Our Fall 2008 potluck was a huge success!
We had close to thirty people turn out, and lots of delicious food for everyone to eat. People started arriving around 6:30, with loads of food and wine in tow. After we got to hang out, eat, and relax for a while, we got down to the business side of things. Layne and Erin first read from the FSG's mission statement, as a way to introduce all the new members to the group's initial goals and purpose. They also mentioned the shift taking place in the group, since its founding members are starting to go on the job market and will be at different institutions in the next year or so.
Next, each person who had volunteered for an activity or a panel briefly described her idea, and then passed around sign-up sheets. Connie went first, and spoke about her work with a group that would discuss financial options, coordinating a workshop where instructors would learn how to connect students to mental health resources, and scheduling RAV sessions. Lydia spoke about her continuing plans for a version of the "Family Matters" that would feature more fathers from the department. Jessica, Halah, and Pearl spoke about their plans for a panel that would offer a discussion of women and the job interview--the process itself, tips and strategies, and what not to do. Patty talked about her plans to compile the syllabi from the various E316K lectures, in order to look at how these professors cover gender in their courses. Layne spoke about her upcoming panel on feminism and the institution, and Erin talked about her workshop series on how to organize all the information we get in graduate school.
After everyone spoke, we took a break for more eating and drinking. Then we went around the room and each person named something about which she or he (or ze!) was proud.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
The FSG so far!!
When preparing for our part in the 2008 CCCC Feminist Workshop, Layne and I put together this timeline that traces the FSG's activities from its inception to today. It's pretty awesome to look over all of the many, many things we have accomplished!
I thought this might also help fill in the long stretch of silence from last year until now, when posting to our blog kind of fell by the wayside.
January 2006: Layne and Erin meet at the Green Muse to discuss their ideas for a feminist graduate students’ group
March 2006: Creating of the Feminist Solidarity Blog @ Feministsolidarityblog. blogspot.com
March 4: First meeting of the group.
Excerpt from our notes: At the meeting, we discussed various names (listed below), putting together a mission statement (once the blog is up), signed up for committees, talked about whether or not the mentoring should be department-wide (and if so, how to implement that), and that a form for mentees to fill out would be forthcoming.
Possible names -- we all really liked the idea of the acronyms, but got stuck as to what words we wanted. Jack suggested that it's easiest to pick an acronym and then make up words that fit each letter. Regardless, we decided to stay away from female or women terms altogether, and instead decided that words like gender, feminist, solidarity, literature, and group fit more closely with what we want this group to accomplish.
Here are some of the names:
Feminist solidarity group (FSG)
FIG (Feminist Interest Group)
GILD (Gender in Literature Departments)
SAF (I can't remember what these letters stood for either, but I wrote it down)
May 8, 2006: First meeting of the Feminist Solidarity Mentor Committee
August 2006: The Mentor Committee, now divorced from the FSG (?) but still aligned with it, matches up its first group of mentees/mentors in a confusing but ultimately successful process. (For a sample description of our program see attached forms)
September 8, 2006: Fall Planning meeting of the Planning Committee
Planned several events for the fall and for the spring
September 15, 2006: Created a new category on the blog that serves to gather tips from current graduate students for those entering the program. Topics include: Tuition/finances/funding, Insurance/health/fitness, Registration/requirements/advising, Austin area.
September 22, 2006: Fall potluck
Creation of an FSG listserv
Activities: Overview of Fall 2006 activities, Spring 2006 activities, Brainstorming ideas for 2006-2007 school year, Discussion about using the various resources, communities, and groups that are already established on campus (such as Gender and Sexuality center, New Works Program, Center for Women and Gender Studies), Discussion of possible future activities, Other upcoming events, Meeting ended with announcements of various sign-up sheets.
September 29, 2006: LGBTQ 101 with Safe Space
For all those who are interested, the session included different activities that allowed us as participants to think about the different conceptions and stereotypes that we have about the LGBTQ community. We also got the chance to learn about different LGBTQ terms that we might not have known before, as well as how to be better allies to our LGBTQ students.
October 20, 2006: “Feminism in the Classroom”
Some of the questions we considered during this panel: Managing different audiences in the classroom: How do we build alliances in the classroom without closing doors?, The Female Body in the Classroom: How do female instructors balance authority and openness toward students?, Politics in the Classroom: When and how do we "come out" with our views?, Feminism in the Graduate Classroom: Who brings up feminist questions?
November 10, 2006: “Family Matters Panel”
Description: Several women in our graduate program are either pregnant or have recently had children, and questions about the feasibility or practicability of having children while in academia have been raised amongst ourselves and our colleagues. While children and pregnancy are currently the focus of discussion, we would like to extend it to include family matters more broadly: how to make time for your partner (and kids) while completing a dissertation, negotiating stress at work and home, etc. Other more concrete topics include practical matters such as finding childcare, negotiating with administration, whether or not to take time off from school, and dealing with the physical/emotional changes associated with having children. The panel will include both faculty and graduate students, as well as the results from a questionnaire filled out by faculty who have children.
January 21, 2007: Spring Planning Meeting
March 2, 2007: “Feminist Solidarity Group Panel” at the American Literatures Group Spring Symposium
Abstract: The Feminist Solidarity Group is a relatively new unofficial group in the English Department. Within the context of a symposium that examines our work, this group allows discussion about the kinds of writing and thinking we do outside of the classroom as well as the concerns that we find unaddressed in typical discussions about academia. We would like to hold a roundtable presentation at the Academics in Action conference to talk about the processes we’ve gone through to create a practical support structure for feminists and non-traditional academics among the graduate student community, and to brainstorm future projects our group could take on.
