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[Kenneth Adams] This interview will be an important contribution to the 40th anniversary celebration of Women's Studies at

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the University of Delaware. And after that, a vital resource in the UD archives available to future scholars studying women's history.

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And we start with a brief review of you, Margaret Anderson, growing up as a girl in the San Francisco Bay Area and the influences of your

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early years there on your later academic and life choices. [Margaret Andersen] I guess the first thing I would say is that I'm

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the first-person to graduate from college in my family, including my extended family. All though I must have set the trend

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because most did after me. But education was always extremely important to my parents. They emphasized education,

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though they did not have much education beyond high school, if any, themselves. And so I was always

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encouraged to do well in school. I loved school as a young kid. I don't think I ever well, I probably did, but I don't think

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I complained about homework. And then when I was ten, we left the San Francisco area and moved to small town in northwest Georgia,

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where I lived for three or four years and then from there moved to Boston and then back to Georgia again.

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So I moved to very different environments. And at the time they were also very different racial environments. And what I remember noticing

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were patterns about what I would now call race relations that I had no idea that's what it was at the time because

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I just thought it was odd. I grew up in an integrated neighborhood in Boston, integrated by Asian/white, moved to Georgia

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during the early years of the Civil Rights Movement, when Jim Crow segregation very much characterized my schools.

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My school was not desegregated till my senior year of high school, and then moved to Boston, which was as segregated as the South,

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though not in a legal sense. So I think in some ways those early experiences of both valuing education

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but noticing my environment later shaped some of the choices that I made about my own career. [KA] Did you have an opportunity to discuss these things

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with your parents and what was their reactions to your observations? [MA] You know, it was not something we talked about and honestly, I'm not sure I was even

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analyzing it at the time, in fact, I know it wasn't analyzing it. I was a kid just trying to fit in like most young kids would be.

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And so it wasn't until college and later graduate school that I started to really make sense of some of the things that I had seen then.

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[KA] You left the Bay Area when you were 10 approximately? [MA] 1958 [KA] OK that's way before the free speech movement. I was going to ask you about the free speech movement. [MA] No, no. [KA] Talking about Jackie Goldberg and Mario Savio

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[MA] That was all going on while I was in college. [KA] Okay. Great You received your

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BA from Georgia State University, right? Were feminism and civil rights issues of concern? Did you openly express your opinion at Georgia State?

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[MA] I have to put some context around that too. I was never a full-time, well I was a full-time student,

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but I was also a full-time worker. When I was at Georgia State, I did my freshman year at Emory University. I transferred to Georgia State when I

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had to start paying for it myself. And I worked full-time as a department secretary. So around me in the culture and the society

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at the time, I'm the kid in the sixties, where all of the social movements that we now know of in the sixties. So that was certainly in my environment,

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but I was primarily a secretary, very low on the totem pole, not terribly engaged with student movements. I was on a campus that

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was not a residential campus. It was an urban campus where most people worked full time. So it was not until

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probably my junior year in my sociology classes when I really started to consciously think about and analyze those movements.

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And they were very much part of the education that I got in Sociology then. [KA] So some people like Gloria Steinem at Georgia State, were you one of the few ones or?

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[MA] loria Steinem wasn't out yet. You're, you've got your history dates wrong. [KA] Yes.

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[MA] I graduated in 1970. And so really it was in graduate school when the feminist movement was really blossoming.

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So I had, I think I counted once. I only had two women professors my entire undergraduate and graduate career. I never read anything in Women's Studies.

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It didn't exist. We made it up and made it up actually after I came to Delaware. [KA] You did your graduate work when you moved to Amherst, went to the University of Massachusetts, where you got your Masters and your doctorate?

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[MA] right. [KA] What were your activities on campus? Were you affiliated with? Were there activities that engaged you? [MA] I had my nose to

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the ground stone, grindstone. I was a graduate student. I did work as a volunteer for a time in what was called,

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I think it was the Pioneer Valley Women's Center that worked as a support system for women for a variety of reasons;

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welfare, family planning, birth control, abortion was illegal. So I did volunteer there. And during the time I was in graduate school,

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I did become part of a consciousness raising group through my affiliation with the Women's Center. So feminism was bubbling up

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all around me as a graduate student. My studies in graduate school were really focused on racial inequality. There was nothing on women in

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the curriculum, absolutely nothing. But my interest in race and racial inequality meant that we were asking a lot of questions of

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professors about how some of these concepts and theories might apply to women. But there was

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no such thing as studying women when I was in graduate school. [KA] While you were still working on your PhD you came to the University of Delaware

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to begin work as an instructor while still working on your PhD at Massachusetts What brought you to UD and were you aware of the 1972 Women at the University of Delaware report also known as the Colburn report?

