Wommi Studies hr. Forum. Vol. 9. No. 2. pp. 171481.1986 Rimed in Great Bntain.

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FROM EXPERIENCE TO INSIGHT TO COMMITMENT

ELLEN SILBER with SR ELLEN MARIE KUNE and SR CAIXERINE VINCIE

Marymount College Tarrytown, NY 10591. U.S.A.

Sr Marie Ellen Keane teaches in the Philosophy/Religious Studies department at Marymount College Tarrytown. She likes to engage students in discussions of Current moral issues; love and commitment; death and dying; hope and despair; racism and sexism; and other philosophical issues. An interest in interdisciplinary issues and an urge to better understand cthieal autonomy and spiritual develonmcnt in women has led her into manv intcrcstine and nrovocative conversations with eollcagues’lately!

. .

She has been a member of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary (RSHM) since 1953. She holds a Masters degree in Psychology from Iona College and one in Philosophy from Notre Dame University; and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Notre Dame.

Sr Catherine Vi&e is currently a doctoral student in the School of Religious Studies at Catholic University of America concentrating on contemporary issues in Christian Worship. She received a Master of Divinity Degree from Yale Divinity School through the Institute of Sacred Music. and wrote her thesis on ‘Feminist Theology: challenge to Christian community and worship.’ Since then she has taught in the Religious Studies Department of Marymount College Tarrytown, lectured on various topia in liturgical studies and feminist theology and worked with groups in creating feminist liturgies.

Ellen Silber is an Associate Professor of French and Faculty Coordinator of Women’s Studies at Marymount College Tarrytown. She holds a B.A. from Wellcsley College with a major in Philosophy and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in French Language and Literature. She also has an M.A. in Counscfing Psychology from Teachers College Columbia University. In addition to teaching French and Women’s Studies on the college level. she has taught French language in junior high school. One of her particular interests is in non-hierarchical faculty collaboration across academic sectors. and she has recently become National Coordinator for Academic Alliances in Foreign Languages and Literatures. a nationwide network of sehool/eollege faculty collaboratives. Her other interests include women’s literature and women’s epistemology.

Marymount College Tarrytown is a small liberal arts college for women founded in 1919 by the Reliaious of the Sacred Heart of Marv and located in a suburb of New York Citv. In 1975. the Coll;gc established a Weekend Sessions program to Serve the education needs of nontraditional age students. both female and male. Women’s Studies at Marymount is described in the current eatalogue as ‘an integral or supplementary part of the various majors.’ Women’s Studies offerings arc listed separately as a cluster of courses on women given in a variety of departments. WC hope to establish a Women’s Studies Program in the near future.

INTRODUCTION

This article had its genesis in conversations with two ,friends, one man and one woman.

One day over lunch, a male colleague of mine in the drama department asked me two questions: Why was I so passionately committed to Women’s Studies? Grafton also wondered if such a passion were part of a person’s dedication to a discipline, whether there was also a profound connection between that person and the discipline itself.

His query about connection reminded me of a question I had been considering myself: how does Women’s Studies help us to find our voices and tell our stories?

Later, I told another friend, Paula Mayhew (one of the co-editors of this issue), about this paper. She pointed out to me the essentially collaborative nature of any Women’s Studies program. She also noted the importance of the presence of the Community of Nuns-the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary-in describing Women’s Studies at

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172 ELLEN SUER with SR ELLEN MARIE KEANE and SR CATHERINE VINCIE

Marymount. So. this story of Women’s Studies at the college is told in three voices.

In May 1985. I spoke for several hours with Sr Ellen Marie Keane and Sr Catherine Vincie, two women faculty. members of the Religious Com- munity, who have been intimately involved in Women’s Studies at Marymount College Tarrytown.

We sought in our conversations to concentrate on two main themes: the personal histories that led to our commitment to Women’s Studies, and the particular issues as we see them for Women’s Studies at the College.’

C&y: I must say that it is my family background that gave me the ability to see that the possibilities for women were so open. although it did so unintentionally. My parents are Hungarian, and I am of the first generation born here.

For my parents. this was the place to come for opportunity for themselves and their children. My mother has been particularly influential because she presumes she can do anything. That’s the opening assumption, and we go on from there. I think I picked a lot of that up. I simply presume that of course I can do anything, or I can try to do it and then if I can’t. I’ll let you know afterwards.

Ellen Marie: My mother was a strong woman, very bright. though not well educated. I was born in 1935. and so was of the vintage of parents who both worked. and my mother worked all our early lives in a hospital. I would say that the force of her personality. humor and common sense had an influence on me as a woman that I haven’t reflected on at all until now. I come from a family with a lot of women. a lot of girl cousins. a big extended family.

Ellen: I come out of a very different family situation. My mother has a college degree and is quite well- read. My father. ‘though not formally educated. was quite intelligent and had a fine aesthetic sense. He was also warm and sensitive and. as I found out much after I’d gotten into women’s studies, he was not sexist in his thinking.

We were Jews living in a middle-class suburban community. My mother was a housewife and had frequent depressions during a great deal of her life. She didn’t work when I was a child because she didn’t have to. She suffered a good deal. and now when I reflect on her depressions, I feel that if she’d had to work. she probably would have had a much better self-image and would have provided a stronger model for me.

