Encompassing Gender: Integrating Area Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Women's Studies

From Beijing to Seattle, women's movements within academe and in local-global communities are growing at an unprecedented rate, raising pointed questions about paradigms of Western feminism, development, global trade, and scholarship. In this long-awaited anthology of more than 40 essays, a host of scholars lead the way—often in defiance of academic traditions and prejudices—to a curriculum that reflects consequences of globalization.

Knowing that one cannot simply “add” gender or international elements to curricula “and stir,” these scholar-teachers promote the discovery of more diverse and global perspectives, not only innovative in their approach but essential to our understandings. Strategies for focus are key, as, for example, in an interesting course in Italian studies that compares and contrasts the exodus of Italians to the United States in the early twentieth century with the current influx of African immigrants into Italy.

The volume includes essays, course syllabi, annotated bibliographies and videographies, as well as novel teaching strategies and suggestions for a variety of international materials. The contributors take a fully integrated approach to such transformational curricular work, recommending both theoretical perspectives and specific strategies for teaching in many different kinds of classrooms. Like notes from the front lines of an academic movement, these accounts speak candidly to the frustrations experienced and the strategies employed as they work to challenge traditional “us” and “them” asymmetries—both in the classroom and in the larger world.