Our panel would have three speakers talk briefly about some of our projects. Layne Craig would discuss the idea of “Feminist Solidarity” and talk about the motivations and the practicalities of forming the group. Erin Hurt would discuss our creation and on-going improvement of a Mentor Program within the department. And Lydia Wilmeth would discuss our very successful Family Matters Panel and the university-wide changes we hope will come out of that event. We hope that these topics will generate questions and comments from all panel participants about the future of the Feminist Solidarity Group, its role in the department, and what else can or should be done to build community among graduate students.
July 2007: Mentor Committee sends out mentee questionnaire along with new graduate student orientation materials
August 2007: Mentor Committee planning meeting
At this meeting, we made several changes to the structure of the program, in an effort to include more of the incoming graduate students. We were also able to match up the students with their mentor prior to orientation.
September 4, 2007: Planning meeting
September 28, 2007: Fall Potluck
October 19, 2007: “Authority in the Classroom”
Graduate student instructors talking about their experiences with and goals for controlling (or not) the classroom environment. The issues we discussed included negotiating authority through our skills, transparency as a tool, student-led classes, classroom contracts, and strategies for handling confrontations.
February 1, 2007: Spring Planning Meeting, Spring Potluck
February 15, 2007: FSG Coffee meeting
This was a new concept that we tried, with mixed results. We initially envisioned this as one in series of informal get-togethers, in which we could meet up with each other to check in on projects and catch up socially. Meeting more regularly but more informally might also, we hoped, draw students who weren’t able to make the planning meetings or the potlucks.
Febraury 29, 2008: Feminism in the Academy Workshop
Description: We would like to start a department-wide conversation within the department about the state of feminism in the academy. Briefly, we're envisioning a workshop involving members of the English and Comp. Lit graduate student communities that will address a series of questions. Primarily, we're interested in thinking about the state of feminism in the academy and the profession? What are the new and on-going challenges we face? Among the issues we might consider are: What are the multiple forms of feminism within the department? Do they interact? How may self-identified feminists act as mentors? How can women inside the academy work with women outside of it? Where are academic men in feminist work? Has feminism become The F- Word to our students? What may feminists do to reclaim feminism within the academy? How does rank influence the manifestation (or lack thereof) of a feminist identity? Through this conversation we hope to make various forms of feminism more present within our own department.
March 28, 2008: “Public Spaces in Academia” @ ALG Symposium
Abstract: Our panel will raise issues of shared public spaces, both virtual (listservs) and physical (student lounges). Should these spaces be moderated? Who should be authorized users? Who should maintain them? What counts as abuse of these public spaces? Are academic public spaces qualitatively different from those in the business world or other professional spheres? Panelists are: Jim Brown and Erin Hurt, who study public spaces in their research within the Rhetoric and English departments, and Stephanie Odom-Robertson, who has moderated discussions within the English department over these issues in the past year.
April 7, 2008: Upcoming panel on improving orientation
Description: The Feminist Solidarity Group, in conjunction with the EGG Steering Committee, is interested in hearing from 1st or 2nd year grad students, or anyone with poignant memories, about how orientation procedures could be improved for incoming grad students this fall and in the future. Help dispel the fog! If you've ever had an idea about what you wish people told you or did in those first couple of weeks before classes started, bring those nuggets of wisdom to the table.
I thought this might also help fill in the long stretch of silence from last year until now, when posting to our blog kind of fell by the wayside.
January 2006: Layne and Erin meet at the Green Muse to discuss their ideas for a feminist graduate students’ group
March 2006: Creating of the Feminist Solidarity Blog @ Feministsolidarityblog. blogspot.com
March 4: First meeting of the group.
Excerpt from our notes: At the meeting, we discussed various names (listed below), putting together a mission statement (once the blog is up), signed up for committees, talked about whether or not the mentoring should be department-wide (and if so, how to implement that), and that a form for mentees to fill out would be forthcoming.
Possible names -- we all really liked the idea of the acronyms, but got stuck as to what words we wanted. Jack suggested that it's easiest to pick an acronym and then make up words that fit each letter. Regardless, we decided to stay away from female or women terms altogether, and instead decided that words like gender, feminist, solidarity, literature, and group fit more closely with what we want this group to accomplish.
Here are some of the names:
Feminist solidarity group (FSG)
FIG (Feminist Interest Group)
GILD (Gender in Literature Departments)
SAF (I can't remember what these letters stood for either, but I wrote it down)
May 8, 2006: First meeting of the Feminist Solidarity Mentor Committee
August 2006: The Mentor Committee, now divorced from the FSG (?) but still aligned with it, matches up its first group of mentees/mentors in a confusing but ultimately successful process. (For a sample description of our program see attached forms)
September 8, 2006: Fall Planning meeting of the Planning Committee
Planned several events for the fall and for the spring
September 15, 2006: Created a new category on the blog that serves to gather tips from current graduate students for those entering the program. Topics include: Tuition/finances/funding, Insurance/health/fitness, Registration/requirements/advising, Austin area.
September 22, 2006: Fall potluck
Creation of an FSG listserv
Activities: Overview of Fall 2006 activities, Spring 2006 activities, Brainstorming ideas for 2006-2007 school year, Discussion about using the various resources, communities, and groups that are already established on campus (such as Gender and Sexuality center, New Works Program, Center for Women and Gender Studies), Discussion of possible future activities, Other upcoming events, Meeting ended with announcements of various sign-up sheets.
September 29, 2006: LGBTQ 101 with Safe Space
For all those who are interested, the session included different activities that allowed us as participants to think about the different conceptions and stereotypes that we have about the LGBTQ community. We also got the chance to learn about different LGBTQ terms that we might not have known before, as well as how to be better allies to our LGBTQ students.
October 20, 2006: “Feminism in the Classroom”
Some of the questions we considered during this panel: Managing different audiences in the classroom: How do we build alliances in the classroom without closing doors?, The Female Body in the Classroom: How do female instructors balance authority and openness toward students?, Politics in the Classroom: When and how do we "come out" with our views?, Feminism in the Graduate Classroom: Who brings up feminist questions?
