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Graduate education in women''s studies: paradoxes and challenges.

Article Excerpt
The proliferation of graduate programs in women's studies over the past decade creates a number of challenges-intellectual, methodological, pedagogical, and administrative--for women's studies programs and scholars. Four years ago, Feminist Studies published a special issue (summer 1998) in which feminist scholars debated the feasibility and desirability of graduate training in women's studies. More recently, it has published a symposium on feminist interdisciplinary scholarship that addresses, in part, the question of how "to balance intellectual interests with professional ... concerns." (1) The three essays published here, by Judith Kegan Gardiner, Sally L. Kitch, and Pamela L. Caughie (originally presented at a session entitled, "The Future of Graduate Education in Women's Studies," at the 2001 National Women's Studies Association convention) continue these discussions, focusing specifically on some of the "paradoxes" (to adopt Gardiner's term) created by the professionalization of women's studies through graduate education.

"Paradox"--from the Greek doxa, meaning received opinion, and para, meaning beside or aside from--is central to the issue of whether and how to professionalize (and thereby "discipline") women's studies, "the institutional context for feminist interdisciplinary study." (12) "Interdisciplinarity" is itself a paradoxical concept in that it occurs (as Caughie...