The Coalition of Women in German: An Interpretive History and Celebration

Jeanette Clausen The Coalition of Women in German: An Interpretive History and Celebration* In this essay I review the history of the Coalition of Women in German: our beginnings as an organization ; goals and projects; relationships to the Women 's Studies movement and the women's movement in general; relationships to other academic associations; the structure of the organization; our accomplishments and our goals for the future. This is a subjective report; my colleagues in WiG would see certain things differently or with a different emphasis, since our experiences are not identical. The history of WiG consists of the concrete experiences and struggles we have shared and continue to share. I write in solidarity with and in celebration of WiG and our work toward a feminist transformation of our lives and our profession . Early Days WiG's beginnings are embedded in developments in the women's movement, both in the US and in Germany, and in the growth of Women's Studies as an academic area in the 1970s. Feminist GerÂœanists meeting informally at the MLA and AATG conventions discovered shared concerns and discussed their need for more communication with others interested in both Women's Studies and German Studies. A discussion at the November 1974 MLA meeting led to the first organizational step: several women at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) agreed to send out a newsletter announcing a special meeting at the MLA convention that year. At that meeting , ideas for collective projects and plans for future conference programs were discussed. The topics chosen reflect some of the major directions of Women's Studies at the time: feminist critiques of teaching materials, especially German textbooks; feminist pedagogy ; feminist critiques of works by major authors, and so on. The name "Women in German" also came out of the discussion at this first meeting. Women in German was chosen over Germanistik, since the latter term applies only to German Studies at postsecondary institutions and thus would seem to exclude high school 1 teachers and others not employed or studying at a university. Like the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA), founded in 1976-77, which aims to promote feminist education and research "at all educational levels and in every educational setting,"l the intent was to be more inclusive and democratic, to expand the traditional boundaries of the "academy'.' And, for much the same reasons that feminist academic programs were named Women's Studies, our organization is called Women in German, not "feminists," though the group's aim was explicitly feminist from the start. People believed, and not without reason, that the term "feminist" might scare away potential members , especially pre-feminist women ("I'm not a feminist but I believe in equal pay for equal work.") The name,and the abbreviation WiG, have since become firmly established.2 WiG Newsletter and Collective The Women in German newsletter, which appeared regularly after that first (1974) issue, was important as a means of spreading information about the activities of the budding organization. A collective of students and one professor (later two) at the University of Wisconsin assumed responsibility for preparing and distributing the newsletter. After the first three issues, it became clear that the newsletter could no longer be sent free of charge, and subscribers were asked to pay a minimal fee. The list of subscribers grew quickly, to over two hundred in two years. Current (1983) paid membership is about 350. Besides reports on meetings, conference announcements , calls for papers, announcements of new publications , etc., the newsletter also contained information about the women's movement in Germany. It was through the WiG newsletter that many of us first heard of the West German feminist magazines Courage and Emma, about the Women's Summer Universities in Berlin (Frauensommerunis, since 1976), about German feminist song groups, women's bookstores, cafes, and many other cultural and political projects and events not reported in other feminist publications (let alone the academic journals of our discipline) in the US. At the time (mid-1970s), Women's Studies programs in the US, which often originated through the efforts of students and faculty in disciplines such as English, Communications, History, Psychology 2 and Sociology, were more...