November 10, 2006: “Family Matters Panel”
Description: Several women in our graduate program are either pregnant or have recently had children, and questions about the feasibility or practicability of having children while in academia have been raised amongst ourselves and our colleagues. While children and pregnancy are currently the focus of discussion, we would like to extend it to include family matters more broadly: how to make time for your partner (and kids) while completing a dissertation, negotiating stress at work and home, etc. Other more concrete topics include practical matters such as finding childcare, negotiating with administration, whether or not to take time off from school, and dealing with the physical/emotional changes associated with having children. The panel will include both faculty and graduate students, as well as the results from a questionnaire filled out by faculty who have children.
January 21, 2007: Spring Planning Meeting
March 2, 2007: “Feminist Solidarity Group Panel” at the American Literatures Group Spring Symposium
Abstract: The Feminist Solidarity Group is a relatively new unofficial group in the English Department. Within the context of a symposium that examines our work, this group allows discussion about the kinds of writing and thinking we do outside of the classroom as well as the concerns that we find unaddressed in typical discussions about academia. We would like to hold a roundtable presentation at the Academics in Action conference to talk about the processes we’ve gone through to create a practical support structure for feminists and non-traditional academics among the graduate student community, and to brainstorm future projects our group could take on.
Our panel would have three speakers talk briefly about some of our projects. Layne Craig would discuss the idea of “Feminist Solidarity” and talk about the motivations and the practicalities of forming the group. Erin Hurt would discuss our creation and on-going improvement of a Mentor Program within the department. And Lydia Wilmeth would discuss our very successful Family Matters Panel and the university-wide changes we hope will come out of that event. We hope that these topics will generate questions and comments from all panel participants about the future of the Feminist Solidarity Group, its role in the department, and what else can or should be done to build community among graduate students.
July 2007: Mentor Committee sends out mentee questionnaire along with new graduate student orientation materials
August 2007: Mentor Committee planning meeting
At this meeting, we made several changes to the structure of the program, in an effort to include more of the incoming graduate students. We were also able to match up the students with their mentor prior to orientation.
September 4, 2007: Planning meeting
September 28, 2007: Fall Potluck
October 19, 2007: “Authority in the Classroom”
Graduate student instructors talking about their experiences with and goals for controlling (or not) the classroom environment. The issues we discussed included negotiating authority through our skills, transparency as a tool, student-led classes, classroom contracts, and strategies for handling confrontations.
February 1, 2007: Spring Planning Meeting, Spring Potluck
February 15, 2007: FSG Coffee meeting
This was a new concept that we tried, with mixed results. We initially envisioned this as one in series of informal get-togethers, in which we could meet up with each other to check in on projects and catch up socially. Meeting more regularly but more informally might also, we hoped, draw students who weren’t able to make the planning meetings or the potlucks.
Febraury 29, 2008: Feminism in the Academy Workshop
Description: We would like to start a department-wide conversation within the department about the state of feminism in the academy. Briefly, we're envisioning a workshop involving members of the English and Comp. Lit graduate student communities that will address a series of questions. Primarily, we're interested in thinking about the state of feminism in the academy and the profession? What are the new and on-going challenges we face? Among the issues we might consider are: What are the multiple forms of feminism within the department? Do they interact? How may self-identified feminists act as mentors? How can women inside the academy work with women outside of it? Where are academic men in feminist work? Has feminism become The F- Word to our students? What may feminists do to reclaim feminism within the academy? How does rank influence the manifestation (or lack thereof) of a feminist identity? Through this conversation we hope to make various forms of feminism more present within our own department.
March 28, 2008: “Public Spaces in Academia” @ ALG Symposium
Abstract: Our panel will raise issues of shared public spaces, both virtual (listservs) and physical (student lounges). Should these spaces be moderated? Who should be authorized users? Who should maintain them? What counts as abuse of these public spaces? Are academic public spaces qualitatively different from those in the business world or other professional spheres? Panelists are: Jim Brown and Erin Hurt, who study public spaces in their research within the Rhetoric and English departments, and Stephanie Odom-Robertson, who has moderated discussions within the English department over these issues in the past year.
April 7, 2008: Upcoming panel on improving orientation
Description: The Feminist Solidarity Group, in conjunction with the EGG Steering Committee, is interested in hearing from 1st or 2nd year grad students, or anyone with poignant memories, about how orientation procedures could be improved for incoming grad students this fall and in the future. Help dispel the fog! If you've ever had an idea about what you wish people told you or did in those first couple of weeks before classes started, bring those nuggets of wisdom to the table.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Notes from Fall 2008 semester planning meeting
We had an awesome turnout for this planning meeting!!
Instead of the 4-5 people that we normally see turn up, this most recent planning meeting saw close to fifteen or so people turn out.
We started with introductions, and went around the room.
We spent the rest of the time brainstorming lots of ideas to do throughout the semester. In terms of scheduling events, Layne made the point that in the past, we have concentrated on spacing out the events. We all agreed that this semester, rather than limiting events in order to avoid overloading people, we would simply let events take place when it was most convenient for the panel organizer and its participants.
The ideas the group generated are listed below, with their tentative contact people:
We had an awesome turnout for this planning meeting!!
Instead of the 4-5 people that we normally see turn up, this most recent planning meeting saw close to fifteen or so people turn out.
We started with introductions, and went around the room.
We spent the rest of the time brainstorming lots of ideas to do throughout the semester. In terms of scheduling events, Layne made the point that in the past, we have concentrated on spacing out the events. We all agreed that this semester, rather than limiting events in order to avoid overloading people, we would simply let events take place when it was most convenient for the panel organizer and its participants.
The ideas the group generated are listed below, with their tentative contact people:
- Financial planning workshop (Connie Steel)
- Potential workshop by Heather from Women Against Violence/RAD (Connie Steel)
- Turning the FSG into a Facebook page, and linking the existing blog to the Facebook page (Erin, with help from Cate and Foley)
- Having a potluck!! Scheduled for the 12th!
