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 Acknowledgments

This reader evolved from several years of teaching WMST 5190,

a course in feminist methodology required for the University of
Colorado Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies (now Women
and Gender Studies). Teaching this class continues to be a
wonderful experience for me and I am extremely grateful to all the
lively and engaged graduate students who helped me to figure out
which readings did and did not work and also made suggestions
for readings that would work better.
I am also grateful to many friends and colleagues who made
innumerable valuable suggestions. Some of them were
anonymous reviewers of the initial proposal but Dr. Jackie Colby
and Dr. Annette Dula were especially generous in helping me
think about feminist methodology in the health sciences.
I have been delighted by the opportunity to work with Paradigm
Publishers, whose staff members bring personal as well as
professional enthusiasm to the books they publish. I am especially
appreciative of the support provided by Dean Birkenkamp, Jason
Potter, and Melanie Stafford. Jason Barry and Laura Esterman
have worked hard on the supplemented edition.
This book would never have been completed without the
dedicated work of Audra King, at that time a PhD candidate in the
Philosophy Department at the University of Colorado. Audra was
involved at every stage of preparing this book, suggesting
selections, searching for alternative selections, editing the
selections we chose, and pursuing sources and permissions. I
hardly know how to express my appreciation for Audra’s vision,
resourcefulness, and generosity.
Finally, my children and partner David continued to provide
encouragement and David also provided much appreciated
culinary support.

7
 Introduction: The Project of
Feminist Methodology

Methodology is critical and systematic reflection on methods.

Methods are the means people use for accomplishing particular
tasks. It is possible to reflect critically on the methods people use
to do all sorts of things, from building bookcases to training
animals. However, the readings in this book reflect exclusively on
the methods people use to research and produce new knowledge.
For the remainder of the book, the terms “methods” and
“methodology” will refer only to research methods and to critical
reflection on these.
Research methods are techniques and strategies for gathering
evidence relevant to producing new knowledge in various fields of
inquiry. Feminist methodology reflects on these methods from a
feminist perspective and with particular reference to research
intended to be feminist. It considers the epistemological, ethical,
and practical implications of various research methods, as these
may have been used or misused in particular disciplines. It also
considers the potential of new and possibly less-exploitative
methods for developing more-trustworthy knowledge.
The collection of essays in this volume is, as a whole,
interdisciplinary. Some of the essays result from feminist reflection
on particular uses of particular methods within particular
disciplines; others are generated by broader epistemological
considerations and develop methodological approaches that may
be applicable in a range of disciplinary contexts. Taken together,
the essays in this book do not provide a how-to manual for
feminist research across disciplines. Rather than replacing
disciplinary how-to manuals, the collection is designed to
supplement them. It is intended to encourage critical feminist
reflection on methodological approaches taken for granted within

8
particular disciplines and to stimulate ideas for alternative
approaches.
If feminist methodology is understood as investigating methods
and knowledge that generate strategies appropriate for feminist
research, we need some working definitions of feminism and
feminist research.

WHAT IS FEMINISM?
Feminism is a cluster of social ideals that continuously evolve and
change. It makes more sense to speak of multiple feminisms than
to speak of feminism simpliciter. Many alternative visions of a
feminist world exist, as do alternative histories of feminism. Some
visions are incompatible with each other and some histories find
feminist activism among people to whom the word and perhaps
the concept were unknown.
Feminism’s meanings are constantly in dispute. This is partly
because feminism is a comprehensive social ideal, like freedom,
justice, equality, and democracy, and so must always be
interpreted for specific contexts. It is also because feminism is a
politically potent term, and therefore disputes are sometimes
waged insincerely. For instance, some people may seek to
appropriate the term for their own advantage, and those who are
hostile to feminism may seek to discredit the term by caricaturing
its meaning. Although disputes about the meaning of feminism are
inevitable, they should not, in general, be deplored. Such debates
are indispensable to the health of feminism because they prevent
it from becoming a dead orthodoxy and enable it to develop as the
world changes. The continuing and often-impassioned disputes
about feminism’s meaning and history reveal the continuing
importance of feminist ideals in a world where gender remains a
primary category of social organization and a primary tool for
domination. They also indicate the vitality of the countless ongoing
struggles worldwide to end these forms of domination.
Even though feminism is a large tent, not all ideas and struggles
are appropriately lodged inside it. No definition of feminism is
uncontroversial or authoritative, but for the purposes of this book I
take feminism to be activity directed toward establishing gender
justice. What counts as gender justice also is disputed, but at a
minimum it means transforming social arrangements and systems

