KAY ARMATAGE IS UNCOMFORTABLE BEING CALLED A LEADER. SHE'S NOT sure she’s earned the title. But some of her other titles – professor and founding director of U of T’s Graduate Collaborative Program in Women’s Studies, co-founder of the university’s Institute for Women’s Studies and Gender Studies, and key player at the Toronto International Film Festival, to name a few – tell a different story.

An associate professor cross-appointed to cinema studies and women’s studies, Armatage’s roots at U of T run deep. As a graduate student in the English department in the late 1960s, she joined a collective that taught the university’s first women’s
studies course.

"I seemed to be the person at the university who knew the most about women’s literature, so that’s how I got involved. And I didn’t even particularly think of myself as a feminist at the time, but I got a crash course.

"It was a volatile time. The students were scared and excited and militant and shy, and the course was a real eye-opener for them. It turned their lives around, in the same way that it did for me, really."

While this early activity would prove to lay the foundation for women’s studies as a discipline, Armatage is modest about her hand in its evolution. "I was just drifting along, doing what was interesting to me at the time."

Following her interests proved fruitful. Armatage was instrumental in creating U of T’s first undergraduate program in women’s studies (see sidebar), and she led initiatives to launch a graduate program and establish the Institute for Women’s Studies and Gender Studies.

"When we started the graduate program we were determined to turn it into a graduate centre, and we worked very hard to make that happen. The Institute houses the undergraduate and graduate programs and has a strong network of affiliations
with all women’s studies programs on the other campuses. It’s a hot little place, full of activity."

Margit Eichler, director of the Institute and professor of sociology and equity studies in education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at U of T, can take a lot of credit for the Institute’s success, but has high praise for Armatage as well. "Kay has been a driving force in women’s studies at U of T. She’s known for her flair and style, and has helped bring high visibility to women’s studies across the university."

But all of these achievements represent only one side of the coin. Armatage’s career in cinema studies is equally impressive.

As a grad student, Armatage was drawn to the rich film culture that was emerging on the Toronto scene, and spent her spare time at movie theatres or in deep discussions with fellow film enthusiasts. "We really developed our knowledge by talking to each other, by teaching ourselves; there was no other way."

Cinema studies at U of T was born at the same time as women’s studies – and Armatage was right there on the ground floor, once again helping to develop a discipline from scratch. "When I got involved with the women’s studies collective, I began asking, ‘Where are all the women filmmakers?’ And I started pursuing that."

In the 1970s, she became a regular contributor to the Canadian film magazine, Take One. And in 1973, she played a key role in organizing the Women’s Film Festival in Toronto. "At this point," recalls Armatage, "it became clear that women’s studies and cinema studies were my thing. My academic background was in English, but I’ve never taught in the English department."

While juggling a demanding teaching load in two disciplines, Armatage also managed to direct seven experimental films between 1975 and 1987, and publish articles on women filmmakers, feminist theory and Canadian cinema. And in 1999 she co-edited a book, Gendering the Nation: Canadian Women’s Cinema, a collection of essays about Canadian women directors and the first anthology of its kind in the world.

Recognition for Armatage’s work has come in many forms, including the YWCA Woman of Distinction Award, the Toronto Women in Film and Television Award of Merit, and grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

Today Armatage’s research is focused on Nell Shipman, a successful Canadian actor and film director from the silent era. Her book on Shipman will be published by U of T Press in 2002. "It talks about her life in relation to her work, but only so far as those two things are connected. Each chapter looks at a film or two in cinematic, social and cultural terms."

The rhythm and direction of Armatage’s academic life has also been shaped for the last 17 years by the Toronto International Film Festival where, in her role as a senior programmer, she is responsible for selecting many of the films that are screened.

"Before I got on the Nell Shipman train, everything I did really came from my work at the Festival. In this role I’m able to combine all my interests." Armatage concentrates on bringing the work of women directors to the Festival. In the process, she finds interesting subjects for her own academic work and generates profile for these filmmakers in academic circles across North America.

In that way, "the Festival allows me to contribute to the construction of a new canon, to new objects of academic study. It’s fantastic."

Indeed, creating new objects of study seems to be the definitive activity in Armatage’s diverse and accomplished career. "But it keeps me on a kind of treadmill. I just finished marking papers for my courses, and then I’m off to Cannes, and then I spend the summer watching cassettes for the Festival, and then I’m working the Festival, and then I’m back to school and it all starts over again!" But it’s all in the name of following her interests. And, reflects Armatage with typical understatement, "It’s a very nice kind of work."

In the spring of 1974, then-graduate student Kay Armatage and her friend, undergraduate student Ceta Ramkhalawansingh, took it upon themselves to launch a women’s studies program at U of T. They decided it was time the university had a full-fledged program, so they developed a program guide by cobbling together courses they thought would be a good fit.

"We cut the course descriptions out of the calendar so it was in exactly the same typeface, and we put the U of T crest on the cover. As a kind of preamble, we wrote an essay about why there should be women’s studies at the university. The brochure was called Women’s Studies at U of T, Program Guide, 1974-75. Since I was employed as a grad student, I snuck in at night and copied the material and then we distributed it all over campus. For the first time, students could see how these various courses could relate."

It wasn’t long, of course, before the administration got wind of the university’s "new program" and Robert Allan Greene, dean of Arts & Science, came looking for answers. "Luckily we had a very liberal dean at the time." Greene intended only to reprimand Armatage, but she seized the opportunity to advance her cause.

"He said, ‘The way we do this here is we strike a committee.’ So I said, ‘Fine, who’s going to chair it?’ He was slightly taken aback – I’m sure he never intended to strike a committee that day." But by the end of the meeting, they had agreed to form a committee – and had even identified a chair. Within a year, U of T had its first women’s studies program.