Standing Alone: Disciplining Women’s Studies through Freestanding Graduate
Programs
Katherine Side
Download Advice and Essay section
The development of undergraduate Women’s Studies programs throughout the 1970s and 1980s in the United States and Canada often reflected three realities: faculty members received their education in and/or were appointed to programs and departments other than Women’s Studies; Women’s Studies had limited visibility and received relatively little institutional support; and interdisciplinary scholarship was generally not well recognized or well respected. With the recent proliferation of Masters level programs in Women’s Studies, most of which were developed during the 1980s, and doctorate level programs, all of which were developed during the 1990s or later, Women’s Studies now occupies a more visible place in universities and has gained significant scholarly and institutional legitimacy.
Women’s Studies, sometimes positioned as a discipline and sometimes positioned as an
interdisciplinary domain (Boxer 1998; Wiegman 2002), is actively becoming disciplined.1 Disciplines serve intellectual and practical functions. Intellectually, they are based in a common
vocabulary, in shared sets of assumptions and collective understandings about how to investigate
and interrogate knowledge projects in ways that distinguish them from one another (Buker 2003,
73). Practically, disciplines divide up intellectual labour and serve as bases for the distribution of
institutional resources. For example, disciplines often have designated hiring and tenure lines and
are often included in national assessment schemes and funding frameworks (Griffin 2005, 108).
Interdisciplinary domains or “fields of inquiry” (Buker 2003, 73) draw on the common
vocabulary, shared assumptions and collective understandings of a number of disciplines to
investigate and interrogate knowledge projects, without attempting to distinguish them from one
another. Interdisciplinary domains or fields of inquiry challenge the practical division of intellectual
labour and the allocation of resources by discipline and as a result, often lack the same institutional
support as disciplines. For example, faculty members in interdisciplinary domains or fields of
inquiry are often hired in disciplines, but have responsibilities in the discipline and in the
interdisciplinary domain, the latter of which is often excluded from national assessment schemes
and funding frameworks.
As opportunities to obtain graduate degrees in Women’s Studies increase, and as Women’s Studies becomes disciplined, the freestanding PhD in Women’s Studies is likely to be the preferred academic requirement and those expecting to hold academic appointments in Women’s Studies in the future should be looking toward freestanding graduate programs.2
Freestanding and Collaborative Programs
- This use of disciplined has more than one meaning. It conveys the construction of Women’s Studies as a
distinctive body of knowledge production embedded in the larger context of institutional structures and the
construction of boundaries around the production and reproduction of knowledge. Both meanings challenge
interdisciplinarity as it is valued in Women’s Studies.
- The freestanding degree in Women’s Studies began to be offered in the United States at Emory University in
1991 and at Clark University in 1992. York University in Canada began offering the freestanding PhD in
Women’s Studies in 1992. Some free-standing programs in Women’s Studies require students to complete
disciplinary clusters (Babb 1996). Other program models in graduate Women’s Studies include: the
independent study model; the consortium model and the graduate minor (Shteir 1997).
Freestanding or stand-alone graduate programs in Women’s Studies facilitate the integration of knowledge from multiple disciplines simultaneously into a distinct epistemology that confers a specific identity and community membership (Anderson 1996; Boxer 1998; Allen and Kitch 1998; Side 2001; Wiegman 2001, in Buker 2003). Freestanding graduate programs in Women’s Studies typically stand alone within university structures and grant degrees in Women’s Studies, not in combination with another discipline.
Collaborative graduate programs in Women’s Studies examine scholarly topics from the
combined perspective of two disciplines, one of which is Women’s Studies (Romero 2000).3 Collaborative programs may require joint admission to a graduate program in a discipline and in
Women’s Studies (Armatage 1996) or may require admission to a graduate program in a discipline
other than Women’s Studies. Typically, collaborative graduate programs require that coursework be
completed in the discipline and a specific identity and community membership may be closely tied
to a discipline rather than to Women’s Studies. Some collaborative programs in Women’s Studies
grant joint degrees in a discipline and in Women’s Studies, while others grant degrees in the
discipline with a certificate or notation of a concentration in Women’s Studies.
