OCB: One Classy Broad

Got a 98 on the Medusa/Mirror paper

Y’all may or may not remember that a couple of weeks ago I was kind of upset about a paper I wrote and I thought it was absolute crap and was worried it was not going to get me a good grade (admittedly, I have a tight margin on what is an acceptable grade, so I kind of set myself up for stress).

Anyway, she graded our essays and attached a word document with comments. 

The opening comment:

A stellar paper, a standout even among your always excellent work.  I think you have a gift for textual interpretation.  I couldn’t ask for anything more.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And she added comments throughout the paper. There’s one that just says “wow”

SUCH A NICE THING TO READ TODAY!!!!!!!!!! Especially while being stressed about these 3 papers I have to do (2 of them are for her. Well, 3 are for her but I finished the Lit Review the other day. Three classes with the same professor, really  lucky she doesn’t dislike me!). Honestly, I don’t think these papers will be very good (I feel like people will no longer care when I say that because I always freak out about papers and then come and say I got a good grade. But, really, these final papers are not the business), but for 2 of the classes I calculated my grade and gave myself an 80 for the final paper and for both classes I would wind up with an A. She makes these final papers weigh a decent amount (30%) so the lowest I can get is an 80, even though my other grades are all in the A range. 

And, I can’t help but be kind of down on myself for the little corrections she made. Must keep these things in mind for my next papers. She’s really helped make me much more aware of small mistakes I make. If I can really get that together I will be able to get a little bit of confidence together about my writing. Even though, if consistent high marks isn’t enough to make me feel okay about my writing I don’t know what will. 

Anyway…it’s just particularly nice to have those comments and to have gotten such a good grade from her on this paper that I was so worried about.

So doing my Fem Inquiry virtual class now

Much more difficult than the Fem Theory virtual class from this morning. That may be because there are about 9 people in my Fem Theory class and a little less than 20 in my Fem Inquiry. Of course, the discussion board for Fem Inquiry has more topics, but there a couple of boards where no one has posted and many that A LOT of people are posting on. It’s harder to follow with so many people. Doable, but not as much fun as the first class. I still think this is a better option than just not having class at all in the case of the professor not being able to get to campus. But, that’s because I’m a nerd who loves class and discussions. 

Oh, also, the reading was the classic Thomson’s A Defense of Abortion . Which I love love love and read 2 years ago for an ethics course. It’s a fun piece to discuss. 

The professor I have 3 classes with on Tuesdays is out taking care of her son

So we’re having a virtual class instead. On this thing called Blackboard (I think most schools have it or a variation of it) there are discussion boards. For my Lights, Camera, Gender class we aren’t doing virtual class (seeing as how we were going to screen the film in class it’s pretty impossible to have a virtual class). But for Fem Inquiry and Fem Theory we are. I’ve been in the library on campus since 9:20, the discussions started at 9:30 and it’s almost over. I came to campus because my 2nd class today is NOT with this professor and I didn’t want to miss class. I’ve leave after that one (it’s my Women,Crime, and Justice class).

Anyway, so much fun! I thought it was going to suck but it’s pretty awesome. the reading we had to do was Faludi’s Backlash and Karen Horney’s “The Dread of Woman: Observations on a Specific Difference in the Dread Felt by Men and by Women Respectively for the Opposite Sex”. Fun discussions, really thoughtful. 

Oh, if anyone wants Faludi’s Backlash, which was really quite interesting, just let me know. I have the pdf so I can e-mail it or something

Movies for my Lights, Camera, Gender course

Lights, Camera, Gender (from the syllabus: “The films we will examine are situated in relation to three historical periods in relation to American feminism: pre-Second Wave [post-WWII through the 1950s]; second-Wave era & backlash (1970s and 80s); and contemporary [1990s-present]). We’re reading texts from Feminism at the Movies and texts that my professor will be uploading for us. Apparently after she got the text she realized that a lot of the essays and movies the text focuses on lack diversity and focus heavily on White movies and characters [partially due in part to the book discussing many mainstream films which we all know struggle with the concept of diversity], so she decided that she’d find a bulk of the texts we’re going to work with elsewhere. 

We have a 15-20 page research essay due at the end of the semester and it’s giving us the “opportunity to find out more about a particularly film genre, a film era, film tropes, or a dimension of feminist film theory”. I think I’m going to do blaxploitation films.