9
of thought that accord disproportionate honor, authority, and
power to whatever is coded culturally as masculine and that
simultaneously degrade and subordinate whatever is defined
culturally as feminine. Such arrangements and ideas typically
devalue female human beings and valorize males, although some
females may achieve honorific masculine status, at least in part,
and some males may be feminized. Because people always live
within multiple systems of social power and because cultural
constructions of sex and gender are always interwoven with other
systems of inequality based on categories such as class, caste,
religion, sexuality, and nation, feminist activism is typically
continuous, with activity directed to promoting justice on many
social dimensions related to gender.
Defining feminism as a commitment to gender justice means
that it cannot be reduced to a matter of personal ethics, choice, or
style. Instead, feminism is a commitment to social change. This is
sometimes obscured by misinterpretations of the “second wave”
U.S.-feminist slogan “the personal is political,” and by stereotypes
of feminists as preoccupied with “politically correct” conduct. “The
personal is political” was a powerful slogan expressing radical
insights. These included the insights that one’s so-called personal
life can be a site of injustice and domination whose inequities
stem from social arrangements rather than individual
personalities; that so-called personal problems therefore often
have systemic causes; and that so-called personal decisions
about matters such as sexuality, self-presentation, and eating
often have political significance. Although these insights were, in
their time, revolutionary, accepting them does not entail that
feminism can be equated with “lifestyle” choices. To the contrary,
taking seriously these insights suggests another popular slogan of
second-wave feminism: “There are no individual solutions.”
Personal choices are important, but feminism is more centrally
concerned with transforming the social contexts within which such
choices are made.
Social life is organized by institutions, structures, and practices.
Unjust social structures create systematically unequal advantages
or disadvantages for the members of different social groups. The
structures systematically restrict the life chances of individuals
who are assigned to devalued social categories, and render them
disproportionately vulnerable to violence, impoverishment, and

10
political marginalization. They also structure the options that are
socially available to individuals by assigning costs and benefits to
various choices. Feminists are especially concerned with how
people’s options are structured according to their gender. We ask
whether institutions present systematically different options to
people with varying gender, class, and racial-ethnic identities, and
whether the social costs of selecting particular options are higher
for some social groups than others. We are less interested in
individual decisions than in the ways those decisions are shaped
by structures that provide the menu of choices and set the social
prices of various options. Feminists seek a society in which all
people, whatever their social identity, have a fair range of social
options available at a reasonable personal cost.

WHAT IS FEMINIST RESEARCH?

When a self-conscious feminist research movement first surfaced
in North America and Western Europe in the late 1960s and early
1970s, feminist research was often equated with the study of
women and the symbolically feminine. This is hardly surprising
since much research of the period did indeed focus on women
and the feminine. Some of this feminist research revealed
previously unacknowledged violence and discrimination against
women; the previously well-kept secrets of systematic domestic
abuse, rape, and incest became publicly recognized at that time.
Some feminist research challenged accepted theories that
portrayed women as deficient or inferior to men; some offered new
accounts of women’s hitherto-unrecognized or -devalued
capacities or achievements; some research did all of these at
once. As feminist scholars sought to remedy the Western
tradition’s neglect or devaluation of women and the culturally
feminine, scholarly literatures burgeoned in areas such as
“women in society”; “women in literature”; and “women’s” history,
psychology, and art. In this context, the belief that feminist
research consisted entirely of the study of women and the
symbolically feminine was institutionalized in many programs of
“women’s studies” founded in the 1970s.
Equating feminist research with the study of women and the
culturally feminine was soon seen to be simplistic. One obvious
reason was that these objects of study were not new; on the

11
contrary, women have been studied for centuries and ideas of the
feminine have long been explored in the arts and humanities,
social sciences, and even physical sciences. Rather than focusing
on material different from that pursued in traditional fields of study,
the new feminist research often focused on the same material but
interpreted it differently. These new interpretations sometimes
challenged basic assumptions in existing disciplines and made it
impossible simply to “add women and stir” to incorporate them
into established systems of disciplinary knowledge. For instance,
a focus on women’s history revealed the limits of widely accepted
ways of categorizing historical periods; a focus on women’s
psychology revealed the male bias in prevailing conceptions of
“human” psychology; a focus on women’s art and literature
revealed that standards of artistic excellence were tilted toward
masculine sensibilities.
It quickly became evident that equating feminist research with
the study of women and the symbolically feminine was mistaken
for a second reason, namely, that women and men, masculinities
and femininities, are always constructed in relation to each other.
Feminist scholars recognized that incorporating feminist insights
about women and the feminine into existing systems of knowledge
requires simultaneously reexamining prevailing understandings of
men and the masculine. Indeed, they argued, incorporating these
insights ultimately requires rethinking much that had been taken
as distinctively human but that feminist research reveals to be
overtly or covertly masculine.
Feminist research cannot be identified primarily by its objects of
study. Although it often focuses on women, women’s productions,
and the symbolically feminine, it also often addresses men and
men’s productions, the symbolically masculine, animals, and other
aspects of the nonhuman world. It cannot even be identified by its
focus on gender disparities, since these, too, may be studied from
perspectives that are not feminist. In principle, the subject matter
of feminist scholarship has no limits; anything, from anthropology
to zoology, may be studied from a feminist perspective. To date,
most feminist research has occurred in the humanities, arts, and
the social and biological sciences, but no field of study is exempt
in principle from feminist scrutiny.
Just as feminist research is not to be identified with any
particular objects of study, neither is it identical to any specific set

