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Bringing Women's Studies to Puget Sound

This digital teaching collection focuses on the beginning of the Women's Studies program at the University of Puget Sound.

Discussion Questions

Below are some general discussion questions that can be adapted to many instructional settings:

  1. What are some of the core issues Women’s Studies students, faculty, and staff faced in the 1970s in getting their academic program formalized by the University?
  2. What is the value or purpose of Women’s Studies, or interdisciplinary studies in general, as an academic discipline?
  3. What was the social and/or political climate at the University that may have played a role in the development of the Women’s Studies program at Puget Sound?  
  4. Through your exploration of these documents and your general knowledge of this time period, did the situation at Puget Sound mirror national trends?
  5. What do the documents indicate regarding how different groups on campus perceived the Women’s Studies program?
  6. For current Puget Sound students, compare and contrast the Women’s Studies program of the 1970s & 1980s with the Gender & Queer Studies program of today. What has changed? What remains similar?

Classroom Activities

Below are a few classroom activities that can be adapted to various instructional settings:

  1. While examining the sources, have students track their understanding of the materials through an OWL (observe, wonder, learn) chart. Before reading, students should make basic observations about what types of materials they see, titles, images, etc. They should record questions they wonder about before, during, and after interacting with the materials. Finally, students should record facts they learn (including citations) as they peruse the sources. Students may integrate their OWL understanding in a written response to the following questions: 
    1. What was the social and/or political climate at the University that played a role in the development of Women’s Studies at Puget Sound? Through your exploration of these documents and your general knowledge of this time period, did the situation at Puget Sound mirror national trends?
    2. What do the documents indicate regarding how different groups on campus perceived the Women’s Studies program? Was there support for the program? If not, why not?

  2. Consider modern topics that relate to division/unity on the basis of gender, such as gendered sports teams or children's toys, public restrooms, and the wage gap. Explore the primary sources in this collection to get a historical perspective on how the subject of women's studies was approached at the University of Puget Sound. Have students research one of the previously mentioned modern topics (or one of their own choosing) and find a relevant article from within the last year that aids their understanding. Who were the stakeholders? What was the primary social issue at hand? How was the issue resolved? How should it have been resolved? Overall, how do we situate such complicated and polarizing topics in a modern cultural context? Discuss in a respectful, mediated manner, or have students write about their learning.

  3. The sources included in this digital teaching collection articulate the varied experiences of women in the 1970s and 1980s in their effort to create a Women’s Studies program at Puget Sound. These sources establish a framework for understanding how women’s rights and history have changed dramatically on college campuses over time. Examine the materials and note the systems of oppression working against Women’s Studies. How did these systems impede the work of advocates for Women’s Studies and how did the advocates react? How do the systems of oppression in these records relate to modern systems that affect women today? Use the materials and individual research to expand understanding; discuss questions and present findings in an informal setting.

  4. Have students look at the December 3, 1971 women’s liberation issue of The Trail, the student newspaper of the University of Puget Sound. Have them look through the issue, and then independently research the wage gap (then and now). Discuss some of the barriers women faced professionally at that time versus now. Are the primary issues the same? Using the wage gap as a lead in, open the conversation to the topic of workplace discrimination in general: what other barriers do people face in the workplace today? What factors still contribute to the complexity of the wage gap? And most importantly, how might we make strides towards addressing this national issue?