, we should.
People were happy there.
And then the final bit was, I think, a couple years ago, one summer, Judith Sydel,
who was a very hard, very brave job.
I think it's time for me to come.
Who would you offer?
Right.
What do you see for the future?
I feel that that gets approved by the Fed.
Well, I mean, one would be tempted to say a B&D program, but I'm not sure.
Because I've actually been thinking about the whole of the literature of women's studies.
It might be the case that women's studies did not continue to fit as separate fields.
Certainly, and I myself, and I'm sure that it would be interesting.
I'm sure that that would be the thing to be up to.
It would be depending on what you place to be.
But I think as we're coming to see gender as very much interrelated with other issues of race, of class,
sexuality, that it may come to be a quarter of a time where we can develop very good programs
that look at all of these issues together.
And that can be a very good, very good program to develop.
I mean, certainly, I mean, one of the things that I guess, certainly, we're looking at the issue of domestic sexuality more than we have.
And there's also been part of me that someway prefers the term gender as well.
I mean, one of the problems with gender is that it can pose the issue of some of the connotations of power,
the connection of women's movements, which I think can be important about the term.
But we're not just studying women's studies, we're doing construction of gender,
and we're not thinking about that when we talk about that.
So, I don't, if we, by the point I'm getting to the PhD program,
I might not be able to get 18 years of experience.
We're all just guiding right now, we're just here.
Over the years, there have been a number of issues that women's studies have dealt with,
someway successful as my mother and I think that.
And I wonder if you have, if there are any that have been banned out in your mind, that you need to talk about.
Like, give me, I'm not too ready.
For a long time we had strong, relatively strong community input into the program.
And at a certain point that same change, and that no longer, we no longer have that same kind of effort,
I thought it was not directly from people, I can tell they haven't even realized that that's right.
I think we've become, we've become more institutional professional.
We've become pure academic.
That's a problem, but on the other hand, it's good things.
It's good things are.
And things are more formal.
And things are, you know, the second issue, the person that comes with it, the movement formal.
It's more of a structural thing.
The person that comes with it, you know, it's a downward.
So I think we have, definitely have lost from not completely the optimal.
Even certainly once we wanted to, it's not straight.
Money, faculty, all kinds.
Secrets are really important.
That's good.
One of the issues, I mean, I'm cheating with people, I really don't want to do that.
But one of the, well, let me press up here.
One of the first meetings of the women's field advisory committee, I want to tell somebody that,
I don't feel like there's an end in this person.
And I don't feel like there's a part of me in this person.
And I know that there has been this deal on the part of some people.
I'm not going to be sure to tell them.
Well, I think the fact that so many of the people who were actively involved in starting to come here and being,
certainly putting so much of the empathy into the problem, where personal children lived together on the day of the street.
And did leave it to that.
And leave that perception, I think.
I know something gets very defensive whenever the issue is even brought up.
But I think there's a grain of truth to it.
I mean, there are people in every, I think there's any organization where some people are more active and more involved, are also close friends.
And do talk informally, have lived on the street.
I don't know if the discussion did take place in the whole reason, or if there was that, such that.
So there was a kind of community here that does, did have a children panel.
It degenerated from that.
And, um, um, they are for the whole.
I think they're talking to each other about the things that they're talking about.
They're talking to each other.
They bring it up.
And I think, I think, at times, I remember once that, I said, for the Christos and Kalena, um, in the sort of, I think, putting a push to a by-law.
And the, as I understand, it was to try to undermine and sense, um, an English.
And to hear public views of the way that they could make, and then, but, writing, he was formal.
And I supported that in the past, um, it wasn't that, you know, whether or not there wasn't English.
There was certainly a perception on one.
And I think, strictly, that having fought the formal structure of the useful, and to the public.
Do you think that this issue was still?
No.
Yeah.
Um, yeah.
I mean, I think there's been, you know, a combination of people, like you said,
these people said to me.
...
But there are some people who have left.
And I wonder if there are any who you care to recall,
that you remember, you know, who probably should be in
this sequence of history.
Well, I don't know.
I would marry Smiley, but she was a
well, she was an untenuous, and progressive, well,
actually, pretty marginal.
Well, first of all, Smiley was not in women's studies,
but she was in women's studies.
