Yesterday I offered the message during chapel services on campus. I'd been asked to do this in my official capacity as director of the Center for Women's Studies, because the student who's interning with the Center this semester is also very involved with Campus Ministries. I would have said no if I'd thought I could get away with it--but, alas, I knew I couldn't.
I stand up in front of people and talk for a living, so it's not performance anxiety that was freaking me out yesterday morning--I lecture in class, I give readings of my fiction, I give talks on the writing process. But I don't talk about my faith very often. The truth is, I feel like a bit of a faith phony. I grew up going to church, but I never liked going. In fact, I really hated church. I had to get up early on Sunday morning and dress well and act nice; I had to listen to things that didn't make sense to me, and then I had to pretend that I believed them. Faith felt completely irrelevant to my life, and no one really seemed to care--as long as I was getting up and going to church on Sunday morning.
I stopped going to church as soon as I'd left home, and I didn't go back again until I was almost forty years old. I've actually enjoyed church as an adult--mostly because of wonderful colleagues in the Theology department at my university, people who've encouraged me to understand that my faith is personal, that it involves both what I believe in my heart and what I know in my head. I can get on board with the idea of an intellectually respectable faith. I even enjoy Bible study, which now seems like a natural offshoot of what I do as a literature professor.
So yesterday, when I was asked to speak in chapel, I brought the two together. I talked about a poem by W.H. Auden, "As I Walked Out One Evening," and I tied it to our scripture reading on the greatest commandment. (The full text of the poem is available here.)
Here's the text of my talk:
"A few weeks ago, my good friend Dr. Metereau reminded me of a poem I’d read many years ago and forgotten. It’s a poem I love—W.H. Auden’s “As I Walked Out One Evening.” It’s a pretty long poem, so I’m not going to read you the whole thing today, though I do hope you’ll look it up. Basically, it’s about a person who goes out for a walk one evening and overhears someone singing of undying love for a partner—telling this partner, among other things, “I’ll love you till the ocean/is folded and hung up to dry/And the seven stars go squawking/Like geese about the sky.”
But not long after this, the speaker of the poem hears another song, as “all the clocks in the city/began to whir and chime,” and their song is much less optimistic: the clocks sing, “O let not Time deceive you;/you cannot conquer Time.”
The clocks continue this song, encouraging the lover to acknowledge their much greater power and to understand that no human being will ever win this battle: human love, unlike time, will come to an end. When it does, it will leave us with a feeling of emptiness—of empty time—where that love used to be. I’m sure we’ve all had that feeling at one point or another. It’s the feeling of loss that makes us question whether love is even worth our while.
The clocks in this poem offer three images of that kind of despair. They say “' . . . plunge your hands in water, /Plunge them in up to the wrist;/Stare, stare in the basin/ And wonder what you've missed.” And then: “'. . . look in the mirror,/ O look in your distress:/ Life remains a blessing/ Although you cannot bless.” And lastly: ". . . stand at the window /As the tears scald and start;/You shall love your crooked neighbour/ With your crooked heart.’”
Those last lines are my favorite. I think it’s interesting that Auden doesn’t say “You must love your crooked neighbor”—that would be a commandment. Nor does he say “You should love your crooked neighbor”—which would suggest that we don’t, and we need to get busy. Instead, Auden just says “You shall love your crooked neighbor.” It’s a statement of fact. It recognizes a very simple truth: human beings can’t avoid connecting with each other, even though we know that imperfect human love is going to leave us wanting.
Of course, Auden also points out that we’re going to love our crooked neighbors with crooked hearts. So what we have in common with one another, it seems, is our imperfection. And maybe that’s why we can’t avoid loving each other—because to love an imperfect person is to prove that you, as another imperfect person, are also worthy of being loved. Maybe we use our connections with each other to escape from the fact of our shortcomings.
The scripture reading for today tells us that we are to love our neighbors in the same way we love ourselves—but we all know that loving ourselves isn’t always an easy job. We live in a culture that’s devoted to pointing out our shortcomings. Women, in particular, are constantly being convinced that they need products that will make their imperfections less noticeable to others—which will make them more beautiful and, by extension, more loveable.
