men’s studies proposals at a time when these organizations were
not inclined to fund them. She explains that she “would not argue
for them as women’s studies projects, but as being excellent,” stating
that over time general standards of excellence and standards pertain-
ing to feminist scholarship have converged, so that now they are
nearly indistinguishable. Speaking of the Woodrow Wilson Women’s
Studies competition, she says:
To me, to win one of these [fellowships], you can’t have one with-
out the other...Women’sstudies scholars...reallydohaveto
master more. Because you could be very good, say, in seventeenth-
century literature, and not pay any attention to women...Butto
win in this competition, you would have to not only master that
field, but also master the feminist theory that speaks to that field.
And I think they’re absolutely crucial, they’ve got to have both.Speaking of her own past, she recalls, “I had to be excellent in the
standard fields and then be excellent in women’s studies...Someof
the people who had done more conventional work [in the past]
chalked it up to, ‘Oh, well, she does feminist stuff and that’s really
hot.’” That this panelist and others have experienced strong tensions
between (not to mention discrimination over) being appreciated for
high-quality scholarship and doing innovative work that contributes
to the institutionalization of a new field speaks to the pervasive and
far-reaching drama of diversity in academic evaluation.
Perspectives on Diversity: Panelists of Color
I conducted nine interviews with nonwhite panelists—seven Afri-
can-American and two Asian evaluators. As in the larger group of re-
spondents, here too I found significant variation in the approach to
diversity as a criterion of selection. At one end of the spectrum, one
Considering Interdisciplinarity and Diversity / 219