’ I regret that Penelope Roach. Co-coordinator of Women’s Studies at Matymount, was unable to participate due to other commitments at the time of the taping of these discussions. Her comments would have enriched the article.

It was always presumed in my family that I would go to college, marry a professional man, preferably a doctor. be a housewife, and have kids. There was an emphasis on my being well-educated, but for what reasons? That really wasn’t ever discussed, whereas it was clear that my brother was being educated to enter a profession and support a family.

Ellen Marie: My mother had the usual Irish love of her sons, but not in the way that it became serious. I had two brothers and one sister. We were treated pretty evenly by both parents and it was assumed that all of us would go to college after high school. My father was particularly strong about getting us educated. There was no distinction in this area between the girls and the boys. I was raised in a very positive way as far as male/female roles were concerned. It’s true that when I would come home from school. if my older sister wasn’t there that I’d have to do the dinner, not one of my brothers . . . now that I think of it!

Cur@: Well. what I found difficult in my family is that no matter what I would do to help. it was always welcome, but in addition, I had to do the ‘woman’ things as well. I think I always felt a little anger and resentment over the expectation that my one brother and 1 would do things together, like helping my father build a cabinet, but then he was not expected to do the household things.

Expectations were high for all of us, but there was always the double burden for my mother, my sister and me: the traditional feminine roles and the desire to do anything. the sky’s the limit. There was always something wrong about that, and 1 knew it in my bones. It wasn’t articulated except for the emotional reactions of being angry that double roles were expected of me and not of my brother or father.

Ellen Marie: My experience was similar I recall. My brothers never did much cooking or ironing when we were young.

Curhy: I can still remember on a few occasions where power was exhibited by my having to do some of the support; getting lunch. etc. and that was a demonstration of my father’s strength in the family, that he could tell his daughter what to do and his daughter would do it.

Ellen: You didn’t have a choice?

Cathy: Not at all. But at the same time my mother was doing job sharing and setting her own patterns of work twenty years ago. She’s a very strong person, competent, and so people wanted to hire her for her skills, but it was always on her terms. And she wanted flexible working hours to be home when we came home from school and so she’d work from 8.30 to 3.30. People hired her year in and year out on those terms, and that has certainly given me a sense of not being boxed in by certain expectations.

From Experience to Insight to Commitment 173

In fact, 1 feel that I’m very much like my mother. She gave me a sense that dreams are possible, a motivation for trying new things and an expectation of success.

What my mother didn’t give me was a sense of working for changes for other women as well. She didn’t have that solidarity with other women, that we must succeed together.

Ellen: Well, my family issues are so different. Because we were ‘middle-class,’ as I said. my mother never really worked; we had household help and the only chore I can remember doing is the dishes, and my brother and 1 shared that task.

What does strike me about my position in my family is that for as long as 1 can remember, I was the outsider. There were my parents, my brother, and me, but I always felt different; I guess what I mean is so different from my mother and brother. My mother has difficulty expressing her feelings. She always claimed she was rational (she ‘thought like a man,’ she’d say). but she isn’t really terribly rational. But I didn’t see that at the time, of course. I was a disturbing factor, for I saw and felt many things and I would express what I felt. I wasn’t quiet at all. and 1 really wasn’t told to be quiet-or at least not in a direct way-but 1 was always sort of criticized by my mother for my sensitivity.

Ellen Marie: How do you think that affects you as a faculty member here at Marymount?

Ellen: Well. it reminds me that one of the differences I noticed first at this Catholic women’s institution is that many of the students were taught to be seen and not heard. That is not a Jewish tradition. We all know about the ‘Jewish mother.’ and while my mother wasn’t a typical ‘Jewish mother’ in many ways. she was definitely the more assertive parent. and I know I take after her in that way. So I did speak up as a child, but I feel that I often said things other people in the family didn’t want to hear. The particular area where 1 can remember this being very strong has to do with expression of feeling. I would see a situation feelingly and my mother would say in her own way that I wasn? being rational, or that I was simply wrong. or she’d joke about something that 1 felt very seriously about.

To tie this to Women’s Studies. I feel that one of the things Women’s Studies has done is to legitimize feeling as a way of knowing, as a way of seeing the world. of its saying that what is true is not what you are told is true. it’s not two and two is four. But rather. ‘My experience is not necessarily your experience.’ And the valuing of subjectivity jibed with what 1 felt was true of my own vision in opposition to that of my mother and the rest of my nuclear family, and I think that has a great deal to do with the depth of my commitment. It’s interesting to me that my place in this institution

(perhaps less so now than five or ten years ago) is that once again I found myself in a situation where 1 was essentially an outsider-as a vocal Jewish woman- and I took a course of action, becoming one of the most outspoken Women’s Studies people. At the beginning that was quite unpopular, and put me even more *outside’, and I see myself as having tried to convince everyone that the new vision was an important vision. So for a long time, I played the same role here as I’d done at home.

C&y: For me the outsider theme has some meaning too, Ellen. As you implied, when one is an outsider, one is slightly defensive. In our position as being outsiders and new immigrants to this country . . . our attitude was you have to make a go of it, and life will be difficult.