- Organizing your sh*t workshop (Erin)
- Modeling one method per workshop
- Talk to Peg Syverson
- Pedagogy panel: Being a TA? Teaching "gendered lit."? Teaching gender in a 316 where there isn't much women's literature... (Patty?)
- Collecting the syllabi from professors that teach 316K and putting together something that shows how many women's texts are taught in each course; incorporating this into the above pedagogy panel, or into a new one (Patty)
- Workshop: Feminism and the administration (Layne)
- Lisa Moore and the study
- Megan Little
- Tim
- Workshop: Gender and the Job Market (Jessica, Hala, and Pearl)
- How the hiring process is gendered
- Tips and strategies for women on the job market, specifically in job interviews/job talks
- How to navigate all of the situations (what are the situations?)
- The job talk itself/the colloquia process
- People to potentially invite: Olga, Liz (Cullingford?), Matt Richardson, Julia Lee
- Connie:
- $ group
- WAV stuff
- RAD training
- Erin:
- Organizational panel (Travis re: Zotero, talk to Sean, Peg, etc.)
- Add people to the listserv
- Layne
- GLBTQ ally training workshop (for the spring?)
- GLBTQ awareness workshop
- Patty:
- Collecting syllabi
- Putting together panel re: TAs and gender
- Lydia:
- Parenthood panel
- Jessica:
- Heading up the panel on faculty/job talk
- Pearl
- Job talk and gender panel
- Hala
- Job talk and gender panel
- Send out email regarding potluck
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
On Tuesday, September 4th, we had an FSG planning meeting. Although not everyone could attend, we went ahead and brainstormed/rehashed a few ideas for our events this fall. It would be really great if we could use the comment section under this blog entry to discuss and respond to those ideas, so we can get started setting some plans into action. If you have other ideas that aren't listed here, please put those in the comments, as well.
Potluck! We're looking at Sept. 21st or 28th as possible dates. What do you think? More info coming soon on the listserv.
Last fall, The FSG had a grad student panel called "Feminism in the Classroom," which was really well-attended and interesting. We would like to do something similar this semester, maybe with a more specific focus. The two ideas we tossed around were:
Authority in the Classroom—Catherine B. brought this up at last year’s potluck. It would be a panel about teaching, particularly addressing the ways that we establish authority as grad student teachers and deal with conflict or confrontation in our classes.
Maintaining Public Spaces in Grad School, like Broken Eggs and Chez Cal--Every once in a while, we're reminded of the issues inherent to the shared spaces we use in our department and on campus. This would be a panel about the ethics and practical concerns regarding "policing" these spaces and using them effectively.
If you have thoughts on one of these panels, please be sure to comment below.
Fathers Version of the Academics and Parenting panel: We had a really successful panel on parenting last fall, but it was an all-woman panel, and several people expressed an interest in doing one for fathers this year. Lydia W. is sounding out interest in the panel in our department and among the grad student parent community, but we definitely know that some professor-fathers are interested. What do you think?
Mentor Panel—We've talked before about setting up a panel about mentorship, possibly with some grad student mentor pairs and professors who are involved in mentoring. At this meeting, we talked about tabling this idea for a little while and seeing if people are interested. What do you think?
Finally, last year we hosted a presentation from the Gender and Sexuality Center called LGBTQ 101. As we look toward the spring, we would like to look into having more educational programs from groups on campus. Any ideas?
Really finally, Kate has posted some open thread type entries on this blog about the first year of grad school. If you have the time to scroll down and check them out and add to the comments, that would be great.
Thanks so much to everyone who made it to this crazy meeting and to people who emailed--I'm so sorry it ended up being weird in time and location! See everyone at the potluck! And in the comments section... :)
--Layne
Potluck! We're looking at Sept. 21st or 28th as possible dates. What do you think? More info coming soon on the listserv.
Last fall, The FSG had a grad student panel called "Feminism in the Classroom," which was really well-attended and interesting. We would like to do something similar this semester, maybe with a more specific focus. The two ideas we tossed around were:
Authority in the Classroom—Catherine B. brought this up at last year’s potluck. It would be a panel about teaching, particularly addressing the ways that we establish authority as grad student teachers and deal with conflict or confrontation in our classes.
Maintaining Public Spaces in Grad School, like Broken Eggs and Chez Cal--Every once in a while, we're reminded of the issues inherent to the shared spaces we use in our department and on campus. This would be a panel about the ethics and practical concerns regarding "policing" these spaces and using them effectively.
If you have thoughts on one of these panels, please be sure to comment below.
Fathers Version of the Academics and Parenting panel: We had a really successful panel on parenting last fall, but it was an all-woman panel, and several people expressed an interest in doing one for fathers this year. Lydia W. is sounding out interest in the panel in our department and among the grad student parent community, but we definitely know that some professor-fathers are interested. What do you think?
Mentor Panel—We've talked before about setting up a panel about mentorship, possibly with some grad student mentor pairs and professors who are involved in mentoring. At this meeting, we talked about tabling this idea for a little while and seeing if people are interested. What do you think?
Finally, last year we hosted a presentation from the Gender and Sexuality Center called LGBTQ 101. As we look toward the spring, we would like to look into having more educational programs from groups on campus. Any ideas?
Really finally, Kate has posted some open thread type entries on this blog about the first year of grad school. If you have the time to scroll down and check them out and add to the comments, that would be great.
Thanks so much to everyone who made it to this crazy meeting and to people who emailed--I'm so sorry it ended up being weird in time and location! See everyone at the potluck! And in the comments section... :)
--Layne
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
I just came across these pointers by Gerald Graff and I wish I had seen them when I started grad school. This is exactly the type of professionalization information that needs to be provided to grad students but is usually left unsaid (at least in my experience). He talks about this problem in another article, "Two Cheers for Professionalizing Graduate Students" in the same issue of PMLA. I hope this helps other people!
