Women's Studies... good idea/bad idea?

[Piggy]

Oh, well that makes sense, but in that case a poor method doesn't justify abhoring the subject.

I don't, actually. Just pointing out that the legitimate objections I've seen (including at my institution) have regarded execution rather than premise.

Maybe my school is unusual, then, because I never got the impression from my friends who took women's studies that they were being, I dunno, brainwashed in feminism (?). I mean, none of them went all militant on us, or anything. They just seemed to get a new appreciation for certain aspects of society they hadn't really questioned before.

My experience is that they weren't questioning them afterward, either. They had merely adopted a new faith. They didn't become militant. But they also didn't become any more educated.

I never did support the ghettoization of "women's studies".

That said, I also didn't support much of the ghettoziation within my own department. And it seemed (and seems) to me that the English deparment was equally lacking in rigor -- not just mine, but pretty much everywhere I looked.

People like me, who demanded actual scholarship, were derided as mere "historicists". It seemed that the prevailing answer to the problem of politics within the canon was to give into it, to turn the teaching of literature and language into nothing but politics.

So we had instructors assigning freshmen to write essays on the role of women in Shakespeare, when they hadn't even been taught what Shakespeare's words meant, or the first thing about Elizebethan artistic conventions or social norms or politics.

We had young professors asking sophomores to write essays on what this or that work meant to them personally, as though they needed a university course for this. And the TAs were allowing the kids to drag in their own choice of pop music as poetry.

This was par for the course.

I saw similar nonsense in the school of education, and in women's studies as well. A damn shame, it seemed to me, when there's so much of value to learn in this world.

 

[slingblade]

People like me, who demanded actual scholarship, were derided as mere "historicists". It seemed that the prevailing answer to the problem of politics within the canon was to give into it, to turn the teaching of literature and language into nothing but politics.

I've been really fortunate, then. My literary/English education consisted of looking at how the writers did what they did, mostly. We studied writing: tropes, style, narrator types, thesis, usage...all the hidden things you need to know how to look for in order to see. I really did learn to appreciate Hemingway's economy of language, and the things Melville did in Bartleby and what Frost brought to poetry. My history of lit crit class was a killer, but it taught me so much.

So we had instructors assigning freshmen to write essays on the role of women in Shakespeare, when they hadn't even been taught what Shakespeare's words meant, or the first thing about Elizebethan artistic conventions or social norms or politics.

Yep, I was lucky again. For one thing, my professors were constantly saying "I don't care how it makes you feel. I don't care if you 'get it.' You find something in the work to analyze, and you analyze it. How you feel is immaterial."

Both Shakespeare and Chaucer were taught to me by a Chaucer scholar who knew his stuff. We did look at the things you list above, and more. We were forbidden to use a Chaucer "translator" when reading Canterbury. We had to pick one of the tales to read aloud to the class, in the old English. My group did The Miller's Tale. I'd no idea it was so hilarious.

We did a lot of background study on Shakespeare: manners, dress, conventions, society, politics, education, and more. We tore the words apart, and looked up the more archaic and confusing constructions. We worked on Shakespeare.

We had young professors asking sophomores to write essays on what this or that work meant to them personally, as though they needed a university course for this. And the TAs were allowing the kids to drag in their own choice of pop music as poetry.

Oh, god no. We'd have been slain if we'd tried that. None of my profs gave a rat's furry behind about our feelings. It wasn't necessary to like the work. It was necessary to understand how it did whatever it did, how the author accomplished whatever s/he'd accomplished, how the language worked.

I saw similar nonsense in the school of education

Don't get me started on them. I have to agree with you there. Education was a joke, but no one was laughing. Least of all, me.

Evidently I was very fortunate in much of my education. Thanks for helping me see I got the better end of what's apparently a bad deal in other places.

 

[Skeptic]

There are two problems with "Women's studies"--one practical and the other philosophical.

First, practically, it is not exactly the most highly-demanded major. This is obvious, but also not much of a point against it as such, since the same could be said of most liberal arts (or social studies) majors.

Second, and worse, is the internal contradiction in the whole thing. In theory, at least, the point of a liberal education is to broaden one's horizons, make one able to reason correctly, understand the world better, by reading "the best that have been thought and said".

So-called "women's studies" departments, however, tend to narrow one's horizons and make one unable to reason. This is because in practice, if not in theory, they are dedicated to Lady Psyche's--the "professor of the Humanities" in the women's university in Gilbert and Sullivan's Princess Ida--that "man is nature sole mistake".

