Textbook Answers

Not too long ago I wrote an article entitled Women’s MisStudies about a debate between Professor Mike Adams of University of North Carolina-Wilmington and Dean Gay L. Gullickson of University of Maryland College Park. The debate was over Women’s Studies programs and Women’s Resource Centers.

Included in my article was this passage:

“I was able to ask Gullickson how she can say that women’s studies is good for research when, as Carrie Lukas points out in her new book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex and Feminism, these texts have misinformation and missing information that women need to make life decisions.

‘I don’t like textbooks,’ said Gullickson, ‘I don’t use them when I teach and I haven’t read the book you are referring to so I really couldn’t say’.”

Well, I had no reason to doubt Gullickson’s statement until earlier this week when a reader of The Campus Report contacted us with some very interesting information.

UMD has an online bookstore and with a course number and professor name it is possible to see exactly what texts are required for your courses, so that you can place an order and pick them up.

Well, it seems that the course, HIST 212 (also numbered WMST 212), will be taught by Gullickson this semester. In fact, she will teach four sections of the course: Women in Western Europe from 1750 to the present.

But if her students were hoping not to have to pay for textbooks, as per her earlier remark to me, they are out of luck.

Gullickson’s students will have to purchase five books each: Family and Kinship in East London, Four Major Plays Volume 1, Life As We Have Known It, and Women In the Holocaust Volume 2.

The grand total of $71.10 (for all new books) will be less than my astronomy text cost me four years ago, but the point is Gullickson either lied to me to evade my question about the worth of women’s studies books. Or she is bilking her students by requiring five books she intends not to use. I’m afraid it is more likely the former.

Julia A. Seymour is a staff writer at Accuracy in Academia.