You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April, 2008.
The two best lines of poetry I’ve read this month, by Sharon Mesmer:
My soul still radiates a luminous intensity
despite this stupid university job.
Read the entirety of “Stupid University Job.”
I do not care about:
Upholding the “highest academic standards” in the face of grade inflation.
Whether English majors are required to take a class on Major Writer A or Underrepresented Group B.
How to integrate more active learning into my classes.
Improving graduation rates.
The precise wording of Section 12, subsection B stroke 2 of the university’s policies.
Whether our next hire is in Critical Area #1, Critical Area #2 or Emerging But Soon To Be Critical Area #3.
Recruiting new students to the major.
Encouraging alumni to donate to the university’s endowment.
Whether there are sausages at the end of the semester departmental brunch.
Assessment.
The longevity, financial stability, or national reputation of the university at which I work.
I could really care less.
A few addendums to my previous post:
Flavia reminds us of Julia Roberts’ performance in Mona Lisa Smile.
Journalist Ann Hornaday discusses the trend of the white and male professoriate on screen. (Courtesy of The Chutry Experiment, fine company indeed!).
Plus, I’ve recalled another memorable female professor, albeit on the small screen: Professor Maggie Walsh from season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By day, an intimidating psychology prof; by night, the evil genius behind a cyborg master race. What more could we ask for?
Read this over at the New York Times:
“If you are in the mood for a movie about the rejuvenation of an aging, widowed college professor — and don’t pretend you aren’t — then this is a weekend of rare and unexpected abundance. By some miracle of film industry serendipity, two such movies are opening today in limited release. Even more bizarre: each is pretty good.”
The two movies are The Visitor and Smart People, both of which figure a disillusioned professor who gets “saved” either by art (and a healthy dose of ethnicity) in the case of The Visitor or by sex with a younger woman in the case of Smart People.
The review goes on to praise the performances of Richard Jenkins and Dennis Quaid (respectively) and states: “There is something about impersonating thwarted intellectuals, their early promise and ambition fading into vanity and irrelevance, that inspires a certain kind of actor to tap into deep veins of pathos and wit.” To wit, the author cites Jeff Daniels in The Squid and the Whale and a commenter adds Michael Douglass in Wonder Boys.
And what do each of these films have in common? Apparently all professors are men.
I enjoy a good send-up of academia as much as the next person. I still chuckle over that surreal episode of Law and Order a few years ago about a murder that had taken place in an Ivy League English department. Oh, it was terrifically terrible!
But seriously, when is there going to be a half-way decent filmic portrayal of a female academic? We’re as disillusioned and in need of rescue as the next guy.
Let’s revisit some of the more infamous female professors on film:
There’s the Professor as Sex Pot in Rodney Dangerfield’s Back to School (1986). Remember that pornographic reading of Ulysses?
There’s the Professor as Make-Over Candidate in Barbra Streisand’s The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996).
Honestly, I can’t think of any other examples. Ain’t it pitiful?
I have been studying yoga for some years now and I think it has been incredibly good for me as a teacher.
There’s nothing better for improving your teaching than being a student again. Particularly if you are studying something that’s extremely challenging, at which you are bound to fail as much as succeed, and during which you are likely to be placed in some embarrassing positions. It is a great reminder of what it’s like to be a student — the fear of not knowing, of failing, the anxiety of being judged or evaluated, the position of powerlessness or dependence relative to the teacher, etc. It has helped me be more compassionate to my students to remember just how hard it is.
But, I also think it has improved my teaching to witness how different yoga teachers teach — what works and what doesn’t. We don’t often get to watch teachers teach unless we’re in the position of evaluating fellow academics, and it’s a real shame. While I undoubtedly absorbed different pedagogical methods and styles while I was student that have influenced how I teach, rarely as an undergrad or grad student was I self-consciously paying attention to HOW my professors taught. Now I think about it all the time when I’m in a yoga class or workshop, and I’ve learned a lot that has enriched my own teaching.
The yogi that I am currently studying with (who is an inspiration to me), sometimes shares tidbits about teaching yoga — guidelines she has learned or uses, etc. Here’s a good one:
“Never demonstrate a pose that the students do not (or cannot) put into practice themselves.”
That is, the teacher should never demonstrate a pose and leave it at that: putting students in the position of observers rather than practitioners. The teacher should also never demonstrate a pose that is so complex/advanced that the students aren’t able to try it themslves: then the teacher’s just showing off, rather than teaching.
