Academic Pathfinders - (Studies in Higher Education) by Patricia Gumport (Hardcover)

About the Book

From the 1960s to the 1980s, a range of academic possibilities for women developed, as their career histories and intellectual biographies reveal. Some women sought to generate a new knowledge specialty in their disciplines, often explicitly defying admonishments that the subject matter was an oxymoron. Others pursued academic paths that disregarded these new opportunities and developments. Together their accounts portray how feminist scholarship emerged and was facilitated by historically specific conditions: a critical mass of like-minded women, a national political movement, an abundance of financial support for doctoral candidates, a tolerance from established faculty for students to pursue the margins of disciplinary scholarship, and an organizational capacity to add new academic categories for courses, programs, academic positions, and extra-departmental groups. That historical era has since been supplanted by feminist infighting and backlash, as well as more cost-conscious academic management practices, which have altered the academic landscape for knowledge creation.

Analyzing the accounts of academic women during this era yields a conceptual framework for understanding how new knowledge is created on multiple levels--through personal reflection on life experiences, disciplinary legacies, local organizational contexts, and wider societal expectations.

Book Synopsis

From the 1960s to the 1980s, a range of academic possibilities for women developed, as their career histories and intellectual biographies reveal. Some women sought to generate a new knowledge specialty in their disciplines, often explicitly defying admonishments that the subject matter was an oxymoron. Others pursued academic paths that disregarded these new opportunities and developments. Together their accounts portray how feminist scholarship emerged and was facilitated by historically specific conditions: a critical mass of like-minded women, a national political movement, an abundance of financial support for doctoral candidates, a tolerance from established faculty for students to pursue the margins of disciplinary scholarship, and an organizational capacity to add new academic categories for courses, programs, academic positions, and extra-departmental groups. That historical era has since been supplanted by feminist infighting and backlash, as well as more cost-conscious academic management practices, which have altered the academic landscape for knowledge creation.

Analyzing the accounts of academic women during this era yields a conceptual framework for understanding how new knowledge is created on multiple levels--through personal reflection on life experiences, disciplinary legacies, local organizational contexts, and wider societal expectations.

Review Quotes

?i[A]cademic pathfinders is important in terms of making public these women's stories, exploring some of the tensions and creative dynamics between the personal, the political and work in the academy, which have relevence more generally.?-Arwen Raddon, University of Warwick.

?Because Academic Pathfinders is about the conditions under which new knowledge emerges and develops as much as it is about feminist scholarship, the book should appeal to sociologists of knowledge and science as well as to feminist scholars and higer education specialists with an interest in organizational theory and curriculum.?-The Journal of Higher Education

?This study documents the development of feminist scholars and scholarship in history, sociology, philosophy, and women's studies from the 1960s to the present....should interest historians, sociologists, philosophers, and feminists. Suitable for college libraries at lower-and upper-division undergraduate levels.?-Choice

"iÝA¨cademic pathfinders is important in terms of making public these women's stories, exploring some of the tensions and creative dynamics between the personal, the political and work in the academy, which have relevence more generally."-Arwen Raddon, University of Warwick.

"i[A]cademic pathfinders is important in terms of making public these women's stories, exploring some of the tensions and creative dynamics between the personal, the political and work in the academy, which have relevence more generally."-Arwen Raddon, University of Warwick.

"This study documents the development of feminist scholars and scholarship in history, sociology, philosophy, and women's studies from the 1960s to the present....should interest historians, sociologists, philosophers, and feminists. Suitable for college libraries at lower-and upper-division undergraduate levels."-Choice

"Because Academic Pathfinders is about the conditions under which new knowledge emerges and develops as much as it is about feminist scholarship, the book should appeal to sociologists of knowledge and science as well as to feminist scholars and higer education specialists with an interest in organizational theory and curriculum."-The Journal of Higher Education

About the Author

PATRICIA J. GUMPORT is Associate Professor of Education, Stanford University.