Pushing boundaries: An ethnographic study of life in and beyond a feminist classroom

Abstract

This paper reports on part of an 18-month ethnographic study of students' participation in a residential college. It chronicles sophomores' rites of passage through a seminar entitled, ''Women and Theatre: the Politics of Representation.'' The five narratives vividly present a process whereby an innovative and feminist pedagogy is negotiated and implemented by faculty and students alike. Using a strategy of participant observation coupled with in-depth unstructured interviews and document review, the author examined group members' beliefs and practices and ways in which they conceptualized, lived, and induced their notions of feminism inside and beyond the classroom. Thompson Tetreault's (1989) scholarship focusing on integrating content about women and gender into college curriculum is the primary theoretical lens used to analyze the narratives.