We also live in a culture that views some kinds of love as less perfect than others. Auden himself was a gay man, and a Christian, and he struggled to reconcile his faith and his personal identity, because he’d been taught that this kind of love was sinful—and yet, no matter how hard he tried to change his heart, that kind of love was what he found there.
I don’t think it’s an accident that, in contemporary culture, to be heterosexual is to be called “straight”; we used the word “crooked” to describe a person who is dishonest or immoral. But maybe, if we understand the “crookedness” Auden is talking about in this poem to be symbolic, not of immorality, but of the path that each of us walks through life—sometimes headed toward God, sometimes headed away from God—then we can begin to understand how crookedness is something we all share, no matter who we love.
In fact, sometimes the people we love the most—our friends, even our family—are the ones who lead us away from God. They do this by offering negative assessments of us, and they often claim to do this for our own good. Sometimes, our self-image is so warped by the negative messages we’ve taken in that they become a part of us: we honestly can’t imagine how anyone, even God, could love us. Our hearts move toward those negative assessments rather than toward God’s love of our glorious imperfection.
When we get to that place of self-loathing, we often lead ourselves even farther away from God. Auden, for instance, declared himself an atheist—but his poetry shows a consistent devotion to Christian faith, and he did eventually turn back to God and reconcile with the church.
Here’s a more contemporary example: in light of the recent decisions made by the ELCA’s church-wide assembly, many members of my congregation have simply stopped worshiping with our church family. They’ve just walked away. Before those decisions were made, I thought a lot about what I would do if I disagreed with the outcome of the church-wide assembly, and I thought I might leave the church. But I couldn’t get around the fact that we walk away from God anytime we’re too confident in our understanding of anything.
The truth is, I don’t know if the church-wide assembly made the right decision. I believe they did—I believe they acted out of love for their neighbors. But I don’t know. And I try to remember that I don’t know (which is hard for me, because I’m a professor, and I’m used to being the person in the room who knows things) so I’m not compelled to act unkindly toward my neighbors who disagree, because I’m called to love them, too.
What I do know is this: our imperfect human love is the best thing we have to offer each other, and it’s the only way we have to fulfill the greatest commandment: Love the Lord, love your neighbor, love yourself. None of these things are easy, but Auden seems to believe they’re inevitable. You will love your crooked neighbor, he says. Only remember that, when you do, you love with an equally crooked heart."
I got through my talk and hoped I hadn't made a fool of myself--that was really the only goal I had in mind. The adrenaline I'd built up left me shaking for a good half hour afterward. I got lots of hugs and pats on the back from my students and colleagues, but friends will say you've done well just because they know they should. It's what friends do.
But then, after I'd headed off to class, I thought I heard someone call my name. I turned around, but I didn't see anyone I recognized. A young woman was walking toward me--but because I wasn't sure I'd heard my name, I wasn't sure if she was just walking in my direction or walking up to me. I must have looked very confused, because she said "It's okay, you don't know me." She introduced herself, then said, "I just wanted to tell you that I really like what you said in chapel. It got to me." She was all choked up as she said this. I thanked her and patted her shoulder, and then we parted ways.
That young woman is the person who let me know I'd done more than just get through my chapel talk. I'd touched the heart of a complete stranger--someone who didn't know me at all, who had no reason to feel compelled to say anything kind. She gave me hope that my words make a difference in the world. And she can't possibly know how much her words meant to me.
Showing posts with label Teaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Teaching. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
The Price of Expertise
A former student sent me an email a few months ago, asking how he might go about getting his work published. (I resisted the urge to write back and say "If you'd paid attention during class, you'd already know the answer to that question.") Last week he sent me the opening 50 pages of a novel he's been working on. To his credit, he said all the right things in his email: No rush to respond. I know you're busy. Maybe just read the first few pages, when you have the time.
I'm sure the basis of that presumption rests on the fact that I'm a teacher. It's my job to disseminate information--why wouldn't I continue to do that long after my students have left my classes, or even graduated from the university? Students just don't make that connection between paying tuition and paying my salary. Many of them don't know anyone else who writes fiction or poetry; even fewer know someone who has successfully published creative work. It makes sense that they'd turn to me for advice, since I fit both of those categories.
Which leaves me wondering: is my advice presumed to be free after graduation because educators are notoriously underpaid? Perhaps the logic works this way: If I'm willing to work for so little money, why would I mind working for no money at all?
