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rusty_haloI PASSED MY COLLOQUIUM. :)
I think this is the most immense sense of relief I've ever felt in my life.
Afterwards my professors told me "This was one of the best colloquiums we've seen. We no longer give graduation distinctions for exceptional colloquiums, but if we did, you would definitely get a distinction." They said that I should speak about academic issues professionally because I integrate everything really well in a "non-pretentious" way. And then my advisor held me back after the others left to encourage me to go to graduate school. (!!!)
I can't believe it went so well. I was SO nervous that I didn't sleep at all last night, so I was (and am) running on pure caffeine. I hadn't even come close to reading everything I wanted to read/re-read in prepraration. I was so scared that I was going to fail.
So anyway, I started out talking about my academic background, why I was interested in gender studies/cultural studies, etc. Then my advisor brought up my website, and we spent like 15 minutes talking about fanfiction! So there's 15 minutes right away on something that I know extremely well.
Then we started going through the books, going in reverse chronological order (thank god, because the older books were only there by requirement and I had nothing to say about them). So I talked about gender/sex/sexuality in Kulick and Willson's "Taboo" (which is a collection of pieces on the role that gender plays in anthropological fieldwork). This segued into a discussion of BtVS, spurred by my advisor, because we were talking about stereotypical "masculine" and "feminine" ways of viewing the world. ("Taboo" argues that both need to be utilized in anthropological fieldwork, which traditionally relies on the stereotypically masculine viewpoint and ignores that which is associated with the feminine--senses, emotions, holistic approaches, and so on). So I talked about how this worked in Buffy (specifically in relation to the rigid, intellectual, stereotypically "masculine" method used by the Initiative and how it was contrasted with Buffy's more "feminine" way of approaching things in S4). Then this went into a discussion of how sexual roles were inverted in (particularly later seasons of) BtVS (the male gaze becomes the female gaze; women assume traditionally masculine, powerful roles, while the acceptable men are those who give up power and assume supportive, passive, traditionally "feminine" roles; powerful men are literally and/or symbolically castrated, etc). We discussed the power dynamic in which the oppressed assume power and simply reinstitute the system of oppression in reverse, and whether this is empowering ("shaking up" the corrupt system) or just as wrong. So we talked about this for a while and I managed to be critical without getting highly emotional (if you read my LJ, you probably know that I have *cough* issues with the representation of gender in BtVS). One thing which was hilarious though was that my advisor said she tuned into the show once, and what she saw was Buffy basically going up to this guy and hitting him without provocation--what was that about? So I talked about Buffy's use of Spike as punching bag and sexual toy, the way this inverts the traditional power dynamic, and how IMO it's just as corrupt (particularly because many women identified with Spike, who was in the traditionally feminine role).
So then we talked about fairy tales (damn, I could've spent the whole thing talking about BtVS--I didn't even get to bring up slash fiction/communities or homoerotic subtext at all!). We talked about the evolution of fairy tales from oral tradition meant for adults to stories written down by the upper classes to instruct children, and how they change in the process (become increasingly didactic and rigid, etc). This was pretty much direct from the book (Maria Tatar, The Classic Fairy Tales, which collects various versions of fairly tales and criticisms of them). I was really lucky that we talked about "Little Red Riding Hood," because that was the only section I actually had time to read. (I'd read the whole thing, but years ago). Then that led to a discussion of Disney's homogenization of a variety of different texts and method of proscribing of particular gender roles onto them (good women are either young, sweet, and innocent, or else they're old, asexual caretakers; bad women are middle-aged, powerful, threats to patriarchy). And we talked about resistant readings, which characters viewers identify with, whether these models of femininity can be seen in positive ways, and so on. But how they set up a basic system (heterosexual romance is the key to happiness, women exist in relation to men) that makes people believe that such an understanding of gender roles is "natural."
So then we talked about cultural construction vs. essentialism. Margaret Mead (Coming of Age in Samoa) and Simone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex) both write about how culture constructs identities. Margaret Mead writes about how something that in Western cultural is understood as "natural," a period of struggle and conflict in adolesence, doesn't occur (or occurs very differently) in Samoan culture. Therefore something we accept as "natural" is, in fact, culturally contructed--an aspect of one culture but not another. And Simone de Beauvoir writes a lot about how one is not born a woman, one "becomes" a woman.
Then we talked about cultural constructionisn vs. specifically biological essentialism. Anne Fausto-Sterling debunks a huge amount of "scientific" studies of "inherent" "biological" gender differences in "Myths of Gender." She shows how flawed most of these studies are, how they get seized by the media because they reinforce the status quo but don't actually have strong science to back them up (and how when the science contradicts them and suggests that there aren't significant differences, it gets ignored). How scientists contruct experiments in particular ways, so that they end up seeing what they want to see. The idea that culture creates biology rather than biology creating culture (like, if you get angry, you produce adrenaline. But the adrenaline didn't make you angry, something in your environment did. The environment came first. In the same way, if little boys play ball while little girls play with dolls, the little boys will probably develop better spatial skills. But it doesn't mean that boys inherently have better special skills--it's a biological fact that is created by the environment.) We talked about the social consequences of this--if gender differences (or racial differences, or any kind of social injustice) are perceived as "essential," "natural," then it gives the status quo an excuse not to change--"this is just the way things are, nothing we can do about it." Problems are blamed on individuals, so no cultural change happens. Whereas if we understand these issues as part of culture, we can change them by changing the culture (and we have a responsibility to change the culture). So, rather than say "girls are inherently bad at math, nothing we can do, may as well keep them out of math class," we should say "many girls are taught to be bad at math, so we have to make sure our culture teaches it to them." That kind of thing. (Also brought in Alice Domurat-Dreger's "Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex," which deals with how we choose to divide sex into two, male and female, but this is a cultural construction, not an essential truth--sex is in reality a continuum with no definitive midpoint.)
