Week 6A--Co-designing the Remainder of the Course

I must confess that I know few of either Lauter or Anne's author references and suggestions.  Where have I been all my life? The only literary canon I have is the European white male traditional one! I am so excited to discover "our" canon of writers in the second half of this course.

Hmm... although I tend to be a little wary of the validity of online quizzes, especially ones composed of so few questions, I find the results of this one to be quite interesting. Apparently, I am bell hooks... which seems fitting, since Anne recommended that I look into womanist theology (the basis of which seems quite similar to her ideas) as a way of starting to explore the questions I raised in my web paper. In addition, I realized that I read an article by bell hooks a few weeks ago in my education class... which was more about education than feminism, as can be expected, but towards the end of this particular excerpt, she does talk about how, to her, "the feminist classroom was the one space where students could raise critical questions about pedagogical process," so... I think her readings might be quite relevant to the concepts we're exploring, as well as perhaps... how we're going about exploring them?

I also want to add my support to those who are asking for more Cixous-style readings as opposed to those in Spivak's style. I have nothing against Spivak, and believe that texts such as hers are definitely important for us to study, but I personally find Cixous' ideas and ways of approaching them to be more interesting & relatable... and would like to read more about the relationships between feminism, identity, the body, sexuality, etc.

I like the idea of reading some works belonging to the feminist literary canon (ie. Jane Eyre), partially because I'm not familiar with them and would like to be, but also because I think it would be interesting to examine them ourselves after reading about how other critics have interpreted them.

I also really love the idea of reading feminist poetry -- that was one of the options on Anne's list of ideas that seemed especially exciting to me. In addition to that idea, I'd like to also suggest looking at more feminist art. I personally found it interesting to start off the course looking at the Sojourner Truth plate (and The Dinner Party in general), and would like to explore more feminist art... perhaps corresponding with time periods of literature, etc. that we end up reading from?

If art does sound like a good idea to anyone... I had coffee this afternoon with a friend who graduated from BMC in 2006, and she gave me a list of feminist artists that she thought might be interesting to consider... though I haven't really had a chance to look into many of them yet. One artist she mentioned that I am slightly familiar with is Cindy Sherman, some of whose work can be seen here... and an author she suggested is Linda Nochlin, one of whose articles can be found here (I haven't read the whole thing, but the bits I've picked up do seem quite relevant to some of our discussions). I can type up the rest of the list if anyone is interested.

So, basically, I guess I'd like to head in the more artsy-literary-ish direction. I still think we should focus on the political aspects of feminism, definitely, but that it would be interesting to do so while looking at different kinds of texts (or even things that aren't texts, like photographs and other works of art, or films).

There were other ideas mentioned in this thread that I liked as well, and I would elaborate more if I weren't so tired at the moment, but... suffice it to say that I would not be disappointed to go in any of the directions people have suggested so far!

I like the idea of The Second Sex. Also, Germaine Greer is hard and I'd love to read her in this class. I'd really like to read some short stories that fir in with the theory we've been reading. I'm not a huge fan of scifi, but I think A Handmaid's Tale is a scifi-y book that everyone would enjoy and Atwood is an interesting writer. I'd love to read some "3rd Wave" stuff...books like Manifesta that address the more current cultural aspect of feminism (rap music, the beauty industry etc.). I think it would be imprtant to at least touch on lesbian feminism like Adrienne Rich. I think we should also consider reading Vindication of The Rights of Women. I've also heard that Christine de Pizan is an interesting parody type thing that adresses the literary steretypes of women. Maybe an Austen novel would be fun.

For last Thursday's class, we began by returning to some previous readings and themes. We first re-examined Cixous' notion of "generous feminism" and looked at the sculptures one alumni had made representing her interpretation of this concept. We then learned of Ann's problem with this notion, who made a very important point about what it means to be generous in this context-do normally introverted women experience a greater hardship in being more "generous" than normally extroverd women? We were left wondering if we can construct a feminism that embraces diversity with equal (or no) costs to women?

We then returned to Johnson's reading and the previous (and ongoing) class debate on the issue of the personal vs. the political. An important question Flora raised was "What is our shared goal for the class?" Professor Dalke responded with her own question: "Do we have to have a shared goal?"

We broke up into smaller groups to discuss the two readings which each half of the class had done and then held a discussion in which we spoke as the author of the text we had read. Harder said than done. We seemed to have a better grasp on what Anzaldua was saying about the idea of a "feminist home." For her, this home embraces ambuguity and allows a diversity of perspectives, allows a greater freedom. She also speaks of the undefinable boundaries within the self. Ultimately, she is saying that there is a home for the feminists (re: the border between the States and Mexico)

We seemed a bit more confused about the Martin & Mohanty reading but what we took away ultimately was that what is needed is an "irreconcible tension." The authors were referencing Edward Said who said that in order to be truly "intellectual" one needs distance from one's subject-you need to feel that homelessness, to lack attachment. We ended class learning that Martin & Mohanty complicate Said's claim because while we do need this "intellectual distance" we also need things like politics, space, and freedom to do the work of feminism.