Disciplining Women’s Studies
The freestanding graduate degree assures a prominent place for Women’s Studies in the
university and in the wider academic community. Disciplinary continuity, understood as the
acquisition of cumulative levels of education within a discipline, is increasingly expected for the
purposes of graduate school admission and academic appointment, but disciplinary continuity in
Women’s Studies has only recently been possible. The founders of Women’s Studies programs
were educated in disciplines other than Women’s Studies, often the result of the ‘elasticity’ of the
disciplines. As it is now possible to proceed from the BA level, to the MA level, to the PhD level in
Women’s Studies, the freestanding PhD in Women’s Studies is likely to become the preferred
terminal degree for academic appointments over collaborative degrees or degrees in other
disciplines.
Women’s Studies is also being shaped as a discipline from within its own professional
associations. A decade ago, those who held office in the National Women’s Studies Association and
the Canadian Women’s Studies Association were committed to Women’s Studies as an intellectual
project, but were appointed to other disciplines. Those presently holding office in both these
associations, some of whom have earned Women’s Studies degrees, are much more likely to hold
appointments in Women’s Studies. For example, the recently appointed Executive Director of the
National Women’s Studies Association is a graduate of the freestanding doctorate in Women’s
Studies and at least seven members of the National Women’s Studies Association’s 2005
Governing Council hold appointments, many of them as Directors, in Women and/or Gender
Studies. All, except one, member of the 2005 Board of Directors of the Canadian Women’s Studies
Association hold academic appointments in Women’s Studies programs and departments.
Initial concerns expressed about how graduates from freestanding Women’s Studies
programs might be displaced in university hiring processes (Friedman 1998) have proven to be
unfounded and the expansion of Women’s Studies, including its graduate programs, has increased its visibility in universities and highlighted its contributions to interdisciplinary scholarship, and
graduates from freestanding graduate programs in Women’s Studies will be particularly well
positioned to take advantage of the many opportunities that these changes present.
3 While disciplines in collaborative graduate programs are typically student-selected, disciplinary
collaboration with Women’s Studies is more widely available at some institutions than others. At the
University of Toronto, for instance, twenty-eight academic units participate in the collaborative Women’s
Studies PhD program.
Works Cited
Allen, Judith and Sally Kitch. 1998. “Disciplined by Discipline? Promise of the Women’s Studies
PhD” Feminist Studies 24 (2): 275-299.
Anderson, Rae. 1996. “Reflections of Crossing Disciplines” In Ann Shteir, ed. Graduate Women’s Studies: Visions and Realities, pp. 69-76. (Toronto: Inanna Publications).
Armatage, Kay. 1996. “Collaborating on Women’s Studies: The University of Toronto Model” In Ann Shteir, ed. Graduate Women’s Studies: Visions and Realities, pp. 11-20. (Toronto: Inanna Publications).
Babb, Florence. 1996. “Graduate Women’s Studies in the Heartland: Breaking Ground for a PhD Programme in Women’s Studies at the University of Iowa” In Ann Shteir, ed. Graduate Women’s Studies: Visions and Realities, pp. 41-45. (Toronto: Inanna Publications).
Boxer, Marilyn. 1998. “Remapping the University: The Promise of the Women’s Studies PhD” Feminist Studies 24(2): 387-403.
Buker, Eloise. 2003. “Is Women’s Studies a Disciplinary or an Interdisciplinary Field of Inquiry?” NWSA Journal 15 (1): 73-93.
Friedman, Susan Stanford. 1998. “(Inter) Disciplinarity and the Question of the Women’s Studies Ph. D.” Feminist Studies 24 (2): 301-324.
Griffin, Gabriele. 2005. “The Institutionalization of Women’s Studies in Europe” In Gabriele Griffin, ed. Doing Women’s Studies: Employment Opportunities, Personal Impacts and Social Consequences, pp. 89-110 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan).
Romero, Mary. 2000. “Disciplining the Feminist Borders of Knowledge: Are We Creating or Reproducing Academic Structures? NWSA Journal 12 (2): 148-162.
Shteir, Ann. 1997. “The Women’s Studies PhD: A Report from the Field” Women’s Studies Quarterly 25 (1 & 2): 388-403.
Side, Katherine. 2001. “Rethinking the Women’s Studies PhD in Canadian Universities” Journal of International Women’s Studies 2 (2): 275-299.
Wiegman, Robyn. 2001. “Academic Feminism against Itself” Plenary Address, National Women’s Studies Association. 16 June. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN.
Wiegman, Robyn. 2002. “Academic Feminism against Itself” NWSA Journal 14 (2): 19-38.