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this interview is being conducted in the Dean's conference room in the College of Liberal Arts on the Towson University campus. This is part of a Siris of interviews comprising the Turf, a aural history project conceived and supported by the Towson University Retired Faculty Association with generous

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support from the dean of the College of Liberal Arts. This interview, as well as others in this Siris, are available in the Towson University archives. Welcome, Joanne. It's our pleasure to see you here today and to share in your story as Professor America of both the

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philosophy and the women's studies departments. At Towson, you were one of only two Towson America who have actually had that dual status. It makes for a rich history, it to you in a very complicated path to trace. Where were you born and raised? I was born

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in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a good old working class city, and I was raised in an inner city neighborhood where I lived close to many of my relatives, aunts, uncles and cousins, and it was a wonderful way to grow up. My family moved to the suburbs when I

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was 18, and then when I started, do Kean University. I had to go right back into virtually the same neighborhood where I was raised to attend Do Kean University. I got my Masters at Penn State and came to Baltimore, and during the eighties I started a

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doctoral program at Hopkins University here in Baltimore, and I finished my PhD in 1989. And it was just a wonderful, very lively place during the eighties, which is called Now The Theory Decade. We we were up to our necks in all kinds of theory. Eso when

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and how did you come to t you? I came to tea you with my then husband, Wolfgang Walt Fuchs, on our son, Dorian in 1969 and Walt was being hired by the philosophy department. I had just completed a master's in philosophy. Walt was almost finished with

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his PhD in philosophy. Both are degrees from Penn State, and we were at Penn State during the mid and late sixties, which was quite an interesting time to be there. And, uh, so we came to Towson and Walt was hired. John Moroney was hired at the

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same time, By the way, it was a period of great growth at Towson in faculty and students, obviously, and the department chair, Charles Eberhard. He was the first chair in philosophy. He knew that I had just completed a master's in philosophy and he said, I understand

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you're interested in teaching. So yeah, I'd like you to teach part time and I did. And I taught a number of courses during the day, the evening and summers, and it got so that he have to say relied on me quite a bit, even to the

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extent where he sometimes forgot to tell me that he had scheduled me for classes. I remember having a call from the what was then called the evening school, and they said, Why aren't you in your class? And I said What class you're talking about? And they

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told me the name of the class. I said, I don't know anything about that. Well, Dr Eberhardt have scheduled you for this class. So I got a lot of experience and and went into some areas, for example, philosophy of the unconscious, which was ah, course that

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he asked me to teach because someone at Georgetown who was supposed to come up and do it re *** And so he said, Are you willing to take this? And I waas It was a little crazy thing on my part, But I did learn a lot

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about Freud in a very short amount of time s. Oh, yes. Well, uh, in the sixties and seventies, what was Towson? What we now call Towson University Like the buildings in campus, um, student population. When? When we got to Towson in the fall of 69 it

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waas really almost the heights of the anti Vietnam War movement. It was kind of bursting with student activism there and also faculty activism. There were a couple of teachings that had happened. Walt began Thio prepare to plan a teaching also. And we came to learn the

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names of some of the like minded, um, professors Rivers, Fred Rivers and Rod Ryan in history. We also heard about Elaine Hedges in English, and students quickly formed and perhaps they already had formed a chapter of S. D s students for for Democratic Society. At one

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point, ah, Walt Fuchs became the advisor of that. I was also involved in it. So it was It was really something. Those years 1970 a lot of our students went down to D. C for the moratorium on May 1st, and many of them were arrested and

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kept in the stadium. Down there is it's a famous point in the American anti war movement. Those were days when things like that were happening almost every other day outside the classroom. One of the students said that she was going to a demonstration in D. C.

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And she might miss a class the next week. Well, she didn't show up for a couple of weeks. She went to that massive Pentagon demonstration where the demonstrators circled the whole outer area of the Pentagon and joined hands. And this was another anti war demonstration. And,

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um, the leaders had made arrangements with the D. C. Police about how people would be. These people would engage in civil disobedience and how that would work and how they would go and be brought to jail and then released two hours later. Whatever. Well, that didn't

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happen. The police decided to do something different, and before she knew it, they were on a bus headed for the women's prison in West Virginia, and that's where she waas for two weeks and a lot of them were so Betsy, I forget her last name, but

