ABSTRACT
My mother, a paient attorney, knows bright babies when she sees them, which, fortunately, is one hundred per cent of the time. Mothers who claim that their infants recognize them are often wrong, say psychologists, but their children develop faster and more happily because of ~hese positive expectations. Such recognitions, which begin as fictions and become facts through our actions and relationships, provide a model for some of the ways I think about feminist teaching and scholarship. In this model, one benefits from advancing others with whom one identifies; it is possible to feel optimistic because one is an agent of social change and possible to continue acting because one feels optimistic about the potential social results.
