Finding a pattern to follow for the women's studies coursework
As their proposal took shape, the committee appointed to establish the women's studies curricula began meeting with students and faculty to vet their concerns. They also gathered information from other schools that were doing similar work. Along the way, they discovered that the existing interdisciplinary framework at UNC provided a natural structure for their ideas.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Mary Turner Lane, September 9 and 16, 1986; May 21, 1987; October 1 and 28, 1987. Interview L-0039. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- PAMELA DEAN:
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Who did the work gathering this information together, contacting other
programs….
- MARY TURNER LANE:
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Well, we divided it up into really three areas here. Margaret
O'Conner chaired the group on consultation. This was the
group established to talk with interested groups, with student leaders,
and other people who were concerned with Women's Studies.
That was essentially on this campus. We had an open meeting at which all
members of the University community were invited to offer suggestions
and to ask questions. I remember some of the open meetings because
several of the men about whom I just made some comments, simply said
very frankly to us, in an aside, "Well, you'll just
have to answer the questions because I don't know how to
answer them." But the meetings were helpful because you had
opened up a range of questions from students, from other faculty. I
won't say that there five hundred students besieging us with
questions about it. But there was enough response, I think, for the
sessions to at least lead to some opening up of discussion, of being
able to think in other ways. So there were four or
five people who worked to organize that group. Another group worked
around the topic of a UNC-CH interdisciplinary curriculum and Duncan
McCray from political science chaired that group with Peter Filene and
Catherine Maley. They were to look at other interdisciplinary curricula
on this campus to see how they were put together, what people said about
them, and how a Women's Studies curriculum might fit into
something like that. Then the third study group was one on
women's studies elsewhere. Dell Johanson chaired that group,
and Earl (), and Ann Woodward, and I were on that
group. We looked up, we simply wrote to as many universities as we could
and got copies of their programs and recommendations from them and
models, etc.
- PAMELA DEAN:
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How many other programs, do you recall roughly, at this time?
- MARY TURNER LANE:
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Not many, not many. That was very interesting. We had very few models to
go by. And we'd included these models of Women's
Studies Programs. We came up with a way to categorize them from all of
the different universities that sent us programs. We found one group
that had no program. We called that Model 1. Model 2 simply referred to
isolated courses relating to women's studies. Then Model 3
would include those universities that had Women's Studies
programs and even within that context there might be no major or they
might have a minor or a concentration or a major or a degree. But there
were very, very few that had anything that was a real major or that was
a degree. We did find one or two places that had a graduate degree, no undergraduate degree but a graduate degree. So
these models or these descriptions of programs did a great deal, I
think, to support our request that there be something on this campus.
They also did a great deal to support the notion that, yes,
Women's Studies is interdisciplinary. And that in whatever
direction we moved, it would be appropriate to stay within the
interdisciplinary context.
- PAMELA DEAN:
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Its interdisciplinary nature is one of the basic arguments for bringing
together different perspectives, different approaches to this question
and cross-fertilizing.
- MARY TURNER LANE:
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Yes, well, I think it's a true liberal arts approach because I
think interdisciplinary programs truly reflect the best of a strong
liberal arts program. As I look through the material, it's
interesting how many places at that time—for instance, the
University of Maryland and the University of North Carolina at
Greensboro had programs that they called them as such but they offered
something called a certificate rather than a major. The University of
Pennsylvania had something that was called an interdisciplinary program
in Women's Studies, and it had two areas of concentration.
One was Preparation for Women in Medicine and Preparation for Women in
Public Life. Then the University of Washington at Seattle had a
Women's Studies major with certain courses in
women's studies and others in relevant departments. So while
the programs were very few, there were certain strands in them that were
very helpful to us, we thought.
- PAMELA DEAN:
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Gave you something to draw from in developing, deciding what you wanted
to recommend.
- MARY TURNER LANE:
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Yes, so then what we really did, I suppose, was to take the strands that
emerged from the knowledge about Women's Studies Programs
elsewhere and merge them with the strands or the core that came out of
the subcommittee on interdisciplinary curriculum because that was what
was already fixed on our campus.
- PAMELA DEAN:
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It gave you a kind of a framework you had to fit in.
- MARY TURNER LANE:
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This notion of a core requirement and what a major might be and then what
electives might be. We had maybe four programs at that time in the
general college or in the College of Arts and Sciences that were
interdisciplinary in nature. And we did have—it's
interesting that I don't see that in this
report—we also had—no, I take that back, there
were at least eight programs that were interdisciplinary at that
time—but we also had a B.A. or a B.S. in interdisciplinary
studies that simply was not labeled. That was different from African
Studies, Afro-American Studies or American Studies. That degree in
interdisciplinary studies was one that a student and a faculty member
created. They devised it around a central theme. You remember, you
don't remember, but at that time so many young people were
interested in different aspects of the environment.
- PAMELA DEAN:
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Right, ecology, things of that nature, yeah.
- MARY TURNER LANE:
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Yes, so that I would say that the thrust of that new degree in
interdisciplinary studies was to accommodate students who wanted to
study different aspects of ecology. They wanted to bring together
courses in plant life and marine life and water purity with courses in
city and regional planning. So that program did
exist where the individual could really tailor a course.