Common Ground

Feminist Collaboration in the Academy

Edited by Elizabeth G. Peck & JoAnna Stephens Mink

Subjects: Higher Education
Paperback : 9780791435120, 298 pages, October 1997
Hardcover : 9780791435113, 298 pages, November 1997

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Table of contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Elizabeth G. Peck and JoAnna Stephens Mink

1. "Educate, Organize, and Agitate":
A Historical Overview of Feminist Collaboration in Great Britain and America, 1640–1930

Melodie Andrews

2. Beyond Feminism: An Intercultural Challenge for Transforming the Academy

Paula D. Nesbitt and Linda E. Thomas

3. Writing against the Romantic Grain

Carol Shiner Wilson and Joel Haefner

4. In League with Each Other: The Theory and Practice of Feminist Collaboration

Carol J. Singley and Susan Elizabeth Sweeney

5. What's Feminist about It? Reflections on Collaboration in Editing and Writing

Helen Cafferty and Jeanette Clausen

6. Self-Connection Shared: Integrating Collaborative and Autonomous Impulses within Feminist Projects

Kimberly A. McCarthy and Sandra A. Steingraber

7. The Role of Talk in the Writing Process of Intimate Collaboration"

Mary Alm

8. Merge/Emerge: Collaboration in Graduate School

Constance L. Russell, Rachel Plotkin, and Anne C. Bell

9. Lesbian Collaboration and the Choreography of Desire

Angela M. Estes and Kathleen Margaret Lant

10. Common Ground, Difficult Terrain: Confronting Difference through Feminist Collaboration

Mary Ann Leiby and Leslie J. Henson

11. Collaborative Leadership: Feminist Possibility, Feminist Oxymoron

Diane Lichtenstein and Virginia Powell

12. Reflections on Scholarly Collaboration

Anne O'Meara and Nancy R. MacKenzie

13. Going against Nature? Women's Resistance to Collaborative Learning

Sally Barr Ebest

14. Revisioning Space: From Territoriality to Collaboration

Elaine Allen Karls and Roslyn Z. Weedman

15. Feminist Theory and Practice and the Pedantic I/Eye

Jamie Barlowe and Ruth Hottell

Biographical Notes

Index

This examination of feminist collaboration reconceptualizes ideas about creativity, cooperation, and competition in higher education.

Description

Placed within the context of the academic environment, this multi-focused book identifies students as active contributors and learners; faculty as researchers, teachers, and learners; and administrators as a synthesis of all three modes of collaboration. While focusing on the mutuality of educational enterprises, Common Ground raises provocative questions about the dynamics of gender and cooperation at various levels of academia. It reveals the transformative power of collaboration by challenging traditional notions of single authorship and beliefs about knowledge as individually owned and acquired. By offering different perspectives on feminism and collaboration, this book establishes the basis for re-thinking Romantic notions about creativity, re-conceptualizing conventional ideas regarding competition, and re-reading traditional hierarchies and authoritarian relationships.

Elizabeth G. Peck is Associate Professor of English at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. JoAnna Stephens Mink is Associate Professor of English at Mankato State University. She is the coeditor of Communication and Women's Friendships: Parallels and Intersections in Literature and Life; The Significance of Sibling Relationships in Literature; and Joinings and Disjoinings: The Significance of Marital Status in Literature.

Reviews

"This is an extremely important topic because it deals with a way of teaching and writing and learning, i.e., collaboration, that may prove to transform the academy; this could be one of the first handbooks for revolution without in any way sounding extreme. In its range of collaborative relationships, it speaks to the different roles that professors play as teacher, scholar, and participant in college projects and activities. It suggests that collaboration is a way of integrating these roles and cross-fertilizing ideas. This book may inspire innovation in the classroom." — Meta Plotnik, Nassau Community College

"For those intrigued by the possibilities of collaborative teaching or scholarship, this book will provide a wealth of models and approaches as inspiration." — H-Net Reviews (H-USA)