Five seminar papers on women's studies and a paper providing an overview of the papers and the Michigan Seminar on Research and Teaching about Women are presented. Catharine R. Stimpson considers the field of women's studies as an area of research and teaching and discusses the current diversity of topic, theory, and method. She notes national and international trends, which are not always consonant with each other. Ellen Morgan discusses her own experience in the women's movement and in teaching women's studies. She notes that one of the real problems has been living up to the challenge set by activists, fulfilling multiple obligations to students and feminism. Kathryn Kish Sklar explores the links between class and gender in a historical sequence of events that took place in eighteenth-century Northampton, Massachusetts. She examines the relationship between civil and cultural (religious) norms, and the interaction of political and lineage rivalries and how these things affected the outcome for the woman involved in a case of fornication which resulted in illegitimate birth. Rachel Maines examines needlework in the United States as a female popular art and describes the development and elaboration of style and technique and the broad dissemination of design books and instructions. Economic factors that hindered decorative needlework are also considered. Rayna Rapp examines first the meaning of family and household and proceeds to examine the normative situation of family and household, and of the genders within them, in working class, middle class, upper class, and among the very poor in contemporary America. The introductory paper was written by Louise A. Tilly and Mary Edwards. (SW)