THE CRISIS IN THE HUMANITIES: FEMINISM, MEDIEVAL STUDIES, AND THE ACADEMY

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1 of groups that edievalists don't reach. The potential-for connection is there, however, and any people on an individual basis are aking those connections and training students to ake those connections as well. To return to Hupty Dupty, it's iportant that we not follow his lead, and choose what we want feinis to ean, but that we engage in the collective endeavor of figuring out what it eans, in orderto be able to talk in a language that reaches across fields. Not only will it allow our scholarship to reach a broader audience, but in the spirit of self-interest, I subit that it will help on the job arket as well. Anna Dronzek Tenzple Llniversity THE CRISIS IN THE HUMANITIES: FEMINISM, MEDIEVAL STUDIES, AND THE ACADEMY This paper addresses the crisis of the huanities (here understood to include the field of history) fro the dual perspective of feinis and Medieval Studies. The structure of higher education in this country is truly diverse, and our careers and our insights are shaped in part by the differing issions, expectations, and cultures of the institutions in which we work. For this reason it is iportant for e to point out that the reflections on the "big picture" offered here have arisen in the context of twelve years of teaching, service, and research at a private research university. I also speak in this paper as president of the Society for Medieval Feinist Scholarship, taking that role as an occasion to reflect on the challenges facing the feinist edievalist counity in today's rapidly changing acadey, and to enuerate the intellectual strengths which we, the counity of feinist edievalists, possess and upon which we can draw to eet those challenges. I will not discuss here the relative erits and deerits of theories of gender, feinis, and sexuality that invigorate the acadey today, noting only that debate aong divergent scholarly approaches and theories is fundaental to the health and vitality of the scholarly counity. No one approach, theory, or grand narrative has a onopoly on truth, creativity, insight, and rigor, whether it be, for exaple, critical theory, inforation technology, post-structuralis, poetics, deconstruction, cultural studies, philology, queer theory, or psychoanalytic criticis. We cannot know fro whence new, original, and creative ideas will eerge; we can, however, act on our feinist coitent to engage in civil, intellectual debate and to press for dive rsity at every level within the acadey. Thinking about the crisis in the huanities eans thinking about the politics of

2 acadeia, about its institutional and scholarly practices and the historical and social contexts in which those practices are ebedded. My feinist exaination of the crisis in the huanities begins with the observation that patriarchy is alive and well. The need for feinist politics and practices in the huanities and in the acadey is as great as it has ever been. In her recent book, Why 50510zu? The Adtanceeni of Wonzen (Cabridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1998), cognitive psychologist Virginia Valian studies the persistence in en and woen of largely unconscious interpretive categories, or gender scheata, which slightly overvalue en and undervalue woen, and explores the cuulative effect of such gender scheata on the socialization of woen and on woen's efforts to advance to positions of leadership and authority. Valian's study reinds us that backlash is real. Hostility towards intellectual woen persists, soeties openly (the undergraduate who defies his feale teacher in class, whether graduate student or professor), soeties covertly (the departental coittee that ignores everything said by its feale eber). Institutional practices that perpetuate gender stereotyping and disadvantage woen go largely unexained.' At y institution, at least, undergraduates re-create aong theselves a doinant peer culture that is highly conventional and conforist and that operates with narrow and oppressive gender stereotypes. For any students, learning in Woen's Studies courses to critically exaine the socialization and stereotyping of woen reains a powerful oent of liberatory transforation. For strong woen are not born, they are ade. In our Woen's Studies progran1s we teach that debate is good, and that huan beings are powerful when they use reason to question unexained assuptions. We learn that soeties what really atters the ost is how you frae the question. We teach our students to speak up and speak out powerfully and persuasively, and we strive to odel doing so ourselves. In the social and professional networks we create for ourselves as faculty and scholars, we share knowledge about our institutions and their practices, pragatic strategies for achieving our goals, as well as the intellectual challenges and exciteent of our research. Patriarchy is alive and well; backlash is real; strong woen are not born, they are ade. If all this is true, then it eans that helping woen becoe strong woen happens again and again, at different stages of life for different woen, across generational lines, and in every new generation. Holding to these feinist insights ay be particularly challenging at this oent in tie, because they fly in the face of any yths of conteporary Aerican society. Many Aericans, ale and feale, believe and wish to believe that the world is fair, that they can advance on the basis of erit and achieveent alone, and that discriination on the basis of gender and race no longer exists (or that discriination only exists when governent-based reedies appear to produce bias against white ales.) It can be