12
of theories, doctrines, or knowledge claims. Although feminist
research has produced a body of scholarship and
counterscholarship that often challenges prevailing views in
various disciplines, the research itself is defined by no orthodox
substantive content. For instance, it would be a mistake to identify
feminist psychology with a commitment to the relational self, or
feminist ethics with the ethics of care. Although bodies of work
that many feminist scholars regard as canonical certainly exist,
the feminist canon is multiple and undergoes continual
transformation. Many developments that the feminist scholars of
yesteryear regarded as groundbreaking are seen by today’s
feminists as naive, incomplete, biased, or downright wrong.
Feminist research cannot be equated with any specific set, or
sets, of knowledge claims or orthodoxies.
Rather than being identified in terms of either its substantive
content or its objects of study, feminist research is distinguished
by its commitment to producing knowledge useful in opposing the
many varieties of gender injustice. Feminist research pursues
knowledge that is free from gender and related biases and so
does not lend itself to rationalizing oppressive constructions of sex
and gender. Instead of being a specific body of knowledge,
feminist research is a tradition of inquiry that seeks knowledge for
emancipation.
That feminist research has social commitments does not make
it unique; most research traditions are motivated by larger social
purposes, and their products are rarely if ever value-free.
However, feminist inquiry is unusual in being explicit about its
ethical and political stance, which motivates feminists to seek out
and challenge the social biases often lurking unnoticed in existing
knowledge claims. In the end, the tradition of feminist research is
uniquely distinguished by its dedication to promoting gender
justice both in knowledge and in the social world. This dedication
carries with it a commitment to opposing all those other injustices
that are inseparable from gender divisions.
The social commitments of feminist inquiry are manifested both
critically and constructively. Feminist research often confronts
scholarship that accepts the domination of the culturally masculine
over the culturally feminine and so rationalizes some men’s
dominance over other men and most women. It challenges
asymmetric and inequitable constructions of masculinities and

13
femininities. These are systematically related and gendered sets
of norms and symbols that are always interwoven with other
oppressive constructions, such as class, ethnicity, and nation.
These complex constructions rationalize unequal and exploitative
divisions of labor by assigning different tasks and values to
individuals categorized as biologically male and female, as well as
to those categorized as racially, religiously, or otherwise superior
and inferior. Feminist researchers seek to rethink the related ways
in which the symbolically masculine is overvalued and the
symbolically feminine is undervalued in specific cultures and
contexts, and they pursue new knowledge likely to be valuable in
the quest for gender equity. At its heart, therefore, feminist
research is a socially engaged tradition of intellectual work; it is
scholarship that seeks epistemic truth and social justice. Feminist
methodology is itself one type of feminist research.

WHO ENGAGES IN FEMINIST RESEARCH?

As an enterprise that frequently challenges established
knowledge, feminist research has a long history outside the
academy. Activists and scholars with no academic affiliation have
produced works that have become feminist classics. In the late
1960s and early 1970s, however, a self-conscious feminist
research movement emerged in North America. Graduate
students and junior academics did groundbreaking work, but they
often faced hostility because their ideas collided with established
scholarship. Women’s studies programs were founded both to
provide an academic home for embattled feminist scholars and to
encourage interdisciplinary work. Many scholars hoped these
programs would be short-lived because the products of feminist
research would rapidly be incorporated into the mainstreams of
the various existing disciplines.
Today, almost half a century later, feminist work has had
considerable influence on several disciplines, but feminist ideas
are still widely controversial. Some attacks on them are
reminiscent of McCarthyism. For instance, a conservative website
recently created a list of the ten most dangerous books, which
included feminist classics The Second Sex and The Feminine
Mystique; in 2006 the editor of this volume was listed among “The
101 most dangerous academics in America.” Even where feminist

14
work is not explicitly attacked, it is often disregarded or
marginalized in mainstream academic disciplines, and
independent institutional bases of feminist scholarship are still
necessary. These institutions have now demonstrated their
distinctive importance as bases for new interdisciplinary work that
transcends the boundaries of older disciplines.
Many erstwhile “women’s studies” programs now include the
word “gender” in their names and a very few proclaim themselves
to be programs in feminist studies—a courageous move in today’s
political climate. Much feminist research emerges from these and
related programs, such as ethnic studies and sexuality studies,
but small groups of feminist scholars are also active in older
disciplines. Some feminist research is still done by activists, and
other research is done under the auspices of the United Nations,
by non-governmental organizations such as Oxfam, and in think
tanks such as the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and the
Women’s Research and Education Institute.

WHAT IS GOOD FEMINIST RESEARCH?

