Paula Schwartz arrived at Middlebury in the fall of 1989, when the proposal for a Women’s Studies program was just getting under way. Although hired as a professor only in the French Department, Schwartz recognized the need for faculty support in Women’s Studies, and taught in the program whenever she had the opportunity to teach in English. Her early courses included “Reading Women’s History” and “Women in Fascism.”
However, Schwartz said, the initial structure of the Women’s Studies program proved challenging to faculty, like herself, who had obligations to their own departments first. “For somebody in any department to teach a women’s and gender studies course, it means that department is making a gift to the college, basically, because it’s one less course they’ll be able to offer,” she noted. “So that poses all kinds of issues and problems and political problems as well. Especially if senior colleagues of a junior person do not really approve of women’s studies, that person might be very discrete about that and not even try to teach a women’s studies course until her job was secure.”
Moreover, Schwartz noted, it was difficult early on to sustain the program without a true center of gravity. “It’s a vicious circle. For a program to thrive it has to have students and for it to have students it has to thrive. For students to even know about it, it has to have a certain presence on campus,” she said. “In order to have that student interest, there has to be more than a door with not even a name plate on it.”
Given the early lack of administrative monetary support and broader campus resistance to the program, Schwartz said of her colleagues, “The fact that it survived at all is a miracle. And it survived because certain people stepped up. People who didn’t necessarily have a vested interest in Women’s Studies per se, but could not bear the thought that at a liberal arts college of this caliber would not have a Women’s Studies program.”
The pivotal change, Schwartz said, occurred with the addition of a full time faculty position designated specifically for WAGS. “Since Sujata Moorti has been here, the program has become stabilized, and there has been somebody in charge. Somebody who’s trained who is in charge,” she stated. “That makes a huge difference.” On the question of where she hopes the WAGS program will be 21 years from now, Schwartz said, “It would be great if WAGS were a department…A stable, core program with interesting electives and an array of selection that would make it appealing to a student. And in an ideal world, all the other departments would integrate women and gender issues into their existing courses. But I’m not holding my breath on that one.”