Disciplining feminism : from social activism to academic discourse / Ellen Messer-Davidow.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Messer-Davidow, Ellen, 1941-

Series:

e-Duke books scholarly collection.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Feminism and education--United States.

Feminism and education.

Women's studies--United States.

Women's studies.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (425 p.)

Place of Publication:

Durham [North Carolina] : Duke University Press, 2002.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

How was academic feminism formed by the very institutions it originally set out to transform? This is the question Ellen Messer-Davidow seeks to answer in Disciplining feminism. Launched thirty years ago as a bold venture to cut across disciplines and bridge the gap between scholarly knowledge and social activism, feminism in the academy, the author argues, is now entrenched in its institutional structures and separated from national political struggle. Working within a firm theoretical framework and drawing on years of both personal involvement and fieldwork in and outside of academe, Messer-Davidow traces the metamorphosis of a once insurgent project in three steps. After illustrating how early feminists meshed their activism with institutional processes to gain footholds on campuses and in disciplinary associations, she turns to the relay between institutionalization and intellectualization, examining the way feminist studies coalesced into an academic field beginning in the mid-1970s. Without denying the successes of this feminist passage into the established system of higher learning, Messer-Davidow nonetheless insists that the process of institutionalization itself necessarily alters all new entrants₇no matter how radical. Her final chapters look to the future of feminism in an increasingly conservative environment and to the possibilities for social change in general.

Contents:

Introduction: Knowing and Doing

Part 1. Confronting the Institutional-Disciplinary Order. 1. Disciplining Women. 2. Constructing Sex Discrimination

Part 2. Institutionalizing and Intellectualizing Feminist Studies: 3. Articulating Projects. 4. Formatting Feminist Studies. 5. Proliferating the Discourse

Part 3. Crystallizing the Future: 6. Remaking Change Agency. 7. Playing by the New Rules.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [365]-404) and index.

ISBN:

9786612920134

9781282920132

1282920138

9780822383581

0822383586

OCLC:

850216665