When I mentioned this to my husband, he was quick to point out that people are always asking for free advice: "Should I get this checked out?" they might ask the doctor who happens to live next door and gets paid much more than I do. In truth, that's not too far removed from "Can you tell me if I'm on the right track here?" It's a sort of pre-diagnosis they're asking for--not an expert opinion, not exactly. You haven't named the problem precisely, just indicated that it might exist.
Of course, if I wrote back to this student and said "No, you're definitely on the wrong track here," he'd want to know where and how he'd gone wrong. Without that information, my opinion isn't worth much of anything. It's just a reaction. As I tell my students, there's a big different between saying "I think this sucks" and "I got really confused after page three because . . . " One response simply indicates that the story didn't work for you; the other demonstrates that you've given some thought to why it didn't work.
As I said earlier, I'll probably read what my student sent me. I'll probably send him a response that is at least somewhat specific. And I'll probably feel better for having done this. Really, the bottom line is what's more important to me: to get paid, or to help bring good books into the world? As long as my answer is the latter, not the former, free expertise is the price I'll pay.
When I mentioned this to my husband, he was quick to point out that people are always asking for free advice: "Should I get this checked out?" they might ask the doctor who happens to live next door and gets paid much more than I do. In truth, that's not too far removed from "Can you tell me if I'm on the right track here?" It's a sort of pre-diagnosis they're asking for--not an expert opinion, not exactly. You haven't named the problem precisely, just indicated that it might exist.
Of course, if I wrote back to this student and said "No, you're definitely on the wrong track here," he'd want to know where and how he'd gone wrong. Without that information, my opinion isn't worth much of anything. It's just a reaction. As I tell my students, there's a big different between saying "I think this sucks" and "I got really confused after page three because . . . " One response simply indicates that the story didn't work for you; the other demonstrates that you've given some thought to why it didn't work.
As I said earlier, I'll probably read what my student sent me. I'll probably send him a response that is at least somewhat specific. And I'll probably feel better for having done this. Really, the bottom line is what's more important to me: to get paid, or to help bring good books into the world? As long as my answer is the latter, not the former, free expertise is the price I'll pay.
Monday, January 5, 2009
It's my privilege
I'll be back on campus later this week after eight months away, and while I'm wondering how in the world I ever juggled teaching and writing and family responsibilities--because it's not like I've been watching TV and eating bonbons for the last eight months, despite the break from teaching--I'm also looking forward to it. Last night I was working on syllabi and actually having a good time thinking about how to structure my classes.
I'm teaching four courses this spring, all courses I've taught before, but I never do exactly the same thing from semester to semester. Part of the pleasure I take from teaching is the fact that it includes a learning process for me: each time I teach a class, I learn something new about the subject matter and the way my students receive it. I've learned, for instance, that asking first-year students to workshop each others' writing just doesn't work; developmentally, most of them aren't in a place where they can separate their fear of hurting someone's feelings from their response to the writing. If we do workshop each others' writing, we do it briefly and with lots of direction. By the time they're sophomores and juniors, though, most of them can do this pretty effectively and free-form workshop discussions are the central feature of the class.
It's not easy to juggle four classes that often require four different approaches, but I actually prefer this to teaching two sections of the same course. (By the time I teach the second section, I'm out of gas. I've said what I have to say. And I feel like my lack of enthusiasm is contagious.)When I was in Boise a few months ago, one of my former BSU colleagues expressed surprise at my teaching load. "That's like a community college teaching load," she said. At one time, this may have been true--but when I was interviewing for tenure-track jobs, not one of them offered anything less than a 3-4 load, and 4-4 was much more common. Colleagues who teach at research-oriented universities (the minority of professors, taking the big picture into account) tend to forget that a 2-2 load isn't standard.
I'm not sure it's a privilege, either. Graduate students are taught to view it this way, but I think that's because they're often taught by professors who view teaching as an annoying distraction from their research and who can't imagine why anyone would want a job that requires they do more of it. (I have three graduate degrees from three different institutions, and this was almost universally true of the graduate faculty I encountered.) The 2-2 load does leave much more time for research and writing, no doubt--but are those really the most important activities a professor engages in? Scholarly activity informs the professoriate--but is it really more important than helping students create new knowledge for themselves? Is it more important than the kind of learning we do in our own classrooms? I'm not so sure.
