Article Title :
Sappho’s Quest: New Volume in Women’s Studies
1 (2017)
21-22
Feminist consciousness , Interdisciplinary , Feminism , Gender discrimination , Mainstreaming , Women's movement
Unlike many other mainstream disciplines that only seek to broaden knowledge and add to it, and thus become additive, women’s studies tries to question and posit new ways of thinking, inaugurating paradigm shifts and thus becoming subversive by trying to question established hierarchies of knowledge. This has not been an easy journey and the practioners of this new approach have faced numerous odds as all pioneering endeavours encounter. This is a story that needs to be told and the present book attempts to do this by charting the trajectories of eighteen women’s studies scholars and their academic sojourn. These scholars have been confined not just to the traditional dominant hierarchies of knowledge but by their own making, ventured into new areas, which has now emerged from the margins to the forefront and struggled to give women’s studies a visibility.
Women’s Studies is still treated with disdain in many academic quarters which are by and large very patriarchal in their approach.
The story of the development of this academic field and the lives that made it possible must be told (and retold) in order not to be left out of the academic picture.
Eighteen scholars have struggled to give women’s studies a visibility and carved out a niche for it amidst the mainstream disciplines.
The work done by these women (and a few men) has created the foundation for the advancement of gender equality in many different countries.
This book highlights this journey.