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she was living at a house where the Barry guns lived at that time. And Elizabeth McAllister, Jonah House. I think it was called. She was a very committed very, uh, religiously committed anti war activists. As many of them were eso there were there were constant demonstrations,

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rallies. Remember, we went over to the administration building once we marched over there to confront President Fisher. And I can't remember exactly what we were confronting him about it, but had something to do with the school and the the Vietnam War. I really don't remember what

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it was about, but there were a whole. There was a whole group of us that went over. We quickly came to know a number of the people in the city who were active in that and became part of a collective called the Free City Collective and

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some other organizations also, So it was definitely definitive for me of how I wanted to live my life. Really? How was it different for you as a new faculty member when you came to Towson and the emphasis was three part research, teaching and service to the

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university from the way that it is for new faculty members coming in 2000 today, with the emphasis on research. Well, when we came to Towson in 1969 it was still called Towson State College. And, uh, it in a couple of years became Towson State University. And,

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of course, it's now Towson University. And early on, the emphasis really was on teaching. And Towson prided itself on its teaching and on its relatively low student faculty ratio, which it still has, I believe, a fairly low student faculty ratio. Also, there were very few rooms

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on campus that would hold large classes, and that was a good thing. We all thought. And I think that universities own philosophy was that they didn't want to create many auditorium size rooms, and as time went on, it became teaching service and research. And so by

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I guess, by the mid eighties research was particularly important. Also, standards changed in terms off faculty members because at first there were a number of people in all the departments who didn't have doctorates. And then I guess it was in the late seventies, early eighties when

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it became pretty much a rule at the university that people would not be hired into faculty positions unless they had a PhD or were in the process of getting one fairly quickly, they wouldn't be in a tenure position. So and with that came the expectation of

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of articles or books, some kind of publishing and certainly activity at, um, conferences, that sort of thing. So how many years did you spend? 1000? I was a Towson for 38 years, and, uh, I was not full time during that. Whole time I started out is

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what used to be called emergency part time, which is simply adjunct teaching. And then I became halftime. So I had half a line which gave me access to a retirement system and benefits. And then when I entered and was close to finishing my doctoral program at

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Hopkins, I was given or applied for and was given a second half on. That was, in addition to my philosophy, half position. So then I was, um, lined up and given a women's studies half, so I became a joint appointment. At that point, you were very

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active in the feminist movement in Baltimore City. Yes, when I first moved to Baltimore in 69 I had seen, uh, mention off a women's magazine. Uh, that was in a a newspaper, the old newspaper called The Guardian, which was a left wing newspaper, and it said

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that they were looking for staff members, So I immediately sent them a letter and said, I would be interested in working for your magazine. The magazine had started just about a year earlier, and they answered me right away. And I wound up working for 34 years

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on that magazine, and it was truly remarkable experience. The women's movement or what we call them The Women's Liberation movement was just exploding. We would get tons and tons of material from all over the world, and there was a process that we went through of choosing

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themes for each issue. Having long discussions. We worked as a collective, so we all were editors. We all read the material. We then were assigned or assigned ourselves certain articles to edit or shorten. If we had to shorten those, and then we literally laid it out

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on by using, uh, drawing tables and, uh, cut and paste of copy and a lot of white out, and I learned a lot about literally publishing not what's called desktop Publishing. Now that's done through a computer. But the rial stuff theme, the paper stuff. And there

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was so much collective work, So many meetings s O. That was one thing. Women, A journal of liberation. And then there was Baltimore women's Liberation. I became part of the speakers bureau for that, and we were getting. We were getting requests for speakers from the Cohens

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Club, the American Legion, Catholic boys, high schools, city high schools, just a variety of places, and we would go out and we had a little brochure of what are quote demands were, um, 24 hour parent controlled daycare. That was usually the one that people really seemed

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to object to believe it or not the right to choice, uh, which is abortion rights and other kinds of reproductive health issues. We also had in Baltimore women's liberation to demands that were not what you would call specifically women's or feminist demands. One was an end

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to racism, and the other was an end to the war in Southeast Asia, because by that time it had spread to Laos and Cambodia. So, um, it was it was definitely a new organization that taught me a lot, and that had a lot of communal activity

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to it. After Baltimore Women's Liberation, I was active in another one called the Women's Union of Baltimore, and we tried Thio connect with working class women. We had a Siris of things called coffee breaks that we had little programs for. We had a van that went

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around, did guerrilla theater and just all sorts of things. So practically every night there was something going on or a meeting of some kind. Would you elaborate on some of the research you carried out when you came 2000? And what sparked your interest in these fields?

