Faculty Roles
Barbara Kaster (1934-2020) was one of the first two women faculty members at Bowdoin. She was an English professor and the faculty advisor for the Bowdoin Women’s Association. Kaster’s original job offer was to teach public speaking, communication, and argumentation, but she insisted that her acceptance of the job was contingent on her being able to teach classes in film as well. She wanted to teach students how to make their own films in addition to film history and theory. Her course “History, Theory, and Criticism of Film” was extremely popular, with two hundred students enrolling a few years after its introduction. The Bowdoin Film Society grew out of that class, as did the Student Film Awards Ceremony, an annual event that Kaster approached with the zeal of the annual awards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, right down to a polar bear version of an Oscar.
As an early advocate for women at Bowdoin, Kaster fought for women to be included in college decisions and supported women students as they established themselves at the College. In this interview, Kaster succinctly explains the ways that systems of oppression perpetuate:
“During the time we were discriminating against women, we were tenuring all these white males. Now that we have women hired we don’t have any tenure left. It’s all white males now. So we don’t have any tenure left because we used to discriminate against you. In other words we have to continue discriminating against you because we used to discriminate against you.”
Interview with Barbara Kaster from The Implementation of Coeducation at Bowdoin College - What Was it All About? October 31, 1980