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[MA] I came to the University of Delaware because I needed a job. Honestly. I had finished four years of graduate school,

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exhausted the funding I could get as a teaching assistant, and I still had to write my dissertation. So I came here on what was then called a

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contingency contract where you're hired into a tenure-track position, but you don't convert to assistant professor until you actually

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have your degree in hand. So I finished my dissertation and defended that in October of my second year here,

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and then immediately became an assistant professor. [KA] Okay. How active were the women on campus?

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Both faculty, administration, and students when you got here? [MA] It was burgeoning. Ok. There were close connections then between those relatively small

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number of women faculty who were here and professional women on our campus who worked very closely together and started,

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well, Women's Studies existed. We had been teaching Women's Studies courses. There was a Women's Studies program. It was quite small.

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The director of that program left precipitously either my first or second year here. I can't remember.

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I mean, honestly, most of my first two years here I was really focused on getting my job secured,

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finishing my dissertation, learning how to teach, trying to figure out how I was going to live in

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what I thought was a very conservative environment. And that was where I was paying attention. But many of us were sitting

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around tables and in occasional meetings starting to think about how we could grow more resources and support systems for women on campus,

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both as academic programs, as offices of support. And I very much became part of those discussions over time.

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[KA] Do you feel there have some, in Women's Studies there've been some discussions about women in academia and the first couple of years they sort of compromise

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because they have to look at tenure like everyone does. They can't really take the activist route until they get security. Did you find that to be the case for you?

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[MA] It's not an either or thing. I mean, you know, particularly when I started here, you saw had to be an activist to survive.

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I mean, it wasn't like you had just the choice to solely focus on your career because you had to make a place for

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yourself in an institution that was not necessarily amenable to your interests, to your lifestyle, to who you were.

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So to me, those weren't really either or things. But you also have to think about what you mean by activists.

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Were we out demonstrating in the streets? No. But we were really working through the institution to try to create new ways

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that women could have fuller lives here. [KA] Okay. In 1973/74 the Women's Studies interdisciplinary committee

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was formalized and the Commission on the Status of Women was formed. What do you remember about those early years, especially the University's reaction? Was it supportive

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or resistance and what was the student reaction to that? [MA] You know, I really don't know. I came in the fall of 74,

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so I do remember early on becoming a member of the commission, but it's hard to answer that question because I'm looking back too far.

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I wasn't here in 1973. [KA] Okay. We'll go on to the next one. We'll go to 1975, how about that? Okay.

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32 faculty served as members of the Women's Studies Committee. What was the purpose of the Women's Studies Committee in those years?

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[MA] you know, I don't remember. It mean you're asked I mean, you know, I really don't remember. I'm gonna go in 1975.

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My goodness. I mean, what was I even doing in that year? It was my second year here. I mean, you know, I don't remember

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the formal structures that were in place at that time. [KA] Maybe from a general, just a generic point of view Did you feel that some of the

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What were the feminist politics of the sixties and early seventies influencing the formation of the Women's program. Do you recall any in particular that you drew inspiration or guidance from?

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[MA] In my own life, not the University's life I tripped into it all when I was still a graduate student at U Mass.

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There were no courses about women in the Sociology department, not one. And the women students on that campus, undergraduate students were advocating

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some work on women be included in their education. And so I had had some teaching experience. I was asked by the department chair

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to develop a course that was then called the Sociology of Sex and Gender. I had nine students in it. And it was the first course taught on women

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in that department at UMass was a great course, but nine students, it's hard to imagine. Oh, so I remember that.

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But when I came here, remember I was hired here to teach courses on race. There were no courses on

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women in the Sociology department. I ultimately created a course here called the Sociology of Sex and Gender and started

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working with other women and other departments. I was also only the second woman hired in this department.

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Well, third, I take it back there was a woman who had been hired as department chair, but she became a dean

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right before I got here. So I was the second woman hired who was actually in the department in 1974. [KA] In 1976, I'm not going to go every year I promise,

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Dean Gouldner sent you, Gloria Hull, Sandra Harding Mae Carter, Beth Haslett, Barbara Kelly, Linda Geist Linda Geist and Bonnie Scott on a retreat to Lancaster.