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Well, I think probably one of the most interesting and really innovative things I did early on was to decide to do. Of course, in philosophy, that was what we now call women's studies. But it was a philosophy course on I. I first called it the idea

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of woman in philosophy. I then changed it to the concept of woman in philosophy, and it was, uh, survey through the whole history of Western philosophy regarding the discussions on mostly the nature of woman that philosophers had written, for example, Plato, who on amazingly wrote in

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his republic, which is his major work on political philosophy, and his major work period in that dialogue republic, he says that women should be educated in the same way that men should to create the ideal society. Now Aristotle comes along who was student of Plato's for

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20 years in the academy, and he says, well, women are actually inferior to men on. He pulls out some very interesting theories to quote prove it when he's talking about biology as well as social and political issues. And people like Rousseau, the French philosopher of the

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18th century, Immanuel Kant, the German Enlightenment philosopher John Stuart Mill and many others have quote ideas about the nature of woman. So the course the course did that, and the first time I taught my philosophy Women's studies course. Of course, it was due rigor to put

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your classes in a circle if you were teaching a women's studies course in those days until the classes got too large to do that. But the first time I had offered the course, there were not enough students in the course and it wasn't offered. And I

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remember aren't Madden coming to me? And I guess he was chair of that point And he said, I know how much you were looking forward to that. That was in 71. We can't offer it. I'm really sorry. Not enough students. Well, the next year it was

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offered and there were plenty of students. I think about 30. Um and, uh, a number of them were male philosophy majors. So we were sitting in a circle, and I noticed after a couple of classes that all the males were clumped in one area and we're

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very close to me. And I asked one of them who was a long haired, total hippie kind of a guy? Um, I said, Dennis, why air you all sitting right here together? And he said, because we're afraid, we're afraid in this class, we think that you

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will protect us, And, uh, I said, Well, I guess I guess I'm doing something right. If you guys are afraid, maybe it's making you think, Think about things. But it was a very good class, and I gave a paper on that at the or new organization

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that was being founded that was founded, called the Society for Women in Philosophy. So that was a professional organization that hadn't, um, existed before. And that also was a period for a lot of the various disciplines to see these professional organizations that women were forming in

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the fields. Um, mathematics, biology, uh, sociology, English philosophy, modern languages, all the fields we're beginning to see. The formation of groups of women or Women's Caucus is sometimes they were called. And in philosophy, it was called Sweep. The Society for Women in Philosophy rather quickly developed

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three different branches theme Eastern, the Midwestern and the Western branch. I gave a paper. I think it was back in 72 um, to the Society for Women in Philosophy. And actually, that year it met in Pittsburgh. Um, not a do Kean university at believe it was

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Chatham College. That was the first time, as's faras. I know that anybody had offered a course in philosophy that we would call a women's studies course, trying to pull in the ideas about women, but also where we could to talk about possibly women thinkers, women philosophers,

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though there we're not, Ah, huge number in the tradition, but little by little. Over the years, more and more of those thinkers were found, and there were publications about them and so on. But this was in the very early seventies, and I think that paper was

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very well received. A strange thing that happened, though, was at that point, Society for Women and Philosophy did not permit men into the meetings. Um, I had been to some meetings earlier where there were men and sometimes it was not pleasant. And frankly, the men did

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tend to dominate these professional meetings because that's just the way it was. And there weren't many women in most fields, really, except perhaps English. But anyway, so at this point sweep, Waas closed two men. Well, the meeting was held in Pittsburgh, which is where I was

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raised and where some of my family still was, and my sister and her husband wanted to hear the paper. So they came to the meeting and my brother in law was turned away because he was a male and of course he would have been a perfect

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audience member, and I felt very bad about that. Actually, at the time, it hadn't occurred to me beforehand, too. Say, you know, he should have special dispensation or something, but the lines were being drawn pretty tightly because women women really wanted to have their own space,

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and I think it was good and healthy. Those rules don't apply anymore. I've noticed over the years in philosophy when we've had interviews for people being hired into new positions that thes thes graduate students. Now mail is well, as's female have things in already in there

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c V in their resumes that are gender related. So they're already doing work and men as well as women doing work in gender related issues. It's become so interesting and so much a part of so many disciplines that it's just become natural that you know, why

