Teaching

As well as being one of the most prominent voices for black studies and the women's movement, it seems that Beverly Guy-Sheftall believes the best way in changing the world is through education. Since returning back to her undergraduate school, Spelman College, to teach, Beverly Guy-Sheftall has become an icon for women's studies - especially concerning black women and the black community. As the founding director of the Women's Research and Resource Center she has helped to shape the programs women's studies has to offer at Spelman. Her main focus is the Comparative Women's Studies department, where she teaches and supervises students in the major. In 1973After she published her first major work Sturdy Black Bridges, Beverly Guy-Sheftall was able to teach her first women’s courses, Images of Women in Literature and then Images of Women in the Media. Those two courses were the first in shaping the women’s studies major that was approved in 1997. She then went on to teach and establish two other mini-courses entitled Black Women Novelists and Black Women’s Autobiographies. Motivated by her desire to teach about important black female literary tradition that was absent in conventional literacy programs enabled Beverly Guy-Sheftall to persistently pursue her vision of the women’s studies major. Now her program is an interdisciplinary comparative women's study focusing on women of African descent as well as other global cultures. It provides insight and analysis of women's experiences cross-culturally. It deals with understanding gender, class, race, social hierarchy, and more from various disciplinary perspectives. Spelman has the distinction of having the first established undergraduate women's studies major at a historically black college/university, which probably would not have happened without the efforts of Beverly Guy-Sheftall and her respective staff. Being awarded the Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women's Studies after the famous Anna Julia Cooper feminist is a major achievement in women's studies and completely deserving. She finds Anna Julia Cooper's A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South the most inspiring literature in black women's studies naming it "the first extensive Black feminist analysis of the plight of Black women in this century (Guy-Sheftall, Review)." She has influenced not only the school community but also her city, in hopes of inspiring others to push for the understanding of black women’s studies in other programs and schools. It seems that her teaching style is very interactive from what people have said of her in person; that Beverly Guy-Sheftall commits to what she believes in and what she has to say and being a teacher is helping her to get her opinions and points across in order to spread the knowledge that is lacking in the American and National population. “Perhaps more important, I am as passionate about teaching women’s studies as I was when I taught my first women’s studies course, Images of Women in Literature, in 1973 in a department which I recall having read only a few women writers as an undergraduate English teacher (Howe 226).”

Work Referenced:
Spelman College: Centers of Distinction. WRRC: Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall. 2004. [13 February 2007]. G]http://www.spelman.edu/about_us/distinction/womenscenter/sheftall.shtml

Guy-Sheftall, Beverly. Review: Black Women/Black Studies. All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies. Phylon (1960-), Vol. 43, No. 3. (3rd Qtr., 1982), pp. 280-281. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8906%28198233%2943%3A3%3C280%3ABWS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-N

Edited - Howe, Florence. The Politics of Women’s Studies. The Feminist Press. New York: 2000