I recently had an experience in my own class that recalled this advice: I introduced a new research tool that I’m very excited about, but I had not developed any assignment that would allow for the application of the tool by my students. The students listened to my presentation with a distinct lack of interest — and I realized it was because they didn’t see the relevence to themselves. “Sure, it’s cool, but why do I need to know this?” They were mere passive observers with no opportunity to put it into practice. Once I recognized the problem, I reorganized some assignments in the class so that they had a new assignment that was all about using this tool — and suddenly they were engaged and curious.
Of course, the yoga classroom does have some distinct differences from conventional academic ones: the students all want to be there and they all believe in the value of what’s being taught. Sometimes, when I’m exhausted from trying to explain how my Obscure Area of Expertise is relevant to my student’s lives, I think about my yogi who never has to make this case — we all enter her classroom just hoping we’ll be able to grasp the full benefit of her teachings. Somehow I never feel that level of adulation from my students.
Read this provocative query over at Notes of a Neophyte: “Where is there room for play in the academy?”
Then, in the comments, several references to the blogger Squadratomagico who was characterized as an icon for balancing the burdens of academia with the play of the circus. And, I thought, “the circus” — what a great metaphor for how we need to integrate an aspect of creativity, community, subversion, inversion, and insanity into our ordered lives! I was really taken with the richness of this image — the circus of possibilty.
Then, I clicked over onto Squadratomagico’s blog only to discover: it ain’t a metaphor! She’s really in a circus! So now I have to second Neophyte’s nomination of Squadratomagico as a hero to us all. I am completely inspired.
Where’s the circus when you’re in the mood to run away from it all?
… is harder than it should be.
I have posted previously about the ways that responsible teachers should be representing graduate school to our students, which is to say: with bright red warning lights. <<Danger!>> <<Danger!>> <<There be monsters!>>
But, I haven’t always been able to follow this advice myself. Last week, one of my favorite graduate students — a smart, funny, down-to-earth young woman — came to tell me that she’s considering dropping out of grad school. I should have jumped up and down, congratulated her for escaping the cold, clammy jaws of academia, and ushered her onto a new and hopeful future.
Instead, I found myself trying to defend academia and encouraging her to stick it out. What happened to me? It’s like my body was temporarily taken over by an admissions counselor.
When I asked her why she was thinking of leaving, she said she was disillusioned about academia and specifically cited her realization that we, her professors, did not seem to enjoy what we were doing. (Isn’t she observant?) What could I say? I hemmed and hawed and talked about how it would be a shame for her to have invested her time and money without getting a degree, about what a great teacher and scholar she would make, about the rewards of being a professor, etc.
Afterwards, I was reflecting on my “Rah! Rah! Academia is great!” performance, and all I could think was: I took her rejection personally. If she doesn’t want to be an academic, she doesn’t want to be like me. She has seen through the persona I present to students, the one that really, really believes in academic work and in the value of reading, writing, and talking about literature. (Okay, I do believe in those things, but generally that sentiment gets buried underneath the drudgery of the job.) I just wanted her to want to be a part of my group because, here’s the chilling part, it feeds my ego. I want my students to idolize me because it’s one of the few “perks” I get. Scratch decent pay, reasonable work load, or free weekends, at least my students think I’m the coolest.
It’s quite a let down when they don’t.
Apropos of my post on corset-adorned book covers, here’s Twisty Faster on the insanity that is “sexy feminism”:
“It’s a too-too-tool of the patriarkay. It’s an expedient justification, a way to rebrand what everybody does when they’re in their twenties, which is to drink too much and screw a lot, as a cool 21st-century-activist political activity.
This would just be kind of funny, you know, youthful hi-jinx and whatnot, except that, since it is entirely devoid of philosophic value, sexy feminism has sort of caught on. It’s had the untoward effect of diluting the message of actual feminism. And the even more untoward effect of vilifying radical feminism. And the even more untoward effect of strengthening patriarchal oppression.
What do I mean by ’sexy feminism’? Suicide Girls. Bust magazine. BDSM. The ‘position’ that women should be free to ‘choose’ femininity if that’s what bangs their box. The idea that embracing sexploitation is ‘empowering.’ The notion that women ‘can do what we want despite patriarchy.’”
<<Applause>>
