COURSE BLOG for GWSS 3307: Feminist Film/Media Studies (Fall 2007)

The front page article about the play “Shipside” and the tragedy of women killing their children was one such article. The vulnerability of women in our society is an important topic that women’s studies does focus on and is in need of social implementation. Single women of color depending on a system that does not help them raise their children, that does not offer support for mental illness, that did not give them the resources of education or health services in the first place is something that needs change. I am in a psych of women class that uses women’s studies to analyze the effects of social pressures in order to better treat and understand the reasons behind feeling that killing yourself and your children is the only way out.

The profile on Susan Hubbard entitled “Recycling rules!” was another example of what different facets of women’s studies is involved with. Hubbard and many around her have battled cancer, and our lack of conscious in dealing with issues of pollution is largely to blame for this. The things that we are putting into our environment are not only killing it, but killing us and our children. I took a class with Professor Jacqueline Zita this semester; she is one of the women interviewed in the “Is Women’s Studies Still Relevant?” article. Perhaps it is because of her and her involvement in environmental issues that I do believe that awareness of what we are doing to our world is a feminist issue.

In short, yes, women’s studies are still relevant. And I think that the changes being made inside of the discipline are largely positive ones. A movement cannot be effective without encompassing the problems that we have deal with in constantly changing world.