Do's and Don'ts for academic writers
from Gerald Graff, "Scholars and Sound Bites: The Myth of Academic Difficulty." PMLA 115: 5 (October 2000), 1050-1.
1. Be dialogical. Begin your text by directly identifying the prior conversation or debate that you are entering. What you are saying probably won't make sense unless readers know the conversation in which you say it.
2. Make a claim, the sooner the better, and flag it for the reader by a phrase like "My claim here is that [. . .]." You don't have to use such a phrase, but if you can't do so you're in trouble.
3. Remind readers of your claim periodically, especially the more you complicate it. If you're writing about a disputed topic (and if you aren't, why write?), you'll also have to stop and tell readers what you are not saying, what you don't want to be taken as saying. Some of them will take you as saying that anyway, but you don't have to make it easy for them.
4. Summarize the objections that you anticipate can be made (or that have been made) against your claim. Remember that objectors, even when mean and nasty, are your friends--they help you clarify your claim, and they indicate why it is of interest to others besides yourself. If the objectors weren't out there, you wouldn't need to say what you are saying.
5. Say explicitly—or at least imply—why your ideas are important, what difference it makes to the world if you are right or wrong, and so forth. Imagine a reader over your shoulder who asks, "So what?" Or, "Who cares about any of this?" Again, you don't have to write in such questions, but if you were to write them in and couldn't answer them, you're in trouble.
6. (This one is already implicit in several of the above points.) Generate a metatext that stands apart from your main text and puts it in perspective. Any essay really consists of two texts, one in which you make your argument and a second in which you tell readers how (and how not) to read it. This second text is usually signaled by reflexive phrases like "I do not mean to suggest that [. . .]," "Here you will probably object that [. . .]," "To put the point another way [...]," "But why am I so emphatic on this point?," and "What I've been trying to say here, then, is [. . .]." When writing is unclear or lame (as beginning student writing often is), the reason usually has less to do with jargon or verbal obscurity than with the absence of such metacommentary, which may be needed to explain why it was necessary to write the essay.
7. Remember that readers can process only one claim at a time, so there's no use trying to squeeze in secondary and tertiary claims that are better left for another book, essay, or paragraph or at least for another part of your book or essay, where they can be clearly marked off from your main claim. If you're an academic, you are probably so eager to prove that you've left no thought unconsidered that you find it hard to resist the temptation to say everything at once, and consequently you say nothing that is understood while producing horribly overloaded paragraphs and sentences like this sentence, monster-sized discursive footnotes, and readers who fling your text aside and turn on the TV.
8. Be bilingual. It is not necessary to avoid academese—you sometimes need the stuff. But whenever you have to say something in academese, try to say it in the vernacular as well. You'll be surprised to find that when you restate an academic point in your nonacademic voice,the point is enriched (or else you see how vacuous it is), and you're led to new perceptions.
9. Don't kid yourself. If you could not explain it to your parents or your most mediocre student, the chances are you don't understand it yourself.
None of what I have said in this essay should be mistaken for the claim that all academic scholarship can or should be addressed to a nonacademic audience. The ability to do advanced research and the ability to explain that research to nonprofessional audiences do not always appear in the same person. To adapt a concept from the philosopher Hilary Putnam, there is a linguistic division of labor in which the work of research and that of popularization are divided among different people, as Friedrich Engels was rewrite man for Karl Marx. Yet even Marx's most difficult and uncompromising texts have their Engels moments—Engels could not have summarized Marx's doctrine if they did not. In short, it is time to rethink the view that the university is not in the gist business.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Spring 2007 Planning meeting – 21 January 2007
- At the meeting today, the current planning committee (Layne, Marcee, Erin, Lydia, Kate, Stephanie, Emily, Jessica) mostly went back over the items we had talked about back in December, and signed up for different committees/activities. Here’s what we came up with:
- Send out email to Broken Eggs about FSG (Did someone sign up for this? If not, want to?)
- Send out a short email about the group, activities/projects, and listserv/blog information
- Mentor committee (contact Marcee Monroe)
- Getting feedback from mentors/mentees (Stephanie)
- Talk to Kevin about making the mentor program a permanent part of the orientation, and sending out information/survey/blog address in the initial new student packets (Erin)
- Panel at the ALG symposium
- First weekend in March
- A panel of speakers will present at the symposium, with the goal of presenting an overview of how we started the group, what kinds of panels/activities we have done, and the opportunity to have a roundtable about what other kinds of issues/activities the UT English Grad community would like to see
- Write up proposal (Layne)
- Potluck (contact Emily Bloom)
- Tentatively scheduled for April
- Liaise with WGL faculty
- Informal Mentor roundtable/happy hour (Stephanie/Erin)
- The point of this would be to gather the mentors (and mentees?) to talk about our experiences as mentors, and how we could improve the program (what worked? Didn’t work? New ideas?)
- Several of the items we talked about relate to ongoing projects, and different people volunteered to keep those going:
- Lydia: send out an email to Broken Eggs asking for tips for students on the blog
- Family Matters Panel follow-up (contact Erin)
- Melanie as liaison between students and faculty
- Changing tables
- The future goals are at the end of the notes
- A day in the life project
- Send out specific emails to gather examples
- Email Broken Eggs
- Put on blog?
- Projects for the Fall:
- Mentor panel (with faculty and mentors)
- Another panel about feminism in the classroom/what to do when you have trouble in the classroom?
