The

 new  F-­‐word  
by  Marianne  Cooper  on  02/28/11  at  9:39  am  

A  few  years  ago  English  professor,  Michele  Elam,  noticed  

something  curious  in  her  introduction  to  feminist  studies  class  
–  very  few  of  her  forty  students  felt  comfortable  using  the  
word  feminism,  and  still  fewer  identified  themselves  as  
feminists.    Despite  being  interested  in  gender  equality,  it  was  
as  if,  Elam  said,  “being  called  a  feminist  was  to  suspect  that  
some  foul  epithet  had  been  hurled  your  way.”    As  one  student  
put  it,  “Feminism  is  the  new  F  Word.    You  can’t  use  it.”  
 
Elam  also  noticed  a  similar  dynamic  playing  out  in  classes  she  
teaches  on  race.    Students  seemed  to  have  a  hard  time  talking  
about  it.    Explaining  why,  a  student  told  Elam,  “It’s  touchy,  it’s  
delicate,  it’s  a  total  killjoy  in  polite  society  to  bring  it  up.”  

 
With  students  distancing  themselves  from  feminist  theory  and  practice  and  silencing  themselves  on  
the  topic  of  race,  Elam  believes  that  “race  and  gender  have  become  unspeakable,”  and  accordingly  
“unteachable”  in  the  classroom.  
 
In  her  talk,  “The  New  F  Word  (Feminism)  and    
 
Beyond:  Gender,  Race,  and  other  Classroom  
 
Unspeakables,”  sponsored  by  the  Center  for    
Teaching  and  Learning  at  Stanford,  Elam    
linked  the  dynamic  she  saw  unfolding  in  her    
classes  with  a  larger  cultural  trend  that    
dismisses  race  and  gender  as  serious    
academic  subjects.    She  noted,  for  example,    
that  President  Obama,  in  his  July  2010  Urban   1917  Feminists:  Women  suffragists  picketing  in  front  
League  address  implied  that  the  study  of  race   of  the  White  House.  Source:  Library  of  Congress  
is  best  left  out  of  higher  education  when  he  
said  that  meaningful  conversations  about  race  would  not  occur  at  “a  bunch  of  academic  symposia  or  
fancy  commissions  or  panels”  but  instead  “around  kitchen  tables  and  water  coolers  and  church  
basements  and  in  our  schools  and  with  our  kids  all  across  the  country.”  
 
Elam  pointed  out  that  this  same  type  of  anti-­‐intellectual  stance  toward  race  and  gender  can  be  found  at  
the  other  end  of  the  political  spectrum  too  like  when  Sarah  Palin  in  her  recent  address  to  the  Susan  B.  
Anthony  List  took  a  swipe  at  academic  feminism.    After  thanking  the  SBA  List  for  being  a  home  to  a  new  
conservative  feminist  movement  and  identity,  Palin  said,  “[For]  far  too  long,  when  people  heard  the  
word  ‘feminist,’  they  thought  of  the  faculty  lounge  at  some  East  Coast  women’s  college,  right?  And  no  
offense  to  them,  they  have  their  opinions  and  their  voice,  and  God  bless  them;  they’re  just  great.    But  
that’s  not  the  only  voice  of  women  in  America.”  
 
Elam  argued  that  these  kinds  of  anti-­‐intellectual  and  casual  approaches  to  addressing  social  justice  
issues  (i.e.  water  cooler  chats  instead  of  academic  symposia)  direct  people  to  suspend  critical  thought  
in  lieu  of  uniformed,  ahistorical,  and  emotionally  based  understandings  of  race  and  gender.    In  doing  
so,  race  and  gender  become  casualized  and  thus  delegitimized  as  proper  fields  of  inquiry.    As  
opposed,  then,  to  subjects  like  math  or  physics,  race  and  gender  are  not  seen  as  serious  academic  
disciplines  in  their  own  right  that  need  to  be  studied  in  an  in-­‐depth  and  informed  way.    Rather,  Elam  
said,  they  are  often  seen  as  “harboring  an  activism  at  odds  with  disinterested  intellectual  
inquiry.”    Politically,  this  type  of  thinking  has  led  some  state  legislatures,  like  in  Arizona,  to  go  after  
ethnic  studies  departments  and  try  to  shut  them  down.  
 
As  a  race  and  gender  scholar,  Elam  uses  ethnic  and  feminist  studies  to  better  illuminate  the  power  
relations  she  seeks  to  investigate  in  her  own  research.    In  the  classroom  she  uses  this  scholarship  to  
provide  her  students  with  a  rigorous  analytic  framework  through  which  they  can  better  examine,  
understand,  and  thus  discuss  how  race  and  gender  operate  in  the  social  world.    By  doing  so,  Elam’s  
students  are  more  able  to  talk  about  such  topics  and  issues,  making  race  and  gender  speakable  and  
consequently  teachable  in  the  classroom.  
 
While  the  recent  cultural  pushback  against  critical  race  and  gender  studies  has  made  sharing  her  
insights  with  her  students  more  challenging,  it  has  also  made  Elam  more  committed  than  ever  to  
teaching  these  subjects.  “Race  and  gender,”  Elam  said,  “cannot  be  confined  to  private  conversations  
around  the  kitchen  table.    There  also  needs  to  be  passionate,  committed  academic  study.    And  
students  need  to  see  how  race  and  gender  function  as  critical  intellectual  tools  for  social  and  literary  
analysis.”  
 
Michele  Elam  is  a  Faculty  Affiliate  of  the  Clayman  Institute  for  Gender  Research.  

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