Dr. Cathy Cavanaugh

I have taught in distance education since 1986 when I joined Athabasca University as a tutor in Women's Studies and Canadian History. I am currently an Associate Professor in AU's women's studies programme. I am the Academic Coordinator for:

• WMST 266: Thinking from Women's Lives: An Introduction to Women's Studies
• HIST 363: The Women's West
• HIST 364: Women and the Family in Urban Canada
• WMST 400: Feminism in the Western Tradition
• WMST 401: Contemporary Feminist Theory
• WMST 465: Special Projects in Women's Studies

I also tutor students in the introductory course and senior independent studies courses (Special Projects).

After returning to university in the 1980s, I completed a PhD in history at the University of Alberta and continue to research in the area of women in western Canadian colonization and settlement. Most recently, my research has led to an interest in social and cultural aspects of a gendered West, that is, the ways in which European expansion into western Canada was constructed as a "manly" enterprise. Studying history has taught me the crucial importance of the shifting social and cultural contexts for understanding women's lives. My work in Women's Studies has deepened that understanding and given me new tools for exploring women's pasts. The advantage of Women's Studies is its interdisciplinary nature which explains why Women's Studies has produced a rich and exciting scholarly literature, particularly over the last twenty years or so. Researchers and writers in Women's Studies draw on a wide range of approaches and methods to uncover and explain the diversity of women's lives, past and present. If you would like to learn more about our WMST programme at AU please review the information on our website.

Distance education is a challenging way to pursue university studies and many of our students are also adult learners with very busy lives. Our research shows that students enrol in WMST for a variety of reasons. Some students are young moms who are taking time out of paid employment to care for their family but also want to continue active learning in preparation for returning to the public labour force. Others are retired and are pursuing educational goals that were put off while raising children and earning a living. Still others are pursuing university as a means of professional upgrading as part of their long-term career goals. Many of our students in Women's Studies are interested in learning feminist analysis that is too often missing from their other course work. My colleagues and I support your educational goals and hope that you will consider Women's Studies courses as part of your university studies. Athabasca University has a number of courses and services to help you plan a programme of university studies to meet your particular needs and interests.

I am especially proud to be associated with a university whose mission is to remove barriers that traditionally restrict access to and success in university-level studies, and to increasing equity in educational opportunities for all adult Canadians. Women in particular benefit from distance education and, historically, AU has attracted a majority of women students. About 66% of our students are women. Women often choose distant education because it affords them greater flexibility while juggling double and triple duty at home, work and as students. Distance education also emphasizes self-directed learning. This is an advantage for many women because their work and family responsibilities often make it difficult to attend prescheduled classroom-based university courses. For women living in remote communities or in rural areas, distance education can be the only practical means available for pursuing university studies. As one student recently told me, "before I found AU, I was just a farm wife. AU gave me a chance." If you think AU may be your chance please contact the Athabasca University Information Centre auinfo@athabascu.ca. For information about the Women Studies program, please email me at cathyc@athabascau.ca with your comments and questions.

With my friend and colleague Professor Randi Warne (Mount Saint Vincent University) I edited a collection of essays on women in Alberta. It's entitled Standing on New Ground. It includes essays on women in Alberta politics, the evolution of cowgirl dress, gender at the University of Alberta during the early years of the women's movement in the 1960s and 1970s, the Alberta Women's Institute, and rural life in the early decades of this century as seen through the photographs of a young farm girl. Published in 1993, you can order the book from University of Alberta Press.

I have also edited, with Jeremy Mouat, a collection of essays on the history of western Canada. The book is entitled Making Western Canada (1996) and is available from Garamond Press. It includes my essay on the campaign for married women's dower rights, "The Limitations of the Pioneering Partnership: The Alberta campaign for Homestead Dower, 1909-1925" and a selected bibliography for western Canadian history.

I am co-editor, with Randi Warne, of Telling Tales: Essays in Western Women's History. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2000.

I am also working on a biography of Irene Marryat Parlby, a British Gentlewoman who settled in the Canadian North-West in 1896 and operated a ranch with her husband in central Alberta until the early 1950s. She was elected first President of the newly formed United Farm Women's organization in 1917 and was the first provincial woman to hold a cabinet position. She was minister without portfolio in the United Farmers government from 1921 until 1935, when she retired from public life. Parlby is perhaps best know as one of the "Famous Five" Alberta women associated with the Persons Case (1929) that marks the entry of women into the constitutional life of our nation. Recently a statue commemorating these pioneers of Canadian women's rights was erected in Ottawa. That it took 70 years to gain such public recognition reflects the discontinuities in women's relationships to the past-discontinuities that women's history seeks to overcome.

For the most part scholars and academics work in relative isolation, following our individual intellectual interests. I was especially delighted then, when, in 1998, my essay, "No Place For a Woman:" Engendering Western Canadian Settlement," was recognized with two prestigious awards: the Joan Jensen-Darlis Millar Prize for the best article in western women's history published in 1997 and the O. O. Winter Prize for the best article published in the Western Historical Quarterly, 28 (Winter 1997): 493-518.