Transcript of interview with Dr. Catherine Bellver by Caryll Batt Dziedziak, November 13, 1995

This oral history has been made possible by a generous gift from Emilie N. Wanderer for the Nevada Women Oral History Program O\\-0 6 F W Li5~ foist 10 (ft Creating Women's Studies at UNLV: An Interview with Catherine Bellver Conducted by Caryll Batt Dziedziak Las Vegas Women Oral History Project Series II. Community Builders University of Nevada, Las Vegas 2006 © NSHE, UNLV, Las Vegas Women Oral History Project, 2006 Produced by: Las Vegas Women Oral History Project Women's Research Institute of Nevada, UNLV 4505 Maryland Parkway Box 455083 Las Vegas, NV 89154-5083 Director: Dr. Joanne L. Goodwin Interviewer and Editor: Caryll Batt Dziedziak Text Processor: Laurie W. Boetcher This interview and transcript have been made possible through the Foundation at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and the research efforts of the Women's Research Institute of Nevada (WRIN). Located at UNLV within the College of Liberal Arts, WRIN is a statewide research institute with programs that add to the body of knowledge on women and girls in the state. WRIN has housed the oral history project since 1999. The specific goals of the oral history project is to acquire the narratives of Nevadans whose lives provide unique information on the development of the state and in particular, southern Nevada. In addition, the oral history project enables students and faculty to work together with community members to generate these first-person narratives. The participants in this project extend their appreciation to UNLV for providing an opportunity for this project to flourish. The text of this transcript has received minimal editing. These measures include the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetition. The editing served to retain both the narrator's style of spoken language as well as the reader's understanding of the narrator's words. Ideally, this interview would be heard as well as read. In some cases, the narrator has provided photographic images to accompany the narrative. If the narrator agreed, these images have been donated with the transcript to the UNLV Lied Library, Special Collections. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Las Vegas Women Oral History Project, Series II. Community Builders. Additional transcripts may be found under that series title. Joanne Goodwin, Project Director Associate Professor, Department of History University of Nevada, Las Vegas LIST OF PHOTOGRAPHS Frontispiece: Catherine Bellver (undated) Photograph is courtesy of University of Nevada Las Vegas Preface Dr. Catherine Bellver is a woman with tenacity. How else could one describe her drive to create the Women's Studies Program spanning fifteen years? As a faculty member in the Department of Foreign Languages, Dr. Bellver first joined the Women's Studies steering committee in 1979. In the following decade, the committee oversaw the formation of the Women's Studies Program, including: procuring administrative and faculty support, creating bylaws and course criteria, critiquing proposed cross-listed courses, and selecting course offerings. During that period she also worked with a volunteer group to create and staff the first Women's Center on campus. In the early Nineties, she played an instrumental role in the presentation of four public colloquia that addressed key issues pertaining to women. Dr. Bellver acted as interim director of the Women's Studies Program while overseeing the search for a permanent director. She continued to remain involved with the Women's Studies program, serving as faculty member on several committees. She has also worked in the Women's Caucus on the regional and national levels of the Modem Languages Association Dr. Bellver is currently Distinguished Professor of Spanish in the Department of Foreign Languages at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her work has appeared in journals such as Anales de la Literature Espanola Contemporanea, Hispanic Review, Hispanofila, Insula, Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, Monographic Review/Revista Monografica, Revista de Estudios Modernos, Revista Hispanica Moderna, Romance Notes and Romanic Review. Dr. Bellver's participation in the creation of the Women's Studies Program illustrates how critical institutional and social progress can result from the commitment of a determined group of individuals. Her decades of involvement in creating an academic arena for the study of women and gender issues underscores the significance of women's contributions to the history of Las Vegas. In addition to the history of the Women's Studies Program at the University of Nevada Las Vegas this interview contains information regarding the creation of the first Women's Center on campus. Catherine G. Bellver Distinguished Professor of Foreign Languages Creating Women's Studies at UNLV: An Interview with Catherine Bellver Conducted by Caryll Batt Dziedziak This is Caryll Batt Dziedziak interviewing Dr. Catherine Bellver on Monday, November 13,1995. This interview is taking place in Dr. office at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Dr. Bellver, why don't you start by telling us a little bit about the community that you grew up in, where it was, what type of people lived there, and what you saw as any prominent gender