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Not drowning but waving [electronic resource] : women, feminism and the liberal arts / edited by Susan Brown ... [et al.].
Includes bibliographical references.
Type of computer file: Electronic document issued in e-Pub format.
Also issued in print format.
ISBN 978-0-88864-613-2
1. Women in the humanities--Canada. 2. Women in higher education--Canada. 3. Feminism and higher education--Canada. I. Brown, Susan, 1964-
AZ515.N68 2011c 001.3082'0971 C2011-903565-0
First edition, 2011.
Copyediting by Brendan Wild.
Proofreading by Joanne Muzak.
Indexing by Judy Dunlop (print and pdf editions).
Cover design by Virginia Penny.
E-Pub created in Canada by Duncan Turner.
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The University of Alberta Press gratefully acknowledges the support received for its publishing program from The Canada Council for the Arts. The University of Alberta Press also gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) and the Government of Alberta through the Alberta Multimedia Development Fund (AMDF) for its publishing activities.
Contents
Not Drowning But Waving
Susan Brown, Jeanne Perreault, Jo-Ann Wallace, and Heather Zwicker
Not Drowning
Living in the History of Equity and Backlash
Patricia Clements
and Other Casualties of Academic Labour at the Present Time
Donna Palmateer Pennee
Academic Mothering and the Unfinished Work of Feminism
Susan Brown
or, What Having a Uterus or Even Just Looking Like You Have One Means for Women in the Academy
Cecily Devereux
Burnout, Feminism, and Radical Collegiality
Heather Zwicker
Aruna Srivastava
Erin Wunker
Or The Adventures of a (Female) Associate Dean
Christine Overall
Lessons for Libertarians Now
L.M. Findlay
Systemic Discrimination and the Canada Research Chairs Program
Louise H. Forsyth
Waving
Temptation and Terror
Aritha van Herk
History / Temporality / Generations
Equity Audit 2010
Historicizing the Second Wave of the Womens Movement
Tessa Elizabeth Jordan and Jo-Ann Wallace
Reviving Wollstonecraft for Future Feminisms
Katherine Binhammer and Ann B. Shteir
The United Alumnae Association and Womens Co-Education at Toronto
Heather Murray
Feminisms Third Wave
Elizabeth Groeneveld
Two Perspectives
Phil Okeke-Ihejirika and Julie Rak
Isobel Grundy
Feminist Alliances in the Academy
Ann Wilson
Activism
Christine Bold
Amber Dean
Feminism, Trans Inclusion, and Nixon v. Vancouver Rape Relief
Lise Gotell
Activism, Agency, Feminist Debates, and Feminist Oversights
Marjorie Stone
Women, Feminism, and the Liberal Arts
Not Drowning But Waving
Susan Brown, Jeanne Perreault, Jo-Ann Wallace, and Heather Zwicker
Yes, its recklessly optimistic to entitle a volume about women, feminism, and the liberal arts Not Drowning But Waving. Pick up any newspaper in this still new twenty-first century and youll be overwhelmed by the number of urgent womens issues at home and abroad. Sit through a university committee meetingor, for that matter, the House of Commons debatesand listen for the number of times you hear the term equity: well bet its zero. And when is the last time you heard about a big bequest designated for womens studies? As for the liberal arts: the humanities, social sciences, or fine arts are not necessarily at the centre of the corporatizing university. By most measures, wethat problematic, variably representative, contested, and vulnerable category that plagues and yet underwrites the project of feminism, and that shifts in this introduction and this collection between specific, identifiable groups and more amorphous collectivesare not waving, but drowning.
Thats how Stevie Smith originally put it. Her short poem Not Waving but Drowning reads,
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now hes dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning. []
The questions suggested by this poem are legion, and unsettling. Have we been too far out? as feminists, arent we supposed to swim farther out? but can we get in too deep? is the climate still too chilly? is feminism dead? has our heart given way? are we about to go under for good? is it true that nobody can hear the moans? who is the subject here anyway, that shifts so unpredictably and seems to lurk between pronouns?
Or perhaps, as Aritha van Herks dive into the task and temptation of daring to be optimistic brings home, we need to undo the impulse to surrender, since waves can both pull under and buoy us up, we can ride out waves of exhaustion or be carried on waves of exhilaration. The possibilities of jouissance herelove and larksare in tension with isolation, difference, separation from the group. Yet are there grounds for hope, nevertheless, in the moaning of this apparently dead body, change that might emerge from the listening, empathetic moment that invokes both collectivity and the isolation of the subject? Might we be not drowning but waving?
The idea for this volume originated in a conference held in October 2006 to celebrate Patricia Clementss career and achievements as the firstand, to that point, only [] woman Dean of Arts at the University of Alberta, and at a time of massive institutional change. We invited conference participants to weigh in on questions like feminism in/and the liberal arts disciplines; the relationship of the liberal arts to the larger university; Womens Studies programs and the new interdisciplinarity; the challenges, costs, and rewards for women in administration; the corporatization of university campuses; intergenerational and transcultural tensions within feminist communities; the state and stakes of feminist pedagogy; the relationship of feminism to cultural studies; women, social justice, and the liberal arts. We asked, Feminist work in these areas has changed the liberal arts, but how much? What remains to be done, intellectually, pedagogically, institutionally?
