Legitimize the Field

EARLY IN MARCH, Harvard's fourth annual Women's History Week drew substantial attendance and enthusiasm, all the more fervent because such scholarship is so rare here.

Three years after former Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky set up a committee to establish the burgeoning, multi-disciplinary field here, Harvard remains the only Ivy League institution without any sort of women's studies program. Although the committee was empowered to tenure a professor jointly in women's studies and another discipline, it has yet to snag any topflight scholar. Last spring Harvard lost renowned feminist literary critic Elaine Showalter to Princeton, which has demonstrated its commitment to the field. Apparently the committee has become bogged down, holding out for a savior both to fill this single chair and to double as an administrator who will generate an entire women's studies program--an absurdly unrealistic expectation.

Still, there are indications that recognition of the field is seeping through even Harvard's Ivy walls. The College's women's studies committee recently won a Mellon Grant to found a Gender Studies seminar featuring international guest scholars--which was so popular that only a handful of undergraduates could be accepted. Also, the Extension School will begin offering women's studies degrees. These small gains both indicate growing recognition of the field's legitimacy and significance and also highlight the College's weakness in this area.

The term "women's studies" encompasses a wide range of specific disciplines and fields, examining new and "unconventional" facts or methods of analysis integrating the influence or contribution of women. New and important aspects of women's studies include feminist literary criticism; history and government courses examining women's roles in politics, the family, and social revolutions; and post-Freudian psychology which accounts for gaps in the male-oriented picture of the human psyche.

Women's studies, therefore, must necessarily be interdisciplinary. But it is not an esoteric or an unwieldy project for a responsible university. We support the establishment of a degree-granting committee for women's studies, similar to Social Studies or to History and Literature. Regardless of its actual structure, such a program would at least offer several introductory, interdisciplinary courses and tutorials which in time would be augmented by other gender-related courses in the various traditional departments. One such course already exists in General Education 100, "Introduction to Women's Studies," but this overwhelmingly popular offering is only taught in alternate years, and its graduates have little chance to follow it up in other departments.

A vicious cycle is at work: traditional departments such as History and Biology seem to be waiting to take their cue from a central program before creating more gender-related courses. At the same time, the women's studies committee cannot attract top scholars without proving that the University is committed to the field.

Of 30 students who have applied, only one has been allowed to design a special concentration in women's studies. The Government Department lost its sole course on women and politics when Ethel Klein left for Columbia. Of the History Department's more than 100 courses, the three focusing on women have an equally uncertain future.

Women's History Week demonstrated decisively that Harvard students want the same opportunities women's studies scholars have at other schools. Students deserve more than just a week of guest lectures each March.