지역에서의 여성학 교육의현재와 역사적 특성: 전북지역 및 전북대학교를 중심으로

Abstract

This paper has two aims. The one is to research the present situation of Women's Studies courses. The Women's Courses has grown up in Korean universities especially since the middle of 1980's. But in the age of so-called ‘post-feminism' under the neoliberal social culture of 2000's, those normative courses have not been regarded as useful anymore and so have been talked to be declined. This paper wants to find whether that is true in the case of the universities which were located at the relatively peripheral southern part of Korea, Chollabuk-do. The other purpose of this paper is to analyze the students' attitudes on the course and the feminism. Did they really become less interested at the feminist issues? By analyzing those two themes this paper tries to seek the feminist pedagogy which could survive in the age of post-feminism. The research methods for this study are such various ones as questionaire survey on the students, FGI for some of them, in-depth interviews with Women's Studies teachers, and searching for websites of the universites which opened the Women's Studies courses. The results of the study are as follows: Firstly, the Women's Studies courses nowadays exist only in a few universities. In many cases the courses went through the long histories of ups and downs and some of them continued no more. Moreover the names of the courses tend to be changed from "Women's Sudies" to “Women and the Family” etc., which do not directly stand for the feminist position. Instead the job-related practical courses for women has grown relatively. Secondly, in contrast to the decreasing tendency of the courses in the liberal arts, the major courses related to feminism in each departments are encreased especially since the early 2000s. It means that feminim as a theory and a scholarly subject started to get recognition in each disciplines, though not a great one, among the academic community. Thirdly, the historical development of Women's Studies shows us some interesting findings. Between the two representatve Women's Studies liberal courses of Chonbuk National University, the one was initiated by the Sociology Department. The professors who were all men, argued the priority of Sociology for opening the Women's Studies course. They seemed to try to get the prior status for opening the prospective course. The other which was opened by the Korean Literature Department has a very different story. It refects the progressive spirit among the university members in the age of 1980's which sought the democracy of Korea not only at the institutional level of universities, but also outside academics. As a way of resistance to the oppressive state in 1980s, some of the female graduate students of literature participated at the gathering in liaison with Marxism at the outside of the campus. Eventually the young scholars prepared for a pool of the instructors for the Women's Studies course of the department later. Fourthly, the statistical analysis of the students showed the high perception among them of Korean society as a sexist one, and the positive attitudes toward the Women's Studies couse. But 22% of the male students identified feminism with the women's selfishness. Lastly, but not leastly the changing atmosphere in the classroom situations should be noted. The result of Focus Group Interview showed conflicting attitudes of the Women's Studies students in the class. They recognize the necessity of the course but, they do not want to hear the monotonous feminist answers from the teachers. This last result means the class should expose the various conflicting positions among the students, and also those between them and the teachers, and have a process of negotiations. But in so far as the openness should be more than a naive neutrality, it might require the teachers to think more reflexively and put them on the more uneasy position at the classroom.