My choice in menu items, this evening, is rather selfish. I have two criteria for choosing topics:
Flavor: It must be something I'm interested in.
Variety: It must be something I have not discussed in depth in another academic setting.

Here are my suggestions:
ONE: A class trip to one of the fantastic-looking presentations at this Gender, War and Militarism Conference. Some of the highlights on the program for me include:

Session 6: Gender, War, Media
Chair: Katherine Sender, Assistant Professor of Communications, Annenberg School, UPenn
1. Matters of Life and Death: Debating Militarization and Gender in the New Eritrea, Victoria Bernal, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine
2. A Fresh Crop of Human Misery: Representations of Bosnian "War Babies" in the Global Print Media, 1991-2006, R. Charli Carpenter, Assistant Professor of International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh
3. Fireman Fetishes and Drag King Dreams: Queer Responses to September 11, Deborah Cohler, Assistant Professor of Women' s Studies, San Francisco State University

Session 4: Rape, Violence, Torture
Chair: Heather Sharkey, Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, UPenn
1. Rape as Marker and Erasure of Difference: Darfur and the Nuba Mountains (Sudan), Sondra Hale, Professor of Anthropology and Women' s Studies, University of California, Los Angeles
2. Wars of Attrition: How Men Get Away with Rape, Liz Kelly, Professor of Sexualized Violence and Director of the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit, London Metropolitan University
3. The Body as Border, Julie Mostov, Associate Vice Provost for International Programs and Associate Professor of Politics, Drexel University
4. Variation in Sexual Violence during War: The Relative Absence of Sexual Violence by some Non-state Actors, Elisabeth Jean Wood, Professor of Political Science, Yale University and Research Professor at the Santa Fe Institute

My logic for the inclusion of each lecture in the conference is different. But, I generally find it important to be exposed to a wide variety of intellectuals doing interesting work. My hope is that these discussions will be as good in person as they look on paper. The variety of topics in this conference is breath-taking to me. I don't want to miss it. I am a bit concerned about the fact that the majority of conference presenters work as professors at American Universities, possibly reducing the diversity of the type of work being presented. But despite that possible limitation, I still think a visit to the conference would add a very different and I think useful experience to our coursework.

TWO: An in depth (1-2 weeks) survey of womanist writers. Perhaps this could include, as Anne suggested to me earlier, a comparison with bell hooks' feminism? I find it incredibly important that womanist texts, especially their valid critiques of certain 1st & 2nd wave feminist assumptions, be included in our study of feminism criticism.

THREE: An in depth (1-2 weeks) survey of feminist work in disabilities studies. I know that this is an incredibly vague suggestion since so many texts could fall into this category. Sadly, I am not as familiar with them as I'd like to be. I only know that the talks at a Disabilities Studies conference I attended at Haverford last spring helped me understand concepts of the body and agency more than any previous text. And, as far as I can tell, these texts are often not included in any sort of mainstream canon.

There are other topics, of course, I'm interested in reading about. But these are the first three that popped into my head and wouldn't go away.

I also want to briefly record my reaction to Lauter. I loved the last two sentences of his essay. But I had so many, many difficulties with how he GOT there. I couldn't help but bristle at his anecdote about feminists not critiquing properly; his essay, even though I enjoyed much of the content, seemed to be saying: Oh there you go again, silly female feminists. I know you're trying to do your feminism. But just listen to (masculine) me and I'll tell you how to do it right. I wished that Lauter had reflected on the possible resonances behind his masculine privilege while writing.

Also, I don't get what's wrong with Spivak. I kind of enjoyed her writing style.

Flora

I was also Angela Davis. Interesting, since I don't consider myself so "communist" and maybe not so into the "black power" movement either. I was pretty surprised as I was sure I'd get someone like Susan B. Anthony, not really sure why.

Anyway, one thing I've really enjoyed about this course is the diversity of readings we've done and I would like to see that continue. It might be interesting to mix it up during the 2nd half of the course by throwing in different types of texts, like a film or play (the "Age of Arousal" one looks really interesting...) and doing some more poetry as well. It'd be interesting to see how the message changes (or doesn't change) depending on the medium in which it's presented as well as how it changes (or doesn't change) for the reader of the "text."

I was intrigued by the idea of reading "Wide Sargasso Sea" since I read it long ago but didn't really understand it so it'd be nice to be able to return to it with a better frame of reference.

