At many universities, women's studies programs have achieved department status, establishing tenure-track appointments, graduate programs, and consistent course enrollments. Yet, as Joan Wallach Scott notes in her introduction to this collection, in the wake of its institutional successes, women's studies has begun to lose its critical purchase. Feminism, the driving political force behind women's studies, is often regarded as an outmoded political position by many of today's students, and activism is no longer central to women's studies programs on many campuses. In Women's Studies on the Edge, leading feminist scholars tackle the critical, political, and institutional challenges that women's studies has faced since its widespread integration into university curricula.

The contributors to Women's Studies on the Edge embrace feminism not as a set of prescriptions but as a critical stance, one that seeks to interrogate and disrupt prevailing systems of gender. Refusing to perpetuate and protect orthodoxies, they ask tough questions about the impact of institutionalization on the once radical field of women's studies; about the ongoing difficulties of articulating women's studies with ethnic, queer, and race studies; and about the limits of liberal concepts of emancipation for understanding non-Western women. They also question the viability of continuing to ground women's studies in identity politics authorized by personal experience. The multiple interpretations in Women's Studies on the Edge sometimes overlap and sometimes stand in opposition to one another. The result is a collection that embodies the best aspects of critique: the intellectual and political stance that the contributors take to be feminism's ethos and its aim.

Contributors
Wendy Brown
Beverly Guy-Sheftall
Evelynn M. Hammonds
Saba Mahmood
Biddy Martin
Afsaneh Najmabadi
Ellen Rooney
Gayle Salamon
Joan Wallach Scott
Robyn Wiegman

Essays on the future of women's studies as a discipline, edited by one of the most important figures in women's history

About the Author

Joan Wallach Scott is the Harold F. Linder Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study. Her many books include The Politics of the Veil, Gender and the Politics of History, and Feminists Theorize the Political (co-edited with Judith Butler).

Reviews
"With its combination of landmark and new contributions, Women's Studies on the Edge will be a valuable addition to the library of any feminist scholar." - Elizabeth Groeneveld, Third Space
"This collection of eight essays, edited by Joan Wallach Scott, discusses the impact of institutional success on women's studies programs in the United States. . . . All the essays, each thoughtful in their own right, represent ideas that have unevenly infused academia but that continue to be salient." - Susie S. Porter, Affilia
"Women's Studies on the Edge . . . opens possibilities for a vibrant, transformed future for women's studies." - Barbara Scott Winkler, Feminist Formations
"An important acquisition for institutions that have (or are in the process of setting up) programs in women's studies, gender studies, or cultural studies. Essential." - N. B. Rosenthal, Choice
"Women's Studies on the Edge . . . opens possibilities for a vibrant, transformed future for women's studies." -- Barbara Scott Winkler * Feminist Formations *
"An important acquisition for institutions that have (or are in the process of setting up) programs in women's studies, gender studies, or cultural studies. Essential." -- N. B. Rosenthal * Choice *



Book Information
ISBN 9780822342748
Author Joan Wallach Scott
Format Paperback
Page Count 240
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 345g