FAMILY MATTERS PANEL – Friday, November 10, 2006
Panel members: Dr. Lisa Moore, Dr. Elizabeth Scala, Sara Sliter-Hays, Melanie Haupt, Dr. Beth Hedrick
The panel began with Professor Lisa Moore, who has two young children. Her advice is:
- Don’t plan too much
- She was glad that she waited; postponed until tenure
- Mentioned the Teaching Continuity Rule (A Texas law that no Tx state employee can take maternity leave)
- Recommended using the institution as much as you can, take advantage of all the resources available, don’t expect less for yourself because you have children
- She emphasized that you won’t be exempt from the pressure to feel like a “bad mother” or a “bad academic”
- Don’t be afraid to shamelessly enjoy being a mother, being an academic, or to shamelessly enjoy being both
o Sexism is responsible for our feelings of guilt for occupying these multiple positions
- Take advantage of the control you have over your schedule as an academic
- Don’t get talked out of that → feel lucky!!
Liz Scala spoke next. She also has two young children:
- She spoke about having children before tenure, and thinking you know everything you want and realizing you know nothing”
- A consideration when looking for jobs if you are thinking about having children pre-tenure
o A big department (like UT) = more flexibility
- You can plan things all you want, but it doesn’t always work out, “expect the unexpected”
Sara Sliter-Hays, a graduate student in the English Department, spoke next. She focused on the financial aspect of having children as a grad student:
- Comparison of the benefits found at other universities and at UT:
o University of Wisconsin: 9 daycares (all different kinds, such as drop-in, sick care, scheduled care, etc.), childcare stipends, funding for families
o University of Michigan: $2000 stipend for one child, $3500 stipend for two children
o UT daycare is more expensive and offers less services
o A&M’s daycare is less expensive than UT’s, which shows that UT fails to measure up even within the Texas State university system
- She emphasized that in asking for better benefits, graduate students are not asking for more than they deserve
- Other universities realize that this is a problem, and have put a lot of money and effort into these issues
Melanie Haupt, another English Department grad student, spoke next. She focused on her experiences here at UT:
- There is no place to pump or to change diapers
- Meetings, events, lectures, and potlucks all take place that span of time in which parents are picking up children from childcare, eating dinner, bath time, and bedtime
o It is hard for mothers to be collegial because of this scheduling; they miss out on opportunities to be collegial and to network
- She found helpful professors and a supportive graduate community indispensable
Professor Beth Hedrick spoke last. She focused on how to work efficiently with young children:
- Take advantage of the flexibility an academic schedule offers
- Faculty can apply for sick leave, but the attitudes within departments vary (some are supportive of one taking sick leave, while other departments look down upon t as unprofessional – example: some departments believe that sick leave is for when you are actually sick)
- When to have kids? You can wait, but infertility is also very real
- To get your work done, you must become more efficient
- Time management:
o Things you never thought you could do with a 2 yr. old – a lot of things!!
o Things you thought you could do with a two year old but can’t
•Mostly thinking and writing
o You get really good at using little scraps of time here and there
o Advice: Big projects take longer chunks of time at the beginning, when you are getting started. So, either start a big project, get it going, and then start a family OR Start a family, get used to it, then start a family
QUESTIONS:
- How to reconcile disapproving families with ambition/teaching/having children?
o (Lisa) It’s important for your children to see you disproving and working against this
o (Liz) “Contribution to community, state, and nation” – a part of the tenure application – you can think of yourself as fulfilling this by having children
• This is your personal choice, and having children can affect your career in POSITIVE ways
- (NY Times article) What about the opt-out revolution?
o (Lisa) The Mother Dance is a book that discusses getting husbands to do housework and childcare
o (Beth) Sharing childcare and household duties becomes a game of chicken: Who can stand it the longest? It requires an unbelievable amount of self-monitoring to be shared equally.
o (Melanie) Every time you come up with a system that works for you and your partner, the pattern changes and the routines have to change, and you have to create a new system
o(Sara) I decided to take a short leave. Sometimes leave can be detrimental.
- Is this something to bring up when on the job market?
o Don’t bring it up at MLA
o Things ARE changing, though.
o It is illegal for a hiring committee to ask you if you have children.
o Wait until the job has been offered, then negotiate.
To hear from others on this issue, check out a link recommended by Professor Diane Davis:
FUTURE PLANS AND GOALS
- Within the department:
o Install baby changing tables in restrooms
o Making the locked room available to students who need to pump or breastfeed
o Creating a grad student liaison between student parents and the department to let new parents know about these kinds of resources (Melanie expressed interest in this)
o ask Martin Kevorkian, Dan Birkholz and some grad student dads to organize a panel for men
- Within the greater student body:
o Contact the Graduate Student Welfare Committee:
o UT can do more about childcare, but there needs to be more pressure
o Getting involved in creating room in the new Grad Student Activity Center
o Contacting Tom Dison, who runs Rec Sports, about creating/providing room for mothers who need to pump
- Contact (or start?) some kind of larger UT parent association (across departments, for faculty, grad students, and undergrads)?
o Collection of statistics: How many women are currently breastfeeding? how many people at UT have young kids? Need daycare?
Panel members: Dr. Lisa Moore, Dr. Elizabeth Scala, Sara Sliter-Hays, Melanie Haupt, Dr. Beth Hedrick
The panel began with Professor Lisa Moore, who has two young children. Her advice is:
- Don’t plan too much
- She was glad that she waited; postponed until tenure
- Mentioned the Teaching Continuity Rule (A Texas law that no Tx state employee can take maternity leave)
- Recommended using the institution as much as you can, take advantage of all the resources available, don’t expect less for yourself because you have children
- She emphasized that you won’t be exempt from the pressure to feel like a “bad mother” or a “bad academic”
- Don’t be afraid to shamelessly enjoy being a mother, being an academic, or to shamelessly enjoy being both
o Sexism is responsible for our feelings of guilt for occupying these multiple positions
- Take advantage of the control you have over your schedule as an academic
- Don’t get talked out of that → feel lucky!!