We have seen that feminist research resembles other research
traditions in being infused with social values and that it is
distinguished primarily by its commitment to the specific value of
gender justice. Advancing gender justice requires that inquiry be
guided by additional epistemic and ethical values.
First, it is unlikely that gender justice will be promoted in the
long run by research that is biased or partial or that pleads for
narrow interests. Thus, feminist research in every discipline must
aspire to that discipline’s highest standards of soundness,
credibility, and trustworthiness. It must aim to meet discipline-
appropriate standards of empirical adequacy, reliability,
transferability, accountability, validity, and objectivity. Second, any
research process that can plausibly claim to be feminist must be
constrained and guided by feminist ethical principles; these must
inform the selection and design of its research programs, its
strategies for gathering and interpreting evidence, and its
approaches to publicizing its results.
Happily, it appears that these various conditions may often be
mutually supporting. For instance, not only does gender equity
require knowledge that is trustworthy and produced by means that

15
are compatible with feminist ethical/political principles, but in
addition, and as we shall see later, many feminist scholars have
argued that trustworthiness is likely to be increased when inquiry
is motivated by emancipatory aims and utilizes methods that are
just. Thus, epistemic truth and social justice often advance each
other.
Good intentions on the part of researchers do not guarantee the
worth of any particular research, even if the researchers proclaim
themselves feminist. In any field of endeavor, gaps may exist
between intention and execution. In practice, research proclaimed
as feminist may sometimes incorporate dominant social values,
rely on inadequate evidence, draw flawed inferences, or violate
feminist ethical principles. The best feminist research comes as
close as possible to meeting its sociopolitical, epistemic, and
ethical commitments, but success is always a matter of degree.

SOME THEMES OF FEMINIST RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

In this book, research methodology is construed in a broad sense,
including reflection not only on techniques for gathering evidence,
but also on processes of selecting and designing research
projects and publicizing their results. Methodological reflections
occupy a logical space between method and epistemology
(Harding 1987:2–3).
Research methods are discipline-specific because what counts
as evidence is typically restricted to a particular discipline.
Methods include activities as diverse as investigating archives,
looking into cloud chambers, taking surveys, analyzing samples,
and reading texts. Methodology occurs at a higher level of
abstraction; it considers how evidence should be gathered and
how research should proceed. Methodological theories may be
limited to a single field of inquiry, but they may also be applicable
to several fields. Finally, epistemology questions the possibility
and nature of knowledge on a still-higher level of abstraction. It
explores how knowledge claims and the authority of knowers
generally are justified. Although the discussions in this book focus
on the level of methodology, they inevitably intersect with issues of
both epistemology and method.
Because evidence and the techniques for gathering it are often
specific to particular disciplines, no interdisciplinary volume can

16
provide detailed instruction on employing the specific methods to
acquire knowledge in various disciplines, as noted earlier.
Readers whose work is based in one discipline may sometimes
feel at a loss when reading about research methods in other
disciplines. However, juxtaposing research in a range of
disciplines often reveals striking parallels and themes that
continue across several disciplines. Learning to recognize these
may illuminate work in one’s own discipline.
Several themes weave through many of the readings and all
sections of this book. One theme that emerges and is suggested
by the title of the book is the complex interrelationship between
social power and inequality on one hand, and the production of
knowledge on the other. Many readings illustrate how the
production of knowledge in many disciplines has been shaped by
inegalitarian assumptions and agendas and how the knowledge
produced has been used to rationalize, reinforce, normalize, and
naturalize social inequalities.
A second and related theme is the inseparability of research
projects and methods from social and ethical values. Since no
research can be value-free, readings expose the social and
ethical values that have been incorporated into past research
projects at various levels. They encourage researchers to be
aware of the value commitments that inevitably inform their
projects, and help them reflect on how these commitments can be
maintained at all levels of their research processes.

STRUCTURE OF THE VOLUME

This volume is divided into two main parts, each of which contains
several sections.

Part I. Feminist Critiques of Methodology

Part I presents feminist critiques (some now classic) of various
research strategies used in a range of disciplinary contexts in the
humanities and the social and biological sciences. The readings
reveal how these methods have often been used to produce
research that has devalued the authority of women (or
marginalized groups of women or men) as knowers and
generated knowledge biased against women (and other

17
marginalized groups). The methods have also often been used in
violation of feminist ethical principles.

Part II. Feminists Rethinking Methodology

Part II develops a variety of approaches to remedying the
problems perceived in mainstream research. Typically these
approaches are intended to be applicable in a range of disciplines,
and so tend to move beyond the methodological toward the
epistemological. Many of the approaches are naturalized, in the
sense of taking their inspiration from practices of producing
knowledge utilized in some successful feminist research. For
instance, feminist empiricism seeks to ground feminist research in
the specific experiences of women; feminist standpoint theory
contends that different social locations make possible different
views on social reality, some of which are more illuminating than
others; feminist postmodernism rejects the view that knowledge
has foundations and presents epistemic concepts such as reason,
truth, and objectivity as contested and contingent.
The later sections of the book focus on topics related to
feminists’ search for more epistemically reliable and ethically
responsible strategies for producing knowledge. They consider
how feminists should think about objectivity, how research might
be democratized, and how it may be informed by feminist ethics.
The concluding section might be seen as an essay about the
methodology of methodology! It consists of a single long essay,
written especially for this edition of Just Methods, that reflects
critically on the methodology of one large-scale feminist research
project that was ongoing as the piece was written. The chapter
describes the feminist methodological approach that guided this
project and shows how using more just methods enabled the
production of more trustworthy and more ethically defensible
research findings. The chapter concludes by identifying some
methodological lessons learned and some questions that still
remain to be addressed.