But, when I got to college--I went to Marymount Manhattan-I knew I was at home. I met the Community of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary (the RSHM), and I remember being incredibly touched by the fact that these women took themselves seriously as women. That struck me more than anything else. I felt a sense of community with them that really changed my life.

Valuing women’s friendship had been my experience before, but when I joined the Com- munity, it became a whole way of life, where very deep friendships were accepted, valued. There was also the realization that in a Community situation. certain kinds of exclusive relationships can be damaging. but if they are managed well, they can be a gift to everyone.

At that point, my experience had been the same as Ellie’s in principally having shared experiences with women who were within religious communities, and so when I went away to study at Yale for my Master’s degree from 1981 to 1983, it was a whole new experience. I first started meeting women who were very involved with issuesof women in theology, women in the Christian traditions. All of a sudden those values of women’s friendship began to move outside of my own religious community and to develop with other women-married women, single women- and there was a high priority among them to establish friendships. It was not just ‘I’m married, therefore I cannot go out with a women’s group on a Friday night or have a study group.’ There was a growing sense of the contribution from our different lifestyles that we had valuable things to teach one another.

At Yale, too, the question of my relationships with men arose again. I was in theology-a field heavily dominated by men-and also in music, another male field. And so I developed many male friendships.

Ellen: Ellie. what happened about your relation- ships with men?

174 ELLEN SILBER with SR ELLEN MAUE KEANE and SR CATHERINE VINCIE

Ellen Marie: Well, I’ve always been struck by the fact that we in the Community are not perceived as sexual objects. I can be friendly with a lot of couples whereas other single women often cannot because they’re perceived as a threat.

Gzfhy: That certainly wasn’t my experience at Yale. 1 was not perceived as ‘one of the nuns* and I didn’t have the ‘luck’ of being considered ‘non-dangerous.’ My relationships with men-either with husbands of women I knew or men in my classes or professors-had to be worked out; and we had to set our own limits on how the relationships would develop.

At the same time it was an opportunity to rethink myself as an individual woman who had made a celibate life choice. It was a time when.1 had come to reassess, and being a woman of thirty and making a choice of lifestyle is. I found out, very different ftom when you are twenty-two and making that choice.

Ellen: I was conditioned to think of my friendships with women as a normal part of any girl’s life, but they weren’t considered really important relation- ships. And I know that another one of the thitigs Women’s Studies has done is once again to legitimize my own feelings-I mean the social science research and women’s literature which point to the power of female friendships in women’s lives. And I think it has taken me until very recently to acknowledge the real value of women and the importance in my life of the intimacy of my friendships with women.

I also see in the life of mv son. who is seventeen years old, a completely different quality in his friendships than young women have. A much less intimate. sharing kind of relationship. I say to him. ‘Do boys talk much about their feelings?’ And he’ll say. ‘Boys? talk about that? I wouldn’t be caught dead talking about my feelings with my friends.’ I realize that within his context that’s very adaptive. but I don’t think it’s very healthy.

But I’m wandering. As I said before. the basic ethos of my early experience was yes . . . you have your friends. you have your schoolwork. but the most important relationship in your life is going to be with a man. On that was going to depend your status and pretty much everything you are. It’s who you’re attached to that counts.

Cathy: How do you think that affected you?

Ellen: I excelled in school and did go to a women’s college-Wellesley-but my real priority throuph- out that whole experience was ‘who am I going to marry?’ At Wellesley. I had the kind of role models you have talked about. some of the women faculty. But they had had to make a choice between a deep commitment to the intellectual life and having a marriage and kids. Many of them were women in their fifties and sixties who had made that choice.

and I couldn’t appreciate that at all. All that I could think of at the time was that they didn’t get married hecause they didn’t have the opportunity, and so they were doing second best.

And I did what I was supposed to-got married six months after graduation to a professional man-an engineer who was just completing his d&orate. But I was profoundly fortunate in that he has been my mentor. It was he who literally pushed me to have a career, to go to graduate school. It was he who said to me, ‘The sky’s the limit for you, Ellen, and it’s okay with me.‘-like your mother taught you, Cathy.

Gzfhy: That’s interesting. As I’ve said, my belief in my ability to cuntribute something was fostered by my mother and my religious community. When 1 got to Yale I wanted to try to find a North American spirituality. to look at what was happening in a North American context that addressed peoples’ religious needs-1 had had some experiences with liberation theology from the South American perspective, and I felt it wasn’t applicable as such in the North American context.

At Yale. it began to be clear to.me that the issues of feminist studies and feminist studies in religion were very important. So I began my Master’s thesis asking the question: ‘Is what’s happening in feminist studies of such wide importance that we as a liturgical community are bound to take it into account?’ So I began the intellectual exploration; 1 just read as much as possible in twelve months time of feminist studies in religion. It was totally mind- blowing to me and challenged everthing I thought I had learned.

Ellen Marie: What you’ve both been talking about makes me reflect on my education. I went lo an ail girls high school. and I was a real jock. I had some interest in boys and dating. but the central thing was really sports. And after that I joined the RSHM and went to Marymount Tarrytown for my under- graduate degree.

After that I went to graduate school at Notre Dame. where I realize now I was virtuall! unconscious. I mean I never even thought about feminism. I read all the philosophers unquestioning- ly. I remember doing Aristotle at the graduate level-1 was the only woman in the course-and the group used to tease me because Aristotle speaks so badly about women. but I never took it seriously.

