Audre Jean Brokes, St. Joseph's University, and
France Winddance Twine, University of
Washington, Seattle

In this chapter we explore the risks, difficulties, and benefits of teaching Intro-
duction to Women Studies from an international, multicultural, and antiracist
perspective. We focus in particular on the resistance both to us and to the course
content that we, as a U.S. inter-racial team, experienced from U.S. White women
of working-class and middle-class backgrounds. We describe the strategies that
we employed and the structural adjustments that we made to both respond ap-
propriately to this resistance and preserve what we regard as the integrity of the
course.

We are a U.S. Black/American Indian woman from a largely working-class
background ( Twine) and a U.S. White, middle-class woman ( Brokes) who col-
laborated for three years on the cornerstone Introduction to Women Studies
course at a large, predominantly White research university, which we will call
"The University." The University is 20.3% Asian, 3.3% Black, 3.8% Hispanic,
2% international, 1.1% American Indian, and 69.5% all others, ¹ and we found
that the racial/ethnic makeup of our classes closely approximated this university
average. ² Although most of the students were women, men made up between
10% and 15% of the 200+ students enrolled in the course each term. A large
lecture course with weekly discussion sections, Introduction to Women Studies
required a teaching team of four individuals: a principal instructor and three
graduate teaching assistants. At the time of our collaboration ( 1994-1997),
Twine was an assistant professor of women's studies, and Brokes was a graduate
student in philosophy and women's studies at The University. We began work-

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