The Revive Project

Here is the second part of the draft Women’s Studies curriculum:

The second method is a specific, required course entitled “Women’s Studies.” This course is already taught in some colleges. Edmonds Community College (EdCC) in Lynnwood, WA has a course, “Introduction to Women’s Studies.” Some of the suggested assignments listed in Option 1 are taken from the EdCC course. In addition, the course book listed below, course description, and course objectives, are also taken from the EdCC syllabus. The purpose of showing this information on this proposal is to provide the data from a well organized, well taught Women’s Studies course.

Option 2: Create a specific, required course in “Women’s Studies”. This option is taken from an existing course at Edmonds Community College, Lynnwood, WA. Many assignments noted in Option 1 are also taken from this same course.
• Course book, An Introduction to Women’s Studies: Gender in A Transnational World, by Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan, McGraw Hill 2006
• Course description (from EdCC): This course provides an introduction to the methods and concepts of the interdisciplinary field of Women’s Studies. We will examine the historical and cultural constructions of gender, race, class and sexuality. Topics will include women’s histories and identities, family and work, body politics/health, sexuality, violence, creativity, empowerment and resistance. Additionally, the course will address issues facing women in a transnational context with a consideration of the importance of power, identity, and oppression in a global context.
• Course objectives (from EdCC): Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:
o Understand and use some of the key concepts of the field of Women’s Studies;
o Understand the meaning and workings of how social constructions of race, class gender and sexuality shape life experiences;
o Draw analytical connections between historical events and contemporary situations;
o Draw analytical connections between ideas and images and material conditions;
o Analyze the relationship between social and political institutions and human behaviors
o Think critically about culture, history, and society;
o Think critically about his or her own positioning within history, culture, and society in relations to others.
• Weekly assignments: These assignments are a pared down version of the EdCC syllabus.
o Week One Introduction to Course: The Cultural Construction of Gender.
o Week Two The Making of Race, Sex and Empire
o Week Three Health, Population Control and Reproductive Rights: Technology and Power
o Week Four Theorizing Women: Intersections of the Public and Private
o Week Five Identity Politics and Social Movements
o Week Six Representational Practices
o Week Seven Commodifying the Body: Consumer Culture, Advertising, Beauty
o Week Eight Gender, Body Represenation continued
o Week Nine Student Project Presentations
o Week Ten Hot Topic Discussion. Linking U.S. issues of diversity, culture and identity to broader global trends.
o Week Eleven Revisiting Gender in a Transnational Context. What can you do?
o Week Twelve Final Exam

Here is a post pasted from another thread, along with some comments from three different commenters on a literary thread about feminist and other women writers. I just pasted it in another place, being intrigued with the names, and meaning to google them later, but maybe whoever is working on this project will find it interesting.
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Is anyone working on biographies? I ran across the name of Stella Browne as a “feminist” writer(?) listed along with the more well known Margaret Sanger and there is no wikipedia article on her. But I did find this:

Frances Worsley Stella Browne (1880-1955), feminist, socialist, sex radical, campaigner for women’s rights to reproductive control.

http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah/webdoc4.htm
and links to more writings by her:

http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah/steltxts.htm#Stella%20Browne

Not a domestic utensil, but a woman and a citizen’ (1917)
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from LH she or i thread:
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what the feminist view of her is

My unscientific sampling, based entirely on what I stumble across, is that there are two contemporary perspectives.

First, in the context of literary woman of the early 20th century, with Margaret Sanger, Stella Browne, etc. as background, she’s in with H.D., Marianne Moore, and Mina Loy, for both their writing and personal lives. For instance, American women going to Europe and vice versa.

Second, a separation without the strong gender distinction, of the mainstream moderns from the “difficult” ones: Laura Riding (and (Riding) Jackson), Mina Loy, Gertrude Stein, but also the Objectivists Zukofsky and Oppen, as postmodernists ante litteram, anticipating L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E and so on.
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http://www.imagists.org/hd/
H. D. is apparently Hilda Dolittle
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Marianne Moore modernist poet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marianne_Moore

poem: imaginary gardens with real toads:
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/txt/1169.txt
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i only said he was better-known to be argumentative, but it is a good book.

I have never been able to understand the appeal of Laura Riding.
I didn’t know Laura Riding had any appeal, but I’d be (mildly) interested to know what the feminist view of her is. She was a terrible poet, but she had a ruthless, unrelenting and successful strategy for furthering her own career. The single redeeming feature of her life seems to be that she ‘renounced’ poetry.
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the appalling Laura Riding.

I have never been able to understand the appeal of Laura Riding. She seems to have been a horrid person, but never mind that, many writers are. But reading her “poetry” is like chewing cardboard. There’s no there there; it’s a bunch of dictionary items strung together in unpleasing ways. She doesn’t even seem to have liked poetry. But there are many things in this world I don’t understand.
~~~~~

part two of literary women threads (posted in two threads because of links)
~~~~
from LH she or i thread:
~~
what the feminist view of her is

My unscientific sampling, based entirely on what I stumble across, is that there are two contemporary perspectives.