roles. I was born in Chicago. I was in Chicago until I was about ten years old, then my family moved out into the suburbs. That was in the Fifties.. .and as you can imagine.. .gender roles were very set, conservative. However, I think that.. .in itself, though.. .made it easier to react against those gender roles. My particular situation was the stereotypical family of the Fifties.. .a father worked and mother stayed at home. You've led me right into my next question about your family. You alluded to prominent gender roles within the Chicago community. Did you also see this within your own family? Yes, a very distinct differentiation of male/female roles... so distinct... so set...that early on made me reject some of that rigidity. Those are the kind of things that were reinforced in the larger family group.. .in the schools that I went to.. .from the lower grade schools into the high schools. Did your father work and your mother stay at home? Correct... yes. And did that seem the norm, pretty much, for the families that you knew? Definitely.. .and I think that.. .more than the families I knew.. .1 think that was fairly typical of most people in the area at that time. And did that also hold true for your extended family? 1 Right. Oh, definitely. Now my parents...despite their own personal strong differentiation in the gender roles, did not discourage me from continuing my studies...unlike some of the women my age or even in my own family. I don't think they quite understood why I wanted to continue, but they didn't interfere with my pursuing advanced studies. Were both of your parents educated? No. My mother had a high school education and my father had a law degree. He went into business... but he had a law degree. So, that might have influenced that. Also, they were children of immigrants.. .and education was considered very important and a key to bettering your life. But that, of course.. .at that time.. .wasn't necessarily transferable to women. One degree led to another and I continued to pursue studies. I know my parents had expected me to stop and do "real" things much sooner.. .get married...have children.. .and stop going to school. Well, I had my Ph.D. before they stopped seeing this as the ideal for me. But you felt their support despite knowing that they didn't understand why... Exactly. They didn't obstruct.. .but I don't think they understood. Yes, which probably held quite true in the 1950s with other families also. So, from what you describe of your family I would presume that your father was the definite head of the household. Definitely, yes. Well, though...you know, that is also an interesting dynamic. In a traditional family.. .a father is the authority figure. However, within the home and in certain family matters.. .the wife is very strong also.. .maybe even stronger than in a more democratic situation. Very much in touch with the day-to-day happenings... 2 And because of the clear differentiation between the domestic sphere and the public sphere. We remember my mother saying, "You can take care of things in the factory but the kitchen is mine." So, there was a sense of...well...control or at least authority over certain areas of domestic life that are now open to interpretation or conclusion from the other sex.. .which I found to be an interesting phenomenon. So, within your family and your extended family... did you see the roles of men or boys more as preparing for the outside world...more so than for the women and girls in the family? Right... exactly. Did other female family members pursue continued education...as you did? I have a small family. I have two female cousins. One eventually got a Master's in teaching and the other one.. .who's actually much younger than I am.. .was told that she didn't need to go on to school because she was a woman. Again...ironically enough.. .she's had continual employment, even though she never went on beyond a B.A., I believe. But that's typical of people who were brought up in the Fifties.. .girls were expected to get married. In fact, even when I went to college and students were on their own.. .most of the young women my age were getting "pinned" and married right after college. So, no longer were they being dictated by their parents.. .but they had assumed those roles. And by "pinned," just so it's clear to anyone who's listening... You wore a fraternity pin or you wore the boy's ring around your neck. So, for some of the female students...was that more the goal than earning their degree? 3 Right. A totally different age. Yes, exactly. When you saw these different gender roles within your family, within your community, within your educational setting.. .how did this affect you? You seemed very aware of them from your childhood on... Yes, right. Well.. .1 think because it was so rigid and so strongly presented that it was just too set for me to accept. I don't think there was a lot of variety in gender roles presented at that time.. .1 don't think I was aware of them.. .1 just wasn't comfortable with what I saw. There's not the variety that you see now. I don't think there were a lot of possible avenues presented to young people.. .1 really don't. So, you felt the rigidity... Sure. I remember when children were asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" and boys always said, "I want to be a fireman." My brother wanted to sell hot