English Majors Practising Criticism
Along with the Buzzfeed article that Kristen Owens posted, here’s an interesting article about a stereotype I’m sure we have all heard as English majors that you might enjoy!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/akane-otani/i-will-not-be-making-coff_b_5128196.html
I am torn on my ideas on the portrayal of white women in Meridian, mainly because I feel that many of the accusations are earned. Obviously, my interactions with white women have occurred on strictly a 21st century basis, so I am biased.
Meridian’s grandmother “held strong opinions which she expressed in this way: 1. She had never known a white woman she liked after the age of twelve. 2. White women were useless except as baby machines which would continue to produce little white people who would grow up to oppress her. 3. Without servants all of them would live in pigsties” (110). Upon reading this section I had agreed with this depiction of white women, remembering a similar sentiment in Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave.
As the semester as gone on, I have realized the legitimacy of criticism for being an english major. As I read Cane, Interdisciplinary, and They Say, I Say, I realize that we as english majors do something that others cannot. We enjoy the lost art of reading. We take pride in our studies, and throughly enjoy doing so. Although the material we are given by professors can be a touch dry sometimes, we are able to peel it back and find things others cannot. In particular, some of the things you guys said in class about Meridian were things I never would’ve thought of. For this, I applaud all of us; for being english majors and studying what we want to study, not what we think we should study.
The other element to being english majors is taking the next step. Whether you want to teach, write, report, anything; english majors need to take the extra step in doing so. For example, I want to be a journalist. Being a double major in English and Communication, I will develop the skills to build my argument, and at how to properly argue it. Whatever you choose to pursue with English, do it with pride.
Moran’s investigations into feminist theory offer an interesting probe into queer theory. He notes society’s need to categorize and diagnose sexuality: “from the late nineteenth century onward, the homosexual became a named category or species, whereas previously same-sex love had just been an activity undertaken by a wide variety of people” (97). Sexuality not only needs to be defined and categorized, but also it becomes tied to personality, becomes “entangled in much wider issues… of masculinity, capitalism, and national identity” (99).
At the Trans? Fine By Me talk I went to recently, one of the speakers mentioned a man who was gay who was assaulted. However, she noted, this man was not assaulted for his sexuality. He was not with his partner, and therefore the assailant would have no way of knowing his sexuality. Rather, he was assaulted because the assailant believed he failed at his gender. He was believed to not be actively expressing his masculinity enough, and because of this, the assailant believed he was homosexual. Thus, his masculinity tied directly to his sexuality, as Moran suggests is a common fault.
Chatting with some friends today at Letch over some amazing cold stone ice-cream wasn’t so amazing.
There was three of us, me being an education major with an English minor. The other being a business major minoring in education. And lastly but not least (..but I placed her last because she was the most rude) has a bio major and I can’t quite remember what she had said she was minoring in. But anyway. We chatted and chatted, and then we started to talk about school. How the midterms went, how our grades were, and what it was we were doing in our individual classes.
The bio major had A LOT to say regarding her major, and unfortunately mine. She non stop talked about how hard and challenging it was now, but would always end the sentence with “but at least I’ll have a job out of here, and i’ll be making bank”. “Bank”. I mean really? This is when I silently laughed to myself. Who would say they were making bank? Not an english minor! Although I do make plenty and plenty of other mistakes, I don’t think that would be one of them.
As I discussed this english class, and talked about how we recently gave comments on each others papers, she also had a lot to say. First, she said it was unnecessary, and also embarrassing. And two, she made it very clear that us students shouldn’t be correcting the paper, the teacher should be. Basically saying we don’t know what we are talking about but the teacher does, but in a much nicer way. And I thought to myself, “NOOOOOO!”. Sharing my essay with my fellow classmates was, yes, a scary thought at first. But knowing that I did it anyway, and gained so much from it was such a proud moment for me to talk about with her. I explained to her that with my group that I had worked with, not only helped me see what I did wrong, but the teacher gained a lot from it too(at least I thought). It was such a good experience for all of us, that I would recommend it to any major out there, regardless if it’s a paper or not. It could be reaching for help in any subject! I talked and explained, and she basically shut up.
Now I do not mean to bad mouth her, and I actually let her proof read this because I wouldn’t want her to think that I was. And she laughed and agreed it was ok to post. Although I love this girl to death, I am going to sit back and enjoy my ice-cream next time while she does all the talking.
Thinking of things to blog about, I was sidetracked thinking about how literature is never really complete. All of literature is just drafts, being revised over and over again and the work will never fully be complete because English is not a subject which always has concrete answers. Reading chapter 4 in Interdisciplinarity, I stumbled on a quote by Rene Wellek and Austin Warren that stated exactly what I was thinking, “…literature must be conceived as a whole system of works which is, with the accretion of new ones, constantly changing its relationships, growing as a changing whole” (page 105). Continue reading “Never-Ending Literature”
Lately, I’ve been thinking long and hard about my concentration in English. This class was pretty challenging in the beginning regarding the three books all at once. I was a bit worried that I wasn’t cut out for all this reading. I thought to myself many times in the past week if this was the right minor for me..
I got a little too excited doing homework a few days ago.
In my creative non-fiction workshop, we are currently spending time reading and critiquing each others’ pieces, similar to the process we used in our Reader & Text workshop groups recently. When writing my comments for one particular piece, I was able to make a connection between the central conflict in the piece and a theme shown in Jean Toomer’s Cane (this is where I got excited). I could then made a suggestion to the writer to consider including a reference to this aspect of Cane in order to strengthen the piece in revision. Continue reading “Intertextuality Between Classes”
It happened again. I was talking to one of my distant family members when they asked me what I was going to Suny Geneseo for, and when I replied that I was majoring in English, I received the same response that we all get: “Why? Do you not want a job in the future?” In my head I muttered the usual recurring thoughts that travel through my mind when I get this response. I nervously laughed and said “Yeah that’s why”. Continue reading “Speaking Up”
Earlier this week, I had a professor guest lecture in my play analysis class about theater design. While I should have been paying attention to what he was saying about design concepts, I feverishly scribbled ideas regarding Interdisciplinarity. The professor informed us that a set designer must be well educated in the areas of art history, architecture, and color theory — he deemed it a “hybrid art form.” Continue reading “Recognizing Interdisciplinarity”