I think a critical date for me was 1978. I went out to UCLA for an NEH Summer Seminar in Ethics. and for the first time. I saw sexism as an ethical issue. Now that translated into a question of justice and then I began to talk about myself very up front as a feminist. It was the connection between feminism and social justice that woke me up.

Carhy: Here I think we’re moving the issue a little

From Experience to Insight to Commitment 175

more toward the connection between women’s studies and how vital it is to our very lives. I find now that I cannot teach women’s studies or theology from a feminist perspective in a cool way because what we do in theology very, very much shapes our lives. I had the experience just last week in a course I’m teaching on liturgy (outside of Marymount) in which I included women’s concerns as part of the material. One of the evaluations by a male student said that occasionally my frustration showed and that made him very angry. I found myself saying to myself, ‘I have to be more careful in my teaching, but I do want to speak very loudly because what we are saying here affects particularly the lives of women in an adverse way. It also affects men. And it is so vital to me that I can’t do it coolly. from an objective distance.*

Ellen: And why should you? I think it is one of the gifts of Women’s Studies to say that your relationship to what you’re studying is of primary importance. How you see what you’re teaching, your own point of view is really all tied up in there. so why deny it, because if you do. you’re really not being truthful. I think again. that for me. this is tied up with my past relationship to feeling. But. also I was taught in graduate school to stand back. to always be very impersonal. to never say ‘I’ in a paper, never to bring my experiences into my academic work. and that makes absolutely no sense. Somehow. again. that’s splitting a person in two parts and as a teacher you’ve got to help students connect with the intellectual experiences or else it doesn’t work.

Ellen Marie: I know what both of you mean. When I hear the whole issue of women reduced to, ‘Should you or shouldn’t you let a man open the car door?’ it sends me into a rage. I can’t handle it. One of the men in my Weekend College course was tackling me on that in my last class. because I became very heated. I said ‘We are not talking about courtesy here; we are talking about a very important ethical issue and you’re reducing it to manners.’ I wasn’t cool at all: and he said to me later that he’d never seen me that way before.

Cathy: This reminds me of my Master’s thesis. When I began the project of feminist studies in liturgies, several men came to me and said they were delighted I was doing it because I come across as a very cool, middle-of-the-road person and they thought they’d get a clear presentation of the material. So I gave the public presentation of the thesis, I tried to be very low key. but I remember one of the men came up to me afterwards and said. ‘Well, you were very gentle and soft-spoken, but your words screamed.’ Then I found that I had lost several of my male friends because my message had become very strong. I was saddened at this loss yet, at the same time, my friendships with women grew.

Ellen: It strikes me here that I’m so different from both of you. I’ve never tried to be cool. For me, feminism and Women’s Studies are a cause. It reminds me of my attitude when 1 worked very hard in Reform Democratic politics at the time of the Vietnam War. I know that strong emotion fuels a lot of what I do in Women’s Studies here; and I’m sitting thinking that you appear so much more rational than I do.

I think what Women’s Studies has done for me is to provide a productive, substantive, creative outlet for my anger, so instead of dissipating it in a very negative way-which I have done in my life before-1 have found that my work in Women’s Studies fuses the creativity and the anger. And recently Women’s Studies has become somewhat more okay at Marymount, so I feel less like an outsider, although I still sense at times that on this campus I’m sort of alien.

Ellen Marie: Ellen, I really wasn’t aware that you were feeling that way. You know, yesterday, I was looking in old files to try to get at the history of Women’s Studies here and I found that we did a Woman’s Day program in 1975, which was around the beginning of my awareness-the time I began teaching the Philosophy of Women course.

Ellen: Yes. I can remember in the early 1970s having Catherine Stimpson and Sheila Tobias here to address the faculty. And in 1973. we formed a Women’s Studies Committee. We’ve had the annual Women’s Day programs since 1981. But Ellie, here we are; we’ve been teaching Women’s Studies for a long time and we still don’t have a Program. And I’d like to explore what has gone on here to prevent our having one. Here 1 think we need to take a more critical perspective on Marymount as an institution. I’m interested in the political issues right here that are preventing more from happening.

Ellen Marie: I’ve been thinking about a couple of things. It’s clear to me that I was trained in the traditional way of keeping the peace. not being pushy. and not being argumentative. That was severely reinforced in the old-fashioned convent training I had. Now Cathy would probably say she was trained differently twenty years later. But I was taught to keep the peace and withdraw from conflict. I can have a. good time fussing about Reagan and the Pope, for example, when it’s far away, but when it comes to us at the College, I just withdraw and find my whole nurturance in the students, in teaching. I’ve never been really involved in college politics.

Ellen: Women’s Studies to me is a political issue here, if not with a large ‘p,’ certainly with a small ‘p,’ and I guess in looking at your position and mine, Ellie, I know that privately you are absolutely as committed to Women’s Studies as I am, but 1 think I

176 ELLEN SILBER with SR ELLEN MARIE KEANE and SR CATHERINE VINCIE

have taken a more public stand.

Ellen Marie: Yes, that’s true.

