Program History

For a comprehensive history of the first 25 years of HSU’s Women’s Studies Program see From the Catbird Seat: A History of Women’s Studies at Humboldt State University 1971-1996, written by two of the founding mothers of HSU Women’s Studies – Kathryn Corbett and Kathleen Preston (Eureka Printing Company: 1998).

Women’s Studies at Humboldt State University emerged in 1971 from the period of activism, debate, and cultural-reflection spawned by the social movements protesting the Vietnam War and calling for civil rights and women’s rights. From brown-bag lunches with faculty and staff, the academic program had its formal beginnings in the Spring quarter of 1972 with the offering of the first Women’s Studies courses on campus: Psychology of Women and Sociology of Women. Fueled by the participation of women faculty and students in the second wave of the women’s movement, and through networking across the CSU system, the founding faculty engaged in the process of forming the theory, methods, and curriculum of the emerging field of Women’s Studies.

During the height of the second wave of the women’s movement in the 1970s and early 1980s, the Women’s Studies Program was politically and academically very active, networking with 200 other Women’s Studies Programs and Departments by 1980. One outstanding event sponsored by the Women’s Studies Program during this period was the 1982 National Women’s Studies Association conference on the Humboldt State campus, spearheaded by professors Phyllis Chinn, Rosalind Ribnick, Karen Foss, Suzanne Larson, Dolores McBroome, and hundreds of other university and community women.
In 1986 the 15 unit Women’ Studies minor was adopted, along with provisions for a 21 unit Women’s Studies certificate, which was approved in 1988. Since the creation of required Women’s Studies courses for the minor and certificate, beginning in the mid 1990s, the approval of the IS-WS major in 1998, and the creation of a tenure-track faculty line for Women’s Studies, the program has experienced an academic renaissance (see Appendix I for a timeline of the program from 1971-1995, and see section VI for a resource analysis of growth over the past several decades).

The original model for the Women’s Studies Program was a core of other-department-based Women’s Studies courses that widened student exposure to women’s issues and contributions through emphasis phase General Education courses. It is important to note that these courses in Art, Sociology, Psychology, etc., were originally designed as Women’s Studies courses, even though they were housed in other departments. Faculty developed them for the program, and students generally recognized them as such. Crosslisting came into play as the Women’s Studies faculty tried to gain a higher profile by garnering FTE for the program. The development of Women’s Studies-only courses brought coherence to the variety of material and gave students an understanding of the field as a whole. It also gave the program some control over the curriculum. During this initial phase of program development, the Women’s Studies faculty philosophy was one of increased integration of feminist theories and gendered analysis in curricula throughout the campus, with the final objective of equal representation of women’s issues, lives, voices, and perspectives across the board, thereby rendering the Women’s Studies Program no longer necessary as a separate entity.

The next generation of scholars to join the Women’s Studies faculty came with additional exposure to Women’s Studies as an academic field, and enriched background in feminist theories and methods of inquiry. However, at this time of emerging strength of Women’s Studies across Universities came a period of backlash in both curriculum and hiring that has waxed and waned for almost two decades. Given this context of increased sophistication in the field, coupled with political backlash, the current generation of Women’s Studies faculty members sees the necessity of interdisciplinary Women’s Studies as a double scholarly enterprise: continued participation of faculty in departments throughout the campus, complemented by a solid independent program with its own scholarly foundations, core courses, and minor, certificate, and major. The goal of integrating diverse women’s lives, voices, and issues into all fields continues today. It has become clear, however, that Women’s Studies scholarship is a unique inter-discipline requiring specialized study of theories, methodologies, terminology, and subject matter.