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not talk about it. If you're ah, philosophy graduate student and English literature graduate student, a Spanish graduate student, why wouldn't you want, at some point to perhaps talk about male and female or gender, or whatever form that might take for you with your dual appointments in

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philosophy and women's studies? Were there any challenges or problems that you experienced associated with your dual appointment. Mhm, I would say. Basically, it was difficulty having two departments, especially because each of those departments was very small. Women's studies was, well, it wasn't even a department. When

00:25:24.040 - 00:25:52.930

I first got my women's studies half position, it was just a program and it didn't have any assigned faculty to it. I was the first assigned faculty. My half was the first half line in women's studies. There weren't other other faculty members to help with the

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jobs of you know, the department. It was difficult because of that, because both departments were small. Also, in 95 I became department head off women's studies, and I held that for nine years and again being in two departments, Chair of One And both departments are small,

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so you don't have much of a distribution of people to go around. For all of these committees college Curriculum Committee, the university PMT committee, the yada yada committee, whatever, and also interviewing new faculty for positions. So there was a lot of work to be shared and

00:26:42.560 - 00:27:04.390

being into departments meant to meetings of every kind of issue that comes up in a department. But it was also you know, enriching as well. I mean, I think it was a wonderful opportunity to meet so many more students and other work with ah variety of

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faculty. We also in women's studies, had a wonderful group of what we called affiliate faculty. They were faculty that we're not assigned to women's studies, but they would teach courses in the their departments that were list to either listed as women's studies courses or more frequently

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listed as courses in their department. For example, women writers a Ning glitz course. But it could be taken by women's studies, majors or minors toward their degree, or perhaps a sociology course on women in the workforce that could be taken toward a either a women's studies

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major or a sociology major. There were faculty members that we came to rely on over the years, um, someone in economics, someone in, uh, education, Uh, and so on psychology. There were several in psychology, several in in the English Department, and so that really is how

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we were able to offer a full program for our majors. We are one of the oldest departments in the country, one of the oldest programs in the country. We started offering courses in 71 and um, had official women's studies courses by 73. I think only the

00:28:44.910 - 00:29:18.900

University of San Diego or San Diego State in California is is older than we are. Could you trace for us the evolution of women's studies from courses, too program to department and finally to the department, Conferring a graduate degree? Um, it began around 71 when the

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then Dean who was dean of faculty who would now be called Provost Ken Shaw. His nickname was Buzz Buzz Shaw set up a committee on Bond, asked faculty members to participate in it to begin to plan a program on scholarship on women. And I think this

00:29:45.340 - 00:30:10.860

was done on pretty positive. It was done at the encouragement slash instigation of two women in full professors in the English Department, Elaine Hedges and Sarah Culture. But I must say the Towson University has been from the beginning, very open to women's studies scholarship and to

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that kind of development, and I went to many conferences over the years and believe me, Towson was quite exceptional in the openness and willingness off its administration from deans of the of the colleges up to the president. Hoke Smith was another. It was a president, by

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the way, who was extremely supportive of women's studies. Um, all the president's were they really had to be for this to be a feasible program. But in any case, um, so this committee was set up. I was asked to be on the committee, and, uh, I

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received a letter, and I was so busy between my my teaching and I usually taught to courses during the day and sometimes one at night. At that point, I had a six year old and I was very active in the city movement, very active in the

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city movement. So I sent the dean of faculty a response and said, I'm sorry, I would I think it's an important thing. I would really love to do it, but I simply don't have the time. Well, within 24 hours, Elaine Hedges was in my office saying,

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You can't say that. You can't say that. They will think that that really You know there's not support for this program. So, uh, she said, please, it just won't look good. You know, if you if you say no, I had no idea that there was that

00:31:50.190 - 00:32:11.780

level to it. So of course I said yes. And I was on that Women's studies committee from 1971 I guess you could say until until I retired, or certainly until it became a department. And that committee was no longer operative. And it did a lot of

00:32:11.780 - 00:32:32.220

work and had a lot of initiatives. And Sarah Culture and the Lane Hedges were always at the forefront, coming up with new ideas and encouraging the rest of us. It was a rather large committee. Um, it could be 20 people. It would include all of the

00:32:32.220 - 00:32:52.570

affiliate faculty as well as over the years, um, anybody who was appointed to the program when once that happened. So in 1971 this committee was set up also in 1971 the first course that we consider a women's studies course. Though it was in history, it didn't