Ellen: And that has been lonely to some degree. But I now understand that your personal background- both in your family and in the convent-has led you to a much less public stance than has my experience in my family and in Democratic politics, of always battling and also coming from a tradition where women speak up loudly-this puts me in a position where I would be the person more likety to take the public stance here.

Ellen Marie: Now there’s another question we wanted to raise, the question of a Program in Women’s Studies. Why do you think we need a Program?

Ellen: Because if you have a Program, you have a representative at the Committee of Chairs. And then Women’s Studies would become an official part of the college curriculum, whereas now we are marginal.

And I wonder why at this college which is a Women’s college, why is Women’s Studies officially so unimportant, why is it simply an adjunct to the curriculum that has really never gone anywhere? One of the women on the Middle States reaccredita- tion team said to me last October, ‘Where is Women’s Studies here? The words are everywhere. but I don’t see the Program.’

Cathy: I think it’s precisely here that we have to start talking about the content of feminist studies and methodology as it’s developed to this point. because I think a lot of the political problems, the reason people are shying away from Women’s Studies. or are not anxious to get a Program going. reflects a tendency to trivialize what is happening in the field. I think some of the difficulties are fear on the part of some people- it might be male faculty members but not exclusively- fear of power changing hands; if someone else takes center stage, someone else is going to lose something.

Ellen: Can you be specific?

Carhy: Well. in courses you have to make choices about content. And if you’re going to get women writers in, you have to drop some other ‘great’ writers, the canon, something has to go because time is limited. I think that is in itself a kind of power struggle. And there’s also an element of fear of the new. The new scholarship on women in many fields is huge. And to go through it all and to try to discern the riches, what is significant, is difficult for people. The challenge of the content can be very frightening as well.

Ellen Marie: And I think that’s compounded by the student backlash. So that if the faculty is not committed to Women’s Studies then there’s no

reason to do it. There has to be the faculty pushing it, because so many of our students are not interested until they get turned on to it.

Ellen: There are more than four hundred programs in the country; some are at universities, some are at liberal arts’colIeges. some are at women’s colleges- they run the gamut. Why do you think we don’t have one here? All we have is a cluster of courses that come from Departments. We don’t have a keystone course of any kind. We don’t have a Program Director in any official way. We don’t have representation on any policy-making committee. We are not anything official here. We’re not a minor. we’re not a major, and we’re not a Program. We are. if you look at the catalog, a group of courses that have come together not for a Program but because people want to give them. What I’m interested in is how come it’s fallen out this way here? What are the forces that are unique and specific to this place that have led us to this point? Maybe we can’t answer in any definite way, but I think we ought to try because I think that we’re all operating within this context.

Carhy: I’m not sure what we have now is such a bad way to go, with the exception of the representation on various committees. I think that’s very necessary and I would like to see it become a reality. But I’m not sure I would even like to give a course called ‘Women’s Studies’. I think that raises the question of ‘Is there a particular methodology of inquiry within feminist studies?’ I think we need to say at this point in time ‘Well. what is going on?’ In my field-religious studies-what is happening? What questions are being raised? What directions are being explored? But the question--‘Is there a feminist methodology?’ This is a question I’m not sure we can answer.

Ellen: Don’t you think at this point. though. we need some sort of course in feminist theory where we bring in many different disciplines? At present it’s sort of up to us to do little pieces of it. And there’s no visible place, no departmental-type office. and I think visibility is very important.

I think that right now Women’s Studies could be a special program. like International Studies. And I think that. a feminist theory course should probably be team taught. First we need to be better educated, but I think three or four of us could do a bang-up job on that.

I guess my answer to the question I asked earlier-why don’t we have a Program-is that until this year-19&t/1985-there has been no Academic Dean who has seen Women’s Studies as a major priority for the college. I think the former Academic Dean showed interest. but the Dean before her didn’t really care at all. I think that until now there’s been no specitically focused

FypExperience to Insight to Cotynitment 177

administrative support. There’s just so much faculty can do, and the faculty certainly isn’t united on Women’s’Studies anyway.

Elfen Murk I think even the best of us is still weak on theory. For some faculty, 1 think the word Ytivialization’ sums it up. They say, ‘I’ll give a week’s lesson on women.’ And yet I do take some pride in the fact that we have formally committed ourselves in our new required core humanities courses to include feminist scholarship.

Ellen: Yes that was stipulated when we adopted the new core program, but ii’s not happening. You’re doing it, Ellie, in your sections and some of the others are trying. but it’s not reaily happening across the board.

Elfen Marie: See. that scandalizes me. I thought we had no permission nor to incorporate the feminist perspective. Now it’s clear that it’s not happening all the way through. And from what I know I don’t think that in the third core course-the Modern World-people are making enough effort to deal with women.

Ellen: 1 agree. I think people are not equipped, they’re not motivated, and they don’t think it’s important.

Ellen Marie: And I was thinking we were doing so well by making the commitment, but in fact it’s only on paper.

Ellen: Well, this past year. we also made the commitment to use this year’s money from the NEH challenge grant to do faculty development in women’s studies. We have quite a bit of money left from 734-G. and what 1 want to do. w’ith the Women’s Studies Committee’s help. is to put together a faculty seminar on Feminist Theory for the Fall. where the faculty members get paid for going. We bring in an outside consultant. we do reading, but we get well paid, like we’re taking a course.

