What constraints and opportunities confront feminists as they struggle for social change? What are the sources of and limits on their power? How and when do they choose to compromise and negotiate, or object and fight? How does activism look? What forms does it take now and in the recent past? How are women's issues represented in the culture through the press, through other media, through art? This course will explore the issues and problems of putting feminism into practice. Part of that exploration will take place directly in social service agencies or non-profits which concern the lives of women and girls; students will be investigating these questions in the trenches in a hands-on environment. We will examine issues such as organizational dynamics, budgetary and administrative constraints, client-staff interactions, power and dependency, and mother-child-family relationships; students will also be interning at community agencies involved in health care, social services, and work. A variety of interactions with these organizations will take place: supervisors will come to class to discuss their work and its relationship to women and girls; students will do presentations about their work sites in relation to issues raised in reading and discussions; the class may visit an organization or attend a meeting relevant to a given topic. Projects can be either papers which pull together research and experience from the work site, or public art projects relating to the student's non-profit and its targeted populations. Format: discussion. Requirements: weekly internship, readings, weekly 1-page discussion paper, final project. Prerequisites: Women's and Gender Studies 101; any 200-level courses in Political Science, Studio Art, Sociology. Enrollment limit: 24. Preference to Women's and Gender Studies concentrators.

DIGGS and C. JOHNSON