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Can you share with us your overall recollection of that experience and a brief summary of your group's recommendation? [MA] Well, what had happened was the person who was

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the director of Women Studies, who was the second, since I had come here, had also precipitously resigned. And so there was a crisis for what was

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then the budding Women's Studies program. And so the dean asked this little blue ribbon committee, many of us very junior professors,

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which you would never do now because junior faculty really need to focus on their work. She sent us off on a two-day weekend retreat,

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asking us to come back with recommendations on how we should structure the Women's Studies program.

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Interestingly, and I really love Helen Gouldner, she's now passed. But we all thought she probably thought we'd come

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back with a recommendation to get rid of the program. But in fact, we came back with a recommendation that there

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should be faculty director with a full-time professional staff member that they had not had before to help with a lot of

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the community outreach and programming and things that happen in women's studies that made it at the time very different than academic programs.

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Because of the link between scholarship and action that was at the core of Women's Studies. And so we went to that retreat.

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I remember it well and fondly, group of women from very different disciplines, in some cases different backgrounds, thrown together for two days

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to come up with a plan, which we did. And in that discussion, and the other thing I remember is driving back from the retreat

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through the beautiful hills of Chester County and ultimately Cecil County. was wondering, wow, would I take this on as director.

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Would I consider doing that when I don't even have tenure yet? And then I did become director of the program.

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[KA] We'll get to that in just a second. I want to ask you, following up on your recommendations in 1978, the Women's Studies minor was created how did that come about?

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What hurdles do you recall encountering in the development of the minor? Why was the choice made to pursue a minor and not a major in Women's Studies?

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[MA] I don't remember. I mean, looking back, I don't know what we were thinking at the time.

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It's too long ago. It would have been a very difficult thing to sell to the Faculty Senate,

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I think to create an entire major in Women's Studies, I think at the time, including Helen Gouldner

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thought Women's Studies was a fad, that it would pass as the women's movement went its way. You know, there was some hostility

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toward courses. We had very little by way of budget. We had no faculty lines. So we were really piecing something together.

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And what you do when you're faced with that circumstance is work with the resources you have, which could be the existing courses

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that people were teaching in departments. And create an interdisciplinary minor of only six credits that would draw students into your program.

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And I know I've always thought if you start to build a good program that people want to come to from that it

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can grow and develop and get bigger. But there simply would not have been either the resources or political support for a

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full-blown major at the time. [KA] Are you referring to the administration or fellow faculty? [MA] All the above. It was a very different context. And frankly, you know,

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that was a time when the scholarship was new that was a time when I could read as a sociologist, everything written in

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every discipline about women, everything. I can't read everything in my own field now. So you have to keep in mind what you know, how new this was.

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We were making up a new field. There were, I think until 1975, there were no journals that published scholarship

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on women. Signs was produced, I believe 1975 was the first issue, and it was revolutionary. You could pick up a journal that published

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very good scholarship in every field and we devoured it, right? I don't know that we were even intellectually ready for

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a major yet. [KA] Did some of that growth. You talk about Sociology and race, the interconnection between race, class and gender. Some of your colleagues and peers were African Americans,

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or they might've been lesbian. In networking with these people, did you come to a consensus that you couldn't , you couldn't study one without studying the other?

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What was that early reaction to the cross-connection [MA] I've always felt them connected. Again, remember I started as

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a race scholar, right? The women, white women were being very much criticized not just here, but nationally, for excluding women of

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color from their thinking, from their scholarship. There were those tensions within the women's movement.

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And I'm not sure that everybody immediately embraced the need to be looking at race and sexuality. And that, that's, that's a little more

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recent though, you know, in my own individual case, just because of my training as a scholar of racial inequality,

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it's always been central to the work that I do. [KA] You and Patricia Hill Collins have collaborated on some very salient works. You served as director of women's studies for four years,

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1981-85 one of your mandates, excuse me, was to develop academic offerings and to create a structure that would maintain the program. What were some of the

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curriculum challenges, cross-sectioning, approval, funding issues? [MA] The simple technicalities of cross section or cross-listing

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courses were problematic. I remember having to work intensely with the registrar's office to simply figure out the mechanics

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by which you could cross list the course. Now it's just people just do it. Maybe we did it, maybe we solved the problem.

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We were pioneers in lots of ways, getting support from department chairs to be able to have a faculty member

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teach a course in women's studies. Now, at the time, I would bet that all of our courses were cross-listed.