The result is that women's studies curriculum is, in practice, little more than synchronized whining about discrimination and how awful "dead white males" are, sometimes mixed up with vague calls for "activism", of the "racism is bad!" sort. Needless to say broadens nobody's horizons and gives no enlightment to anyone; if anything it only breeds unjustified resentment and victimhood.

 

[Skeptic]

That said, I also didn't support much of the ghettoziation within my own department. And it seemed (and seems) to me that the English deparment was equally lacking in rigor -- not just mine, but pretty much everywhere I looked.

The joke in academia is that if you want to do philosophy, go to the philosophy department; history is done in the history department; sociology in the sociology department, and so on--but, if you want to do bad history, philosophy, or sociology, you go to the English department--for the reasons that you note.

We had young professors asking sophomores to write essays on what this or that work meant to them personally, as though they needed a university course for this.

Why not? Since the much-heralded "death of intentionalism", the revolutionary idea that there is no such thing as a "correct" meaning of a text and that all interpretations are equal, there is nothing to distinguish between what a Sophmore who never read Shakespeare before thinks Shakepseare's play meant, and what someone who studied Shakespeare for 50 years thinks they meant.

 

[Skeptic]

Yep, I was lucky again. For one thing, my professors were constantly saying "I don't care how it makes you feel. I don't care if you 'get it.' You find something in the work to analyze, and you analyze it. How you feel is immaterial."

None of my profs gave a rat's furry behind about our feelings. It wasn't necessary to like the work. It was necessary to understand how it did whatever it did, how the author accomplished whatever s/he'd accomplished, how the language worked.

Yet, despite this horrible, unbearable and disgusting abuse of power to hurt your self esteem by daring to suggest that your English professors knew more about English literature than you did, you are actually are thankful to them and consider yourself lucky to have had such an education.

This, clearly, is evidence of the way power can brainwash your mind into compliance with the existing order, for the benefit of the capitalists, by making you think you are not 100% perfect and that you might have something to learn from experts and authority figures, obviously the kind of thought that is very destructive if we want a new generation of world-reforming activists.

Yes, I am kidding; no, unfortunately, there are a lot of professors who think just that... or, more correctly, claim to think just that, since it allows them to get away with just giving everybody an "A" for "saying what they feel" instead of, you know, actually teaching something.

 

[Piggy]

Since the much-heralded "death of intentionalism", the revolutionary idea that there is no such thing as a "correct" meaning of a text and that all interpretations are equal, there is nothing to distinguish between what a Sophmore who never read Shakespeare before thinks Shakepseare's play meant, and what someone who studied Shakespeare for 50 years thinks they meant.

I hear you. I tried to go along and get along mostly, except when an issue affected me directly -- otherwise I'd have no rest. But I remember certain conversations, such as one with a young instructor following the latest trend, "queer theory"*, who was adamant that we cannot say anything about what an author intended a text to mean, but can only analyze what various groups of readers say about it.

When I pointed out that, if we cannot know what the text meant, then we cannot know what these readers mean when they comment on it, he got very exasperated because I was obviously being intentionally difficult (pardon the pun).

I got similar reactions to my opinion that agon analysis produced nothing useful, my objections to "peer review" (the futile and lazy practice of having college-level students teach each other), and my insistence that the professor or instructor is the one who should select the reading list even if it is "the students' class" whatever that means.

It also burned my cheese that graduate students were being made to read Derrida in "reading theory" courses, but nothing of the recent scientific discoveries which were (and are) contributing to actual understanding.

After a few years, the whole thing got to feeling like a fun-house. Fortunately, in English, you're free to teach your own course as you like, select your own texts, and so forth. But it became increasingly clear that I was never going to be happy in that environment, so I jumped the wall over to the public service branch, and then into the private sector, where results are required.


*For those who don't know, in English studies, a theory is not an explanatory framework, but a sort of intentional bias. Which can be useful -- it can help to view a work through many lenses -- but which can also be a tremendous distraction.

 

[Piggy]

If you're interested in the state of the art, perhaps you might want to read Susan Gubar's recent book.

 

[Skeptic]

I hear you. I tried to go along and get along mostly, except when an issue affected me directly -- otherwise I'd have no rest. But I remember certain conversations, such as one with a young instructor following the latest trend, "queer theory"*

I always thought that name was appropriate in more way than one.

As far as I can tell, the entire intellectual contribution of "queer theory" is to suggest that just about every famous character and/or author were gay or lesbian. I mean, can you prove Uriah Heep was not Mr. Micawber's gay lover, or that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern didn't have wild orgies at university with Hamlet?

