Archive for the 'Teaching' Category

Asking out Dr. “desperately hot”: a note on students pursuing former professors

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 12, 2008
in Older Men & Younger Women, Student crushes and Teaching
. 10 Comments

One of my former students has now transferred on to a large university elsewhere in the state. A 22 year-old junior, she took a class this past quarter with what she describes as a “desperately hot” 30 year-old assistant professor. He’s in his first year teaching the best of all possible subjects (history), and according to my former student, he’s said to be “single and straight and very available.”

My former student has read my various postings on student crushes and on older men, younger women relationships. She shot me a message on Facebook this week, asking me whether I thought it would be appropriate for her to ask out “Dr. Desperately Hot” now that the term is over. She’s quite clear that this isn’t just an intellectual crush — she’s interested on, as she puts it “every level.”

Assuming she’s not likely to be his student again, I wrote her a short note telling her, in essence, “Go for it.” An eight year age-gap is not insignificant, but it’s not an insurmountable one. (I admit I would have responded differently had her Dr. DH been 40 instead of 30.) I’m familiar with the campus on which she studies and he teaches; the university policy in place, like that at Pasadena City College, prohibits professors from dating their current students, but says nothing about dating former students who continue to be enrolled in other instructors’ classes.

I got a follow-up note:

Cool. So, another question: how do I ask him out??? Do I suggest coffee, trying to make it seem like I just might want a friendship? Or do I just flirt with him (more than I have been!!) to see if he takes the inititaive?

I pointed out to her that students frequently invite me to coffee. The nice thing about coffee is that it can have multiple meanings; it can be a wonderfully casual “first date”, or it can be an extension of normal office hours, complete with refreshment. I’m a great believer in having coffee with students, knowing that the chance to chat with a professor one-on-one in an informal environment was one I always treasured when I was an undergraduate. It’s a situation that can be, and indeed should generally be entirely non-sexual, uncharged and unfraught with romantic implications. But it’s relatively easy for even a young adult to inject some gentle flirtation into a coffee date — and my former student can try that with Dr. DH and see how he responds.

I warned her, half teasingly, that she might be very disappointed. Many of us who are masterful and charismatic in the classroom are stunningly not so when we are out of “our element”. While there’s nothing inherently unethical about a 22 year-old dating her 30 year–old former professor, the chances are pretty damn high that she’s got him on some sort of a pedestal. Up until this point, theirs has been a one-sided relationship; he lectures to a large classroom, she sits and gazes at him. She projects more on to him than he has to her, even if he has “noticed” her in a way that goes beyond the purely professional. The chances of disillusionment on her part are near 100%, though I’ve seen more than one relationship survive that process.

Because we’re friends, I felt comfortable challenging my former student to check her motives. Some students pursue professors for the same reason some young women seek out older men; they look for a yardstick by which to measure their own attractiveness. Dating (or, depending on the milieu, merely having sex with) a popular professor who is widely acknowledged to be “desperately hot” might be simply a way to boost the ego, or to boost status in the eyes of peers who share an attraction to this desirable instructor. Even if he is older and presumably wiser, it’s at best unkind and at worst deceptively manipulative to pursue a relationship of any duration merely for the sake of bragging about it (even if that bragging is confined to one or two very close friends.)

I’ve said a time or nine that older men, younger women relationships are problematic — but not always strictly inadvisable — for many reasons. I’ve pointed out too that most student crushes on professors are less about the desirability of the instructor and more about how that professor makes the student feel about himself (or herself), about ideas, about possibilities for life and the world. But all of this doesn’t mean I don’t think a mature young student can’t ask out a relatively young, eminently single, hot assistant professor. Something interesting will happen no matter what the final outcome.

“How do you desexualize that?”: on the erotics of teaching, and learning to affirm and redirect

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 9, 2008
in Favorite Posts 2008, Sexual ethics and transformation, Student crushes and Teaching
. 5 Comments

A reader named Anna kindly sends me a link to this story that ran in the Times (UK) Higher Education Supplement last month: Sex and the university. It deals with an old and familiar subject, that of teacher-student affairs at the post-secondary level.

