Reply to comment

This class was much different than what I initially thought it would be. As a freshman coming into what was advertised as an introductory course for those interested in the Gender and Sexuality field, I expected to get a good amount of groundwork (vocabulary, exposure to scholarly works, theory, writing practice, etc) necessary to enter into higher level courses with a desired edge. What I experienced was actually quite different. I was left out of the loop for not having this groundwork which I had expected to gain, not teach, to the class, and often tremendously irrelevant to the inappropriately Bryn Mawr-centric syllabus.

Even so, I felt I was often able to speak easily and made a tangible contribution to the progression of class discussions from my outsider’s standpoint. For every class that I attended, I attempted to add in my perspective to the current of conversation. Class discussion was definitely the most enjoyable part of class time for me and I believe it showed to be my strongest area in the course. That being said, the out of class discussions that took place on Serendip were by far the most disagreeable expectation. I felt taxed every Sunday to try to further strain conversations I often felt had been talked to death in class and the format itself facilitated a disjointed, biased, smattering of incongruent opinions. Posting was tedious and I often felt it to be unnecessary to participate. The web papers were somewhat better, due to the immense creative freedom and receiving feedback from Anne.  This creative allowance has made me more ambitious as a critical thinker doing as I saw the web papers as ways to explore realms of feminism I had personally never experienced or even thought of. For example, even though I felt largely unknowledgeable concerning transgender and transsexual matters, I still decided to pursue it for one of my web papers. It was probably one of my least successful endeavors, but I am still glad to have the opportunity to explore it.

    Overall, I learned that there are many complexities within the world of feminism, complexities that I have yet to delve into, and that the issue of feminism concerns each and every one of us in ways we sometimes may not realize. While I still yearn for a certain degree of specificity and am disappointed with the class’ actuality as opposed to its advertisement, I greatly appreciate the explorative elements that this class achieved for me as a thinker.