REFERENCES
Harding, Sandra, ed. 1987. Feminism and Methodology. Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

18
Jaggar, Alison M. 2007. “Teaching in Colorado: Not a Rocky Mountain High—
Academic Freedom in a Climate of Repression.” Teaching Philosophy 30, no.
2 (June):149–172.

19
 Part I
FEMINIST CRITIQUES OF
METHODOLOGY

20
 1
The Humanities
The humanities are a cluster of disciplines dedicated to studying
the human condition and the meanings of human life. In an
influential 1959 lecture and subsequent book, The Two Cultures,
British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow drew a sharp contrast
between the humanities and the sciences based on their
respective methodologies. He contended that the humanities and
the sciences comprised two distinct cultures in modern society
and that the breakdown of communication between them was a
major obstacle to solving the problems of the world. Snow’s work
was widely read and discussed in Great Britain and North
America, where the expression “two cultures” became popular
shorthand for the supposed contrasts between two
methodological approaches to understanding the world. Scientific
methods were understood as designed to screen out the influence
of emotion and value; they were seen as quantitative, precise,
systematic, and reliant on observations that could be replicated by
any properly situated observer. They produced knowledge
regarded as objective in the sense of invariant across time and
culture. By contrast, the knowledge produced in the humanities
was seen as expressing the distinctive insight and vision of a
unique human consciousness, and the methods of the humanities
were recognized as purposely utilizing emotion and value.
Although the knowledge produced in the humanities is often
valued for its universal meaning, it is infused simultaneously with
the subjectivity of specific individuals and with the values of
specific times and places.
These widely accepted accounts of the contrasts between
methodology in the humanities, on the one hand, and the
sciences, on the other, are embodied in the administrative
structure of contemporary knowledge-producing institutions and
funding agencies. Today, humanities disciplines include
philosophy, the classics, literature, literary criticism, comparative
literature, art, art history, art criticism, art theory, music, and

21
musicology. Cultural and area studies of regional interdisciplinary
fields such as American Studies, East Asian Studies, and Middle
Eastern Studies are also often categorized as humanities
disciplines, although they include methods characteristic of the
social sciences. Another borderline discipline is history,
traditionally regarded as central to the humanities but moving
increasingly in the direction of social science. It should also be
noted that several disciplines categorized administratively as
social sciences, such as cultural anthropology, sociology, political
science, archaeology, and parts of economics, in fact often include
qualitative descriptions and analyses of the types regarded as
characteristic of the humanities.
Administrative distinctions among disciplines do not reflect
natural divisions among kinds of knowledge; instead, they are
historically and culturally contingent artifacts, which inevitably
incorporate a degree of arbitrariness and stereotyping. One theme
running through this book is that the supposed contrasts between
methodologies in the sciences and the humanities are often
overdrawn; in particular, that the methods used in the social
sciences include more humanistic and evaluative elements than is
commonly supposed. However, the present chapter includes
methodological reflections from disciplines of philosophy, history,
and literature, generally categorized as humanities. These
disciplines are quite diverse but reflection on their methods
reveals some parallels across the disciplines as they have
evolved over the past four decades in response to feminist
challenges.

FEMINIST METHODOLOGY AS CRITIQUE OF

ANDROCENTRISM
Western feminist scholarship in the humanities at first took the
form of a revolt against the exclusion of women and the culturally
feminine from traditional Western ideals of what it means to be
human. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, feminist historians
challenged the presentation of Western history as a narrative of
men’s achievements, an unending parade of kings, generals, and
statesmen. Similarly, feminist literary critics pointed to
overwhelmingly male literary representations of heroes, facing
distinctively masculine predicaments and coming of age or

22
proving themselves through distinctively masculine adventures; if
women in literature had adventures, the critics noted, they were
typically sexual adventures. Feminist philosophers pointed out
that Western philosophy imagined the ideal human as male; the
ideal knower was a man of reason; the ideal citizen was a male
property-owning warrior. If philosophers discussed women as
knowers, it was generally to derogate their reasoning capacities
by portraying them as emotional and intuitive; if they noticed
women’s work, which made possible the leisure and wealth of the
ideal male citizen, they represented it as closer to nature than
men’s and less than fully human.
Feminists responded to these exclusions by revising the
humanities to include women and the culturally feminine. Feminist
critics began to focus on portrayals of women and gender in
literature and also to study the work of women writers. Feminist
philosophers began to challenge philosophical construction of the
feminine as inferior to the masculine and to recuperate the work of
long-forgotten women philosophers. A few women had always
been present in traditional histories, mostly warriors and queens
(or warrior queens) such as Joan of Arc, Catherine the Great,
Cleopatra, and Boadicea; however, feminist historians began to
focus also on more ordinary women in those spheres of life
culturally defined as feminine. They supplemented diplomatic and
military histories with social and family histories.
Feminist work in the humanities was conceived originally as a
project of inclusion and balance. Its values were those of equality
and androgyny, and it insisted that women were as fully human as
men, including being as capable of participating in humanities
scholarship. However, the feminist project of expanding the
humanities canon provoked queries about why male-dominant
ideals of humanity had been presented and accepted for so long.
Could it be because most artists and humanities scholars had
been male, producing art and knowledge for overwhelmingly
masculine audiences? Methodological questions began to be
raised about the “male gaze” of artists and audiences and about
what it might mean to “read as a woman.” Philosopher Janice
Moulton argues that philosophy’s dominant method, the adversary
paradigm, reflects values that are culturally masculine; she points
out some limitations of this method, which facilitates silencing
people with less social power and confidence, including many

23
women. Feminist concerns about exclusion developed into
concerns about bias and misrepresentation.

