WGS-200 Level Course on Mentoring (3 credits)
Syllabus
Mentoring, Leadership, and Young Women’s Lives
This course examines the theory and practice of mentoring to consider what might constitute a
feminist model of mentorship. The course utilizes an intersectional analysis to explore the ways that
gender/race/class/age interact in relation to mentoring for social change. Beginning with a
discussion of definitions of mentoring, the history of mentoring, and personal narratives by mentors
and mentees, the course proceeds to consider personal narratives and mentoring practices, and
mentoring and women’s leadership for social change.
In addition, the course will consider the challenges in building mentoring relationships, and their role
in both social change movements and the development of young women’s leadership. Key questions
addressed include: Can mentoring cross gender/race/class/age? How important is it to for mentors
and mentees to share the same world view, standpoint, and culture? How is mentoring a tool for
improving girls’ and young women’s lives? What is the connection between mentoring and
leadership? What role has mentoring played in social change movements?
The class will feature several guest speakers to illustrate feminist mentoring models. In addition, for
an additional one CESEP credit, students may link their registration in the course with an applied
experience in an existing Rutgers mentoring program which may include the WINGS program; a
mentoring program for girls in foster care sponsored by the Graduate School of Applied and
Professional Psychology (GSAPP) and the Institute for Women’s Leadership (IWL); and/or other
existing mentoring programs.
The learning goals for the class include: (1) to gain an understanding of the definitions and history of
mentoring using an interdisciplinary approach; (2) to gain an understanding of the ways that women
in mentoring relations understand and narrate their experiences in the context of their life stories; (3)
to gain an understanding of the importance of mentoring as a primary goal of transformative
women’s leadership; (4) to advance critical reading skills; and (5) to utilize both primary and
secondary sources in writing a research paper.
Course Assignments and Requirements:
Two short critical review papers
Journal
Research paper (7-10 pages)
I. Definitions and History of Mentoring Weeks 1, 2, and 3
Week 1: Introduction
Week 2: Feminist Mentoring
Lois A. Benishek, et. al.,“A Multicultural Feminist Model of Mentoring,” in the Journal of
Multicultural Counseling & Development, Vol. 32 (2004), p. 428-442.
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Fangxia Zhao and Cynthia J. Reed , “Love, Trust, and Concern: Ingredients for Successful Mentoring
Relationships,” in Global Perspectives on Mentoring: Transforming Contexts, Communities, and
Cultures.
Cynthia Mahaffey and Sandra Meade , “A Virtual Dialogue on Feminist Mentoring,” at:
http://www.womenwriters.net/summer05/scholarly/mahaffey_meade.htm
Pamela Moss, et. al., “Toward Mentoring as Feminist Praxis: Strategies for Ourselves and Others,” in
Journal of Geography in Higher Education, Vol. 23, Issue 3 (November 1999), pp. 413-427.
Week 3: The History of Mentoring
Helen Colley, “A ‘Rough Guide’ to the History of Mentoring from a Marxist Feminist Perspective,”
in Journal of Education for Teaching, Vol. 28, 3 (Nov 2002), pp. 257-273.
Valerie L. Schwiebert, Chapters 1 and 4 (“Mentoring: Past, Present, and Future,” “Women as
Mentors”) in Mentoring: Creating Connected, Empowered Relationships.
II. Personal Narratives: Mentoring Practices Weeks 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Week 4: Conceptual Foundations
Abigail Brooks, “Feminist Standpoint Epistemology: Building Knowledge and Empowerment
through Women’s Lived Experiences,” Feminist Research Practice: A Primer (Thousand Oaks: Sage
Publications, 2006), pp. 53-82.
Week 5: Mentoring Girls
Jean E. Rhodes et al., “Caring Connections: Mentoring Relationships in the Lives of Urban Girls,” in
Bonnie J. Ross Leadbeater and Niobe Way, eds., Urban Girls Revisited: Building Strengths.
Jennifer Pastor et. al., “Makin’ Homes: An Urban Girl Thing,” in Urban Girls Revisited.
Ruth Nicole Brown, “Mentoring on the Borderlands: Creating Empowering Connections between
Adolescent Girls and Young Women Volunteers,” in Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology
of Self-Knowledge, IV, (Special Issue, Summer 2006), pp. 105-122.
Stephanie A. Parker , “Growing the Ferocious Voice of Leadership in Young Women with
Disabilities and Other Significant Life Challenges through Leadership Development and Mentoring,”
Leaders for a Lifetime Program, The Aurora Foundation, Inc.
Renee Spencer and Bell Liang, “She Gives Me a Break from the World”: Formal Youth Mentoring
Relationships Between Adolescent Girls and Adult Women,” by. J Primary Prevent (209) 30:109130.
Week 6: Young Women’s Narratives
Selections from Barbara Findley, ed., Listen Up: Feminist Voices from the Next Generation
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Selections from Mary K. Trigg, ed., Leading the Way: Young Women’s Activism for Social Change
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press), 2010.
Week 7: Intergenerational Mentoring
Selections from Astrid Henry, Not My Mother’s Sister: Generational Conflict and Third-Wave
Feminism (Bloomington and Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2004).
Anne Firor Scott, Sara Evans, Susan Cahn, and Elizabeth Faue, “Women’s History in the New
Millennium: A Conversation across Three ‘Generations,’” in Hokulani K. Aikau et. al., Feminist
Waves, Feminist Generations (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), pp. 87-108.
Week 8: Memoirs
Choose one memoir:
Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
Jill Kerr Conway, True North
Eleanor Roosevelt, The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt
III. Mentoring & Women’s Leadership for Social Change Weeks 9, 10, 11, 12, 13
Week 9: Mentoring and Aspiration
Selections from Matilda Cuomo, The Person Who Changed My Life: Prominent People Recall Their
Mentors (including forward by Hillary Rodham Clinton)
Video link: Hilary Clinton on mentoring
Week 10: Mentoring Models
Christy Chandler, “Mentoring and Women in Academia: Reevaluating the Traditional Model,”
NWSA Journal, Vol 8, Issue 3, pp. 79-100
Audrey J. Murrell et al., “At the Crossroads of Race and Gender: Lessons from the Mentoring
Experiences of Professional Black Women,” in Mentoring Dilemmas: Developmental Relationships
Within Multicultural Organizations.
Week 11: Community Building and Social Change
Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision
(London: The University of North Carolina Press), 2003, Chapter 8: “Mentoring a New Generation of
Activists: The Birth of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, 1960-1961”
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Interview with Diane Nash (November 12, 1985. Washington University Libraries, Film and Media
Archive, Henry Hampton Collection.)
Film: FUNDI
Week 12: Women’s Leadership for Social Change
Nicole Burrowes, "On Our Own Terms: Ten Years of Radical Community Building With Sista II
Sista," in Morgan Cousins, Paula X. Rojas, and Ije Ude, eds., The Revolution Will Not Be Funded.
Selections from Marian Wright Edelman, Lanterns: A Memoir of Mentors
Audre Lorde Project (You tube link/video component)
Week 13: Women’s Leadership for Social Change, Part 2
Selections from Srilatha Batliwala, Feminist Leadership for Social Transformation: Clearing the
Conceptual (CREA, 2010).
Selections from White House Project Report, “Benchmarking Women’s Leadership,” 2009.
Deborah L. Rhode, “The Difference ‘Difference’ Makes,” in Deborah L. Rhode, ed., The Difference
“Difference” Makes: Women and Leadership (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), pp. 350.
Week 14: Presentations of Research
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