Date: Wed, 31 Dec 1997 00:17:54 -0400
From: Stirling Newberry <allegro-AT-thecia.net>
Subject: Re: PLC: Cultural Studies



>        The emergence of academic disciplines is rather interesting, and
>not very uniform (or so it seems to me).  Skidmore College faculty recently
>approved a major in Women's Studies, and though the ground swell was behind
>approving the major, there were some acerbic, and admittedly interesting,
>arguments against it.  To smmarize, there were several people who felt that
>the Women's Studies was not a discipline, but an "orientation," and that
>the work being claimed by women's studies was just a hodge-podge of people
>in various fields that 'talk about women's experience.'  The arguement went
>that if there could be a women's studies major, we could have an Upperclass
>White Male major -- one can define one's 'field' by defining a phenomenon.
>Others pointed to women's studies as marked by 'poor scholarship.' In
>effect, all the arguments I heard could be applied mutatis mutandis to any
>new discipline.  They seemed unconvincing to me for their 'a priori'
>reasoning.
>

Ah but one can show whether something is poor scholarship - or refute the
charge if leveled against one. If a "discipline" is based on the common
ideology of its members - then per force bad schoalrship will be allowed so
long as it supports that ideology.

Or have we forgotten "The Bell Curve" already?


Stirling Newberry
business: openmarket.com
personal: allegro-AT-thecia.net
War and Romance: http://www.thecia.net/users/allegro/public_html




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