Ellen Marie: And we know that works. The faculty development workshop that we had last January with outside feminist consultants speaking on Women and Freud. Darwin and Marx had some effect. I heard people saying. ‘Boy, this scholarship is of high quality.’

Carhy: Well it seems to me that one of the most important things that women‘s studies teaches is that what we learn affects the shape of our lives.

Ellen: And vice-versa.

Cathy: I think we must attempt to let people have a taste of that or have people committed to women’s studies because there’s a conviction. that not doing it stifles people’s lives, delegates them to silence, to voicelessness, to stunted growth. If we can have

people see that, help one another to see that. then we’ll have the motivation that is necessary to have a change take place. But if people aren’t convinced that it makes any difference to the women who are here, then there is no reason to do it. It’s just a fad. You know, it’s a little aside that sounds interesting, maybe it will go away in a little while . . . .

Ellen Marie: And also the issue of feminist pedagogy. Sometimes I’m appalled at what goes on in some of the classrooms. Some faculty don’t seem to care about the voices of the students. There’s not enough effort to get them to talk. And the lack of knowledge about learning through relationship with the teacher is clear. It’s as if some faculty are saying, ‘1 teach what 1 know, if they can’t hear that, that’s their problem.’

Ellen: It’s like that analogy, drilling the hole and pouring the stuff in; the student as receptacle . . . what a wonderful image!

Ellen Marie: What can we do to change that?

Ellen: Well. I think change is in the air. The new Dean has given me a one semester course release next year for Women’s Studies.

Ellen Marie: Ellen, if you had your druthers, what would you want to do here? Do you think in terms of setting up a Department with a Program?

Ellen: Within the realities of our present economic situation. student enrollment and everything. 1 think the first thing that I would do is get us educated. get a faculty seminar going. and then put together, two or three of us, a keystone women’s studies course. An Introduction to Women’s Studies, that would deal not only with method. I would make it interdisciplinary. I’d want some literature in it. some history. some religious studies. whatever we came up with as a really good keystone course. And then, I think, what 1 would like to do is call it a Program with that as the keystone course, and the courses already in the catalogue. an Interdisciplinary Program, start there.

Ellen Marie: What about the Women’s Studies Committee? What would you do about that?

Ellen: Well, I think that committee should be putting all this together. You know, I chair that committee and I think the committee should be talking about what we want. Do we want a seminar in feminist theory? If so, how do we want to put it together? If we want a Program. what kind of Program? These are my ideas, but I think it’s got to be a collaborative effort.

Eflen Marie: I’m still not entirely clear about the Program. It would be a keystone course with a collection of other courses, and would students major in it?

178 ELLEN SUER with Sn ELLEN MARIE KEANE and SR CATHERINE VINCIE

Ellen: They could major in it. And maybe people wouldn’t. But I think eventually they would. There are a lot of Women’s Studies Programs with majors or minors or certificates. l’bcre nre all kinds of possibilities, but we need a focus. We need representation.

Ellen Marie: You’re saying now that you’d be willing to chair that whole thing and run it and that the Dean has given you a course release so that you’ll have the time to give. Well, that sounds good to me.

It seem to me there’s another goal as well, that of better relationships between the faculty and administration. What I’ve experienced in Women’s Studies is that it helps to break down the lines of division between the two.

C&y: Theoretically. When I got here several years ago, I was struck by some of the political problems that existed here, especially the antagonism which sometimes surfaces between administration and faculty. That was very much outside of my own experience. Much of my past teaching has been in a ministry setting. where there’s not a sense of being on different sides. And again, I’ve had the experience of living with administration. So administration is not some theoretical group out there . . . with me it’s very personal.

Ellen: Cathy, I know I’d like to see a more collaborative, less hierarchical process among faculty and administrators, particularly here where most of the administrators are women. And I guess sometimes I act as if there is this kind of structure, and then I’m brought up short because an administrator is telling me I cannot do something or I must do something. and there’s the traditional structure. It’s not a feminist process, but there it is.

Cathy: Well, I think that’s one of the many learning things we have to go thiough. not only in the classroom where we need to give people voices and empower people. We also have to learn new models for whole institutional structures.

Ellen Marie: I know you’re right Cathy, but at the College, all that matters to me is teaching. To develop the political skills to get into the political battle and do it well doesn’t interest me. So I just withdraw. I probably would physically leave if I were forced to do it. I get my nurturance from the students.

And it’s too bad I act this way because there’s one less reasonable voice in the marketplace. You see I think of myself as a fairly reasonable person; and I think a lot of what goes on is not reasonable, so another reasonable voice would probably be helpful.

Ellen: And you’re a respected voice at the College because you are from within the Community. YOU have a strength that I don’t have by virtue of your

being a nun.

tirhy: Well, it would be interesting, Ellie, to see what would happen if you started using your voice in political terms in this College, what will happen to your esteem if you use your voice openly as a feminist. Because my experience has told me that the esteem goes very quickly when one starts taking advocacy positions.

Ellen Marie: I really don’t really think of myself as so esteemed in the College. I have the Community and the students. And teaching to me is totally energizing. I’m as happy as a clam because of the content of what I teach, and the interaction with the students really turns me on.

Ellen: I feel that I need to go beyond that.