dogs [laughing], I didn't know what I wanted to be but I knew what I didn want to be.. .1 said I didn't want to be a nurse or a schoolteacher. All I knew was I didn't want to accept the traditional female role. How interesting! But other possibilities weren't presented to me. All I knew was that I just didn't want to follow that typical path. I don't think a variety of possibilities were presented.. .and I always thought that therefore it was harder to break out of the mold. What types of schools did you attend? When I was in Chicago.. .it was very antiquated, poorly funded.. .it looked like something out of the nineteenth-century. When we moved to the suburbs I went to a very modern, enlightened, progressive school.. .it was like moving to another country. There 4 were some elements of adjustment for me, but it was totally different... for instance, take science. In the public school in Chicago, science class consisted of looking at a little glass case of dry leaves with a stuffed bird in it that had the little write-up next to it on yellowing paper. We went there to look at it and memorize the little facts that you could hardly see on this yellowing piece of paper. When I moved to the junior high, which was one of the first junior highs in this country.. .they were doing hands-on kind of experiments with magnets under water and doing poster boards and the sort of thing that now is just taken for granted. I remember in the school in Chicago we had two grades in the same room. It was a large class and the teacher would teach half the class for 15 minutes and the other half for another 15 minutes. When we moved to the suburbs.. .to this progressive school.. .the classes were smaller. And I went one year.. .1 believe it was.. .to grammar school before the junior high. There were no grades.. .just teacher conferences with parents. The grades began in junior high... so, like I said...it was from night to day. And the high school I went to was one of the top high schools at that time. There were three or four from the Chicago area that had a wonderful reputation for their academic program. In fact, I think it was something like 87 percent college-bound. So, I felt a bit inferior to the rest of my classmates at the beginning.. .but the program was wonderful and it prepared me for college. Do you think that attending that type of high school increased your desire to attend college? It's hard to know. Probably...because it was stimulating.. .and also at the beginning I felt inadequate. It was motivation to prove myself. Were all of the various schools that you attended public schools? 5 Right. They were all public schools but the ones in the suburbs were top-notch .. .particularly the high school. It was called Oak Park River Forest High School. There were three or four schools at that time that were at the forefront of a lot of advanced teaching methodology. It wasn't until many years later when I got a professor's job that I found a book on literary criticism that had been put together by one of the high school teachers there. So, it was an unusual experience. It was a bit traumatic going from.. .it wasn't an inner city school in Chicago but it was.. .like I said.. .ill-funded and quite antiquated. When you mentioned the 87percent college-boundfrom your high school.. .do you remember if it was pretty equally divided between the boys and the girls? I really don't know. Was there a general sense that many female students were college-bound? I think yes.. .because it was a school that emphasized academics.. .they were preparing the girls for college as well as the boys. So...there was no sense offirst priority going to the male students? No, I don't think so. That's good to hear. Let's move ahead to Northwestern University... your first college experience. Was there an established Women's Studies Program that you were aware of? No.. .none that I was aware of. This was 1959.. .1 probably was pre-Women's Studies. Were there any courses that had a central focus on women ? I took a lot of courses and finished early.. .so I took things totally out of my major and totally unrelated to anything that I was doing. I took two courses, I remember.. .one was 6 advertising.. .which at that time was a new, exciting, avant garde field.. .and the other was basically home economics.. .which at the university level.. .is unheard of nowadays. So, there was certainly no Women's Studies...we learned about budgeting your family resources and things like that [laughing], A little different than today. You're making me think about how much things have changed [laughing]. Back at Northwestern, were you active in any student organizations? Yes, I was on student council for a little while. I was the organizer of what they called the SSF, Student Service Fund, which was a yearly campaign to raise funds for charity...and the charity that the university had adopted was the NCAA.. .and I was in charge of that. Oh gosh, that's so long ago.. .but I was involved in a lot of things because I ended up being chosen for a thing called Mortarboard. I don't know if you're familiar with that.. .which is campus leaders...not only academic but involved in activities. I was involved in a number of other things... honorary clubs and honorary societies and language clubs and things like that. No sports! [Laughing] We had to take some gym. You were going from a progressive high school atmosphere to Northwestern. Were there a lot of female students there also? Yes.. .and it was a school in which sororities and fraternities were very big. There was also a strong contingent of what you would call independent students. They organized the social aspect of campus life that again, I would say... reinforced traditional gender roles. Did you belong to a sorority? 