The British, it seems, are slower than we Americans to embrace ethical codes that forbid consensual amorous relationships between professors and their current students. While most American two and four-year colleges started adopting such policies in the early 1990s, universities in the United Kingdom have met more resistance to such restrictions (and, apparently, less interest in the policies in the first place).

In the UK, attitudes towards relationships in academe are changing rather more slowly. In 2005, figures revealed after a Freedom of Information Act request by Times Higher Education showed that 50 out of 102 institutions had no policy requiring staff to declare sexual or other relationships with students that might give rise to a conflict of interest. Of those that did, few appeared to apply them: just 17 universities had any current records on file.

In the same year, 18 per cent of respondents to a poll conducted by the Teacher Support Network said that they had had a sexual relationship with a student. Despite this, only 73 relationships were officially recorded and just five of these were defined as sexual or romantic. Many respondents, 62 per cent, said they did not know whether or not their university had a protocol on such matters.

That nearly one in five faculty members in Britain admits to having had a sexual relationship with a student doesn’t surprise. I don’t know of any comprehensive study of faculty behavior at North American campuses, but would imagine that the numbers would be very similar. Purely anecdotally, based on gossip as much as self-reporting, I’d guess that somewhere around 10-20% of my colleagues have engaged in such a relationship. (And as I’ve admitted many times, I had a series of such relationships, all of which ceased ten years ago this month.)

I’ve written about consensual relationships policies here, here, and here, among other places. Part of my own redemptive work was to chair a committee to write a policy for Pasadena City College on consensual relationships, a policy that was not in place during the years in which I was conducting a series of these affairs.

But the point I want to make today is less about such policies, and more about the erotics of teaching. Of all the quotations in the THE piece, this one from the Cambridge classicist Mary Beard struck home:

In some ways we have to accept that there is an erotic dimension to pedagogy. If you take a traditional Oxbridge-style tutorial system, that’s one thing that students love and it’s some of the most interesting teaching when you really get to know someone. That doesn’t mean it’s about feeling someone up, but it is passionate. The difficulty is that that’s a terribly sexy experience; two people sitting together really talking through how Latin love poetry works. How do you desexualise that?

I haven’t done anything with Latin love poetry since auditing a seminar on Catullus in late 1990, but I get what Beard’s talking about. Obviously, a community college doesn’t have the English tutorial style of instruction. But what we do have at PCC is a faculty dedicated to student mentoring. I am certainly not the only instructor whose office hours are frequented by bright young people eager to meet with me one-on-one. And though I don’t teach Ovid, I do teach several courses that touch on various aspects of human sexuality and gender. I’m passionate about these subjects, and the students of both sexes who can be bothered to come to my office hours to work through the material with me are, generally equally passionate. And we all know that there are few things more charged with sexual potential than a shared interest, perhaps particularly one that is discussed behind closed doors. (And yes, I always keep my office door shut — as it opens out onto a hallway so loud that even if it is merely ajar, I can’t hear myself think.) Continue reading ‘“How do you desexualize that?”: on the erotics of teaching, and learning to affirm and redirect’

The Pill, autonomy, male responsibility, and the virtues of body sovereignty

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 2, 2008
in Birth control and contraception, Memories and Teaching
. 27 Comments

As noted on Friday, historian (and fellow UCLA Ph.D.) Elaine Tyler May is looking for stories about the Pill.

Since she asks for stories from men whose partners have used the Pill, I’ll take the invitation to offer some thoughts.

I lecture on birth control every semester in my women’s history class. I always begin the same way, by talking about semantics, namely to make what ought to be an obvious point: “birth” control is not identical to contraception. The very names make clear the difference: birth control encompasses a wide variety of methods to give women control over their entire (or nearly entire) reproductive process; contraception is, evidently, limited to those methods designed to prevent conception. Contraception, in other words, is a subset of but never a synonym for birth control. One key feminist goal remains ensuring safe and reliable access not merely to contraceptive technology but to birth control.