00:32:52.570 - 00:33:13.940

have a winning studies. He just we didn't have that at that point. But Fred Rivers, uh, a member of the History Department, use the history topics, which was, I think, of 300 or 400 level topics, and he used it to do a course on the 19th

00:33:13.940 - 00:33:36.700

century suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and a couple of others. So Fred gave our very first course, and then, in 72 Elaine Hedges offered one called I Think It was called The Modern Woman, and I offered my philosophy course the idea of woman in

00:33:36.700 - 00:34:06.370

philosophy. And by 75 or 76 we had we had 10 courses in eight different disciplines, and then it just kept growing. So other people in the English department joined and, uh, sociology. We also began offering some interdisciplinary courses by 1973 70 for Elaine Hedges and Judy

00:34:06.370 - 00:34:27.880

Barris taught an interdisciplinary course, and I think this is a good time for me to mention that, UM, women's studies is a new interdisciplinary field. The people that those of us who began this field I saw that we had to pull in a number of different

00:34:27.880 - 00:34:53.660

disciplines to do the work that we wanted to do. There's a women's contributions had been ignored or for gotten women's values. Women's ideas, um, ideas about women, literature by women. This was all just dumped by the roadside somewhere or never even noticed. And our job was

00:34:53.660 - 00:35:21.100

to pull it out to rediscover it or thio also invent new ways of thinking about certain issues, whether it be government or literature or whatever. So we felt that we needed a new interdisciplinary field, and I think the women's studies was not the first. International studies

00:35:21.100 - 00:35:44.930

was the first interdisciplinary field at Towson, but women's studies, I believe, was the second. And there have been more and more interdisciplinary fields, cultural studies, Metropolitan studies. I'm sure by now there are even more. In 1983 the women's studies received a large Fitzy grant that was

00:35:44.930 - 00:36:14.400

intended to change the curriculum of Towson and offer a model for other universities. Fitzy is fund for the improvement of post secondary education, and it's a federal fund. Eso in 1983 Sarah Coulter and Elaine Hedges applied for a grant in 82 received it, and it was

00:36:14.400 - 00:36:42.070

a quarter million dollar grant to develop Mawr curriculum, a Towson, or to improve curriculum so that it would reflect women's lives, women's experiences and so on. They set up. I believe it was eight or 10 workshops and there were, I think, a total of 75 faculty

00:36:42.080 - 00:37:02.810

involved in these in these various disciplines, Um, you know, there were eight or 10 workshops, but the disciplines were something like 16 discipline. So some of the workshops had people from a couple of disciplines in unfortunately, philosophy was not in that, I guess, because it was

00:37:02.810 - 00:37:32.630

such a small department. And so what they did was I think about how they could here and the terminology was integrate. How could they integrate into their courses into their existent curriculum information about scholarship about women? It was sometimes simply called the new scholarship on women.

00:37:32.640 - 00:37:59.990

So how could this be brought into your American history? Course your English, Your Shakespeare course. You're poetry course. Let's look at your at your curriculum. Let's look at your syllabus. If you're teaching American poetry, is Emily Dickinson really the only person you have there? Should you

00:37:59.990 - 00:38:20.050

perhaps add a few more? Because that was the situation. In a lot of cases, they're at most would be a token woman. Also, in things like history, there came to be more of an emphasis on social history, whereas so many of the history courses were on

00:38:20.530 - 00:38:43.430

military history or political history. In a strictly governmental way. So social history had been kind of left by the wayside or considered not important. Well, as you start to do women's history or to think about women as actors in history, you have to start talking about

00:38:43.430 - 00:39:12.380

social history, domestic situations, various things, perhaps immigration, things that are not captured, usually in political or military history. So these workshops allowed faculty to converse with each other and support each other in developing ideas that they might include in ways that they might include this new

00:39:12.380 - 00:39:36.710

scholarship or to create the new scholarship because it was just beginning as well. And I think that in most cases people really we're happy with with those workshops, I think people came away with just wonderful ideas and a sense of community and commitment. For example, Virginia

00:39:36.710 - 00:40:00.770

Anderson and Biology did did some great work on how to incorporate this new scholarship on women into some of her writing assignments, because these were also the years when Towson had begun its quote second writing course requirement for students. And that was a way that you