7 I did.. .because at high school I felt not well-integrated into the popular group of the high school. I unconsciously set that as a goal.. .to feel integrated.. .and I did. I was very unhappy with that whole sorority/fraternity scene.. .but I think at that moment.. .that was something I needed to experience.. .belonging to the social group. But the sororities and fraternities.. .at least at that time...not only reinforced gender stereotypes, but also ethnic stereotypes.. .religious stereotypes. I was really very deluded and upset once I got involved in sororities. There was a couple of us that tried to work to change things.. .and we were unsuccessful.. .1 don't know about fraternities. There's a lot of sororities that started in the South and did have a very traditional, objectionable outlook on things. So whyeonu talk about the sororities or fraternities propagating the stereotypes that we see in our culture... was there, for example, a sorority for black female students? There was no such thing. I mean, at that point.. .and we're not even talking race.. .we're talking certain ethnic groups.. .and the attitude was, "Well, we just don't choose ." There was religious...particularly anti-Jewish, sentiment...but the whole race issue was not that prominent. Do you feel that these social organizations at the university in the 1950s were set up primarily for white students? Oh definitely, yes. And white students as in White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. As a freshman I thought that was important.. .1 wanted to do that to feel part of the group. Then.. .once I got in.. .there were a lot of things that I wasn't comfortable with. In general, the community of students is nice.. .you make friends.. .there are certain aspects that are positive. But, I should say the values of the national organization .. .from what I understand.. .have changed. My goodness, that's 30 years ago. The outlook is different. 8 You mentioned earlier that your parents were children of immigrants? Yes. Did this play into your awareness of the exclusionary tactics used by these organizations? That's exactly what bothered me.. .but my high school was also very exclusionary in that regard.. .very. So, that's one of the things that set me to want to belong at that time.. .and Chicago at that time was also.. .1 would say.. .very ethnically divided. Of course, maybe that's still true, too. Chicago has always had a mix.. .and what I found out is.. .mix doesn't necessarily breed comprehension, compassion, and community. It is unfortunate... sometimes it's just the opposite. When you finished at Northwestern, did you immediately go on to Berkeley? Right, and at that point I guess the personal element.. .college was to make up a bit for my feeling of marginalization in high school. But by the time I went to graduate school my only interest was going to a department that had a good program in what I was interested in.. .the social aspect didn't really enter into it. So, that's how I went to Berkeley. The reason was the reputation. At that time it was considered the top in Spanish. You received your Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures from the University of California at Berkeley in 1972 and immediately joined the Department of Foreign Languages at UNL V [University of Nevada, Las Vegas]. Well, yes. From '70 to '72 I taught at the University of California at Davis while I was doing my thesis.. .1 was on the faculty there. 9 You came from Berkeley...known for its social activism...to teach at UNLV. What similarities or differences did you perceive as far as the atmosphere of the university? Night and day.. .yes. When I was at Berkeley.. .well, anyone who was at Berkeley was involved... even tangentially... in the Free Speech Movement... and then we had the People's Park Movement... Were you involved in both of those? Yes, in the Free Speech more than the People's Park because I was a TA [teaching assistant] at the time and 90 percent of the TAs went on strike. I wouldn't call myself a political activist but most people were somehow involved.. .to the very least of going on strikes and perhaps partaking in a few demonstrations. You couldn't be really oblivious to it.. .1 mean, I remember reaching out my window.. .practically being able to touch the helicopters during the People's Park incident.. .to smell the tear gas and all of that.. .and when I was in Davis.. .though I didn't participate.. .train stoppage people went and sat down on the tracks and stopped a train. It was a Vietnam War protest. Here [Las Vegas] was a vacuum.. .there was nothing.. .1 don't think there is anything. I remember about five years after I came here.. .there was a streaker. That was the most political thing that happened here. [Laughing] What else was different? Certainly academics were different. In what way? [Laughing] Night and day. I had come from a school that was considered number one in Spanish in the country.. .eminent people in many