GYNOCENTRIC METHODOLOGY
Feminist scholars of the 1970s and early 1980s quickly
discovered that expanding the canon required more than simply
inserting materials dealing with or authored by women. In an
often-quoted phrase, feminist scholarship is not just a matter of
adding women and stirring. As Joan Kelly-Gadol points out,
women’s lives cannot always be understood through categories
developed to make sense of men’s lives; for instance, periods
traditionally categorized as times of progress in Western history
were often times when the status of women declined. Declaring
that women are fully human means more than insisting that
women are capable of performing men’s activities and living up to
male standards; this simply pushes women into a masculine mold.
Some argued that the male-biased ideals that have pervaded the
Western humanities must be challenged and supplemented or
even replaced by more gynocentric ideals.
Gynocentric feminist scholarship sought to transfer women from
the margins to the center of the humanities. Its methodology
called for rebuilding the humanities from women’s perspective.
The new canon would be informed not only by feminist critiques of
androcentrism but also by distinctively feminine perspectives,
methods, and values. Thus, in the 1980s the ethics of care was
promoted as a distinctively feminine way of doing ethics. A classic
example of the gynocentric approach is artist Judy Chicago’s
heroic-scale installation, The Dinner Party, which features an
enormous triangular table set for thirty-nine women. The
installation utilizes media that are culturally associated with the
feminine, porcelain plates and intricate textiles, and each plate
features an image based on the butterfly, symbolizing the central
core of a vagina.
Gynocentric feminist methodology was also known as
“difference feminism.” It recognized that gender differences are
also inequalities, so that men and whatever is categorized as
masculine receive disproportionate honor, authority, and power,
and women and whatever is culturally defined as feminine are
degraded and subordinated. Gynocentric feminist methodology

24
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Title: The Yale Literary Magazine (Vol. LXXXVIII, No. 8, May

1923)

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YALE

LITERARY MAGAZINE (VOL. LXXXVIII, NO. 8, MAY 1923) ***
Vol. LXXXVIII No. 8

The
Yale Literary Magazine
Conducted by the
Students of Yale University.

“Dum mens grata manet, nomen laudesque Yalenses

Cantabunt Soboles, unanimique Patres.”

May, 1923.
 New Haven: Published by the Editors.
Printed at the Van Dyck Press, 121-123 Olive St., New Haven.

Price: Thirty-five Cents.

Entered as second-class matter at the New Haven Post Office.

ESTABLISHED 1818

MADISON AVENUE COR. FORTY-FOURTH STREET NEW

YORK
Clothing for the Tennis Player and the Golfer

Flannel Trousers, Knickers, Special Shirts, Hosiery, Shoes

Hats, Caps
Shetland Sweaters, Personal Luggage
Men’s and Boys’ Garments for
Every requirement of Dress or Sporting Wear
Ready made or to Measure

The next visit of our Representative

to the HOTEL TAFT
will be on May 30 and 31
 BOSTON
Tremont cor. Boylston
NEWPORT
220 Bellevue Avenue

THE YALE CO-OP.

A Story of Progress
At the close of the fiscal year, July, 1921, the total membership
was 1187.
For the same period ending July, 1922, the membership was
1696.
On May 1st, 1923, the membership was 1922, and men are still
joining.
Why stay out when a membership will save you manifold times
the cost of the fee.
 THE YALE LITERARY
MAGAZINE

Contents
MAY, 1923

Leader Laird Shields

Goldsborough 245
The Acolyte Herbert W. Hartman, Jr. 249
Chopin Arthur Milliken 250
The Bells of Antwerp Morris Tyler 251
Rhapsody Arthur Milliken 253
Offering D. G. Carter 254
Gabrielle Bartholow Lewis P. Curtis 255
A Little Learning Laird Goldsborough 268
Notabilia: On the Francis Bergen Maxwell E. Foster
Medal 273
Book Reviews 274
Editor’s Table 277
 The Yale Literary Magazine

Vol. LXXXVIII MAY, 1923 No. 8

EDITORS

WALTER EDWARDS HOUGHTON, JR.

LAIRD SHIELDS GOLDSBOROUGH DAVID GILLIS CARTER
MORRIS TYLER NORMAN REGINALD JAFFRAY

BUSINESS MANAGERS

GEORGE W. P. HEFFELFINGER WALTER CRAFTS

 Leader
There be two handles to all things in this world, one called
the good, and one the bad. But a man may lay hold of
anything by whichever handle shall please him best.—Old
Stoic Maxim.