Liz Scala spoke next. She also has two young children:
- She spoke about having children before tenure, and thinking you know everything you want and realizing you know nothing”
- A consideration when looking for jobs if you are thinking about having children pre-tenure
o A big department (like UT) = more flexibility
- You can plan things all you want, but it doesn’t always work out, “expect the unexpected”
Sara Sliter-Hays, a graduate student in the English Department, spoke next. She focused on the financial aspect of having children as a grad student:
- Comparison of the benefits found at other universities and at UT:
o University of Wisconsin: 9 daycares (all different kinds, such as drop-in, sick care, scheduled care, etc.), childcare stipends, funding for families
o University of Michigan: $2000 stipend for one child, $3500 stipend for two children
o UT daycare is more expensive and offers less services
o A&M’s daycare is less expensive than UT’s, which shows that UT fails to measure up even within the Texas State university system
- She emphasized that in asking for better benefits, graduate students are not asking for more than they deserve
- Other universities realize that this is a problem, and have put a lot of money and effort into these issues
Melanie Haupt, another English Department grad student, spoke next. She focused on her experiences here at UT:
- There is no place to pump or to change diapers
- Meetings, events, lectures, and potlucks all take place that span of time in which parents are picking up children from childcare, eating dinner, bath time, and bedtime
o It is hard for mothers to be collegial because of this scheduling; they miss out on opportunities to be collegial and to network
- She found helpful professors and a supportive graduate community indispensable
Professor Beth Hedrick spoke last. She focused on how to work efficiently with young children:
- Take advantage of the flexibility an academic schedule offers
- Faculty can apply for sick leave, but the attitudes within departments vary (some are supportive of one taking sick leave, while other departments look down upon t as unprofessional – example: some departments believe that sick leave is for when you are actually sick)
- When to have kids? You can wait, but infertility is also very real
- To get your work done, you must become more efficient
- Time management:
o Things you never thought you could do with a 2 yr. old – a lot of things!!
o Things you thought you could do with a two year old but can’t
•Mostly thinking and writing
o You get really good at using little scraps of time here and there
o Advice: Big projects take longer chunks of time at the beginning, when you are getting started. So, either start a big project, get it going, and then start a family OR Start a family, get used to it, then start a family
QUESTIONS:
- How to reconcile disapproving families with ambition/teaching/having children?
o (Lisa) It’s important for your children to see you disproving and working against this
o (Liz) “Contribution to community, state, and nation” – a part of the tenure application – you can think of yourself as fulfilling this by having children
• This is your personal choice, and having children can affect your career in POSITIVE ways
- (NY Times article) What about the opt-out revolution?
o (Lisa) The Mother Dance is a book that discusses getting husbands to do housework and childcare
o (Beth) Sharing childcare and household duties becomes a game of chicken: Who can stand it the longest? It requires an unbelievable amount of self-monitoring to be shared equally.
o (Melanie) Every time you come up with a system that works for you and your partner, the pattern changes and the routines have to change, and you have to create a new system
o(Sara) I decided to take a short leave. Sometimes leave can be detrimental.
- Is this something to bring up when on the job market?
o Don’t bring it up at MLA
o Things ARE changing, though.
o It is illegal for a hiring committee to ask you if you have children.
o Wait until the job has been offered, then negotiate.
To hear from others on this issue, check out a link recommended by Professor Diane Davis:
FUTURE PLANS AND GOALS
- Within the department:
o Install baby changing tables in restrooms
o Making the locked room available to students who need to pump or breastfeed
o Creating a grad student liaison between student parents and the department to let new parents know about these kinds of resources (Melanie expressed interest in this)
o ask Martin Kevorkian, Dan Birkholz and some grad student dads to organize a panel for men
- Within the greater student body:
o Contact the Graduate Student Welfare Committee:
o UT can do more about childcare, but there needs to be more pressure
o Getting involved in creating room in the new Grad Student Activity Center
o Contacting Tom Dison, who runs Rec Sports, about creating/providing room for mothers who need to pump
- Contact (or start?) some kind of larger UT parent association (across departments, for faculty, grad students, and undergrads)?
o Collection of statistics: How many women are currently breastfeeding? how many people at UT have young kids? Need daycare?
Monday, October 23, 2006
Here are some of my notes from the Feminism in the Classroom Roundtable on Friday, October 20th. Thanks so much to all who participated. We had a really interesting conversation, mostly about issues related to gender and graduate student teaching. I am going to go ahead and make a outline of different topics that came up, and some of the thoughts that our panelists and participants had about those topics.
1. Managing different audiences in the classroom: How do we build alliances in the classroom without closing doors?
The question of which students we address as feminist teachers came up several times during the discussion.
--We talked about women and men as separate audiences, and Jackie reminded us not to make assumptions about our students' views on gender based on their genders or backgrounds.
--Pat asked about discussing feminist interpretations of texts without alienating students who aren't interested in feminism, and inspired several suggestions: 1) That we as teachers attach feminist interpretations very clearly to ourselves, giving the students an opening to question 'just our opinion'; 2) That we introduce various interpretations of a text "hypothetically," mentioning a feminist interpretation alongside other points of view; 3)That we avoid using the word feminism upfront in class discussions, giving students a chance to get used to new ideas without the baggage of a politicized terminology.
--Lacey talked specifically about consciously designing classroom activities to appeal to less talkative students, who do not have as strong a sense of their entitlement to participate in a graduate classroom; and then Amanda talked specifically about teaching to more obviously conservative students. Each of these strategies were posited as ways to overcome our own biases and traditional power dynamics in the classroom.
2. The Female Body in the Classroom: How do female instructors balance authority and openness toward students?
--Both Patty and Lacey talked about some of the specific issues female instructors encounter because of the more visible and often sexualized and/or politicized nature of our bodies in the classroom.
--Issues of dress came up: How much more formally do female instructors have to dress than male instructors? What are the connotations of a loose bra strap or a shirt hiking up over a belly in class? Does varying our gender-presentation enhance our authority as teachers?
