Views of the deep-rooted assumptions and myths surrounding the role of women in academic institutions of the South are presented in scholarly articles, experience-based essays, and poems. Among the themes that are explored are the history of women's involvement in higher education, women's studies, women's status, racial stereotypes, alienation, and conformity. Contributions and authors are as follows: "A Different Kind of Being" (Sally Brett); "IWY: Breaking the Silence: A Fantasy" (Minnie Bruce Pratt); "Mary Munford and Higher Education for Women in Virginia" (Mary Gathright Newell); "Women's Studies at Vanderbilt: Toward a Strategy for the Eighties" (Elizabeth Langland); "New Women at Old Dominion" (Carolyn H. Rhodes and Fran Hassencahl); "A Delicate Balance: Academic Women in Arkansas" (Barbara G. Taylor); "Teaching Women's Studies at the University of Arkansas" (Margaret Jones Bolsterli); "Academic Women in Mississippi: Oktoberfest 1980" (Peggy W. Prenshaw); "Fair Harvard and the Fairer Sex" (Susan Read Baker); "Racial Myths and Attitudes among White Female Students at the University of Florida" (Faye Gary-Harris); "The Black Female Academic: Doubly Burdened or Doubly Blessed?" (Jacqueline Jordan Irvine); "Tilting at Windmills in the Quixotic South" (Irene Thompson); "She Who Laughs First" (Judith Stitzel); "To Delois and Willie" (Martha Mayes Park); and "Scratching at the Compound" (Mary Lou Kohfeldt Stevenson). The appended essay, "The Historical Perspective: A Bibliographic Essay" (Virginia Shadron, Eleanor Hinton Hoytt, Margaret Parsons, Barbara B. Reitt, Beverly Guy Sheftall, Jacqueline Zalumas, and Darlene R. Roth), presents a literature review of the history of both black and white women's involvement in higher education in the South. (SW)