I've missed being around students. I've enjoyed having the time to focus on my own reading and writing, but I remember how energized I felt after the class I taught at BSU--there's no denying that teaching gives me a kind of energy that research and writing just don't. When the semester gets frenetic, I'm going to try to remember that it's a privilege to interact with and learn from my students every day.
I'm teaching four courses this spring, all courses I've taught before, but I never do exactly the same thing from semester to semester. Part of the pleasure I take from teaching is the fact that it includes a learning process for me: each time I teach a class, I learn something new about the subject matter and the way my students receive it. I've learned, for instance, that asking first-year students to workshop each others' writing just doesn't work; developmentally, most of them aren't in a place where they can separate their fear of hurting someone's feelings from their response to the writing. If we do workshop each others' writing, we do it briefly and with lots of direction. By the time they're sophomores and juniors, though, most of them can do this pretty effectively and free-form workshop discussions are the central feature of the class.
It's not easy to juggle four classes that often require four different approaches, but I actually prefer this to teaching two sections of the same course. (By the time I teach the second section, I'm out of gas. I've said what I have to say. And I feel like my lack of enthusiasm is contagious.)When I was in Boise a few months ago, one of my former BSU colleagues expressed surprise at my teaching load. "That's like a community college teaching load," she said. At one time, this may have been true--but when I was interviewing for tenure-track jobs, not one of them offered anything less than a 3-4 load, and 4-4 was much more common. Colleagues who teach at research-oriented universities (the minority of professors, taking the big picture into account) tend to forget that a 2-2 load isn't standard.
I'm not sure it's a privilege, either. Graduate students are taught to view it this way, but I think that's because they're often taught by professors who view teaching as an annoying distraction from their research and who can't imagine why anyone would want a job that requires they do more of it. (I have three graduate degrees from three different institutions, and this was almost universally true of the graduate faculty I encountered.) The 2-2 load does leave much more time for research and writing, no doubt--but are those really the most important activities a professor engages in? Scholarly activity informs the professoriate--but is it really more important than helping students create new knowledge for themselves? Is it more important than the kind of learning we do in our own classrooms? I'm not so sure.
I've missed being around students. I've enjoyed having the time to focus on my own reading and writing, but I remember how energized I felt after the class I taught at BSU--there's no denying that teaching gives me a kind of energy that research and writing just don't. When the semester gets frenetic, I'm going to try to remember that it's a privilege to interact with and learn from my students every day.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Home Again
I'm back in Texas after a week in Boise. I made this trip to the Northwest mostly to celebrate my dad's 82nd birthday with my family, but I did some work while I was there as well--I met with a class of really wonderful students at Boise State University on Thursday and did a reading at BSU on Friday evening. I taught at the university for a few years in the mid-90's, and it was good to have a chance to reconnect with some of the people I knew back then.
I still call Boise my hometown, but I have a troubled relationship with the place. Partly, I think, this is because I lived in Boise mostly as a kid--so I go back to feeling like a kid every time I return, feeling trapped and discontent and vaguely furious all the time, exactly like a teenager. There's no reason for me to feel this way now, of course, but it's like an emotional reflex I can't prevent. I lived in Boise for only three years as an adult, those three years I taught at BSU.
This time, though, staying with my sister instead of in the house where I grew up, it was easier to be in Boise and still feel like myself. Just having my own car to drive seemed to make a huge difference. When I'm there with my own little family, my husband usually drives; it had never even occurred to me that being a passenger in a car in my hometown contributed to that feeling of being dropped back into childhood again. Just having some small measure of autonomy this time let me be in Boise and still feel like the generally well-adjusted adult I've been for more than twenty years now.
When I talked with my friend Karen's nonfiction writing class at BSU, one of the things we discussed is what constitutes an Idaho story. Does it have to include hunting and fishing, for instance? Part of my own Idaho story is having grown up as a non-hunter in a family of hunters, and becoming a vegetarian as the result of that. (Though I gave up vegetarianism when I moved to Texas, a.k.a. The Land of Meat.) Another part of my Idaho story is the class division I faced because I never learned how to ski. By the time I was in high school, all my friends had been skiing since they could walk; even if I'd had the money to buy or rent equipment and go skiing on the weekends, I wouldn't have been able to keep up with them. Whole layers of the social hierarchy in my high school just weren't accessible to me for that reason alone.
