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In what ways will the study of U.S. women writers in the twenty-first century challenge our current conceptualizations of the discourses of women and class? While it is impossible to foresee all such changes or even to imagine some of the directions such inquiries might explore, what we can do is insure that inquiries into all realms of women and class do continue. In that sense, I want to posit some interrogatories for future consideration.
Our profession has become deeply dependent upon technology -- we exchange information on electronic message boards; we establish websites for our organizations, our classes, and our research; we search the Internet for archival materials that allow us instant access, even if we live hundreds of miles from the institution that houses the original materials. "Intellectual property" itself is being redefined. Just as with the industrial revolution, the late twentieth-century's technological revolution is deeply implicated with class structures; that the distinctions are now phrased in terms of "access" makes them no less class related, but it does tend to posit a classlessness that is denied by the economic realities of many women scholars and students....