Invariably, some students get confused, largely because the phrase “birth control” in their minds has come to mean only the Pill. When they hear an expression such as “Mary’s on birth control”, they assume that means oral contraceptives. This equation of birth control with the Pill hasn’t changed noticeably since I first started teaching fifteen years ago. Nearly five decades after it first appeared on the market, the Pill continues to exercise a powerful hold on the language — as well, of course, on the bodies — of women young enough to be the granddaughters of the first generation to use it. Continue reading ‘The Pill, autonomy, male responsibility, and the virtues of body sovereignty’

“Our presence is evidence we’ve all screwed up”: defending the community colleges against Professor X

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 28, 2008
in Academia, Pasadena City College and Teaching
. 24 Comments

Via Lauren, this stunningly depressing article by Professor X about life in the basement of the ivory tower. X adjuncts a night class at a community college — which is what I did for one year (1993-94) before I had the great good fortune to get a tenure-track job at the tender age of 26. X teaches English, and he or she is grim about it:

Those I teach don’t come up in the debates about adolescent overachievers and cutthroat college admissions. Mine are the students whose applications show indifferent grades and have blank spaces where the extracurricular activities would go. They chose their college based not on the U.S. News & World Report rankings but on MapQuest.

Okay, right off the bat, that describes only half of my students at Pasadena City College. Professor X doesn’t get in his night classes the students I’ve been getting in mine for fifteen years — which include not only the academically indifferent but those of exceptional potential whose family circumstances prevent them from attending a four-year college right away. I transfer students to Berkeley, UCLA, Occidental, and USC every year, students who have figured out that taking two years at $20 a unit makes good sense.

The thing about the community college is that I get such an astonishingly wide range of students. In a typical night class of nearly fifty, I will have a few very bright high school kids of perhaps 16 or 17 years of age. I will also have retirees in their 60s and 70s, 30-ish single moms returning to school, and quite a few students between the standard ages of 18-24. Some are very bright, with the skills but not the financial wherewithal to do well at competitive universities; others struggle with learning disabilities or barely average intellectual ability. That breadth of ability is a challenge, but it is also a joy — and anyone who doesn’t find it such should be elsewhere. Continue reading ‘“Our presence is evidence we’ve all screwed up”: defending the community colleges against Professor X’

“Fly, you fools!” A simple answer to the question about where to go to college: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 30, 2008
in Academia, Family and Teaching
. 20 Comments

I’ve been getting emails and calls and visits this week from various students who, having been accepted to at least two colleges to which they have applied for transfer admission, are now trying to decide where to go for school.

Let me make it simple: all things being equal (and Berkeley and UCLA are pretty equal in most programs, as are Cal State LA and Sacramento State), go to college as far away as possible from your friends, family, and everything you have known. I don’t know if anyone has copyrighted it yet, so call it the Gandalf theory of higher education. When in doubt, and if you can possibly afford it financially, move away.

So much of a good college education takes place outside of the classroom. Disconnecting from loved ones, if only for a time, is a vital part of becoming an adult. Not everyone has the luxury of making such a choice, but if my advice is asked, my answer is essentially the same as that uttered by Gandalf the Grey in his last words before the Balrog drags him down.

I do understand that some students must live at home for financial reasons. Though I think debt and independence are preferable to solvency and enmeshment, that’s a personal cultural bias on my part, a bias others may not share. I do think that there is much to be said for spending as much time as possible in another corner of the state or country, exposed to different weather, different media markets, different social values.

And for what it’s worth, as someone with an undergrad degree from Cal and a Ph.D. from UCLA, I can say that I loved Berkeley with every fiber of my being. My attachment to Westwood never rose above the tepid. But as they say, your mileage may vary.

UPDATE: I’m bumping this up from the comments section. Daisy at Our Descent offers the exact opposite advice in a lovely post. I’d like to note that my wife shares a view closer to Daisy’s; she graduated from high school in Glendale and headed off to USC, living at home the entire time. She wouldn’t have changed that for the world.