In my first novel, part of what makes it an Idaho story for me is one character's feeling of being trapped by the landscape of her life. The Boise where I grew up was very remote--it's not within easy driving distance of a major city, and in any case my family didn't travel for recreation. We drove to a campground, or we drove to a relative's house in the Midwest; it wouldn't have occurred to my parents that we might just go visit a city for the sake of seeing what it had to offer us. I always wanted to live somewhere other than Boise, because it seemed like Real Life must be happening somewhere else. I always wrote stories about people who lived elsewhere: Seattle, New Orleans, Chicago, Paris, all manner of places I knew absolutely nothing about. I had no idea how I'd manage to go to any of those places on my own, but I was intent on getting away.
When I drove across the country to start graduate school, I remember being shocked by how much space there was between Idaho and Kansas. Somehow, the "away" I'd imagined wasn't quite as far away as reality took me. I wound up in a strange state, in a strange town, on a strange campus with (it must be said) a strange roommate. But that's where I learned to see Boise as a place in its own right, a place with a very specific personality and character--a place worth writing about. When I left Idaho, for the first time I met people who were fascinated by the idea of a place they'd rarely even heard of. As my friend Steph puts it, "Before I met you, people from China were more real to me than people from Idaho."
These days, when I go back to Boise, it doesn't look a thing like the town I remember. It's much larger than the place where I grew up, much more urban, much more hip. And, truth be told, San Antonio feels like home now. I'm glad to be back.
But Boise is a place I love. Most importantly, Boise is a place.
I still call Boise my hometown, but I have a troubled relationship with the place. Partly, I think, this is because I lived in Boise mostly as a kid--so I go back to feeling like a kid every time I return, feeling trapped and discontent and vaguely furious all the time, exactly like a teenager. There's no reason for me to feel this way now, of course, but it's like an emotional reflex I can't prevent. I lived in Boise for only three years as an adult, those three years I taught at BSU.
This time, though, staying with my sister instead of in the house where I grew up, it was easier to be in Boise and still feel like myself. Just having my own car to drive seemed to make a huge difference. When I'm there with my own little family, my husband usually drives; it had never even occurred to me that being a passenger in a car in my hometown contributed to that feeling of being dropped back into childhood again. Just having some small measure of autonomy this time let me be in Boise and still feel like the generally well-adjusted adult I've been for more than twenty years now.
When I talked with my friend Karen's nonfiction writing class at BSU, one of the things we discussed is what constitutes an Idaho story. Does it have to include hunting and fishing, for instance? Part of my own Idaho story is having grown up as a non-hunter in a family of hunters, and becoming a vegetarian as the result of that. (Though I gave up vegetarianism when I moved to Texas, a.k.a. The Land of Meat.) Another part of my Idaho story is the class division I faced because I never learned how to ski. By the time I was in high school, all my friends had been skiing since they could walk; even if I'd had the money to buy or rent equipment and go skiing on the weekends, I wouldn't have been able to keep up with them. Whole layers of the social hierarchy in my high school just weren't accessible to me for that reason alone.
In my first novel, part of what makes it an Idaho story for me is one character's feeling of being trapped by the landscape of her life. The Boise where I grew up was very remote--it's not within easy driving distance of a major city, and in any case my family didn't travel for recreation. We drove to a campground, or we drove to a relative's house in the Midwest; it wouldn't have occurred to my parents that we might just go visit a city for the sake of seeing what it had to offer us. I always wanted to live somewhere other than Boise, because it seemed like Real Life must be happening somewhere else. I always wrote stories about people who lived elsewhere: Seattle, New Orleans, Chicago, Paris, all manner of places I knew absolutely nothing about. I had no idea how I'd manage to go to any of those places on my own, but I was intent on getting away.