It has been usual, in the past, for Editors of The Yale Literary
Magazine to express themselves as strongly opposed to something,
when engaged in writing a leader. Two recent leaders have varied
this procedure to the extent of declaring the opposition of their
authors to opposition, but the principle of being opposed to
something remains. At the present moment, it occurs to us that it
might be interesting to suppose correct a few of the pessimistic
opinions held by that rather noisy group whom we shall call The
Troubled Spirits. On the basis of these suppositions, we shall then
try to show that, bad as things are, there still remain a few bright
spots lurking in unsuspected corners of the very evils whose
existence we are admitting, for the sake of argument.
A convenient starting point may perhaps be found in the
Compulsory Sunday Chapel question. It can be urged that the two
services now provided prevent anyone from claiming that he is
forced to listen to propaganda in the form of a sermon, on Sunday.
But The Troubled Spirits, whose positions we are now admitting,
regard the matter differently. If we are correctly informed, they
consider it a fact, however unpleasant, that the average Yale student
feels a very real, if unofficial, compulsion to attend whichever
Sunday service is held at a later hour than the other. The Troubled
Spirits defy the University to hold the short service at eleven o’clock,
and the long one at ten—believing that their position would be more
than vindicated by the lack of attendance at the earlier service. In
short, so far as The Troubled Spirits are concerned, Sunday service
is at eleven o’clock, and contains a sermon varying in length from
twenty minutes to half an hour.
But after allowing all that, and allowing, too, that the visiting
clergymen are attempting to foist opinions of their own upon the
undergraduate body, there is still something to be said. In the first
place, we imagine that The Troubled Spirits, on leaving college, will
perform their undoubted duty of attacking Christianity with every
resource in their power. Hence, were we in their place, we should
ask nothing better than to have all the foremost of our enemies
brought before us, at great expense, and exposed in such a manner
that we could most easily detect the flaws in their armor, which we
were later to pierce.
Secondly, there will be certain of The Troubled Spirits whose ardor
will evaporate on leaving college, and who will allow the public
opinion of their friends and relatives to force them to church again
every Sunday. To these we should like to say that observations upon
the sermons of more than one pitifully underpaid clergyman have
convinced us, from The Troubled Spirits’ point of view, that in this
respect “the worst is yet to come”. However stupid and unthinking
The Troubled Spirits may find the highly cultured, and in many cases
highly paid, gentlemen who speak at Yale, they will find the less
highly paid, and not infrequently less cultured, type of man to whom
they are destined, infinitely more stupid, and perhaps positively
unpalatable. The flowers of rhetoric, when blended skillfully into a
delicately fragrant and perfumed discourse, are, indeed, far more
expensive than a bouquet of orchids—few of us will ever be able to
afford them again. And so, after a lapse of years, I can imagine an
old and embittered Troubled Spirit attempting a Drydonian
paraphrase to this effect:—

Battell to some faint meaning made pretense,

Elsewhere, they never deviate into sense.

That, of course, would happen to very few Troubled Spirits, but it is

not impossible.
 Having attempted to prove, let us hope with some slight measure
of success, that even the most troubled of The Troubled Spirits may
find some crumb of consolation in present-day Sunday Chapel
conditions, let us pass on to another example. Perhaps, by way of
trivial digression, it might be interesting to speak of the feeling
among The Troubled Spirits that Osborn Hall should be summarily
destroyed as a relic of a past and barbarous age. Here, though we
might admit the contentions of The Troubled Spirits as before, we
think it more serviceable merely to recommend that The Troubled
Spirits go and look at Osborn Hall. If our own spirits were troubled,
we can imagine nothing more soothing than to look at Osborn Hall
for the first time. Around the front of the main entrance runs a band
of stonework carved with animals and foliage exactly resembling the
woodcuts in The Troubled Spirits’ favorite magazines. One of the
beavers, in particular, is gnawing away at a capitalistic grapevine
with a communistic fury only to be called prophetic. Again, we have
never seen anything more “advanced” than the exquisite mosaiced
representation of a steamboat complete with paddle-wheels, which
adorns the under surface of one of the arches. It is exactly the same
thing as the “Painting Of A Train of Gear Wheels” sold recently in
Paris as the latest example of Da Da. It seems, then, that this matter
might very well rest by allowing The Troubled Spirits to admire
Osborn Hall as a sample of the latest phase in unrepressed art,
while the rest of us respect it as an example of what our
grandfathers were fond of, and of what our grandsons will treat with
veneration. But to return to things less trivial—
As this is written, the Senior class have voted that the most
important thing needed by Yale is football victories, and we are, for
once, in accord with The Troubled Spirits in thinking that our gridiron
defeats are dreadful things. They may not go so far as to admit, with
The Troubled Spirits, that football at Yale has become not the most
manly but the most sentimental of sports, yet they do attach great
weight to the matter. The Troubled Spirits, I understand, go much
further, and assert that year after year the University is expected to
have confidence, trust, or perhaps blind faith in the team. They
would have us believe that Yale has been taught to accept defeat
with a pious resignation that savors of slave morality. And then they
point to other fields of endeavor. Is the student given a long cheer by
his parents before going into an examination, and assured that it
won’t matter anyhow if he fails? Does the greatest of generals
receive the same amount of encouragement from his people no
matter if his success be large or small? The Troubled Spirits have
put these questions to many of us, and, without waiting for reply,
answered them almost vulgarly in the negative. They remark that it is
fundamentally self-evident that one must spur one’s charger, not
feed him lumps of sugar, before going into battle. And therefore they
would attempt to excite the student body to such a pitch that to be a
member of a team defeated by Harvard would not be an wholly
enviable post.
But, even supposing there was a word of truth in these extreme
views, it seems to us that, while The Senior Class, The Troubled
Spirits, and ourselves are agreed in desiring a football victory as
soon as possible, we may as well take pleasure in a certain aspect
of these defeats which is very desirable in a quiet way. It has always
been held that football victories help to stimulate enrollment, and it is
universally admitted that the enrollment of the University is far too
large as it is. Likewise, victorious Harvard is swamped with “race
problems” and what not, which do not trouble us. We are permitted
to jog along without attacks from “degraded races, who are trying to
cast off the yoke of oppression with the key of learning”, and want a
look through our keyhole. That, at least, is a consoling thought. May
it bring a little peace to The Troubled Spirits.
LAIRD SHIELDS GOLDSBOROUGH.
 The Acolyte