00:40:00.770 - 00:40:25.610

could begin to include some of the work on women. So Virginia did that She did a lot of very good work in it. There were there was wonderful work going on in psychology by a number of people. Um, history, sociology, anthropology as well, and a number

00:40:25.610 - 00:40:52.220

of fields and the people very active in those workshops did include as they finished the workshops and finished the grant. It was a three year grant that started in 83 and the workshops met for three years. And after that, the Tipsy gave Towson another grant to

00:40:52.220 - 00:41:25.840

disseminate some of that information through trips to conferences, through publication of a newsletter and other ways. Then, a couple years later, there was a community college grant that for which Elaine and Sarah organized a workshop of faculty in the community colleges. Five community colleges in Maryland

00:41:26.810 - 00:41:43.010

and I attended a couple of those and gave talks of those two. So I was involved a bit in the workshops, but not as an ongoing member. I was usually visitor that would come in and give a little talk or whatever about my fields, which were

00:41:43.010 - 00:42:07.060

philosophy and theory, the kind of work that I was doing at Hopkins, which was of contemporary theory on continental philosophy and on writing and language and that sort of thing. So these 50 grants there were two or three of them were very important in the development

00:42:07.070 - 00:42:28.950

of women's studies of Towson, but also they were enriching to each of these departments that these faculty members were coming from. But Alison, because of these grants and because of the visits and the reporting that Elaine Hedges, Sarah Coulter and some of the rest of us

00:42:28.950 - 00:42:51.750

made at different professional conferences and meetings, we were very active in doing that and spreading the word about what was going on it Alison. So Towson got quite a good reputation for curriculum transformation. I mean, literally. We were answering questions from all over the country. I

00:42:51.750 - 00:43:16.380

remember one year when I was filling in for Elaine Hedges on leave, getting a request from Japan. They wanted to start a women's studies program there and wanted some information about how to do that. So we were constantly engaged in in discussions about our work and

00:43:16.390 - 00:43:40.900

trying to spread the word and then the community college. Grant was a very important part of the educational philosophy, if you will of Maryland itself, because on Arrundell Community College, the Community College of Baltimore County Montgomery Junior College, which was called then, and a couple of

00:43:40.900 - 00:44:01.830

the others. They those people went out and really did work each of their own schools, and I think there were 30 or 40 people involved in that grant. When you put all the grants together, Towson got over a million dollars in those grants. And that isn't

00:44:01.830 - 00:44:25.190

including the money that Towson contributed in like funding, you know, and in release time and facilities and so on. So it was quite amazing Project, and most of it through the 80 the the mid to late eighties and into the early nineties, the community college Grant

00:44:25.190 - 00:44:43.950

was in the nineties. I think we need to go back to something maybe I should have mentioned before, which is the development of women's studies itself. I started to talk about that, but, um, we had the early years of the program, but then in the I

00:44:43.950 - 00:45:06.970

think it was the late seventies, we got an independent major. First we had a minor in general studies. Then we had an independent major. We were the first in the whole system of University of Maryland system to have an independent major in women's studies. Then we

00:45:06.970 - 00:45:28.460

had my half position, which was half a line in women's studies. Then we hired one or two. First it was one Esther Wangari. Then a couple of years later, Cecilia Rio. So we had two full time faculty members and women's studies. Then we got Karen Duggar

00:45:28.460 - 00:45:50.420

in 99 and she was a joint appointment in women's studies and in one of the institute's that were set up. So this department is growing and this program is growing, and that's it's growing. Uh, its presence on campus is more important by by the early nineties,

00:45:50.430 - 00:46:11.370

House and um set up something called the Institute for Teaching and Research on Women, which had an office in the old light, early tall building. So I T, R. O. W. Or Retro was headed by Beth Van Fossen, who was hired in a a new line

00:46:11.780 - 00:46:39.600

as three director of this research institute, and she got a number of grants to do research on gender and equity. She was a sociologist and then, um, Sarah and Elaine got another grant to set up something called NCC TRW National Center for curriculum transformation. Resource is,

00:46:40.000 - 00:47:03.540

the idea was to published a directory of all the women's studies programs in the country and then to publish how to books on how to set up women's studies programs and then to publish books in the various disciplines on what women studies looks like in English

00:47:03.540 - 00:47:32.260

literature, French philosophy, economics, whatever. So this was a massive publication project that all happened here and again, you know, reports would be given at meetings and conferences. There would be meetings on campus, a swell and other kinds of professional reporting, you know, ways that that research