That sort of thing gets old fast.

It also burned my cheese that graduate students were being made to read Derrida in "reading theory" courses, but nothing of the recent scientific discoveries which were (and are) contributing to actual understanding.

I tried to read Derrida. Couldn't understand a word. He followed well the advice of Piet Hein, the author of the "grooks" versions, to the effect that "If your have nothing to say, at least make sure that your writing is obscure."

 

[Piggy]

You were lucky, slingblade. My experience at conferences was that this method had become a rarity.

But the thing is, teaching literature in English is damn difficult. There's an enormous amount of it, to begin with. And to teach it meaningfully, you really do have to become a jack of all trades. You can't teach Twain without knowing something about 19th century American politics. You can't teach Pynchon without knowing something about 20th century physics. You can't teach Faulkner without knowing something about the Bible and its place in American life.

No wonder so many of the faculty abandoned "historicism" for an approach which I used to call "teaching sociology without a license" (or training).

And I didn't find the Women's Studies department any better. Some of my students were taking courses (and you could often spot them by the errors of fact and the heavy jargon in their essays), some of our faculty were teaching in both areas, and I even audited a course briefly. Sadly, I encountered many of the errors described in this non-academic Web site.

I remember taking an Old Testament course from a prof who used to repeat his teacher's mantra, which became mine, too: A text cannot mean what it never meant.

He allowed the interdepartmentals, who did not have the archaeology and ancient language courses normally required for that course, to write papers relevant to their fields. Initially, he would not accept my paper critiquing The Chalice and the Blade on the grounds that it was so easy to debunk that the paper was trivial, and only relented when I pointed out that the book was being read as a primary text in English and Women's Studies courses.

 

[geni]

I guess I'm still waiting to hear why these sorts of studies cause such reactions.

Less lectures per week than chemistry had in a day and no 9.15s.

 

[rats]

...

Great. Now I have that Benny Hill tune stuck in my head!

 

[Ian Osborne]

Great. Now I have that Benny Hill tune stick in my head!

That's exactly what I thought too!

 

[slingblade]

I hear you. I tried to go along and get along mostly, except when an issue affected me directly -- otherwise I'd have no rest. But I remember certain conversations, such as one with a young instructor following the latest trend, "queer theory"*, who was adamant that we cannot say anything about what an author intended a text to mean, but can only analyze what various groups of readers say about it.

According to my education, he said only part of it correctly.
We can't know exactly or definitively what an author meant or intended, especially if the author is dead, or never said anywhere else what his intentions or meaning were. But it's the text we analyze, not the readers. The text has its own meaning, which will be somewhat different for each of us, depending on what we bring to the text. There are times when it can be rather obvious what the author's intent was, and other times (Flannery O'Connor comes immediately to mind) when meaning can be elusive.

As one professor said to us: "Moby Dick is not about your aunt in Teaneck, New Jersey. I don't care how many similarities you seem to see, Melville did not know your auntie, and cannot have written about her. Do you see?"

I thought it a rather strange speech at the time. Now I'm not so sure....

We used lenses, too, but they seemed pretty standard to me. No gay lens, but we did examine certain works historically, or through a feminist lens, or a Marxist one, such as that. I found it fascinating.

Wow. I'd no idea how fortunate I've been.

 

[Piggy]

Yes. What I objected to was the extreme interpretation which holds that "original meaning" or "authorial intent" is some black hole. Clearly, it is not. I also objected to the critic-centered approach which effectively dismisses the author's commentary on hir own work. I remember one prof (when I was doing my MA in Spanish lit before moving over to English) who said that we have no reason to give a special place to the author's commentary, anymore than to the critic with the biggest feet. That's patently ridiculous. That's like saying that the designing engineer's comments regarding a plane are no different from a test pilot's. We need them both, but they are different sorts of commentary, and we should not pretend that the author does not have a special point of view.

 

[pgwenthold]

According to my education, he said only part of it correctly.
We can't know exactly or definitively what an author meant or intended, especially if the author is dead, or never said anywhere else what his intentions or meaning were.

Or if he actually had any.

Consider the Wizard of Oz. Wannabee critics spend a lot of time trying to discover Baum's hidden meaning. The most popular is to find some political meaning, such as a Populist message, although the guy who invented the "Oz as a Populist metaphor" approach never claimed that Baum had anything to do with it, just that it could be used that way. However, some jumped on it, and it became popular to claim that Baum wrote The Wizard of Oz as a political statement.