--Lurking behind questions about self-representation and authority, to me at least, are questions about the ways that disrespect and respect manifest in the classroom. How do we gauge the level of authority we have in class before a problem arise? Is the issue that female instructors face more outright disrespect, or that they do not receive respectful gestures men can often take for granted?
3. Politics in the Classroom: When and how do we "come out" with our views?
--Amanda asked a question about saying the word "feminist" in connection to ourselves in the classroom, which elicited several different responses.
--Lisa Moore's tactic in E316K of announcing her politics to her students early in the semester was brought up as an effective, but intimidating (to graduate instructors), tactic; it was noted that it is important to emphasize both the instructor's beliefs and the instructor's openness to different opinions in that situation.
--Other participants in the panel argued that they took more subtle approaches to politics in the classroom, leaving students to guess their beliefs and presenting both sides of political debates.
4. Feminism in the Graduate Classroom: Who brings up feminist questions?
At the end of the session, Patty brought up some issues that I think would be really useful for further discussion, perhaps at another roundtable! She asked whether students or teachers bring up feminism in our classrooms, and what the best tactics for us to bring up gender-focused or feminist interpretations of texts might be in class situations, especially in situations when anti-feminist texts are excused by reason of their historicality. This is an interesting question from both an instructor and a student perspective, and we addressed both briefly at the panel.
I have some thoughts about the panel, but I may leave them for the comments, as this really long! Please feel free to post here anything I forgot, or your thoughts on the panel or the issues above, or ideas for future discussions.
1. Managing different audiences in the classroom: How do we build alliances in the classroom without closing doors?
The question of which students we address as feminist teachers came up several times during the discussion.
--We talked about women and men as separate audiences, and Jackie reminded us not to make assumptions about our students' views on gender based on their genders or backgrounds.
--Pat asked about discussing feminist interpretations of texts without alienating students who aren't interested in feminism, and inspired several suggestions: 1) That we as teachers attach feminist interpretations very clearly to ourselves, giving the students an opening to question 'just our opinion'; 2) That we introduce various interpretations of a text "hypothetically," mentioning a feminist interpretation alongside other points of view; 3)That we avoid using the word feminism upfront in class discussions, giving students a chance to get used to new ideas without the baggage of a politicized terminology.
--Lacey talked specifically about consciously designing classroom activities to appeal to less talkative students, who do not have as strong a sense of their entitlement to participate in a graduate classroom; and then Amanda talked specifically about teaching to more obviously conservative students. Each of these strategies were posited as ways to overcome our own biases and traditional power dynamics in the classroom.
2. The Female Body in the Classroom: How do female instructors balance authority and openness toward students?
--Both Patty and Lacey talked about some of the specific issues female instructors encounter because of the more visible and often sexualized and/or politicized nature of our bodies in the classroom.
--Issues of dress came up: How much more formally do female instructors have to dress than male instructors? What are the connotations of a loose bra strap or a shirt hiking up over a belly in class? Does varying our gender-presentation enhance our authority as teachers?
--Lurking behind questions about self-representation and authority, to me at least, are questions about the ways that disrespect and respect manifest in the classroom. How do we gauge the level of authority we have in class before a problem arise? Is the issue that female instructors face more outright disrespect, or that they do not receive respectful gestures men can often take for granted?
3. Politics in the Classroom: When and how do we "come out" with our views?
--Amanda asked a question about saying the word "feminist" in connection to ourselves in the classroom, which elicited several different responses.
--Lisa Moore's tactic in E316K of announcing her politics to her students early in the semester was brought up as an effective, but intimidating (to graduate instructors), tactic; it was noted that it is important to emphasize both the instructor's beliefs and the instructor's openness to different opinions in that situation.
--Other participants in the panel argued that they took more subtle approaches to politics in the classroom, leaving students to guess their beliefs and presenting both sides of political debates.
4. Feminism in the Graduate Classroom: Who brings up feminist questions?
At the end of the session, Patty brought up some issues that I think would be really useful for further discussion, perhaps at another roundtable! She asked whether students or teachers bring up feminism in our classrooms, and what the best tactics for us to bring up gender-focused or feminist interpretations of texts might be in class situations, especially in situations when anti-feminist texts are excused by reason of their historicality. This is an interesting question from both an instructor and a student perspective, and we addressed both briefly at the panel.
I have some thoughts about the panel, but I may leave them for the comments, as this really long! Please feel free to post here anything I forgot, or your thoughts on the panel or the issues above, or ideas for future discussions.
Monday, October 02, 2006
On a lighter note, another personal situation that can sometimes intrude into our academic lives is the issue of moody professors. Has anyone ever encountered this phenomenon? If so, how do/did you handle it? Pretend like it doesn't happen? Say something? What if it seriously affects your academic relationship with her or him? Comments and reactions?
In looking to continue the momentum of the new semester, I thought I'd post a blog topic to get us started with our online conversations.
Our recent Safe Space awareness training and its small turnout made me think about different ways to reach more people in the department. More specifically, in reaching out to the department (or other communities) how should the FSG surmount the obstacle of “identity politics" (e.g. "I'm not ______, so that stuff doesn't concern me")? How can we emphasize to people the importance of coalitions and allies? Should we? Is it better to just let a person come to an awareness of an issue on her or his own?
Comments and reactions to the above topic are not only welcome but also wanted.
Our recent Safe Space awareness training and its small turnout made me think about different ways to reach more people in the department. More specifically, in reaching out to the department (or other communities) how should the FSG surmount the obstacle of “identity politics" (e.g. "I'm not ______, so that stuff doesn't concern me")? How can we emphasize to people the importance of coalitions and allies? Should we? Is it better to just let a person come to an awareness of an issue on her or his own?
Comments and reactions to the above topic are not only welcome but also wanted.
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