different sub-fields of Spanish.. .and I came here to a small program.. .to a university which at that time didn't even have an "F" [grade]. We had "N" grades...there were no "F"s. I heard stories that people went into 10 graduate school with their B.A. average multiplied by a minus number so that their average would be comparably lower.. .that's hard to believe. What else? Particularly in northern California.. .1 liked northern California when I went there. I felt that there were people who were intellectually stimulated and stimulating...whereas down here.. .at that time...it was kind of a bad reflection of L.A. [Los Angeles]. Now, we're a better reflection of L.A., but something more akin to the flashy materialistic southern California personality. There was a lot of rivalry between northern California and southern California.. .they're two different kind of things. An atmosphere of tolerance and intellectualism.. .which when you came here to Nevada you didn't see.. .there was no intellectualism. We used to call it a cultural desert. Interestingly enough, the Seventies were a bad time in education and there were a lot of people that came here from Berkeley and Harvard and schools back East because there weren't jobs. So.. .there were those who had no jobs and those who ended up at places like UNLV. Also, I don't think there was the spirit of tolerance that.. .at that time, at least.. .was in northern California. It still is a very reactionary state.. .rebellious, individualism.. .which is really a type of libertarianism. So, there are a lot of differences between northern California, Berkeley, and coming to UNLV. So you came to UNLV despite that? Well, there was no "despite." I didn't know what UNLV would be like.. .as far as the school... it was because of a dire need for a job at the time. The physical and intellectual environment of the school was probably the hardest thing to take. The city now has changed and there are a lot more cultural things.. .but there was almost nothing at that 11 time.. .almost nothing. The weather was.. .of course, different.. .but that was the least of differences, I think. I want to backtrack just a little bit and touch on Berkeley before we go on to your position here as a professor. When you spoke of Northwestern, you said there were no female-centered courses available other than home economics. The University of California at Berkeley is known for its liberal perspective...so, one would think that if anything's going to start for a disadvantaged group...it would be at a campus such as Berkeley. Did you see more female representation ? I was involved only in my own particular department...so, I really can't say. But I have a vague recollection that there were things going on.. .1 wasn't involved in them. But there was probably a lot more that was geared toward the anti-Vietnam War effort. Which was definitely the priority, as you said... Right, at that time. Jumping ahead to UNLV...you came here for your first full-time job as a professor... Well, I had a full-time job at Davis. You taught at Davis for two years... Right. ...then you came to UNLV in the fall of1972 as a Spanish professor. Correct. What degree offeminist awareness did you perceive at UNL V among the students or faculty? I would say... very little. It wasn't till the end of the Seventies. That would be jumping ahead to 1978... 12 Or 1979.. .yes. And interestingly.. .1 don't know if you know the story of the initial steps for that. There was a woman.. .have you heard the name Rosemary Masek? Yes. \ Because she was really the impetus.. .that's very important. She has died. She was the one who organized the Interdisciplinary Studies Program. She was an amazing woman. She was a polio victim.. .she was in a wheelchair. But she was committed to Interdisciplinary Studies and to Women's Studies. Way back there in the mid- Seventies. . .she was teaching a course in women's history. That's probably where it all began at UNLV.. .and she set into motion several of the interdisciplinary programs. She also wanted a Women's Studies Program...so it was on her suggestion...on her push for Women's Studies.. .that the first committee was appointed. So she's a very important part of this.. .1 would say she is the beginning point.. .the point of departure for Women's Studies at UNLV. So, the first Women's Studies Steering Committee was something that Rosemary Masek worked very hard to establish? Right. I think she convinced the administration that they needed to put together a committee. I can't be sure which ones were there in the beginning.. .but there were Film Studies, American Studies, comparative literature...those things were being tried out. She definitely fostered the idea of the Women's Studies Program. I believe that she convinced the administration to appoint the first steering committee. When were you asked to join the steering committee? I think I was on from the outset in '78...1 have minutes from as early as that. In fact, I'm looking at something here that's very interesting. Talk about a woman before her 13 time...there was a woman art historian who suggested that a Women's Studies course be a university requirement, which at that time was really a radical idea. You know now there are some schools that have that. I remember that we talked about that on the committee and thought that was probably counterproductive. She