First, in the context of literary woman of the early 20th century, with Margaret Sanger, Stella Browne, etc. as background, she’s in with H.D., Marianne Moore, and Mina Loy, for both their writing and personal lives. For instance, American women going to Europe and vice versa.

Second, a separation without the strong gender distinction, of the mainstream moderns from the “difficult” ones: Laura Riding (and (Riding) Jackson), Mina Loy, Gertrude Stein, but also the Objectivists Zukofsky and Oppen, as postmodernists ante litteram, anticipating L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E and so on.
~~~~~
http://www.imagists.org/hd/
H. D. is apparently Hilda Dolittle
~~~~
Marianne Moore modernist poet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marianne_Moore

poem: imaginary gardens with real toads:
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/txt/1169.txt
~~~~~
i only said he was better-known to be argumentative, but it is a good book.

I have never been able to understand the appeal of Laura Riding.
I didn’t know Laura Riding had any appeal, but I’d be (mildly) interested to know what the feminist view of her is. She was a terrible poet, but she had a ruthless, unrelenting and successful strategy for furthering her own career. The single redeeming feature of her life seems to be that she ‘renounced’ poetry.
~~~
the appalling Laura Riding.

I have never been able to understand the appeal of Laura Riding. She seems to have been a horrid person, but never mind that, many writers are. But reading her “poetry” is like chewing cardboard. There’s no there there; it’s a bunch of dictionary items strung together in unpleasing ways. She doesn’t even seem to have liked poetry. But there are many things in this world I don’t understand.
~~~~~

about women writers form the previous post (continued because of number of links):
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Marianne Moore modernist poet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marianne_Moore

poem: imaginary gardens with real toads:
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/txt/1169.txt
~~~~~

Here is a link to a NYT magazine article “Life with the Real White Goddess”, a book review about a bio of Laura Riding, the girlfriend of Robert Graves, author of The White Goddess.

Apparently Riding is much criticized in the literary world for breaking up Graves’ marriage, but is not considered to be much of a poet, not being included in Norton’s anthology. The review contains several lines of her poetry:

Her poems had an effect on the young Auden — he paid her the compliment of copying her style: economy of syntax, sparseness of sensuous detail, powerful rhythms. Here are three lines by Laura Riding: The standing-stillness The from foot-to-foot Is no real illness. and three by W. H. Auden: This gracious greeting “Good day. Good luck.” Is no real meeting.

Here is the other:

Come, words, away to miracle More natural than written art. You are surely somewhat devils, But I know a way to soothe The whirl of you when speech blasphemes Against the silent half of language And, labouring the blab of mouths, You tempt prolixity to ruin.

My take on Laura Riding is that there are probably better authors to present to school children to emulate–after all, her main importance is about how she influenced a man–but she might be interesting for adult women interested in literature.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE7D7143FF932A25752C1A966958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

I met with the assistant to the Assistant Superintendant for High School Curriculum for my school district today. I presented the letter I wrote, addressed to the superintendant as well as the proposed curriculum and the list of women nobel laureates. She LOVED it!!!!!! She told me more than once how well written and organized it was. She THANKED me more than once for taking the time to put the package together and getting involved in the issue. She is making copies to give to “the big guns” as she called them. The superintendent AND the Assistant Superintendents for ALL grades levels.

I am sooooo jazzed. She agreed with the proposal of integration into existing studies. We discussed how the district will mandate certain topics that have to be integrated into the studies and how I want Women’s Studies to be one of the topics mandated by the District. She is absolutely, 100% in agreement. We had an absolutely wonderful chat. I have dealt with the Assistant Superintendent for the Elementary level and know she will be on-board with the idea too.

The meeting was about a half hour. Pumas could certainly mail the letters in. As I told her, I thought about mailing it and decided against it because I wanted the personal touch to show how important the issue is.

Wooo hooo.

update on curriculum at the school district-
I have been meeting weekly with the curriculum coordinator noted in my prior post. We are creating a curriculum that can be incorporated into existing curriculum. We are provided resources in four areas: internet, written work, multi-media, and guest speakers for the teachers use. The resources are matched with specific state learning requirements by grade. In addition we are tying the resources in with the specific course book that the teachers use so that they can use these resources, which are women-specific, to what they are teaching. Our third area is projects. We are creating specific projects for the teachers that they will be able to assign to the students. Our “test run” of the work we have been doing is in two weeks when our work will be presented to the staff at one of the local high schools. Our goal is to have the information “complete” before summer. Our expectation is that it will be a viable source that is updated by teachers and continues to grow. And, of course, we want the curriculum to go state-wide. Currently three states have legislation mandating women’s studies-Illinois, Florida, and Louisiana. We want to be the fourth and have it spread even further.

An interesting site to study very early feminists:

http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/march99/whm_99.html

Among featured great women, Ada Lovelace who is the world’s first computer programmer!
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/famous-women-mathematicians.html