All that, despite the fact that Baum wrote in the introduction,

the story of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" was written solely to please children of today.

Solely to please children. Not to provide a statement about the politics of the times.

It's one thing to talk about influences in Baum's life, and how they led him to develop the stories he did. For example, what influence did his mother-in-law have on his inclusion of women in major roles in his stories.

But when it comes to "hidden intentions," it's all pretty much meaningless speculation. Especially when focusing solely on TWoO considering his huge body of work. TWoO wasn't his first book, only his most popular.

 

[Piggy]

All that, despite the fact that Baum wrote in the introduction

This is precisely my point. Unless we have some reason to think Baum was lying, then there's no reason not to take him at his word here.

 

[Dava]

I started the thread because I'm really interested to know more. I never took any classes in the department at my university, and I'm not entirely sure what all is taught.

Based on a posting by SlingBlade, if I'm understanding correctly, it's to point out all the contributions by women over the years.

I'm just not sure what the motivation is. I know that in most disiplines most figures spoken of are men, but certainly not all. But I've not taken this as sexist in the present, but rather a reflection of a sexist history. It was less likely for women of the past to make significant contributions. I'm I missing something?

When in doubt, ask the history major!

Women's Studies will vary from one campus to the next, just as your Western Civ classes will vary from one to the next. Some will look at women's writings, as someone else mentioned. Some will look at overlooked female historical figures. Some will latch onto prominent female historical figures, like Elizabeth I.

Generally, though, Women's Studies tends to be what is called social history. Most people think of history as names and dates, and they concentrate on authoritative figures from government, philosophy, science, etc. Many historiographers are moving away from this take on history, and some are concentrating on the lives of "common" people. There is so much more to the history of France than a list of kings!

So, in this approach, Women's Studies would focus on the daily lives and social constructs in which women have historically lived. Major players like Elizabeth I may play a part in the discussion, but they are more likely to spend a week on women like Margery Kempe.

http://departments.kings.edu/womens_history/margerykempe.html

 

[Skeptic]

Solely to please children. Not to provide a statement about the politics of the times.

To be fair, just because it says so in the introduction doesn't mean it's true. Authors have been known to lie about their purpose (though there's no reason to suspect Baum in particular of it).

What DOES, I think, show Baum was writing for children, apart from the enormous enjoyment they derive from the stories, is that he just got on with it. No matter how easy it is to connect a cowardly lion, a tin man with no heart, a scarecrow with no brain, a wicked witch, and a wizard who is really a fraud to the politics of his time--and of any time, come to think of it--he never so much as hints in that direction. He didn't belabor the point; he just tells us what happens to them.

TWoO wasn't his first book, only his most popular.

Compared to some of the other books in the Oz series, TWoO is as sober and realistic as a logarithm table.

 

[Polaris]

Generally, though, Women's Studies tends to be what is called social history. Most people think of history as names and dates, and they concentrate on authoritative figures from government, philosophy, science, etc. Many historiographers are moving away from this take on history, and some are concentrating on the lives of "common" people. There is so much more to the history of France than a list of kings!
http://departments.kings.edu/womens_history/margerykempe.html

What you just described as social history IS history, period. Names and dates isn't history, it's chronology. Names and dates are irrelevant unless they are in a context. Knowing D-Day was June 6, 1944 doesn't mean anything unless it's made known that it was important because it was the day the Western Front in Europe was successful in killing enough German troops and breaking enough German things that the Russians were able to launch a counter-offensive strong enough to reach Berlin.

Sure the history of France is more than a list of kings (which, again, isn't history, but record keeping), but levels of importance also matter (and the average French peasant didn't effect much change - at least until the Revolution). Historiography too often seems to willfully ignore the powerful and influential because they had power and influence, in keeping with the school of thought that common people are better people. As someone who enjoys books like "A Day in the Life of a Medieval Village" I find it interesting myself, but only as a curiosity. The people studied here are acted upon by the movers and shakers. It's a rare thing in history when the average populace effected change on a large scale - at least until the Modern Era when 'the people' became a viable force (which generally was encouraged by an individual with power and influence, by the way).

 

[Piggy]

Polaris, I think we do well to consider the entire spectrum. The powerful cannot merely push the populace around at will, because they are few, and they have to get their soldiers, their bureaucrats, their taxpayers from among the many. It's neither all top-down nor all bottom-up.

I prefer a Tolkienesque view of history. History is not just the story of the grand leaders in their halls. Nor is it just the story of the Sams and Frodos and Gollumns (and orcs) in the trenches. To understand it all, we have to look at it all.