subsequently left the university, and I think she was trying to do film writing in L.A. I don't know what happened to her. I have a copy of the letter from Ronald Smith, who was the assistant dean at the time...asking you to join the Women's Studies steering committee in 1979... Oh, I thought it was [John] Unrue that had been the one that signed that. Now, looking back at a copy of this letter...does this jar any memories as to what was your initial reaction when you were asked to join the steering committee? Well, I was very interested. I was very happy because it was just about this time in my scholarship that I was starting to become interested in women's issues.. .because at the national convention of the Modern Language Association, in the Seventies I attended a number of sessions, particularly in English literature... some of the first feminists in English literature. They were very stimulating, exciting sessions.. .so my interest in Women's Studies as an academic pursuit was just beginning then...and it was just after this in, say, 1980-plus.. .that I myself started writing this sort of thing. So, things were just coming together at this point. We were interested, excited. We didn't really know what we were going to do. We were sort of working in the dark.. .but, of course... that's what happens when you're the first.. .opening up new territories. I was curious as to whether you perceived this as an exciting challenge or a momentous task placed before you... 14 No, it was a big task, but you see the names that are there. Claudia King was the one that I was talking to you about, with the radical proposal. Martha Knack was already teaching things in anthropology that lent themselves to that. I think psychology was there just to round it out. Rosemary Masek who, as I said, was the impetus behind all of this, she is ex oficio. And Lynn Osborne was already interested in women from the sociological standpoint. So, we were committed to drawing up a program. One of our first tasks, of course, was bylaws and deciding the direction of the mission and the task before us. I don't think we saw it as overwhelming. I think we saw it as important. As a committee, what was the initial task that you saw before you? To define what our mission was.. .the framework within which we would operate.. .you might say the philosophical framework.. .and then getting down to the practical element of what specific courses to fit in. Broadly speaking, what was the ideology of the steering committee? I remember there was a little bit of a split.. .a disagreement of whether Women's Studies was specifically and solely aimed at advancing the cause of women.. .or Women's Studies as part of the advancement of all repressed or marginal groups. There was a disagreement as to that point of view. What was the end result? Well, I think in the eventual bylaws or mission statement, it was concluded that Women's Studies was part of a larger problem. I myself was fearful that if we made Women's Studies part of a larger struggle against oppression.. .that as so often happens.. .as it happened during the civil rights movement and is happening now, too.. .that women's concerns are subsumed by other kinds of political struggles. I repeated my concern that 15 we should be first and foremost interested in promoting women's liberation, search for self-identity, and so forth., .and not getting lost in a struggle for just general, social liberation. But, we finally had a number of points that addressed all of those things. Once you established the bylaws for the steering committee, was your next task concerning courses? Yes, and that, unfortunately was limited by whatever was available at the time.. .by the people who were willing and able to give a Women's Studies course and to convince a department to support a Women's Studies course within their own curriculum. Now, I think we did very well. We had a list of criteria because another thing that we were fearful of was that courses would be included that would be counterproductive to the whole feminist ideal. We sent out a call for courses, and then judged them according to our criteria. There were people who would include one book.. .maybe [Simone de Beauvoir's] The Second Sex, and think that would qualify to be included in a Women's Studies Program.. .whereas in a Women's Studies Program, the whole philosophy behind the course has to be a little different. How do you feel it differs from traditional courses offered? Well... supportive of women... questioning certain givens... besides works that center on either women authors or women's roles, depending on the discipline. Did the steering committee ever make up a questionnaire to canvass the opinions of the UNLVfaculty as far as what type of interest or support you would have? No, but I think we were afraid that if we sent that out, it might be counterproductive also. I gave a course once in my department on women in literature... and I was told that I 16 should be concentrating on "essential" courses instead of these "frivolous" concerns. Interestingly enough.. .1 was told that by a woman. Oh really? And what, in her viewpoint, would constitute an essential course? Well, one that was already part of the program and was not thematic, specialized. So, I think canvassing the university at that point would have been counterproductive. If you were t