During the Spring 2007 semester, I had the privilege to work with a Women's Studies course that produced a "feminist memoir project." For their culminating project, students were to use the weblog form to publish biographies of living women sociologists, whose voices may not be as well documented as their male counterparts in the discipline of Sociology. Dr. Patricia Wasielewski conceived of the project and enlisted the expertise of our Instructional Technology Manager, Catherine Walker, and myself in order to provide students with the additional technology and research skills and tools for the endeavor.

In our first meeting, Dr. Wasielewski and I discussed the evolution of the “feminist memoir” assignment.  Firstly, the field of Sociology has been dominated by male voices even though there have been many prominent women scholars.  Secondly, a feminist memoir encapsulates the concept of the “personal is political.”  And, finally, the project would valorize the vital work of a generation of activists/scholars while still active.  Three questions arose from this meeting that would shape the formal library research instruction session.

Where are the best places to find biographical information about their assigned sociologist?

How to find and use secondary sources to determine the impact of their assigned sociologist in the field of Sociology and/or other fields?

How does one discover biographical information through primary and secondary sources?

The next step was to join Dr. Wasielewski’s WMST 227 class for a consensus-building session to determine the elements of their blog sites.  In the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Redlands, the practice of consensus building in the classroom is fairly prevalent, emanating from the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies.  The structure determined during this class session included thirteen categories of which each student would include on their individual blogs for their specific sociologist.

1. Biography/Autobiography Information

2. The Way I Became an Academic (roles models, historical influences, career path, etc.)

3. Fun and Interesting Facts

4. Teaching

5. Activism/Community Action

6. Intellectual Influences

7. Research (methodology, major works, findings of note, etc.)

8. Accomplishments (from the sociologist’s perspective)

9. Significance to Me (Why do you, as the student, find her work relevant?)

10. Current Status and Goals

11. Thoughts on the Future of Discipline and Feminism

13. Useful Links

From these two meetings I was able to develop an instruction session that would meet both the perceived needs of the students and what Dr. Wasielewski and I felt were necessary.  (Ideally I would have spent portions of 2-3 class periods addressing all that was covered in one session.  Thus I was not entirely embedded.)

My outline for the class was a whirlwind of finding biographical information, primary sources, and secondary scholarly material: WMST227_Outline.pdf.  Not included on the outline is the brief discussion regarding finding biographical information on the freely available Internet.  We concentrated on academic institutional biographies and/or CVs.  A handout of the CRAAP Test was also distributed and briefly discussed. 

After the session, I worked with many of the students individually over the remainder of the semester.  This, I believe, was the added value of being more incorporated into their class.  The students truly felt I was a resource, having been a part of the process from the beginning. 

Dr. Wasielewski and the students of WMST 227 generously agreed to share their project with a wider public: Women Sociologists.