Rethinking Modernism: Minority vs. Majority Theories

lW A omen's studies is in many ways a curious academic field. With the exception of ethnic studies, we owe a great deal more than other academic disciplines to social movements off campus. The large exception here, of course, is ethnic studies. Indeed, we owe much of our very existence in academia to the struggles of those who did not have as their goal the creation of a new scholarly field; rather, they were interested in a much more general social transformation. Moreover, many of us in women's studies remain committed to doing academic work-both research and teaching-in ways that are indebted to the politics and organizational forms of the activist women's movement. The issue of the relation of academics to activists is, in consequence, a more critical one for women's studies than for the other academic disciplines in which many of us also take part. What has been the relation of academics and activists? It is not too