In the end, I acknowledge that giving advice about going to college is like giving advice about whether to have sex at a young age: the right answer is contingent upon a unique set of circumstances surrounding the needs of the particular person inquiring.

I’d point out, though — and this is clearly for a future post, maybe soon — that the desire for autonomy is not evidence of a lack of devotion to family. As I’ve argued before, WASPy families in which men never do more than shake hands to show affection to each other, and where children leave home at 18, never to return, are no less intensely loving for their commitment to formality and personal autonomy.

More on that to come.

Not just a professor, but a mentor: on hiring a new African-Americanist

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 24, 2008
in Academia, Mentoring, Pasadena City College, Race and Teaching
. 3 Comments

As most readers will know, the feminist blogosphere continues to go through an unusually painful period of discussion and debate about race, sex, and intersectionality. And while it really isn’t all about me, I find it, if not ironic, oddly serendipitous that this semester finds me on a hiring committee to select a new African-American specialist for a tenure-track position. The first round of interviews unfold this afternoon and tomorrow.

Confidentiality protocol bars me from disclosing too much about the hiring process, but I can share what has already been made public. After more than two decades, my colleague Pete Mhunzi, who taught both African and African-American history, is retiring. In this depressed budget climate, we had to fight tooth and nail to get a replacement position approved; some in the administration wanted to fill the Africanist position with a series of adjuncts.

At the beginning of the year, we sent out the standard notice for a new tenure-track hire. Because we are a community college, we need someone capable of handling several different intro courses: African-American history; the History of Ancient, Early Modern, and Modern Africa; modern U.S. Survey. We received a number of excellent applications, and starting at noon today, we’ll meet the most promising candidates, the one who survived the “paper screen” process.

When we were first writing the hiring proposal last year, there was some debate amongst the members of the committee about non-academic qualifications. We have only one professor who teaches African and African-American studies; the retiring holder of that position served not only as a classroom professor but also as a mentor to black students on campus, advising the BSA and so forth. Though just three decades ago, the campus was nearly 25% black, today the percentage of African-American students has plummeted to the mid-single digits. Some of that is due to the changing demographic of the San Gabriel Valley and of Southern California in general, some of that is due, frankly, to a decline in the number of African-American high school graduates who are attending any kind of college.

As far as I — and the other members of our committee — were concerned, it’s vital that the new faculty member we choose be committed not only to mentoring all students, but have a particular interest in working with young African-American men and women. Of course, this doesn’t mean we asked for or are demanding that the person we hire be themselves black. (Even with tenure, if I, as a member of a sitting hiring committee, announced on a public blog that race was a qualifying factor, I’d be in a massive heap of trouble. Heck, I might not be allowed to serve on a committtee again. Wait a minute… naw, bad idea.) Continue reading ‘Not just a professor, but a mentor: on hiring a new African-Americanist’

Avoiding the zero-sum game: on feminist publishing, citing, and using Jessica Valenti and Andrea Smith together

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 13, 2008
in Books, Feminist Pedagogy, Race, Teaching and WAM 2008
. 55 Comments

I’m taking a break from packing for our spring break trip to offer a Sunday afternoon post. We’re off tomorrow to the place where ‘Canes roam, where Democratic delegates wait in limbo this spring, and where dear old Gianni Versace breathed his last. It’s a region I love visiting every year, but gosh, I’m always as happy to leave as I am to arrive. It doesn’t help that I love the sun and the sun doesn’t love me. (My friend Joe and I used to run shirtless together; Joe, an ER physician, always called me a “melanoma farm.”) And I’m eager for the warm waters of the Atlantic.