00:47:32.260 - 00:47:53.710

was done. So the profile of women's studies certainly was raised quite a bit through the eighties and nineties. We finally became a department. Um, it was during the years I was chair. We went from being a program to a department. And then, um, the Provos decided

00:47:53.710 - 00:48:14.810

we didn't decide, but the Provos decided it was John Hager at the time, he decided that we should have ah, masters in women's studies. So we said about doing that and again, it was a challenge because there was half a position mine in women's studies, and

00:48:14.810 - 00:48:38.740

we had a new person. Esther Wangari. So there were 1.5 people officially in women's studies and then all of these affiliate faculty who had their own departmental, uh, responsibilities on who did really Yeoman's work for us over the years. And, uh, people like Jan Wilcots friend

00:48:38.740 - 00:49:04.010

Rothstein, Jenny Jokinen's Joan Robin people. Gail Disparage was another one in biology who we're just kept offering these courses and their chairs were cooperative. They would let the courses run. I mean, not with a low enrollment, but they would. They would approve the scheduling of the

00:49:04.010 - 00:49:22.110

courses. So this was a in a way of full university project. If you think of it that way, that there were so many people in and a variety of departments and that meant shares in those departments. That meant deans in those colleges and ultimately the president

00:49:22.110 - 00:49:41.410

and the Provos who were willing to let this happen. I do think that certainly by now or by the time I retired in 2007 that there really was more of an acceptance of this way of thinking, and I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty sure

00:49:41.410 - 00:50:02.150

that that Mawr and Mawr departments had courses on women. And, um, individual faculty members were including women in their their discussions. I hate to move away from women's studies. We're going to go back to more general questions toe kind of end this interview. If you were

00:50:02.150 - 00:50:33.020

going to describe the biggest changes in what is now Towson University from the time you arrived on campus to the time you retired, what would those general changes be? That's hard, I would say. Definitely mawr oven emphasis on research and, um, the whole process of merit

00:50:33.030 - 00:50:54.660

merit raises. That was a difficult thing that came through and how to make those assessments. Um, certainly that, of course you know, the Internet computers, first of all, in the use of email. All of that changed things so much. I mean, when I was, I was

00:50:54.660 - 00:51:13.440

chair of women's studies for nine years, and when I first started, email was just barely. It was being used, but not much. But before that, you'd have if you wanted to have a meeting, you send out 15 copies of a memo saying, When can you meet

00:51:13.440 - 00:51:34.630

here? Five different dates and then you'd wait for all of those memos to come back and then, you know you'd eventually plan the meeting. Then you'd have the meeting. So I mean, the ease of meetings and different kinds of connections through email and just computers in

00:51:34.630 - 00:52:01.080

general and work. Big difference now, of course. Also in the early days, faculty members often gave their work to the department secretary to do, and once computers came in, you were doing it all yourself. And that added that added hours every week to the work. Um,

00:52:01.450 - 00:52:19.280

I think the students have There was kind of a bit of a low period there in the I think it was three early nineties. It was also a period when the state budget was in bad shape, Um, and the students coming through where I would say

00:52:19.330 - 00:52:40.560

in some kind. I remember us talking about writing skills, not being great in the early nineties. But after that, students have just improved enormously. And what I read about Towson students now is is just something to be really proud of. I mean, I think we all

00:52:40.560 - 00:53:02.080

made a great university, and I think we're finally getting some of the recognition and also getting some of the guidance that in terms of connections with with the larger community and the area of the region that I think we needed. And I'm glad to see it

00:53:02.080 - 00:53:26.080

happening. And speaking of guidance, could you talk a little bit about the mentoring that goes on that? Yeah. Um, I should talk a little more to about my other department philosophy because there was certainly mentoring. Um, that happened there, Um, there. When I first started 1000

00:53:26.080 - 00:53:49.370

and 69 there were only three people in the philosophy department. The first was Charles Eberhart, who was the chair. He was a cleric of some kind, and he taught courses on the geography of ancient Palestine and because department has always been called philosophy and religious studies.