Ellen Marie: Well, I’m very happy. I think of myself in the background saying, ‘Go for it, Ellen.’ You know I’ll support you, but I’m not going to get into politics. I’m happy Women’s Studies is being taught here. The students need it. So the classroom is my entree into it as a solution. I work hard at it there.

Cathy: Much of my own motivation and satisfaction is in teaching but also in working towards change in structures. The more that I learn, the more I find that structures have been so domineering and so harmful to women, and many of the concepts that have been taught have helped put those structures into place. Through my teaching and my writing I want to change those structures, so that in fact we are shaping a different world than we had before. Of course, at this point in time, I’m not so sure I’m committed to the political ramifications on this campus, because of my own personal choice to leave here and return to graduate school. I haven’t really put a lot of energy into changing structures here.

Ellen hfarie: What that reminds me of, Cathy, is that I’d really like to pursue another question we mentioned when we decided to do this article together: ‘Does it make a difference to have Women’s Studies going on at a college founded by a women’s religious community?’ I would think that would have a positive influence, but I’ve never really explored it.

Ellen: Okay. I want to look at both aspects of that-the positive fact of a Community of women religious and the negative in that this Community exists within the conservative structure of the Church. You two can probably speak to that better than I.

Cathy: From my own point of view, it seems that there is a specific impetus to do Women’s Studies at an institution like Marymount because of its Judeo- Christian background. One can do critique of the

From Experience to Insight to Commitment 179

Judeo-Christian heritage and conclude that we have in ChrSan origins a motivation for creating a countercuSture which is supportive of both women persons and men persons, welcoming them to break out of the typical stereotypes of the culture. It is also my understandmg of the Biblical and particularly prophetic tradition that it is a self-critical tradition. When oppression becomes institutionalized or becomes the norm, then the tradition must ask itself: ‘Are we being faithful to our best insights into the nature of God and human persons? Is this really how we should be treating one another?’ It seems to me for many other reasons that we as an institution should be very involved in Women’s Studies, but from the religious perspective, there’s an imperative that says, ‘Yes, you should take a step back and do whatever is possible to break the limitations that we’ve set on one another.’

Ellen Mutie: I sometimes feel I’m very naive about much of what we’re talking about. I feel that working in a place where the President, the Dean, and many other administrators are women makes things automatically easier. At least that seems true to me.

Ellen: I would look at it a little bit differently. I mean, for me. I think what you’re both saying makes wonderful sense theoretically. but I think it is very important that that whole point of view is itself within an institution. that it’s part of a male dominated structure, the Catholic Church.

Ellen Marie: Right.

Ellen: And it seems to me that that’s the tension . . . a tremendous tension, inherent, 1 think, in a female institution which is founded within a male structure. I may not be saying it right, but I’m saying. even if you do have female administrators. they are used to thinking of themselves as a part of a male structure. This is the outsider talking. but this is what I see. I see a tension between the strength of the community and all of the good things that you’re talking about and that Community as part of a larger structure in which it lacks equality with men. And I guess. I come here and I see this contradiction and how it affects doing Women’s Studies at a Catholic institution . . . that it’s not simply a women’s institution, but it’s in the larger context of the Church that has undergone so much upheaval itself in the past ten. fifteen years. There still is that overlay that I think shows up. for example. in the quote in our self-study where one individual talks about Marymount’s training the students to be good wives and mothers. I’m reminded of these factors every so often. and I think that mitigates the strong voice for women. the discovery of the roots of the Biblical heritage that you’re talking about. I feel like when I’m saying all these things. I’m dealing way out of my realm . . . and yet it’s my impression that

there is that tension. Cathy: I think there’s also the tension for many of us here of facing how we have been victimized by the structure that we have been a very part of. I experience it as a tension. How do I accept the fact that my tradition has been oppressive? Therefore. it is hopeless? Can it be redeemed? Can it be changed? And those are very big questions. HOW does one work within the structure and does one try and change it from the inside, does one abandon it, does one move outside, does one leave it? The transformation hasn’t yet taken place. Yet I’m working within the structure because I believe the possibilities are there for change. It may not be in my lifetime. Those are very difficult commitments to make.

Ellen Marie: I’m trying to think individually of the people we have here as administrators . . . in the Community. I think some of them are not where we are in terms of being feminists. so that they’re not even conscious of the male structure which they’re a part of.

Ellen: I think, Cathy, you hit on something interesting before although you might not have said it this way, about the roles of the administrators and how they see themselves and the need for growth into a more feminist model. I think that the only model open to administrators, female or male is the male model. And that within a women’s institution. you’re dealing with that even if the people are female. that you’re dealing with the hierarchical male model that dies so hard. And that. in fact. that’s another part of the tension. even if some of the administrators are women. They’re expected by the Board of Trustees to perform according to the male model. They have no other models to go by.

Ellen Marie: Well, maybe part of the attack should also be some kind of feminist seminars for administrators. They don’t get any. At least we get something. They get nothing.

El/en: At least several administrators including the President. Dean and Associate Dean came to the Women’s Studies faculty seminar last January.

Ellen Marie: Maybe this is another angle to talk over with the Dean, the issue of administrative development.

