Rachel Rys

WRIT 501
Professor Johnson
13 October 2015
COR #2: Threshold Concept: The Personal is Political
One of the most widely cited threshold concepts within the field of Feminist Studies is
the idea that The Personal is Political. This concept is so prevalent that the phrase cannot be
traced to a single scholaror even confidently attributed to academic feminism(s) at all. The
Personal is Political emphasizes the fact that an individuals personal experiences have broader
political significance. Issues that are presumed to only affect individuals (such as healthcare,
division of labor, sexuality, pay, media representations, personal liberties, etc.) must be
publicized and politicized in order for change to occur. This threshold concept asserts that
everyday experiences canand mustbe made public in order to highlight the commonalities
across different experiences. Making the personal political disrupts the structures of power that
allow the rights of disenfranchised populations to be violated or ignored. Expanding the realm of
politics to also include personal, seemingly individual, issues brings these everyday lived
experiences into public consciousness. Politicizing the personal emphasizes commonality of
experience while also attending to intersectional differences.
This concept has affected my writing, teaching, and campus and community activism.
Along with other threshold concepts that appear in our field, this idea has motivated Feminist
Studies students and faculty to emphasize the role of praxis and community involvement as part
of their academic pursuits. This commitment has shaped the field of Feminist Studies by
demanding a focus on particularity and subjectivity over generalizability and reliability. In
addition, it emphasizes the (fraught) connections between academic feminisms and the much
longer history of feminist activism. For me personally, committing to the idea that the personal is
political has encouraged me to become aware of the labor of academic work, its role in the
university, and its potential connections to the communities that it serves. Moreover, it has
influenced my interest in pedagogy by shaping my philosophy and practice in the classroom.
From a pedagogical standpoint, emphasizing and valuing the personal means finding ways to
elicit individual stories and connect them to broader contexts and struggles.
I identified the threshold concept of The Personal is Political by brainstorming the main
concepts or takeaways that we emphasize in our introductory courses. While The Personal is
Political is a familiar phrase to many students prior to enrolling in a Feminist Studies course, one
of our goals as a discipline is to emphasize the diverse ways and reasons that this approach to the
personal is important. This is a threshold concept because it shapes the common political
commitments, epistemologies, and analytical lenses that are shared among members of the field
regardless of their objects of analysis. In addition, it delineates some of the most appropriate
methods that might be used by individuals in the field. Using the criteria established by Meyer
and Land (2003, 2005), this concept is a threshold concept because it is transformative (because
it requires someone engaged in the field to actively value personal experience), irreversible
(because the connection between personal and political is a defining feature of feminist analysis),
and integrative (because it requires connections to be forged between external structures and
individual experiences).
Many of the threshold concepts that I brainstormed during this process are directly
related to Writing Studiesthus my interest in adding the Writing Studies emphasis to my

degree. While I am not teaching Writing 2, thinking about the threshold concepts in my home
discipline was a useful exercise because it allowed me to consider the productive overlaps
between the two fields. Like Writing Studies, Feminist Studies is engaged in considerable
ongoing work to name our field and to determine our shared commitments. Because this work is
so recent and so prevalent, the idea of threshold concepts feels quite familiar to me. Thinking
about threshold concepts reminds me of the commitments of my field and the reasons why I am
invested in bringing a feminist lens to my involvement in Writing Studies (and vice versa!).