Remote Ready Biology Learning Activities

Cynthia Enloe's visit to the Philadelphia during the week of March 29-31 was a rich and generative one, @ a wide range of different locations, not all of them college campuses. She spoke at the American Friends Service Committee, as well as at Temple, Saint Joe's, West Chester, the Unversity of Delaware and Haverford College, before "finishing up" with a faculty development workshop @ Bryn Mawr. She had a great deal to teach us all about

• co-optation (acting on the basis of others' expectations and values)
• varieties of imperalist and liberatory attempts to create new sets of aspirations
• becoming curious about our own lack of curiosity about our starting presumptions
• refusing the "it's not politics" dismissal of where a feminist curiosity might lead
• studying the silence(s)
• refusing the conventional distinctions between what is private and what is public (for instance, not taking as a given where military bases start and stop)
• the need for sharing information (for instance, if women married to soldiers--encouraged to take on extra burdens in the service of patriotism--compared notes and made alliances w/ women living around military bases: would it be more difficult to realize the imperial project? what happens when men seeking sex seek out women who are hungry, or women who are seeking citizenship: how do both parties enable each other to acheive their ends?)
• looking for patterns among stories, refusing the dismissive gesture of "it's an anomaly."

But what struck me most was Cynthia's ability to include all of us in the audience (I noticed this first in the public talk she gave @ Haverford, though she demonstrated it as well in the faculty workshop @ BMC afterwards) as recognizers of a larger pattern and makers of a common story. Her hearty "tell us what it was like for you, there," was a generous and welcoming acknowledgement that all of can contribute our experience to two shared projects: both an awareness of larger patterns and the ability to change them. Her belief that we can do so is entirely congruent w/ the aims of this forum (and others on Serendip).

Please join us here w/ your thoughts (initiated by Cynthia or elsewhere/otherwise) about feminism and world citizenship, centers and peripheries, teaching and curiosity...