Claiming feminist space in the university: The social organization of feminist teaching

This study explores both pedagogy and course content in social science courses cross-listed with women's studies. Drawing on the theoretical works of Dorothy Smith and Michel Foucault and utilizing in-depth interviews with eight women faculty, five women teaching assistants and nine students (eight women and one man), I examine the socially mediated arena of feminist teaching. I ask: to what extent is it possible to practice idealistic teaching, framed as feminist, in the contemporary masculinist university? I also analyze student resistance to feminist course content. Through this analysis I ask: what counts as knowledge for students in social science courses cross-listed with women's studies?; Numerous social relations work to organize classroom spaces. First, the social location of the course participants mediates the undergraduate university classroom. Age, gender, race, sexuality and so forth shape the local experiences of people in university classrooms. Second, one's position as a sessional instructor, limited term faculty member or untenured faculty member organizes how one teaches. Here we see the extra-local relations of the university and the economy organize how departments staff their courses and departments. Third, extra-local social relations such as surveillance mechanisms materially represented in texts such as course evaluations and merit reviews contribute to the social organization of classrooms. Faculty find themselves practicing hidden feminist pedagogies, hesitating to teach from their preferred feminist perspective and attempting to appease students who might be critical of their use of feminist material. In the end these survival practices undermine efforts to position feminist knowledge as legitimate.