Later today or tonight, I’m going to close comments I have closed comments on this post regarding the Amanda Marcotte, feminists-of-color, plagiarism/appropriation/attribution fight that happened across our corner of the blogosphere this week. I don’t regret having taken the tack I did in the original post, but I do appreciate the many and disparate voices that weighed in here. The general rule that threads rarely stay productive after the 200th comment may not have applied, but better not to push it. Two other threads with good discussions of this issue were at Feministe and Amptoons. I remain convinced of two things: first, that Amanda did nothing to deserve the opprobrium directed her way; two, that the mainstream, predominantly white feminist blogosphere (of which I am most decidedly a part) has more to do in terms of both listening and crediting what we hear.

When we were gathered in Cambridge two weeks ago for the Women, Action, and Media conference, I chose not to go to the panel on women–of-color bloggers. I missed out on the chance to meet the likes of Blackamazon, Brownfemipower, and Sudy. And I’ll be honest: I weighed whether to go up until the last minute. I talked to a few people at WAM whom I trust, and who were familiar with the often bitter and bewildering exchanges I had with many of those same bloggers in last year’s long and exhausting Full Frontal Feminism fiasco. (Do a search in my archives or in the archives of half the feminist blogosphere — first in May, and then around Thanksgiving, things got heated.) These friends told me that while there was some potential for good, it might be best if I didn’t go to the Women of Color panel. That was my gut intuition as well. Perhaps I flatter myself unduly, but I wondered if, in the aftermath of all that had happened, my presence would be a noticeable irritant. It would be hard — given that I was just about the only man over forty at the entire conference, and the only one in a bright pink shirt — for me to be unobtrusive. So I didn’t go. Continue reading ‘Avoiding the zero-sum game: on feminist publishing, citing, and using Jessica Valenti and Andrea Smith together’

“I have so much love to give”: young women and self-flattery

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 9, 2008
in Relationships, Teaching and Youth
. 18 Comments

In my women’s history class yesterday, we were making our way through Lynn Phillips’ Flirting With Danger, a text about which I have written before and which I have used in class for the last several years.

Phillips talks a great deal about discourses that impact the lives of contemporary young American women. Among these is what she calls the “Love Conquers All” discourse:

The love conquers all discourse does not limit itself to the notion that long-term heterosexual relationships are necessary for women’s fulfillment in love. Indeed, it suggests that finding the right man will somehow solve all of life’s problems.

Fed by Disney movies and pop songs, magazines and movies, most girls run into the notion that love conquers all early on. Some fiercely resist it, of course. The discourse suggests, however, that those who most fiercely resist making romantic love a priority are fooling themselves; from Jane Austen’s time to our own, we have countless fictional heroines who are initially dismissive of love, but in the end, succumb to its all-consuming power.

My students know all this, of course. It’s not news to any group of college students that they live in a culture that tries to impose a vision of happy heterosexual fulfillment on each and every one of them. But I’ve found another aspect of the “love conquers all” discourse that Phillips largely ignores: a great many young women (usually younger than typical college-age) go through adolescence with a vast over-estimate of just how much love they have to give to the “right person”.

When I first started working with youth group kids, particularly ninth and tenth-graders, I was struck by how often I would hear the same thing from so many of the girls with whom I worked. In group discussions or in writing, many would say something more or less like this:

I have so much love to give. I’ve never been in love, not really, but I just feel like I have this huge amount of passion inside of me. If I could just find someone whom I could really trust, then I could give him (usually, it’s a him) everything I have inside of me. I know it sounds corny, but I really believe love can heal all our problems. I feel like I have enough love inside of me to change the world, if I could just find a way to let it out. Continue reading ‘“I have so much love to give”: young women and self-flattery’

“I’m not a creep”: on male-female mentoring and the wisdom of openly disavowing sexual interest: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 2, 2008
in Emotional and Sexual Boundaries, Favorite Posts 2008, Mentoring, Teaching, WAM 2008 and Youth
. 28 Comments

Another issue that came up in Saturday’s WAM session on “breaking the hold of the Old Boys Club” was that of mentoring. Ann Friedman brought up the often-problematic, often-rewarding experience of being mentored by older men. In her field, journalism, the majority of senior writers and editors are male; it simply wouldn’t be possible for her to seek out only women as mentors, as there aren’t enough of them around yet. Though the topic came up only briefly, several of the women on the panel talked about being hit on by “creepy” older men, but also about having had very kind, safe, nurturing older fellows play a welcome and vital role in their professional growth.