Ellen: Here’s a good example. If you and 1 went to the Dean to talk about feminist models of administration. it would be so much stronger. As we’re talking I realize. my fantasy is going into the Dean and talking about it. me alone. and going in there with you and talking about it. Your being there makes all the difference in the world. Not only with her but with anybody in terms of its coming from the College and the Community instead of from just me.

180 ELLEF: SILBER with SR ELLEN MARIE KEANE and SR CATHERINE VINCIE

Ellen Marie: I think that would be interesting. I would be happy to do it. That would take nothing out of me.

Ellen: You know. then we ought to do that.

Ellen Marie: The other thing that I worry about . . . . This may be a little bit on the fringe with all the other important things that we have to do. but I have also fretted about the staff people here. The secretarial staff for example.

Ellen: You know they weren’t able to go to our annual Women’s Day Program.

Ellen Marie: At a women’s college that we don’t do more for those women.

Ellen: I said to one of the faculty secretaries, because she helped so much with the Women’s Day this year, ‘Come, it’s going to be wondei-ful.’ And she said, ‘I’m not supposed to go.’

Ellen Marie: It’s too bad that we haven’t done more on that score. It would be a wonderful opportunity to put theory into practice right here on campus.

CONCLUSION

Much has happened since these conversations took place. With money from the NEH grant a faculty seminar in feminist theory is underway. It is being led by Elizabeth Minnich. and the participants are thirteen faculty members from a variety of disciplines. the Dean and the Associate Dean. We meet once a week for the entire semester and receive a stipend for our participation. In addition, as official Faculty Coordinator of Women’s Studies. I am now invited to all meetings of department chairs. Yes, there is some good news.

But what else is to be gleaned from taking a look at Women’s Studies at Marymount through the eyes of the Coordinator and two faculty who are also members of the religious community and have been an important part of the effort? What I have learned from talking with Sr Ellen Marie Keane and Sr Catherine Vincie and from reflecting on the topics we discussed?

Simply because Marymount is a women’s college with women in key administrative positions includ- ing that of President and that of Academic Dean does not guarantee Women’s Studies a privileged position in the curriculum. The fact is that it is still marginal.

For example, in response to a question asked principally of faculty and administrators for the 1984 Self-Study Report to the Middle States Association regarding the importance certain items should have in the college’s mission statement, Women’s Studies ranked 25th in a list of 35. It ranked 17th in a list of 24 items expressing perceived influence on college activities, where ‘liberal arts education’ and ‘ethical

values’ ranked first and second respectively. In the latter list, ‘aspirations of women’ and ‘problems of women’ ranked fifth and sixth. Knowledge of material about women is thus not yet perceived as intimately related to wpmen’s problems and aspirations at Marymount. Perhaps this is because of its

IE litical and politicizing associations. ing Women’s Studies at a Catholic Women’s

College where many of the faculty and administra- tion are members of the Religious Community and the large majority of the students are Catholic raises some special issues. While members of the Religious Community have strong female role models and value deeply their relationships with women, they are still part of a female order’operating within a male hierarchical stntcture, which continues, offici- ally, to deny them equality. They are in a sense ‘used to’ what we are all used to in the outside world, for their structure is but a microcosm of the larger world order. So in a sense, women in the Church are somewhat marginal just as Women’s Studies in colleges and universities is marginal.

Doing Women’s Studies at Marymount College is. then, trying to do something radical within a traditional structure even though the top administra- tors are women.

And what about our students? In the Reagan years, when many women all over the country want to become doctors, lawyers, and business’men’- join the male establishment-our students, most of whom have been raised to be ‘good’ girls (though this is certainly not exclusive to the Catholic students) present an even greater challenge than does the female student population at large.

The typical Marymount student strongly resists the content of Women’s Studies as well as its process, that of speaking up and being heard. We do have some students who take risks and they make us appreciate even more the need of the more typical student to learn to question and speak in her own voice. We known we must work hard and be sensitive to each one.

But my ultimate conclusion hardly is negative. For I have found through my fifteen years as a teacher and administrator at Marymount, through my conversations with Ellen Marie and Cathy and through my experience of being one of the editors of this special issue of WSIF that individuals with their special histories, talents, and energies can and do make a difference.

Perhaps my role as an outsider has given me the privilege of making a difference. I have had an impact on Marymount College. Through my persistence in bringing outside consultants to the campus, through organizing and directing five annual Women’s Day Programs, I have helped to raise the consciousness of some. Through my teaching Women’s Studies courses and injecting feminist concerns into all my courses, I have reached

From Experience to Insight to Commitment 181

individual students, helped them to begin to find their voices.

Penelope Roach. as Co-coordinator, Sr Ellen Marie Keane and Sr Catherine Vincie have done the same. as have numerous other faculty whose names do not appear in this article.

Our President who has provided funds for our Women’s Days and has used her contacts to get well-known speakers. the Government Grants Coordinator who raised the NEH money, the new

Academic Dean and the Humanities chairs who assigned that money in 1984-1985 to faculty development in feminist scholarship-each has made a difference.

So I remain committed to and passionate about Women’sStudies at Marymount College Tarrytown. With our energies and commitments. continued support from the administration-both moral and financial-we will develop a Women’s Studies Program. and I believe it will be a fine one.2

2 1 am grateful to Nikki Lee Manos and Marjorie Glusker for their generous help in editing this article and to Carrolita Porter for typing the manuscript.