Since the 1990s, there is a growing attention for gender and diversity mainstreaming of university curricula. However, in our experience –as two young, female professors teaching introductory courses to politics– textbooks have remained relatively unchanged. Many introductory textbooks seem to adopt a ‘foundational approach’ to teaching political science: they identify the ‘pioneers’ of the discipline and present the ‘classic’ work and ideas of scholars who laid the foundations of our discipline. The integration of female and minority perspectives into such a canon poses important challenges for the organization and presentation of knowledge in introductory textbooks. These perspectives often challenge the political science canon, dominated by white, senior and male scholars, and, as such, are difficult to integrate without first offering students an account of the canon they criticize. As a result, we find, introductory courses continue to prioritize the traditional canon; and female/feminist and minority voices continue to be postponed to graduate and postgraduate courses.
In this paper, we offer a gendered intersectional analysis of the foundational approach adopted in introductory textbooks. We start by conducting a content analysis of a selection of Introduction to Political Science textbooks used across Europe in order to assess whether, to what extent and how they integrate female and minority perspectives. Next, we identify three main problems with this foundational approach. First, for many university and college students, Introduction to Political Science is at once the first and final course on politics. With little to no follow-up courses, the risk exists that these students do not become familiar with the diversity of voices that have challenged the foundational ideas of our discipline. Second, and more profoundly, the prioritization of a traditional canon in (under)graduate years risks reproducing hierarchical or center-periphery relationships within the discipline. Teaching a predominantly white, male canon in Introduction to Political Science sends an implicit signal about minority and inferiority status in the discipline; a signal so powerful that it cannot be attenuated by having female or minority staff teach introductory courses. Third, and in conjunction to the former, there is an issue of complicity whereby faculty staff risk becoming implicated in masking, and thereby, justifying the historical power struggles as a result of which women and minority perspectives now stand under-represented in their field.
