"I believe that, at present, women are the best helpers of one another. Let them think; let them act; till they know what they need."

- Margaret Fuller, Women in the Nineteenth Century

Bell Hooks has argued in Talking Back: thinking Feminist, Thinking Black Sheba that "[f]eminist education - the feminist classroom - is and should be a place where there is a sense of struggle, where there is visible acknowledgement of the union of theory and practice, where we work together as teachers and students to overcome the estrangement and alienation that have become so much the norm in the contemporary university" (51). Our classroom, though virtual, should aim to be exactly that kind of place-one where conflict and struggle are mediated by community and collaboration, where a productive and meaningful exchange of ideas complements the material we read and the writing we do.

Susan M. Shaw & Janet Lee offer a definition of Women's Studies in "Women's Studies: Perspectives and Practices" in Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings:

Women's studies is the examination of women's experiences that recognizes our achievements and addresses our status in society. Women's studies puts women (in all our diversity) at the center of inquiry and focuses on our reality as subjects of study. This is different than the traditional enterprise of women as objects of study. Being the objects of study means that researchers theorize about women's lives without women's input, placing women in a subordinate position to men. Instead, women as subjects of study implies both active agency [power, authority] on women's part and a challenge to male domination and other systems of inequality like racism and classism. In other words, when we are subjects of study as in women's studies courses, our experiences and voices have informed analyses about our lives. Women's studies also involves the study of gender as a central aspect of human existence. Gender concerns what it means to be a woman or a man in society. Gender involves the way society creates, patterns, and rewards our understandings of femininity and masculinity. Women's studies explores our gendered existence: what it means to be feminine and masculine and how this interacts with other aspects of our identity, such as our race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and sexuality."

This course aims to do just that: give us as students, thinkers, writers, and readers the opportunity to ask and answer the question "How does the world look different if we put the experiences of those who have been excluded - from various activities, ideas, events, institutions, and phenomena by various forces - at the center of our thinking?"