00:53:50.250 - 00:54:12.730

So Charles Eberhard taught those courses. And by the way, Charles's son David was serving time in a prison in Pennsylvania for his anti war activity. Hey, was one of the first in the Baltimore area to make a public demonstration. It was a group called the Baltimore

00:54:12.730 - 00:54:35.190

Four that came right before the Catonsville nine. So that was that was quite amazing. I've met David over the years a few times. Very admirable person and a poet. Anyway, Charles Charles is now has passed away. But then Art Madden was a wonderful, wonderful man who

00:54:35.740 - 00:54:56.190

was very devoted to education and was a Catholic and was on the board of a couple of the Catholic colleges as well. Hey, was a real force in the city, and I think a lot of people knew him and he was a wonderful mentor. He really

00:54:56.190 - 00:55:15.030

waas a very kind man and someone who did courses on ethics a lot. That was his field. And then there was Jim Hill. We used to call him our Jim Hill because there was a Jim Hill in English as well. And since the English department, one

00:55:15.030 - 00:55:35.860

half of it was in the same corridor with the philosophy department in those years in Linthicum Hall. It was interesting to ask, which Jim Hill are you talking about? Because both of them could be in the area. Anyway, um, it was quite a lively group, and

00:55:35.860 - 00:55:57.020

they helped us. Uh, Walt Fuchs and myself and John Marangi all came at the same time. So three new people came and there were only three people in the department. So there was a lot of communication and a good a good feeling during those years and

00:55:57.030 - 00:56:25.190

with women's studies and mentoring. Certainly Elaine Hedges and Sarah Coulter were were wonderful mentors. I mean, they were tireless. They they were tenured full professors by the time they started this work, so they were relatively safe. I was, ah, lowly adjunct when I started teaching these

00:56:25.190 - 00:56:48.220

courses in women's studies in philosophy, so their support was important. The savvy that they had about how the university worked was really important. And, you know, meetings and discussions in Linthicum Hall were just constant. And Linthicum Hall was a strange building. It was not the greatest,

00:56:48.220 - 00:57:06.120

the most beautiful building. It's still on campus, and it's being used, I think, for a variety of things. But there was so much community there, and there was constant talks in the in the corridors. I mean, I really constant talks in the court is I guess

00:57:06.120 - 00:57:26.940

every every area of the university is like that. But it was wonderful to have that community at Linthicum to run into a history professor on the stairway and have a 10 minute discussion about something, or run into somebody from sociology and ask them something about the

00:57:26.940 - 00:57:53.730

latest public policy that that kind of interaction went on all the time in Linthicum. Uh, and what do you miss most about your life? A Towson. Well, I certainly missed the community off other faculty members, but I have a number of of regular groups that I

00:57:53.730 - 00:58:15.080

meet with for lunch or dinner. Um, I think really what I miss most is the discussions about ideas with students. I mean, being a professor at a university, I think is an enormous privilege. How many of the people on the face of this earth get to

00:58:15.080 - 00:58:37.340

do that? Really? And, you know, with students you're teaching something. And then there, there, there, after class, they wanted elaboration. They want to share a new idea with you. Um, they want to suggest something. Um, there were a number of student groups that I worked with

00:58:37.340 - 00:58:56.590

over the years, by the way, a group called the Feminist Collective organized in my feminist theory class. And I don't know if they still exist, but I know they they had existed up to a couple of years ago. There were groups in philosophy that organized while

00:58:56.590 - 00:59:16.410

I was there for you. know, being helped by all of the faculty, the philosophy form I know that still exists. There was a group called Section 12 and Philosophy um, that was called itself a socialist feminist organization, and it was male and female. So there were

00:59:16.410 - 00:59:39.210

those activist groups of students or organized groups of students. But then that luxury of talking with students about ideas and being able to go in depth with them. That's a wonderful, wonderful feeling. Um, you know, I talk. I talk in other situations with my students, for

00:59:39.210 - 00:59:57.890

example, at at Osher the Senior College. But it's a different experience because they haven't had a lot of them have not had a Siris of courses in a particular field. Like my philosophy students would have for my women's studies students where you know they have that

00:59:57.900 - 01:00:18.720

base, they have the jargon or the vocabulary, and you can have an in depth conversation with them about something, and I'm sure every professor in any field would would understand that. So you don't get that except in a university setting in a in a really in

01:00:18.720 - 01:00:39.300

a formal educational setting. And that's a joyful thing, or a least at least it was for me. Thank you so much for allowing us to interview you. It's been our pleasure to help make this valuable information about you and your stellar career available to the Towson

01:00:39.300 - 01:00:45.070

community and the community at large. See you at the next turf event, if not before.