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Letter to Jane Gould, Barnard Women's College

This letter from Brooklyn College Women's Studies Program co-founder Renate Bridenthal to the director of the Women's Center at Barnard College demonstrates the inter-institutional collaboration within academic feminist activism, and the co-development of the field of Women's Studies. Writing after attending a women's studies faculty conference at Barnard, Bridenthal is eager to address issues facing women's centers and women's studies programs in academic institutions around the country. The issues presented here are emblematic of the issues facing the field as a whole, including: departmental homes for women's studies programs, homophobia as a barrier to students's access to resources, a lack of feminist consciousness in the student body, and lack of funding, staffing, and legitimacy for programs. Bridenthal lists ideas for professional support that attendants brainstormed for moving "beyond survival," including alumni associations for women's studies graduates, funding opportunities, broadening research on women of low-income and in developing countries, dealing with administrators, and the development of an outcomes-based evaluation metric for the effects of a women's studies curriculum on the student body,

Source | Brooklyn College Library, Archives and Special Collections
Creator | Bridenthal, Renate
Date Created | March 16, 1979
Rights | Obtain From Brooklyn College Library, Archives and Special Collections
Item Type | Text (Diary / Correspondence)
Cite This document | Bridenthal, Renate , “Letter to Jane Gould, Barnard Women's College,” CUNY Digital History Archive, accessed March 19, 2024, https://cdha.cuny.edu/items/show/5462.

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