When I drove across the country to start graduate school, I remember being shocked by how much space there was between Idaho and Kansas. Somehow, the "away" I'd imagined wasn't quite as far away as reality took me. I wound up in a strange state, in a strange town, on a strange campus with (it must be said) a strange roommate. But that's where I learned to see Boise as a place in its own right, a place with a very specific personality and character--a place worth writing about. When I left Idaho, for the first time I met people who were fascinated by the idea of a place they'd rarely even heard of. As my friend Steph puts it, "Before I met you, people from China were more real to me than people from Idaho."
These days, when I go back to Boise, it doesn't look a thing like the town I remember. It's much larger than the place where I grew up, much more urban, much more hip. And, truth be told, San Antonio feels like home now. I'm glad to be back.
But Boise is a place I love. Most importantly, Boise is a place.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Teaching the Gaps
I've been thinking about Carson McCullers ever since my last blog entry. Specifically, I've been thinking about the fact that no one reads McCullers anymore, as far as I can tell--she's rarely ever represented in the big anthologies of American literature, dozens of which are sent to my office every year. I find that very depressing, because I learned so much about writing with emotional accuracy from reading her work. At one point in my academic career, when I was contemplating a focus on literature instead of creative writing, I aspired to become the preeminent Carson McCullers scholar. Her work is pretty sentimental, I'll admit, but I think that's understandable when you consider how young she was when she died.
When I was in my first graduate program, working on my M.A., one of my professors visibily turned up his nose when I mentioned McCullers as a writer I admired. "I suppose she wrote some nice little stories," he said. The operative words in that sentence were nice and little. From this comment I was to understand that nothing she'd written really mattered that much--it wasn't innovative or groundbreaking or any of those other words that quickly become associated with writers like Hemingway and Faulkner and Fitzgerald, the men who were writing and publishing at about the same time McCullers was. The one story my professor did like was "A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud," probably McCullers' most famous story (and, ironically, my least favorite of her work.) But in retrospect, it's no surprise that my professor would have liked this one: the words of wisdom spoken at its pivotal moment come from an old man, not a young girl.
I didn't even realize how many "nice little stories" I'd missed out on in my academic studies until I got into my Ph.D. program and had to put together a reading list for my comprehensive exams. Then, suddenly, I saw the hundreds of women who'd just been left out of the anthologies my professors had selected for all the courses I'd taken. Those books left no way for me, the literary novice, to see all the gaps in their versions of American literary history--many of which are populated by women.
My response to that has been to teach the gaps whenever I teach a course in literature, especially an intro-level survey (which may well be the only literature course some college students take.) Working from the assumption that most of the teachers my students have encountered so far will have taught the Big Name Writers, I teach Sarah Orne Jewett instead of Mark Twain. Instead of Ralph Ellison, Ann Petry. The Street is nearly always the book my students list as their favorite among those we've read in that class. We do read male authors as well, if it's a general survey course, but we read selections by lesser-known writers, like Edgar Lee Masters and Sherwood Anderson.
It probably comes as no surprise that some students object to this strategy. On my teaching evaluations, I get occasional comments like "We read all these weird authors I'd never even heard of before," and "I thought this was supposed to be American literature." I'm not shy about being a feminist, and I teach Women's Studies in addition to literature, so the fact that I teach a lot of literature written by women is nearly always seen as a political statement. Which it is, of course--but it's something I do in order to help my students see the gaps in their education, to see who's in those gaps and start thinking about why those writers might be there. Why did they get left behind or glossed over? What are they saying that's so dangerous and uncomfortable? My students laugh at the thought that The Awakening was considered scandalous in its own time, but that doesn't mean they're okay with Edna Pontellier, a mother who isn't completely devoted to motherhood. That idea is still uncomfortable, even now, a hundred years later.
Still, my students like to argue that "teaching the gaps" is unnecessary; discrimination is a thing of the past, they claim, and I'm just perpetuating it now by discriminating against white men. Whenever they make that argument, I tell them the story of when my daughter came home, just two years ago, with a list of 20 Famous Americans on whom she could choose to do a report for her history class. Of the 20 people on that list, 2 were women. So I explained to my daughter that I thought this was a ridiculous list, and I proposed a solution: I'd make up a new list, and my daughter could take it back to her teacher, and the teacher could choose any name she liked for my daughter's report. (I also told my daughter I'd be happy to write a note to her teacher explaining my problem with the assignment, so she didn't have to do that if it made her uncomfortable--but my daughter said she didn't mind talking to her teacher about it. That apple didn't fall far from the tree.)