One of the things Ann said, before we moved on to other subjects, was something like “It’s difficult for a man, as a mentor, to send the right signal about his willingness to mentor a younger woman. Should he come right out and say ‘I’m not hitting on you, but I am interested in working with you’, or should he leave it alone? That’s a hard one.” Everyone else agreed, and since the topic of the workshop was not “how can older men safely mentor younger women”, we moved on to other things. After all, I was the only man over 25 in the whole auditorium.

I divide my mentoring work into multiple categories. In various church settings, I’ve worked with teens and young adults as a volunteer youth pastor. Here at the college, I’ve mentored students and, increasingly, junior colleagues. The mentoring with students is both academic and personal. Because I teach gender studies, and offer courses on emotionally charged, sensitive subjects like sexuality, GLBTQ history, and “the body”, I have an obligation to be present for students as they work through the various issues that these classes can bring up inside of them. Any given semester, I would guess that I’m actively mentoring around a dozen current students, as well as current and former youth group kids. Some come to my office hours, I meet others — when I can — for coffee and lunch.

Off the top of my head, I’d say two-thirds of the people I mentor are women. Pasadena City College is already 56% female, and my gender studies courses — from whose ranks most of my mentees come — are 70-90% female. Add in the cultural forces that make it more likely for women to ask for help when they need it, and it makes good sense that the majority of my mentees would be female. Most of my mentees are, these days, young enough to be my children. The students I am working closest with this year were born between 1986-89, the years in which I was a college student. Continue reading ‘“I’m not a creep”: on male-female mentoring and the wisdom of openly disavowing sexual interest: UPDATED’

No break from the “heavy beast”: on teaching, the body, and the danger of triggering

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 19, 2008
in Body, Feminism, Feminist Pedagogy and Teaching
. 3 Comments

In my Humanities class on “Beauty and the Body”, we’ve been comparing some of the various theories about the etiology of modern eating disorders. It’s a lot of ground to cover: medical models, cultural models, psychological models. (Today, we begin talking about Courtney Martin’s wonderful new book: Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters.) It’s a tough class to teach for many reasons, not the least of which is that so much of the material is automatically triggering for some who are already struggling with “body issues.”

Over the last two lectures, I’ve been talking about everything from Western mind/body dualism to the Mosaic law to Sigmund Freud. The basic case is simple: much of our culture, for a variety of historical reasons, teaches us the Gnostic notion that the soul, our truest self, is imprisoned in a corrupt and foul body. The “heavy beast” that is always with us is our flesh, but these voices tell us that the “real self” is somewhere deep inside, an ethereal spirit locked in a corporeal cage. The notion that the body, with all its effluvia and its frailties, is disgusting and offensive is deeply rooted in several strands of the Western tradition. And these strands all contribute to a contemporary culture in which self-denial becomes virtue. After all, to pick the anorectic example, a woman who starves herself to the point that her periods stop and her bowel movements become very infrequent has, in a very real sense, given herself an illusion of mastery and purity. If the body’s demands and emissions are dirty, then self-starvation becomes not only about self-denial but about ritualized cleansing and transcendence. Continue reading ‘No break from the “heavy beast”: on teaching, the body, and the danger of triggering’

“We love your look, but lose fifteen pounds”: of modeling contracts, feminist principles, and the elitist politics of personal purity: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 13, 2008
in Body, Clothing and Fashion, Favorite Posts 2008, Feminism, Money and Teaching
. 43 Comments

One of my students came to me yesterday with a question. “Carine” is twenty, and has already taken four of my classes here. She’s getting ready to transfer on to a four-year school, and she’s doing so — to my considerable delight — as a women’s studies major.

Carine is an independent student, and has lived on her own for several years. She’s entirely self-supporting, and her parents have contributed nothing towards her college education. (This is a very common story here.) She is taking a full load of classes, and working a great many shifts as a server in a West Los Angeles restaurant. Though the tips are good, she’s barely scraping by. Her twelve year-old Camry is on the verge of complete collapse. Something’s gotta give.