Readings focusing on other perinent issues of feminsim like sexuality and class would add another dimension to the class so reading about transgender and intersexuality may nicely complicate even more our conception of "feminism" and what it means to be a "feminist." I think it also makes sense considering we've already looked at the interaction of ethnicity and race with feminism.

 

Alright, so, I suppose since everyone else is mentioning their results, I might as well throw in that I got Judith Butler. While I hate to follow along with what everyone else does, this helps me segue nicely into the fact that I really think we should read Judith Butler, and once we've made at least a small foray into her work, what has been said since she first wrote Gender Trouble (though I'd be happy to read Butler even if it wasn't that specific text). Reading Paul Lauter and his archaic idea that "the social experiences and the cultures of women and men diverge at significant points" served to make me even more frustrated with the age of the texts we've been reading (73).

I can understand Lauter's argument on some level. Yes, we are currently living in a society that believes in a binary construction of gender and since gender is a social construct it makes sense that there could be some difference due to societal indoctrination as far as the way situations are viewed by each gender. However, when he makes statements such as "the application to women's art of principles and standards derived almost exclusively from the study of men's art will tend to obscure, even hide, and certainly undervalue what women have created", he seems to be suggesting that there is some inherent difference between women and men other than those which society has created (73). However, I am immediately reminded of Butler's question and answer in Imitation and Gender Insubordination: "What, if anything can lesbians be said to share?" "There is no necessarily common element among lesbians, except perhaps that we all know something about how homophobia works against women--although, even then, the language and the analysis we use will differ." (14,17) If a group which shares both gender and sexuality has little in common, how could a group which shares merely gender have so much similarity?

The works we have read so far have given us a small but useful basis in feminist theory. However, I would argue (as I started to do in my Web Paper) that the syllabus has been mislabeled. The works we have already read are themselves not "contemporary" to us as a class. Since we have both alumnae who graduated long before any of these texts were written, and students who were barely learning to walk, if even born, at the same time, the definition of contemporary needs to be reconsidered. I think that this gives us an obligation to consider as contemporary those texts which are most relevant to current trends in feminist theory. While I realize even Butler's work was published in the early 90s, I feel it would be useful to see what has been written in the past 10-15 years. What has been said by those who have had time to process and digest those writers who have questioned the validity of the gender binary?

I believe Susan Stryker is a good first step in studying the work of someone who actually is contemporary, but I don't believe that this one foray into that which has been written since I learned how to read is enough. Yes, going back and studying that which was written before anyone still alive began their existence is useful, but there are so many classes out there where students can take the opportunity to look at texts in a feminist light. I challenge you to find a class in the English department where you can't look at texts from a feminist perspective, even just in your own papers. Why can't we take this one to look at something new?

I got Kathleen Hanna when I took the quiz. Funny, I never saw myself as a punk rocker...

Anyway, on to what we should read. I would also like to talk about Simone de Beauvoir. I actually bought The Second Sex awhile ago and never got past page 40. But she's definitely one of the big names that I would like to have under my belt.

Other than that I think I would like to read literature written by women, admittedly works that are part of the feminist "canon." I don't want to continue on dismissing the canon (as many of the articles we read would have us do) before I am familiar with it. So perhaps more Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, Edith Wharton, the Brontes or Jane Austen... I have not read Jane Eyre or any Jane Austen other than Pride and Prejudice. Makes me feel like a bad feminist... just kidding. But I would like to try.

My sister feminist icon is also Simone de Beauvoir.  I've been looking into the French/Existentialist feminism and I'm completely intrigued.  I think The Second Sex would be a great place to start, but we could also look at de Beauvoir's fiction, or the work of other artists working out of the same place... though I wouldn't be able to name any other names just yet.  I think it's very valuable to be able to study a writer's art, as well as her non-fiction. I also very much enjoyed Cixous, and at first I thought it might be nice to do a lot of de Beauvoir-esque work and Cixous-esque work together, since they're sort of from the same world, but I'm realizing that since Cixous comes out of postmodernism with all these fascinating ideas about tearing down what's been established, I think I would prefer to first see what has been established, and given the varying levels of experience in the class, I think it would be a good idea to start a little farther back .

 Other than that, I'd like to read literature, "feminist texts," learning why we might identify something as a feminist novel or play, etc.  But I think it would also be a great experience to take an author traditionally bashed as a sexist, a D.H. Lawrence or someone (though I've never been able to figure out where the sexism is in his work) and give a feminist reading... whatever that means. 

Since I'm Angela Davis, it's somewhat appropriate that my major goal is questioning the status quo, ie the "feminist literary canon". Like Jessica, I'm new to the study of feminism or feminist study. I'd like to examine why and how certain texts become "feminist". This is also why I like the idea of reading Jane Eyre and then Wide Sargasso Sea.

And personally, I'd like to read the suggested Latina feminist texts because I think that's an area that's looked over alot in academia.