Our list included 18 women and 2 men, the same proportions on the original list. When my daughter came home the next day, she said her teacher had indicated that any of the names on our list would be fine.
As long as there are lists of Famous Americans like that one coming home from school--and as long as there are anthologies that minimize or leave out Carson McCullers in favor of her male contemporaries--I'm going to keep teaching the gaps. It might not make me popular, but I'm hopeful it will lead some of my students to see how carefully their knowledge is constructed to avoid certain people and the difficult questions they dare to raise.
When I was in my first graduate program, working on my M.A., one of my professors visibily turned up his nose when I mentioned McCullers as a writer I admired. "I suppose she wrote some nice little stories," he said. The operative words in that sentence were nice and little. From this comment I was to understand that nothing she'd written really mattered that much--it wasn't innovative or groundbreaking or any of those other words that quickly become associated with writers like Hemingway and Faulkner and Fitzgerald, the men who were writing and publishing at about the same time McCullers was. The one story my professor did like was "A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud," probably McCullers' most famous story (and, ironically, my least favorite of her work.) But in retrospect, it's no surprise that my professor would have liked this one: the words of wisdom spoken at its pivotal moment come from an old man, not a young girl.
I didn't even realize how many "nice little stories" I'd missed out on in my academic studies until I got into my Ph.D. program and had to put together a reading list for my comprehensive exams. Then, suddenly, I saw the hundreds of women who'd just been left out of the anthologies my professors had selected for all the courses I'd taken. Those books left no way for me, the literary novice, to see all the gaps in their versions of American literary history--many of which are populated by women.
My response to that has been to teach the gaps whenever I teach a course in literature, especially an intro-level survey (which may well be the only literature course some college students take.) Working from the assumption that most of the teachers my students have encountered so far will have taught the Big Name Writers, I teach Sarah Orne Jewett instead of Mark Twain. Instead of Ralph Ellison, Ann Petry. The Street is nearly always the book my students list as their favorite among those we've read in that class. We do read male authors as well, if it's a general survey course, but we read selections by lesser-known writers, like Edgar Lee Masters and Sherwood Anderson.
It probably comes as no surprise that some students object to this strategy. On my teaching evaluations, I get occasional comments like "We read all these weird authors I'd never even heard of before," and "I thought this was supposed to be American literature." I'm not shy about being a feminist, and I teach Women's Studies in addition to literature, so the fact that I teach a lot of literature written by women is nearly always seen as a political statement. Which it is, of course--but it's something I do in order to help my students see the gaps in their education, to see who's in those gaps and start thinking about why those writers might be there. Why did they get left behind or glossed over? What are they saying that's so dangerous and uncomfortable? My students laugh at the thought that The Awakening was considered scandalous in its own time, but that doesn't mean they're okay with Edna Pontellier, a mother who isn't completely devoted to motherhood. That idea is still uncomfortable, even now, a hundred years later.
Still, my students like to argue that "teaching the gaps" is unnecessary; discrimination is a thing of the past, they claim, and I'm just perpetuating it now by discriminating against white men. Whenever they make that argument, I tell them the story of when my daughter came home, just two years ago, with a list of 20 Famous Americans on whom she could choose to do a report for her history class. Of the 20 people on that list, 2 were women. So I explained to my daughter that I thought this was a ridiculous list, and I proposed a solution: I'd make up a new list, and my daughter could take it back to her teacher, and the teacher could choose any name she liked for my daughter's report. (I also told my daughter I'd be happy to write a note to her teacher explaining my problem with the assignment, so she didn't have to do that if it made her uncomfortable--but my daughter said she didn't mind talking to her teacher about it. That apple didn't fall far from the tree.)
Our list included 18 women and 2 men, the same proportions on the original list. When my daughter came home the next day, she said her teacher had indicated that any of the names on our list would be fine.
As long as there are lists of Famous Americans like that one coming home from school--and as long as there are anthologies that minimize or leave out Carson McCullers in favor of her male contemporaries--I'm going to keep teaching the gaps. It might not make me popular, but I'm hopeful it will lead some of my students to see how carefully their knowledge is constructed to avoid certain people and the difficult questions they dare to raise.
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