Since she was in high school, Carine has done a little bit of modeling here and there; it’s provided a little extra pocket money from time to time, nothing too significant. But now, with transfer looming and the economy hitting the restaurant business, she’s decided to investigate making her modeling more serious. She has the right look, and earlier this week, she met with one of the better-known agencies in town. They loved her face and her portfolio, and were quite willing to sign Carine to a “conditional” contract. The “conditions”: lose three inches off her hips and drop fifteen pounds off her already lanky frame. The agency would check in her with regularly to assess her “progress”; if she did as she was asked, she could be assured of steady work. There’s no question that taking this contract would make a huge difference to Carine. It will enable her to transfer, to stay on course for her degree (in women’s studies, heaven be praised), to remain independent.

Carine is a self-described “staunch feminist”. She took my women’s studies class and was hooked; she regularly e-mails me for “more books, please!” I send her reading suggestions at a staggering rate, and she ploughs through them just as fast. And Carine, like so many young feminists I’ve known, was worried about whether taking this contract would compromise those infamous “feminist credentials.” She said something like: “I know the fashion industry sends a lot of destructive messages to women. If I lose this weight, do I become part of that destructive message? Am I hurting other women as well as myself?” Continue reading ‘“We love your look, but lose fifteen pounds”: of modeling contracts, feminist principles, and the elitist politics of personal purity: UPDATED’

Facebook and teaching

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 10, 2008
in Pasadena City College and Teaching
. 3 Comments

My former student Hilary is now at UCLA, and she alerts me to this article in today’s Daily Bruin: Instructors use tech to reach students. It’s about professors who give out their cell phone numbers or use Facebook to stay in touch with students.

My students generally don’t have my cell phone number, though most of the kids from my old youth group program still do. I have something like 470 contacts on Facebook, of which perhaps 125-150 are current or former students. I don’t list Facebook on my syllabus as one of the primary ways to contact me; I urge students to use email and office hours. At the same time, I’m happy to let those students who do prefer Facebook to contact me that way. I don’t like to answer lengthy questions using that format, but am happy to respond to shorter ones on the site. Continue reading ‘Facebook and teaching’

Andrea Smith denied tenure

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 4, 2008
in Ethnicity, Feminism, Feminist Pedagogy, Race and Teaching
. 37 Comments

Brownfemipower has taken the lead on reporting the story of Andrea Smith’s denial of tenure at the University of Michigan. Read here and here, and see the report in the Chronicle of Higher Ed here.

It’s a strange case. Smith had been given a joint appointment in American Studies and Women’s Studies at the Ann Arbor campus; ’twas the latter department that nixed her promotion while the former supported her tenure cause. She’s also the director of the campus Native American Studies Center. Few of us are privy to the details of her file, and the Women’s Studies department at Michigan has not commented on why it has denied Smith tenure. But to those of us familiar with Smith’s published work, the decision is inexplicable. Her book Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide is a master-work of both advocacy and feminist scholarship, and is used in women’s studies courses across the country. (It’s on the short list of books I’m considering rotating in to my women’s history syllabus).

At research universities, the proven ability to publish is a critical part of getting tenure. So many assistant professors struggle to get anything notable into print; Smith has already done so by producing a text that is not just interesting but fundamentally ground-breaking. She’s got another book coming up: Native Americans and the Christian Right, which is available for pre-order.