3 particularly painful for our feale students, and for ourse lves, to give up these beliefs. Other exaples of current yths that are contravened by feinist thinking include : the notion that innovation of any kind equals progress; the belief all huan beings are ruled by self-interest, and that copetition is a law of nature; the conviction that social injustices and ills that appear resistant to iediate change are ultiately caused by the affected individuals thes elves; above all, the yth that huan beings ake their own identities as individuals independent of historical, econoic, and social fraes of eaning. Huanists today are faced with siilar challenges. Like feinist scholarship, the huanities also produce truth clais and arguents that unsettle and dispute prevailing conteporary social yths and values. Further, the huanities preserve, transit, and produce knowledge of a kind that sees incopatible with the goals of any Aerican universities today. At soe preier institutions the chief goals at ties see to be raising oney, strengthening those acadeic units that bring large aounts of grant and donor onies into the institution, and arketing to undergraduates degree progras that proise financial prowess, political influence, or a lucrative occupation. 2 How to describe the relationship of the huanities to the rest of the university in this eerging acadeic world? I suggest that the huanities are perceived through a set of binary oppositions involving, on the one hand, the exact sciences and the social sciences, and on the other, the huanities. The exact sciences and the social sciences are perceived as objective, the huanities as subjective. (Those of you who grade essay exas ay recall how often this opposition is brought into play when you discuss grading standards with colleagues and adinistrators who rely on ultiple choice exas.) The exact sciences and the social sciences are perceived as real, the huanities as intangible. The exact sciences and the social sciences are perceived as being practical; the huanities are ornaental, decorative. This odel, reductive though it surely is, nevertheless suggests that within the odern university, conventional, conforist gender stereotyping and the hierarchical power relations it reproduces are not confined to the hallways and party roos of our undergraduate dors, but flourish unexained at any levels of university culture. The knowledge preserved, transitted, and produced in the huanities is being "feinized", and I deliberately use the ter here in its pejorative eaning of diinished prestige and decline into subordinate status. The social and exact sciences aintain and expand a doinant position in the new acadey by consolidating their "robust", "asculine" status and, as the any studies of our edieval feinist colleagues have taught us, by subordinating and casting out those odes of knowledge that challenge the status quo. "The success of such powerful interrelationships rests

4 on the expulsion or redefinition of eleents perceived as threatening to the hegeony [of patriarchy, y note]. :" Medievalists often feel theselves, and with good reason, caught in a particularly perilous position. If the huanities are perceived as being increasingly irrelevant, how uch ore irrelevant is the study of the distant past? One notes the use of certain strategies in odernist and preodernist fields in the huanities for fleeing this eerging feinized status. These include, first, juping on the IT bandwagon, which holds out the proise of oney and high status and which has the interesting and unexpected side effect of aking philology, bibliography, and codicology relevant and useful again; second, the eergence of a prestige-based culture of theory (what I now call theory as "grand narrative"), particularly in literary studies, which tend to write the troublesoe and resistant aterialities of huanist fields out of existence altogether, as though to relegate once and for all to the real of the social and exact sciences all of ateriality and its effects; third, the increasing focus of huanities departents on twentieth-century and conteporary studies (often proceeding fro pragatic arguents for eeting student interests) that proclai the relevance of huanist studiesbecause they, like the social sciences, allow us to study ourselves at the present oent. For edievalists, the IT strategy of survival can and does work (edievalists and classicists have been at the vanguard of scholars inventing IT applications for literary study), but it ust live with the contradiction that in its focus on the ateriality of texts it runs afoul precisely of strategy nuber two, participation in the prestigious theory culture, and so lives in constant (and for the tie being unresolvable) intellectual tension with large groups of literary scholars who, alas, function not as its allies but as, at best, uninterested onlookers. Strategies two and three have no pressing need for historical thinking and historicity, and have not found a way to intellectually and ethically anchor historical thinking in their paradigs. At their worst these strategies confor nicely to what edievalists like to call the "presentis" of the odern university and odern society, that is to say, its loss of historical knowledge and its erasure of historical understanding as a ode of knowing in what has been called the growing "culture of anesia" in odern Aerica. Medievalists whose scholarship eploys sophisticated theoretical and critical thinking at ties find their work discounted, or even ignored, by the ainstrea of theory prestige culture. The response "I really can't ask a question because I' not a edievalist", for exaple, subtly hars intellectual dialogue across the boundaries of disciplines and fields because it confers upon the edievalist scholar the (high) status of specialist, yet does so in order to foreclose further intellectual conversation. The reply could be construed to suggest that Medieval Studies belongs on the