Yeah, but Ruth had already gone by the time I got a
bar, so I can't really talk about women's issues.
I'm trying to fix the last bit of life.
Can you give me a video?
Okay.
What about students?
Are there students you remember?
I mean, the happiest place.
Let's talk about them.
It's always interesting to know, see your about the students.
Okay.
Well, on one student on name, and one student I won't name,
the student on name is Danielle Corris.
She has, I think, she has won one of her most
early illustrious graduates.
And she's, I remember her tricky, my undergraduate,
and of course, that was her social political book.
And she was really a real smart and political,
political, and solidified, and she has great class
analysis and committed more.
She was such a serious student.
And funny, and I remember her bringing to those
core of the classes.
Stories about her grandmother, her grandmother was a
book that fought the police who were trying to break up.
Striping, striking, striking, working, organizing,
by throwing Marvel's down the streets in the air.
So, of course, it's a trick, some of the work is Marvel's.
Danielle, tell us what you think.
Danielle, did you think it was because she wants to learn more
about Marvel's?
I don't do it, it's a kind of study.
All that often, I have to realize that she really wants
to learn about it, but it's using a tool, really,
when you learn about something out of the way.
If you do that, it's an easy, treading strategy.
And Danielle, she's very, very serious, too.
Who might call it television?
Oh, she did all of the rest of the...
I think she's working with a law that I want to provide.
Very serious, anyway.
Anyway, doing political care, I think, I should do it.
Oh, you know what I remember, though?
And I won't make it, because one of the problems
that women's studies have been struggles with the collective.
And I remember, sometimes the collective,
the collective gives, has given students the opportunity
to take on much more responsibility and authority
than they gain their students in a more
probability of a context between persons and students
loving for good reason.
But sometimes students who have their own agendas,
their own desires to be authority figures,
exert an inordinate amount of power,
these would be their other students.
And our very very hostile, or have been hostile
to faculty in any way, interfering with the power
that has managed to garner through this so-called collective.
And so I remember cases of one student to do
and being in battle with the faculty.
Yes.
That's...
I want to...
The collective, the faculty president,
joined the collective and he took all the space
with himself to make students with the state
up to all our student life.
Anybody who knows me, has asked about
what she needs to have in the house.
Right?
And there are a lot of things.
And there are a lot of things.
Issues with students amongst each other,
and some students think were responsible.
Others think much so.
They think much about getting angry.
None of them use a group to request me.
How are we going to use the collective?
So we were talking about the collective.
And my own experience of questions.
Right.
Why don't we chose the course of thinking talk?
Okay.
The undergraduate level of the collective,
and the professional political,
now teaching a new course of women politics and power.
That's the undergraduate graduate of the post at this theory.
Seven of the post, and I want to talk years ago.
I think that's a women education.
That's what I have in my book.
So which is a cross-listing graduate?
The feminist theory course is this cross-listing 45.
Do you want to talk?
I think that's one of the two.
Which is the most exciting one for us,
and can you say that?
Well, I personally enjoy,
sure, we'll teach that undergraduate,
and the professional political plot,
the first time, which we read.
But mostly teaching graduate.
I think, yeah.
It's what I personally, much better say.
I like to be a student.
Undergraduate sometimes have a feeling of the purpose.
They're less...
I culture it,
they have less...
Similar intellectual agendas,
I just...
Sometimes...
Clash.
Here, consider it.
I always wish.
I do a lot of job at the teacher's.
Do you?
What would you like to see when some do that department do?
And what do you see now?
I would like there to be more interaction
with other departments like African Americans
that need to be...
Black.
I would like there to be more...
more integration.
And the research department,
looking at other forms of communication.
And the research department,
and the research department,
and the research department.
Yes, you're giving about...
your culture, the idea of evolution.
Right.
These kinds of programs,
are interested in whatever we have.
And I certainly like, of course,
the graduate team.
That's not...
That has to do not just...
The fear of the graduate team.
And I come more into just a lot of things.
There's more to just...
Do you have any other things that you want to bring up?
I do.
I do.
I try to...
I try to...
Well, for the...
I wouldn't have studied...
been a very important community.
It's...
more even just than academic.
It's more...
Open-minded.
Academic.
Full of conceptual.
Sometimes it has problems.
But it also has a new...
College of academic.
Community.
Community.
Okay.
