ABSTRACT
Women’s studies, along with African-American studies, ethnic studies and global studies are fundamentally interdisciplinary. All of these areas ask questions and seek answers that cross disciplinary boundaries. At the center of multicultural research and teaching are questions of race, gender, ethnicity, and class. Leading the way in curricular change in colleges and universities were studies by and about African Americans. Black studies grew out of the political movements of the 1960s and 1970s concurrent with the rapid increase in the number of black students and faculty on college campuses and African Americans in the workplaces of industry, social services, and government. Women’s studies grew out of the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s and the awareness by women faculty and students of what they perceived as the monocultural perspective of the academy, where women and minorities were invisible in content and research.
