Customer Reviews

Can We Wear Our Pearls and Still Be Feminists?: Memoirs of a Campus Struggle

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Joan Mandle has written a wonderful, bittersweet memoir about her years as the director of a women's studies program at a liberal arts college. Her passion for feminism is palpable, and her willingness to be openly critical of the intellectual, philosophical and emotional blunders she encounters along the way is as refreshing as it is courageous.

The narrative line of this slim volume moves along at a rapid clip. She tells scores of stories -- about herself, her students, her interns at the center, and her colleagues both on campus and across the country. The tales are both fascinating and instructive. What sets this memoir apart, though, is her unshakeable commitment to social change and her equally rock-solid belief that feminism is strengthened, not weakened, by a rigorous and often critical self-appraisal of both the academic discipline and the social movement.

In this cogent, thought-provoking and ultimately hopeful memoir, sociologist Joan D. Mandle chronicles the six years in the 1990s when she directed the women's studies program at Colgate University, an elite liberal arts college in upstate New York. Her main challenge was how to transform a program narrowly focused on identity politics, talk therapy and male bashing--the agenda favored by the program's former director--into an intellectually rigorous, ideologically open, campus-wide forum on women and gender issues. Mandle's efforts were only partly successful, but you'll be fascinated (and disturbed) by the obstacles she faced. Chief among them was self-censorship in the classroom and at faculty gatherings. People avoided frank discussion of certain issues for fear of being labeled a sexist or a traitor to the women's movement. Mandle also analyzes why certain groups rejected, or felt excluded from, the program in the past--male faculty and students, sorority sisters (hence the reference to "wearing pearls"), women athletes, African-American women, pro-life advocates and others. Notably, Mandle counts herself as a feminist. But her vision of women's studies as an ideologically neutral field, anchored in evidence not political dogma, is shared by all too few in the academia. If you've ever wondered why most Americans believe in equal rights for women but reject "feminism", this book is a good place to start.

Mandle has written a memoir of her years running the Women's Studies Program at Colgate University. During that time, she struggled to make it a non-dogmatic, inclusive, academically rigorous program. She had many setbacks but also successes. It is depressing to read about the narrow-minded ideologues - usually people who thought of themselves as feminists - who resisted her admirable goals. Still, the larger message is one of hope. Feminism really can be an open, inclusive force for education and social change. Mandle avoids jargon and her writing is vivid and accessible. This book is a must for anyone interested in an alternative vision of feminism.

Joan Mandle has done an excellent job at synthesizing for the reader what types of conflicts and miscommunications lie fundamental to the core of struggling women's studies programs. Her account of a case study (memoirs of a campus struggle) is important reading for anyone interested in truly examining and furthering the state of women's studies programs in today's liberal arts curriculum.

This is worth a read if you're interested in the whole Wimmin's Studies cult phenomenon. But there's much to puzzle about here too. Prof Mandle took the helm of the WS program at Colgate determined to drag it out of its sectarian isolation, impose scholarly standards, and build bridges to the secular branches of the humanities and even the sciences. At every turn the True Believers fought her and accused of her of straying from the path of ideological purity. In the end, there was a coup and she got dumped.
It makes for an interesting enough tale, but I was left scratching my head as to Mandle's motivations. Did she really expect to effect a lasting clean-up of that stable?