Philosophical orientation of GALA

[Alice Freed]

Given the issues raised in the last few postings, regarding
interdisciplinary, multi-disciplinary and discipline-specific
orientations for GALA, it occurs to me that we may want to look at
existing models from other organizations. I agree with
all of the problems raised about what happens when people referee
abstracts and articles from an interdisciplinary perspective, but
at the same time I would hate to abandon the goal of an
interdiscplinary approach to language and gender research for the
future. Might it be possible to establish within our new
organization, separate sections for different disciplines which
will operate specifically for research-related tasks? I am
thinking of both the Modern Languge Association and the American
Anthropological Association where meetings are orgainzed around
subfields as well as around topics. I have no intimate knowledge
of the interworkings of either of these two organizations, but in
theory I believe it can work. I can imagine GALA as a multi-disciplinary
organization dedicated to the study of language, sex, and gender
and one which sponsors conferences, (a future journal?), etc.; it
could have different boards of researchers working in different disciplines.
Where requested or appropriate, these boards can be merged or a
paper or abstract could be reviewed by two boards, etc. For other
general business, the organization would operate as a unit. This
approach would allow researchers from diverse disciplines to get to know
the work being done by others and would allow us to build bridges
between and among related disciplines. In fact, this is in some
ways the model that we use for the Women's Studies program at
Montclair State University where we are in the process of creating a major
after having had a successful minor program for 20 years.

_____________________

     Alice F. Freed
     Linguistics Department
     Montclair State University
     Upper Montclair, NJ 07043 (USA)
     freeda at alpha.montclair.edu
     (973) 655-7505