We talked a bit more about how gender is constructed (Susan Douglas' "Where the Girls Are" about how popular culture teaches particular gender roles, and how we can reinterpret that pop culture in an empowering way). Then we got into this long discussion of "Jane Eyre," which sucked because it's been forever since I read Jane Eyre. I tied it to "Taboo," relating it to this idea of integrating mind and body, "masculine" and "feminine," incorporating both in order to be a whole person. Two of the three professors were Jane Eyre "experts," so I can't believe I got away with the bullshit I babbled here. So we talked about that, and about the role of cross-dressing in Jane Eyre, which I didn't even remember, so instead I tied it to cross-dressing in "The Merchant of Venice"--Portia obtains the power of male position by assuming the male gender role. Her sex doesn't change, but her gender does, which gives her social power--it's being recognized by others as a member of a particular gender that allows her to achieve power and success at what she wants to do. Catalina de Erauso's autobiography, written in the 1600's, titled in translation "Lieutenant Nun," also shows the power of gender roles (and their constructedness). Catalina didn't want to get married or be a nun, so instead she disguised herself as a man and became a soldier. (She goes around killing people, being tough, all this stuff.)
Okay, so I think that's when we hit the time limit (it went about an hour and half, plus my advisor was about 15 minutes late). I managed to avoid entirely a lot of the older stuff (Ovid's "Metamorphoses," "The Tain," "The Wife of Bath"), only barely mentioned Plato's "Symposium," Euripides' "Medea," LeGuin's "The Left Hand of Darkness," and Kulick's "Travesti" (which actually would've been fun to talk about). I was afraid that it sucked, I forgot relevant details of Jane Eyre, I couldn't remember specific details of "Where the Girls Are," etc. But like I said above, they liked it! They said it was one of the best colloquiums they'd seen! I still can't get over how cool this is. :)
I think this is the most immense sense of relief I've ever felt in my life.
Afterwards my professors told me "This was one of the best colloquiums we've seen. We no longer give graduation distinctions for exceptional colloquiums, but if we did, you would definitely get a distinction." They said that I should speak about academic issues professionally because I integrate everything really well in a "non-pretentious" way. And then my advisor held me back after the others left to encourage me to go to graduate school. (!!!)
I can't believe it went so well. I was SO nervous that I didn't sleep at all last night, so I was (and am) running on pure caffeine. I hadn't even come close to reading everything I wanted to read/re-read in prepraration. I was so scared that I was going to fail.
So anyway, I started out talking about my academic background, why I was interested in gender studies/cultural studies, etc. Then my advisor brought up my website, and we spent like 15 minutes talking about fanfiction! So there's 15 minutes right away on something that I know extremely well.
Then we started going through the books, going in reverse chronological order (thank god, because the older books were only there by requirement and I had nothing to say about them). So I talked about gender/sex/sexuality in Kulick and Willson's "Taboo" (which is a collection of pieces on the role that gender plays in anthropological fieldwork). This segued into a discussion of BtVS, spurred by my advisor, because we were talking about stereotypical "masculine" and "feminine" ways of viewing the world. ("Taboo" argues that both need to be utilized in anthropological fieldwork, which traditionally relies on the stereotypically masculine viewpoint and ignores that which is associated with the feminine--senses, emotions, holistic approaches, and so on). So I talked about how this worked in Buffy (specifically in relation to the rigid, intellectual, stereotypically "masculine" method used by the Initiative and how it was contrasted with Buffy's more "feminine" way of approaching things in S4). Then this went into a discussion of how sexual roles were inverted in (particularly later seasons of) BtVS (the male gaze becomes the female gaze; women assume traditionally masculine, powerful roles, while the acceptable men are those who give up power and assume supportive, passive, traditionally "feminine" roles; powerful men are literally and/or symbolically castrated, etc). We discussed the power dynamic in which the oppressed assume power and simply reinstitute the system of oppression in reverse, and whether this is empowering ("shaking up" the corrupt system) or just as wrong. So we talked about this for a while and I managed to be critical without getting highly emotional (if you read my LJ, you probably know that I have *cough* issues with the representation of gender in BtVS). One thing which was hilarious though was that my advisor said she tuned into the show once, and what she saw was Buffy basically going up to this guy and hitting him without provocation--what was that about? So I talked about Buffy's use of Spike as punching bag and sexual toy, the way this inverts the traditional power dynamic, and how IMO it's just as corrupt (particularly because many women identified with Spike, who was in the traditionally feminine role).