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We had an introductory course. I think the dean gave us a little bit of money to hire somebody on a course by course basis.

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Those were often senior graduate students who would teach that one introductory course. But other than that, we were very dependent on the goodwill

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of department chairs to allow someone to cross-list, a course with us. So I spent tremendous amount of time as director building the curriculum.

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And then when we started to want to structure a curriculum of our own, one of the things I first remember happened early was having introductory courses,

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both the social sciences, the arts and humanities, in science to try to diversify the disciplinary approaches we were looking at.

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That was not always easy because we had to find people who could teach them without having faculty lines.

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in the program [KA] Did you find much opposition from faculty about the legitimacy of women's studies? What was their main argument? [MA] Luckily, I don't remember.

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But the answer to that is yes, that it wasn't serious scholarship, that we weren't publishing in the mainstream journals

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because mainstream journals weren't treating it as serious scholarship. So we couldn't get into those journals. That it would be a passing fad.

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It was just political and intellectual. There were many sources of resistance to this. So then I don't remember every one of

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[KA] What do you feel was your greatest accomplishment for that time? [MA] Personally? [KA] Yes. [MA] I won't take individual credit because we really worked collectively.

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But I would say getting the program institutionalized was a major accomplishment that I'm very proud of.

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And it wasn't just the Women's Studies program, it was really during those early years when we also established what was then

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called the Office of Women's Affairs that provided support for women on campus, whether they were students, staff, or faculty that helped

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on such matters as promotion and tenure. We started running promotion and tenure workshops for anyone but women in particular,

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to know how to put a dossier together and what kind of record you would need offering support when there was a sexual harassment case.

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So Women's Studies as a program was really the academic arm, though we did other things too. We were also working to

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establish the Office of Women's Affairs. The Commission became more powerful at that time as well. So it's a multi-pronged approach.

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[KA] When you left in 1985, in your opinion, where was the UD Women's Studies program compared the northeastern universities such as UMass Amherst [MA] I would say we were

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equivalent to the very best of them. [KA] Congratulations. [MA] Thanks. [KA] I certainly think it's very strong today, Given the interdisciplinary nature of

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Women's Studies and its feminist perspective, how do you reconcile the critiques of women outside your department Sociology Has it created problems,

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challenges for you in your own discipline? How has it shaped your research and writings? [MA] That's a huge question. Could you break it down? [KA] How do you, in other words,

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what is the the did Sociology co-exist with Women's Studies in an exemplary manner or did they compete? And how has your work

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in Women's Studies shaped your research or your writing? [MA] Well for me they're one and the same. So I should say within Sociology,

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all of the things that you've asked about, about the development of Women's Studies here also have a disciplinary history. So within the discipline of Sociology,

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women and some men as allies early on in the generation right before me, actually really did everything they could do to

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make the study of what was then called Sex and Gender, you know, a part of the discipline of Sociology.

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And they were incredible struggles to do that. But again, in those early years, Sociology established

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the journal Gender in Society, which is now one of the most successful journals in the discipline. At the time that journal was created,

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they proposed to the National Association that it be sponsored as one of their journals, which they refused to do

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because they didn't take it seriously, a point they now very much regret because it turns a huge profit and that profit

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would have fallen to their coffers. So the struggles of people on this campus, as well as every other campus, were also being played

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out in the disciplines. I mean, in the generation of women before me, if you went to the national meetings, women couldn't enter the bar if

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not accompanied by a man. So there were demonstrations at the national academic conferences for simple rights like to be able

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to participate fully as citizens. You have to keep that perspective really in mind. Women and the generation right before

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me could not get academic jobs. They would end up being somebody's administrative assistant on a research project.

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So, so the struggles on campus, we're also being very much played out within the professional associations. And that included such things as

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establishing the legitimacy of an area of inquiry. In my own personal case, I published a lead article

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in the journal Signs, which everybody recognizes as a premier journal now. But at the time it didn't count heavily in

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my own tenure case because it was seen as, you know, Women's Studies stuff. So but my case is not unusual. This, this was repeated

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in many women's careers. [KA] Do you feel that today's generation of female students at the University of Delaware appreciate the nature and context of what life was like in the sixties and seventies.