5 argins of acadeia, a specialized field with little tocontribute to general acadeic trends and to the pressing issues confronting society today. The price of such "gifts of status" is high. Regardless of thei r theoretical knowledge and sophistication, edievalists (and, I would argue, all huanists) are in danger of being regarded siply as traditional and "old-fashioned", which in today's acadeic world is another way ofsaying irrelevant. 4 Siilar ruptures, tensions, and contradictions can also be found within the feinist counity and Woen's Studies progras, operating as they ust" within the sae institutional and acadeic constraints. There are, of course, differences. I see few signs that Woen's Studies and gender studies are in danger of being perceived as traditional, old-fashioned, and irrelevant, though the basic paradig of thought that lies behind such ters (innovation is relevant and good, old is irrelevant and bad) certainly surfaces in debates within the interdisciplinary feinist counity. In this arena, too, the erasure of history and the loss of historical thinking as a category of analysis haunts feinist edievalists who strive to speak to larger philosophical and historical issues and to reach beyond the confines of their specific disciplines. Woen's Studies and gender studies do see particularly at risk of "presentis". The reasons for the lure of presentis to Woen's Studies progras are coplex, but one reason ight be that speaking to present about the present proises any iediate rewards for such newly fored disciplines and acadeic units (prestige, funding, faculty lines). Yet the loss of eory, of history, is in fact a pressing issue for all feinists, not just feinist edievalists, for it is precisely the lack and loss of institutional eory that has pre vented woen fro having their own history for so long. Do feinists really wish to endorse and perpetuate the "tradition of discontinuous tradition" that has traditionally characterized woen's place in society and the study of woen and woen's history in patriarchal institutions? I think not. What is to be done? If the situation I have sketched out sees bleak, it ay be because one grows so used to the "copulsory optiis" of Aerican culture that any step away fro it is disturbing. Yet as president of the Society for Medieval Feinist Scholarship and as a long-standing eber of the organization, I a in a position to note the outstanding achieveents and accoplishents of the feinist edievalist counity. This scholarly counity is extraordinarily vital and productive. Medievalists and edieval feinists in all fields of huanistic study continue to produce scholarship of astonishing breadth, scope, and excellence, scholarship recognized yearly by their peers, odernist and edievalist alike, with nuerous awards, fellowships, and prizes. Feinist edievalists chair departents and Woen's Studies progras, hold high adinistrative positions, teach an extraordinary

6 range of classes, adapt their syllabi to the changing needs of their students, are active in faculty governance and in professional organizations, train future scholars, establish and anage web-based knowledge resources, and so on. We do ore than hold on; we hold our own. We ust be doing soething right. I suggest that the tools, skills, and knowledge that are the bedrock of our training as edievalists and as feinists represent a set of extraordinary intellectual strengths. What have we learned as edievalists? We have learned how to gather evidence, that is to say, how to do research, how to observe and describe. We have learned to scrutinize evidence, analyze it, and ake arguents using it well. Above all, we are practiced in the arts of rhetorical analysis and rhetorical crafting. Few are better equipped to use rhetoric to craft their own arguents. We have becoe adept "translators" of culture, skilled at using odern analogies to help our students and colleagues grasp the alterity of the past. We know that a shift in perspective can create a shift in outcoes. We know that every odel, no atter how powerful, is also liited. We know that for and content, process and substance, are inseparable odes of representation, and that for and process theselves produce eaning. Further, we know how to recognize rhetoric at work, and we know how to analyze and articulate the cultural, social, econoic, historical, or political workit is doing. Few are better equipped to scrutinize the clais being ade and the political work being done by, for exaple, the recent widespread appearance of a word such as "interdisciplinarity" in adinistrative discourse (fro y own experience I would add the ters "internationalization" and "globalization") and the coincidence of its appearance with the corporatization of the Aerican university. As feinists, we have learned practices for taking eaningful, ethical, action. We know that contexts are created; over the past thirty years, the hard work of feinist scholars and scholars of Woen's Studies and gender studies and the excellence of their scholarship has created a vast and coplex set of intellectual and acadeic contexts in which feinist studies and Medieval Studies atter, and this work continues. We have learned that any battles are won ahead of tie, by carefully defining the ters, the questions, and the issues at stake. We have learned to ake the invisible visible, to speak forthrightly and persuasively, for exaple, about the fissures and contradictions that gender nors ask. We have learned that one of the ost powerful ways to advance a cause is to vouch for one another. Socialized into gender roles as woen, we tend to be very good at counication and at building bridges. We can and do excel at cultivating allies who share, if not all, then soe of our goals. We have learned the power of collaboration, both in scholarship and as a for of political action. We have learned that when one is excluded by powerful, inforal networks, one ust join with others to ake one's own networks, and that we can attain power and use it wisely.

