Friday Feminist Fuck Yeah: Women’s and Gender Studies

This may be our most chaotic Fuck You/Fuck Yeah ever. The gals came over to keep me company (I’ve been pretty sick) and do some Feministing work, so we did our video panel-styles.

Transcript below the jump.

Jessica: So this week’s Friday Feminist Fuck Yeah is for Women’s Studies but firstly and most importantly we wanted to introduce Marlee who has been our Feministing intern for the spring and helping us out with all sorts of fun stuff. And Women’s Studies brought Marlee to us because she took a class that I teach at Rutgers, Gender and Pop Culture (and ‘m teaching again this Fall, so take it if you go to Rugers). But we just wanted to do a general Fuck Yeah to Women’s and Gender Studies, a lot of us came from that area. This is our “panel” Friday Feminist Fuck Yeah. Monty is part of it.
Courtney: I actually wasn’t a Women’s Studies or Gender Studies major. But I took a really amazing class as an undergrad at Barnard about theorizing women’s activism. And it got me to start thinking about the ways in which academic things I had been interested in had very real life consequences. Which sounds incredibly obvious but at the time everything was in the classroom… So thank you to Janet Jacobsen and Barnard College.
Samhita: I did both my undergraduate degree and my Masters degree in Women’s Studies and had mixed experiences in both, in terms of the kind of fine line between academic feminism and activist feminism. I think the Women’s Studies programs helped me articulate what type of feminism I buy into and the necessity to be educated in women’s studies abut ii recognize the drawbacks to academic feminism…
[Everyone laughs while I make out with Monty and he is generally cute]
Jessica: You forgot to mention the most important thing about your undergraduate experience.
Samhita: Jessica was in it. [Laughs]
Jessica: That it brought us together!
Samhtia: Without my undergraduate Women’s Studies, Jessica and I would have never met.
Jessica: And the SUNY Albany Women’s Studies teaching collective was really formative for me; it was this program where undergrads could teach other undergrads Intro to Feminism, which was amazing as someone who was new to Women’s Studies and got involved super fast and it was amazing way to feel like I had a leadership role in feminism in Women’s Studies. And I don’t know if the program is still around but I hope it is because it was bad ass.
Samhita: It is, Maia just emailed us. Thanks, Maia you rock – fuck yeah!
Courtney: Fuck yeah!
Marlee: I go to Rutgers University, I’m still in my Women’s Studies program. I had to take Women, Culture and Society as a Douglass requirement and it was the first time I was exposed to feminism and Women’s Studies and that was a real turning point for me.
Jessica: And you have another rock star Women’s Studies professor that we were talking about earlier.
Marlee: Jasbir? Puar?
Jessica: Everyone has a mad feminist crush on her. There’s lots of feminist crushing going on.
Courtney: I would also say fuck yeah to schools that schools that create Women’s Studies courses that satisfy general ed requirement. Because I used to teach at Hunter College in NYC and it was Intro to Women’s Studies but it satisfied this requirement that everyone had to do so I just got all these people who didn’t know anything about feminism or who didn’t do gender race class analysis and that was amazing, it was such a great way to have this conversation. To really make people think about this shit that they otherwise wouldn’t be forced to think about – or at least they wouldn’t have the theoretical language to think about it. So fuck yeah to colleges and universities to prioritize women’s studies and make it a general ed requirement.
Samhita: Building on that, fuck yeah to all the Women’s Studies professors who have fought to keep their departments open, who have fought against really sexist boards, and really sexist departments that never saw it as a legitimate discipline. And also, a voice of support to continue those programs for young women and make sure we don’t get too legitimate and make sure that we do keep connected to on the ground activism. Monty is licking me.
Jessica: And with that, thanks and have a great weekend.