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[MA] They have no clue. And in a way, I'm really glad because it was hard. It was really very hard, you know,

00:24:04.660 - 00:24:12.890

do I want them to young women to not take certain things for granted quite so easily, of course. But I also don't want

00:24:12.890 - 00:24:20.270

them to have to go through the bruises that women in my generation, and particularly the women just in front of me,

00:24:20.270 - 00:24:28.550

went through. [KA] I just have two more questions. What do you think is your most significant contribution to the status of women at UD. Not necessarily restricted to women's studies.

00:24:28.550 - 00:24:38.630

but you've been an administrator, and a provost. You have both the academic research and administration but what are you most proud of? [MA] Wow,

00:24:38.630 - 00:24:46.130

that's a really interesting question. I suppose, I suppose I don't really think of myself as

00:24:46.130 - 00:24:53.720

a role model every day, but I suppose just showing that women can do this, that you can come into something that's

00:24:53.720 - 00:25:01.210

the equivalent of a vice presidency or a dean's job and not lose your feminist perspective is important.

00:25:01.210 - 00:25:07.730

And that really has happened within my lifetime for women. I think that's important. [KA] And finally, along what you

00:25:07.730 - 00:25:13.610

just said, in closing, Would you care to address future young feminists and women's studies scholars who will

00:25:13.610 - 00:25:23.540

meet Margaret Anderson through this interview. What would you like for them to think about say five-years down the road, a young feminist scholar comes and sees you on this interview.

00:25:23.540 - 00:25:33.260

What you want her to think about as she begins her formal journey as a scholar? [MA] Wow, that's a tough question. I would like her

00:25:33.260 - 00:25:42.800

to I guess I'd want to talk to her about how she could meet some of the challenges in her own life. Some of the lessons learned about how

00:25:42.800 - 00:25:52.770

you take on these professional challenges, which can be hard, which can be demeaning or debilitating, even how you overcome those challenges.

00:25:52.770 - 00:26:01.340

You know, we haven't gotten into some of the icky stuff that went along the way with me. But I think that what younger women can learn from

00:26:01.340 - 00:26:08.440

people who have had struggles before and made it, is how you do that. How do you do it emotionally? How do you do it professionally?

00:26:08.440 - 00:26:17.270

How do you build community around you when there is none there to support you? Because I think one of the most important lessons I've learned,

00:26:17.270 - 00:26:22.940

you have to make up the support structures that are going to enable your success if they're not

00:26:22.940 - 00:26:33.770

there for you and if they're there for you, that you should take advantage of them. [KA] Along the line you made a previous reference to making it in an academic, administrative community

00:26:33.770 - 00:26:41.960

still maintain your feminist perspective in your particular case with strength did you draw upon. How were you able to do that? [MA] Relationships with other people,

00:26:41.960 - 00:26:53.600

the scholarship I continued to do, keeping, keeping abreast of the news, talking with people whom I greatly admire, keeping myself intellectually and politically

00:26:53.600 - 00:27:02.420

viable. [KA] Were there difficult moments with other women that you had to make choices with. Sometimes, not all women will agree on all issues

00:27:02.420 - 00:27:09.900

whether you're debating how the course of the women's studies program or you're in a diversity meeting, you're at an administration meeting how do you handle that?

00:27:09.900 - 00:27:15.950

[MA] We're not always all going to agree. I mean, I've learned a tremendous amount from people whose life experience is

00:27:15.950 - 00:27:22.400

very different than mine. I think I've learned to listen and that If I feel like, wow, that doesn't make any sense.

00:27:22.400 - 00:27:30.320

I have to appreciate where that person's coming from. What kinds of factors in his or her own life are

00:27:30.320 - 00:27:36.950

guiding how he or she feels about a given situation or how they think about it. And there's just simply no way

00:27:36.950 - 00:27:45.110

in the world that I'd be sitting here today without having learned from those people with different backgrounds, different issues, whether that be race

00:27:45.110 - 00:27:53.270

or sexuality or social class, you have to respect where people are coming from. That's the core of appreciating diversity.

00:27:53.270 - 00:28:01.580

[KA] Well you certainly accomplished an amazing amount of goodwill at this university and around the country. and we want to thank you for your time. [MA] Thank you. Thank you.

00:28:01.580 - 00:28:06.770

[KA] I will come back and interview you five or ten years from now. [MA] I'm sorry, I couldn't give you your full hour and a half.

00:28:06.770 - 00:28:13.220

It's just impossible [KA] We appreciate the graciousness of letting us in today. [MA] Ok, great. [KA] Thank you very much. [MA] You're welcome.

00:28:13.220 - 00:28:17.730

[KA] I think we made it by 4 o'clock. Did we?