Shall we then consecrate those things we know,

Clinging to patterns with complacent ease,—
Or, tired with feigning meekness on our knees,
Rise up in might and confidently go,
Leaving the rest to kneel? The candles glow
Whether or not we speak our litanies.
Yet wiser men say hope cannot appease
The lasting voice that chants, “God wills it so!”

Rather I think our fitful prayers ascend

To Him who lights the candles of our Love,
Knowing we seek in Him our human best:
Thus does the worth of God in man defend
Our emulation, make us walk above
Man’s world with Him while kneeling with the rest.

HERBERT W. HARTMAN, JR.

 Chopin

Ethereal and pale, pure melody,

Was Shelley’s song, while Keats could never sing
Without more warmth and depth of coloring:
But Chopin soars unshackled, truly free,
For music is a higher poetry,
Not bound by clumsy words, so it may wing
Its way through groves celestial or cling
To the warm couch of wine and revelry.

I hear the sea wind crooning; far below

The cold stars shiver on the ocean floor.
What nation is that rising ’gainst the foe
In revolution fierce? What antique lore
Do those bells toll? Whence comes this overflow
Of tones so sweet that we can bear no more?

ARTHUR MILLIKEN.
 The Bells of Antwerp
Why do you call to me,
Bells of the centuries, mellowed with yearning and joy o’er the
ages?
What is your secret that charms each new listener back to life’s
pages
Men scrawled out in blood and carousel, love and the brine of
the north wind?

...

“We are the keepers of secrets, sighed to us out of the

darkness;
Guardians of clandestine loves that will burn past all human
remembrance,
Told by our tongues that rejoice in the undying ardor of telling.
Ancient conspiracy ran to our doors, we appointing the hour,
Passed through the arras and knelt for the gesture that spelt
absolution,
Forgetting that we spied the drama to curse and proclaim at our
pleasure.
We are the tyrants that reigned in the city of mantle and doublet
And hose; when the gem-crusted baldric that sheltered the
dagger was slung
’Cross a heart that beat steadfast and calm with a faith most
eternally constant.
Each of us carols an air that was born of a vision-mad organist,
Preaches the infinite word that God whispered to man when his
uplifted
Eyes caught a flash of eternity granted as part of the covenant.
Joyful our voices and kind to the heart that is sad with contrition,
Bringing a hope in the good that is past with the quieter ages,
Soothing humanity’s fears with our message that tells of a
future.
Harsh and unmeaning and cruel is our song to the souls that are
stiff
With a pride that turns faith in the mind to a stone in the heart of
the thinker,
Blinded by twilight within, which shuts out all sunshine and
laughter.
Ever unchanging our call, to the winds, the clouds and the
rainbow,
Rings forth in song at the moments that God as His sentinels
ordered;
Now we are one with the jet-wingéd night and the cloud-mantled
sunrise.”

...

“Thus do we call to you,

Bells of the centuries, mellowed with yearning and joy o’er the
ages.
These be our secrets that charm each new listener back to life’s
pages
Men scrawled out in blood and carousel, love and the brine of
the north wind.”

MORRIS TYLER.
 Rhapsody

Moon-lit sea coast, wild rose blowing,

Smack of salt, and gray gull’s cry:
Night that is wild with the exultation
Of the bellowing breath from a cool, clear sky:

Green waves swinging down the moon-path

Pause and lean and break and roar,
Making full majestic music,
As they pound the sounding shore.

Oh, to forget! half-mad with moon-light,

And toss with the cold waves where they go,
Cedar green and molten silver,
Tireless tumult of ebb and flow,
Rapturous, wild, eternal rhythm,
To and fro.
ARTHUR MILLIKEN.
 Offering

I will go into the city of tired eyes,

And tell my thoughts to each pedestrian,
And on its towers, beneath its leaden skies,
Inscribe a little message for all men.
And few shall read its modest letters there,
And none of them shall ever understand,
Yet all I will perform, nor greatly care,
For I may not be long within the land.
D. G. CARTER.