ABSTRACT
In her first articulation of her Interactive Phase Theory, McIntosh explores five foci of curriculum development once a discipline has asked: a) What are the shaping dimensions of a discipline, or what is the content and methodology of a discipline, and b) How would the discipline change to reflect that women are half the world’s population and have had half the world’s experience? She calls her foci “phases” in order to underscore that a phase does not disappear, that the phases exist on a spectrum, and can be continually and differently felt throughout the re-development of a discipline. In this essay, McIntosh outlines the five phases as Phase I: a Womanless Discipline; Phase II: Exceptional Women in the Discipline; Phase III: Women as a Problem, Anomaly, or Absence in the Discipline; Phase IV: Women As the Discipline; and Phase V: the Discipline Redefined or Reconstructed to Include Us All. Each phase corresponds to different attitudes towards hierarchies and to the functions of a discipline. McIntosh ends her essay with a description of curriculum and generational change, using the personas of Meg, Amy, Jo, Maya, Angela, and Adrienne, taking inspiration from Little Women and three prominent feminists.