So then we talked about fairy tales (damn, I could've spent the whole thing talking about BtVS--I didn't even get to bring up slash fiction/communities or homoerotic subtext at all!). We talked about the evolution of fairy tales from oral tradition meant for adults to stories written down by the upper classes to instruct children, and how they change in the process (become increasingly didactic and rigid, etc). This was pretty much direct from the book (Maria Tatar, The Classic Fairy Tales, which collects various versions of fairly tales and criticisms of them). I was really lucky that we talked about "Little Red Riding Hood," because that was the only section I actually had time to read. (I'd read the whole thing, but years ago). Then that led to a discussion of Disney's homogenization of a variety of different texts and method of proscribing of particular gender roles onto them (good women are either young, sweet, and innocent, or else they're old, asexual caretakers; bad women are middle-aged, powerful, threats to patriarchy). And we talked about resistant readings, which characters viewers identify with, whether these models of femininity can be seen in positive ways, and so on. But how they set up a basic system (heterosexual romance is the key to happiness, women exist in relation to men) that makes people believe that such an understanding of gender roles is "natural."
So then we talked about cultural construction vs. essentialism. Margaret Mead (Coming of Age in Samoa) and Simone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex) both write about how culture constructs identities. Margaret Mead writes about how something that in Western cultural is understood as "natural," a period of struggle and conflict in adolesence, doesn't occur (or occurs very differently) in Samoan culture. Therefore something we accept as "natural" is, in fact, culturally contructed--an aspect of one culture but not another. And Simone de Beauvoir writes a lot about how one is not born a woman, one "becomes" a woman.
Then we talked about cultural constructionisn vs. specifically biological essentialism. Anne Fausto-Sterling debunks a huge amount of "scientific" studies of "inherent" "biological" gender differences in "Myths of Gender." She shows how flawed most of these studies are, how they get seized by the media because they reinforce the status quo but don't actually have strong science to back them up (and how when the science contradicts them and suggests that there aren't significant differences, it gets ignored). How scientists contruct experiments in particular ways, so that they end up seeing what they want to see. The idea that culture creates biology rather than biology creating culture (like, if you get angry, you produce adrenaline. But the adrenaline didn't make you angry, something in your environment did. The environment came first. In the same way, if little boys play ball while little girls play with dolls, the little boys will probably develop better spatial skills. But it doesn't mean that boys inherently have better special skills--it's a biological fact that is created by the environment.) We talked about the social consequences of this--if gender differences (or racial differences, or any kind of social injustice) are perceived as "essential," "natural," then it gives the status quo an excuse not to change--"this is just the way things are, nothing we can do about it." Problems are blamed on individuals, so no cultural change happens. Whereas if we understand these issues as part of culture, we can change them by changing the culture (and we have a responsibility to change the culture). So, rather than say "girls are inherently bad at math, nothing we can do, may as well keep them out of math class," we should say "many girls are taught to be bad at math, so we have to make sure our culture teaches it to them." That kind of thing. (Also brought in Alice Domurat-Dreger's "Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex," which deals with how we choose to divide sex into two, male and female, but this is a cultural construction, not an essential truth--sex is in reality a continuum with no definitive midpoint.)
We talked a bit more about how gender is constructed (Susan Douglas' "Where the Girls Are" about how popular culture teaches particular gender roles, and how we can reinterpret that pop culture in an empowering way). Then we got into this long discussion of "Jane Eyre," which sucked because it's been forever since I read Jane Eyre. I tied it to "Taboo," relating it to this idea of integrating mind and body, "masculine" and "feminine," incorporating both in order to be a whole person. Two of the three professors were Jane Eyre "experts," so I can't believe I got away with the bullshit I babbled here. So we talked about that, and about the role of cross-dressing in Jane Eyre, which I didn't even remember, so instead I tied it to cross-dressing in "The Merchant of Venice"--Portia obtains the power of male position by assuming the male gender role. Her sex doesn't change, but her gender does, which gives her social power--it's being recognized by others as a member of a particular gender that allows her to achieve power and success at what she wants to do. Catalina de Erauso's autobiography, written in the 1600's, titled in translation "Lieutenant Nun," also shows the power of gender roles (and their constructedness). Catalina didn't want to get married or be a nun, so instead she disguised herself as a man and became a soldier. (She goes around killing people, being tough, all this stuff.)
Okay, so I think that's when we hit the time limit (it went about an hour and half, plus my advisor was about 15 minutes late). I managed to avoid entirely a lot of the older stuff (Ovid's "Metamorphoses," "The Tain," "The Wife of Bath"), only barely mentioned Plato's "Symposium," Euripides' "Medea," LeGuin's "The Left Hand of Darkness," and Kulick's "Travesti" (which actually would've been fun to talk about). I was afraid that it sucked, I forgot relevant details of Jane Eyre, I couldn't remember specific details of "Where the Girls Are," etc. But like I said above, they liked it! They said it was one of the best colloquiums they'd seen! I still can't get over how cool this is. :)
