FEATURED WOMEN'S STUDIES
STUDENT AND PROFESSOR
FALL 2004 SEMESTER
Each fall and winter semester, the Women's Studies Program celebrates a student and professor at Washington & Lee University who not only have made outstanding contributions to the study of women, gender, and feminism, but also have employed what they learned in the classroom to positively improve life on campus, in the community, and in the larger world.
In Fall 2004, we are honoring Robyn Konkel (Public Policy Major, Women's Studies Concentration, Poverty Studies Concentration, Class of 2005) and Professor Domnica Radulescu (Professor of Romance Languages, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and Women's Studies). Each has contributed a statement to this website about what the Women's Studies Program means to her.
Robyn Konkel
My Main Campus Activities: Projects chair for KEWL, co-editor of Washington and Lee Political Review, University Scholar, Oboe player in the W&L Wind Ensemble, Writing Center tutor and Desk Attendant, among other things…
Why I am involved in Women's Studies: I remember how controversial it was my freshman year that a Women’s Studies department was forming at Washington and Lee. During the same time at Beloit College, where my mom went to school, students were deciding whether to change the name of their Women’s Studies program to Gender Studies or Queer Studies. I thought it was very peculiar how behind the times Washington and Lee seemed—after all, we were just getting a program considered so common elsewhere. Yet at the same time, I found it exhilarating. Here I was at a place where change needed to happen. I could be involved in something powerful.
Like many students who opt to study Women’s Studies, I was often asked why (though never by my parents or my friends, only by other students at Washington and Lee). Some labeled my involvement with KEWL as an “anti-sorority thing” and others just questioned the value in studying gender issues. The answer is simple. I am involved in Women’s Studies because it is important to me. Gender issues have huge implications in the realm of public policy, and I feared that without careful and conscious selection of Women’s Studies oriented classes, this facet of my major would be overlooked. Concentrating in Women’s Studies makes my Public Policy major more complete.
Beyond that, I have found my Women’s Studies courses to be the most open and inviting. Students understand the depth of the issues we are learning, but we are also willing to share stories of our own experiences and connect with each other (including the professors) on a more personal level.
Domnica Radulescu (Professor of Romance Languages, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and Women's Studies)
Women’s studies and feminism mean a variety of things to me: they are an intense area of scholarship and an important part of my creative work in the domains of literature, theater, culture, and they inform a good part of my teaching. They are however more than purely professional endeavors: they are a way of life, they represent largely my way of being in the world, they inform the way I raise my children or in which I interact with both men and women in society.
A
feminist critic once said that while there are so many different ways and waves
and theories which inform feminism, there is however something very simple and
basic which binds the different feminist movements, and ultimately, all
feminists: “paying attention to women.” It is precisely this urgent need to pay
attention to women, recognize their achievements, observe and fight against the
injustices they suffer in the world, contribute to changing views about women as
sexual objects, or as people who serve others to the detriment of their own
individuality, that motivated my passionate involvement in the creation of the
women’s studies program here at W&L. In fact I consider the work I have done in
helping found the program, together with Profs. Lesley Wheeler and Jeanine
Stewart, the introductory courses I co-taught with Prof. Julie Woodzicka as some
of my most important, socially and intellectually useful contributions I have
made to this institution, and as by far some of my most inspiring collaborative
work on this campus. I am thrilled to see the many new faculty who teach in the
area of women studies, the changing attitudes of many of our students,
particularly women, and the feminist sensibilities many of them have developed,
the critical views with which they look at the world and ascertain gender
differences and gender inequalities. There is however a lot of progress yet to
be made on this campus, with regard to raising a feminist consciousness among
both men and women, students and faculty, and in terms of enhancing the respect
that is due to women's studies as a legitimate and intellectually rigorous area
of study and method of inquiry, indispensable in this day and age to any
respectable institution of higher learning.
With regard to my own contributions, I am very excited to be teaching next term an advanced seminar on women and comedy, which is largely deriving from the research and book project I completed while on sabbatical leave last year, and which focused on women performers, improvisers and artists as creators of humor. Contrary to the many derogatory clichés about women and feminists as being "not funny," my research and my course will prove precisely the opposite: that women artists, feminists and women from various cultures and historical periods, have created and continue to create a rich tradition of comedy and humor which is often subversive of patriarchal societies, and for that reason , often dismissed as not funny at best, marginalized and neglected entirely at worst.
It is also comforting to discover the many traditions of female humor throughout the centuries, for there is nothing better than a good laugh and humor to help us "make it through the day," as one of Samuel Beckett's heroines once said.