7 I hav e tried to describe the ultiple intellectual situations in which I and any of y colleagues work so that they illuinate one another. The crisis of the huanities is not so uch a proble (defined as an issue to which there is a solution), as a predicaent, a set of dileas and contradictions to whi ch there are no answers, only ongoing negotiations. This eans that the struggle to preserve and advance the huanities, feinist studies, and Woen's Studies will not be over anytie soon; we are in this for the long haul. We should neither despair at our defeats, coforting ourselves with the belief that the struggle is hopeless, nor feel euphoric at our triuphs, indulging ourselves in the illusion that the struggle is over. Our passion for justice and for reason, our knowledg e of the past and the present, and our ultiple intellectual strengths ake our voices powerful. Perhaps the task at hand for feinist edievalists is not just to continue the any vigorous and productive intellectual and acadeic conversations we have with one another, iportant though that surely is. Perhaps the task at hand is to expand these conversations to include huanists and feinists fro other fields and disciplines through inforal and foral eans alike: conferences, reading groups, tea-taught courses, and so on. These suggestions represent tried and true acadeic structures. I have no doubt that the read ers of MFF know how and where this intelle ctual work is already being done, and that they know, as well, about different kinds of scholarly ventures that are reaching any different audiences. I hope that the readers of MFF will weigh in on this thee through letters, announceents, essays, and articles, sharing their insights, strategies, and knowledge and speaking up with authority about the value of feinis, historical thinking, and the huanities for the acadey and the world. A nn Marie Rasussen Duke University 1 The extraordinary self-study done by faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology docuenting gender bias against woen in the School of Science suggests that siilar studies at other institutions ight produce siilar results. It should be noted that MIT's adinistra tion responded quickly with positive reedies. See Robin Wilson, "An MIT Professor 's Suspicion of Bias Leads to a New Moveent for Acadeic Woen, " The Chronicle of Higher Education (3 Deceber 1999): p. A16. The full text of the report, "A Study of the Status of Woen Faculty in Science at MIT," is available electronically to subscribers at the Chronicle's web site ( ronicle.co). 2 For a cogent defense of the value of the huanities and analysis of their endangerent in the odern university see Jaes Engell and Anthony Dangerfield, "Huanities in the Age of Money," Harvard Magazine (May-June 1998): 48-55; 111. On the endangerent of notions of disinterested inquiry in the sciences see Eyal Press and Jennifer Washburn, "The Kept University, " The Atlantic Monthly (March 2000): Thanks to Bob Clark and Bryan Gillia for bringing these articles to y attention. On the crisis in the huanities see in particula r Bill Readings, The University in Ruins (Cabridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1996).

8 3 Quoted fro Clare A. Lees, "Introduction," Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, Medieval Cultures, vol. 7 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), xxii. 4 As a slur, "old-fashioned" says little about edieval scholarship, but it does reveal the quest for trendiness to be a fundaental iperative of soe fors of theory prestige culture. One can only note that scholarship equating fashion and arketability with intellectual innovation has the best chance of success if its clais of newness cannot be evaluated in historical contexts. Attepts by scholars of the distant past (which in y field begins in the 18th century) also can (and do) fall prey to soe of the pitfalls of grand narrative thinking, in which the chief usefulness of a literary text lies at ties in deonstrating the truth of the grand narrative's logic.