Safe Feminist Spaces: Reflections about the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers-New Brunswick

Abstract

We begin with two iconic statements in the Anglo and Spanish feminist traditions: Sor Juana’s meditations during the second half of the seventeenth century, in New Spain, about feminine knowledge produced in daily activities like cooking, and Virginia Woolf’s reflection from the late 1920s about women’s need for resources and a private space that would allow them to write. Although many would consider that the proposals advanced by these two writers are not current, we would like to use their words as inspiration to reflect on the need to create and validate intellectual spaces for feminist knowledge and scholarship in universities today. At a time in which many would assume that women’s intellectual spaces are guaranteed in contemporary First-World societies, we would like to argue that the constitution of ‘safe feminist spaces’ is still a crucial component in the mission of research centers such as the Institute for Research on Women, located Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, in New Brunswick.

Bien dijo Lupercio Leonardo, que bien se puede filosofar y aderezar la cena. Y yo suelo decir viendo estas cosillas: ‘Si Aristóteles hubiera guisado, mucho más hubiera escrito. (74)

[It was well put by Lupercio Leonardo that one can philosophise quite well while preparing supper. I often say, when I make these little observations, ‘Had Aristotle cooked, he would have written a great deal more’. (75)]

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Respuesta Sor Filotea

All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point — a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved. (4)

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own