Of course, being able to publish is not the only prerequisite for tenure. Teaching counts for something, even at mammoth state institutions. But the statement released by faculty and students at Michigan (available here, in PDF format) makes it clear that Andrea Smith has immense talents as a teacher and mentor. Her students and colleagues are asking that letters in support of her tenure case (which has been appealed) be sent to

* Teresa Sullivan, Provost and Executive VP for Academic Affairs, LSA, tsull@umich.edu
* Lester Monts, Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, LSA, lmonts@umich.edu
* Mary Sue Coleman, President, PresOff@umich.edu
* TenureForAndreaSmith@gmail.com

Anyone who reads the feminist blogosphere is aware that the most painful struggle of the past year, played out in so many places, is over the issue of the intersection of racism and sex. A number of prominent women of color have written, time and again, of feeling marginalized or ignored by white feminists. Whatever your feelings on the issue of race, gender, and intersectionality, it’s disastrous PR to have the Smith denial come at the hands of the Michigan Women’s Studies department. To a community of activist women of color, many of whom are already suspicious of the bona fides of white feminists, the Smith decision can only serve to increase a sense of cynicism about the prospects for real inclusion.

I’ve never met Andrea Smith or heard her lecture. I wouldn’t recognize her on the street. But I’ve read her work and been galvanized by it. I’ve chatted with people who have worked with her and heard her speak at conferences. Anecodotally, everyone I’ve heard from says she’s not merely a competent and inspiring teacher, she’s an extraordinary one. Her more than one-dozen published, peer-reviewed essays, her edited anthologies, and above all, her first masterwork “Conquest“, are building blocks of a tenure file that would put those of virtually any other junior scholar to shame. The Women’s Studies department at Michigan surely has its reasons, but until it makes those reasons clear, the shock and anger and alienation generated by their denial of tenure to Andrea Smith will continue to spread. And that’s bad news for all feminists.

And here’s hoping that if Michigan doesn’t come to its senses, someone else (are you listening, USC?) makes a nice offer. Soon.

Some will love you, some will loathe you, and the mass will be indifferent: some thoughts on teaching and student reactions

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 27, 2008
in Teaching
. 1 Comment

This week I’ve had a couple of conversations about teaching which have dovetailed nicely together. A junior colleague asked me what I’d learned since I first started here fourteen years ago; later that same day, a student whom I mentor asked a not dissimilar question.

I teach very differently than I did when I first arrived at Pasadena City College in 1993. I have considerably more confidence, and — possibly — a deeper knowledge of the material. When I first started teaching Western Civ, I often had only the barest, thumbnail grasp of what it was I was covering in my lectures. Like so many other novice professors, I was frequently just one step ahead of my students. Experience and background reading have gradually filled in most of the lacunae, but every once in a while I still find myself lecturing on a topic about which I don’t know nearly as much as I would like. (For example, the Napoleonic Wars.)

But on a psychological level, the real change is measured by the diminishing degree to which I pander to my students in order to be liked and admired. I don’t know if those of us who are predisposed to narcissism are naturally drawn to the teaching profession, but in my case, my need for validation and my career aspirations meshed together nicely from the beginning. Hugo Schwyzer at 26 (the age at which I began my career here at the college) was an insecure bundle of nerves and desires. I was already a fairly polished speaker, but that polish was the result of the assiduous cultivation of qualities that I knew could get me the attention I craved so much. Continue reading ‘Some will love you, some will loathe you, and the mass will be indifferent: some thoughts on teaching and student reactions’

“The rights of desire”: a professor-student romance makes the local news

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 25, 2008
in Marriage, Older Men & Younger Women, Sexual ethics and transformation, Student crushes and Teaching
. 13 Comments

This story popped up on my radar screen today: Professor, ex-student tie the knot.

Muata Kamdibe and Crystal Domingues aren’t looking for anyone’s stamp of approval - not from their resistant families, curious colleagues, or a gossip-prone public.

For two months, the couple managed to keep their romance a secret from everyone, knowing the kinds of whispers and judgments their 18-year age difference would spawn - as well as the fact that Kamdibe, 36, a Rio Hondo College professor, first met Domingues, 18, when she was a student in his class last fall.

But it all publicly tumbled out two weeks ago, when Domingues was reported missing by her family, then tracked down by a private detective Feb. 7 to Kamdibe’s home in Irvine.

Well, that’s one way to start off with the in-laws. Continue reading ‘“The rights of desire”: a professor-student romance makes the local news’