Many teachers of introductory women's and gender studies find themselves in the position of introducing bad news to an already hostile audience. To deal directly with this dilemma, author Katie Hogan has approached student resistance to women's and gender studies (WGST) with carefully constructed syllabi designed to encourage cognitive/intellectual awareness of the astonishing achievements of WGST. Motivated in part by a familiarity with Martin E. P. Seligman's positive psychology exercises--in particular "The Gratitude Visit" and the "What-Went-Well" exercises, Hogan adapted Seligman's approach as a way to work with students' negative emotions. Feminist scholar Alison Piepmeier points out, "Although feminism can be understood as an ideology grounded in dissent and critique, the feminist impulse is ultimately a hopeful one." The project Hogan describes here intertwines feminist pedagogy with positive psychology. Hogan believes that by asking students to write letters of gratitude to visionary feminist activists, she is offering students the experience of remaining in a positive struggle despite the grinding structural injustices that must be covered in the course.