Films (I’ll break it down like the syllabus does):

1. Adam’s Rib
2. The Woman’s Film:Hitchcock’s Rebecca
3. Theorizing “The Gaze”:Some Like it Hot
4. Masculinity and The West I:Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
5. Masculinity and the West II :Brokeback Mountain
6. On the Road I:Fandango
7. On the Road II:Thelma and Louise
8. Queering the Screen I:Orlando
9. Queering the Screen II:Transmerica
10. Feminism and Backlash:Mona Lisa Smile
11. Postfeminism:Enchanted
12. Neofeminism???????:Sex and the City: The Movie (oh dear)
13. Women, Race, and Class:The Help

And the readings, in the same order as above (posted down here in case there were those who were interested in what movies we’re watching and not what the readings are. Understandably because some of the essays may not be readily accessible outside of the text we’re using. Maybe some can be found on ebscohost or Jstor, though). I think some of the texts we’re reading will make some of the film choices make more sense.

1. No text for Adam’s Rib as it was the first day
2. Doane, “Caught and Rebecca”
3. Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”
4. no text for Butch Cassidy because an essay is due
5. no text for Brokeback Mountain
6. Hansen-Miller and Gill, “Lad Flicks: Discursive Reconstructions of Masculinity”
7. Mulvey, “Afterthoughts on ‘Visual Pleasure’…”
8. de Lauretis, “Oedipus Interruptus”
9. Needham, “the Road to the Multiplex after New Queer Cinema”
10. No text
11. Schaap, “No Country for Old Women”; Tasker “Enchanted by Postfeminism”
12. Stapleton, “Music and the Woman’s Film”; Kaasabian, excerpt from Hearing Film; Gledhill, “Pleasurable Negotiations”
13. Gaines, “White Privilege and Looking Relations”; hooks “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators”

I’m excited. I have this professor for two other courses (Intro to Feminist Inquiry and Feminist Theory I). I also had my Women, Crime, and Justice class today. Tomorrow I have my Gender and Society course (3 hours and 50 mins! Only one that fit my schedule, unfortunately). Tomorrow or Thursday I’ll post the readings for my Fem Inquiry and Theory class. I need to hit the hay soon.

17 credits this semester plus 2 jobs. I am going to be a very tired lady!

My courses for next semester

SOC 342-Women Crime and Justice.

WMST 200: Gender and Society.

WMST 201: Intro to Feminist Inquiry.

WMST 350: Lights, Camera, Gender! Femininity and Masculinity at the Movies

and WMST 352-Feminist Theory

Excited about the Lights, Camera, Gender class.

Uncomfortable Discussion in Logic re: “Raccoons”

So today in Logic we were talking about Fallacies. The prof was going through a bunch of them and then was going on to talk a bit about ad baculum arguments. He only got a chance to spell “baculum” for someone when this girl, we’ll call her A (her sister is B, professor is professor, I’ll be me and army guy is AG if he comes up in this summary of events), brought up a daily show clip that I guess she watched in her last class. She asked, and I’m paraphrasing a bit “I watched this clip of the Daily Show where Jon Stewart is showing clips of politicians and they’re talking about taxing raccoons, meaning the poor. What kind of argument/fallacy is that?” The prof asked for a bit more and said he didn’t think it was a fallacy really, that it was just rhetoric. I immediately thought of the “Tar Baby” situation where these republican pundits used the tar baby phrase, feigning ignorance about its racially charged history so as to not distance their non-racist fans all the while feeding their racist fans by so brazenly using a racist term in reference to our President. Raccoons=coons=Black people. I’m biased, of course. And more often than not if I hear “Raccoon” and it’s not referring to an animal  I’m going to think of the racist term. It’s not unusual for Republicans, recently (and probably in the past), to use these terms that could go “either way” so that they could play to racists while feigning ignorance. 

The professor said it was rhetoric. The girl kept asking. And kept asking. And kept asking. The professor clearly didn’t think it was a fallacy, she kept saying “But it’s the argument that we should tax the raccoons because they’re robbing us” and things to that nature (her argument was that it was an argument, so there should be a fallacy, lest it’s true). 

Now, I want to interrupt here and say that this is a class that meets once a week. I first had this class last Tuesday. We did small intros by going around the room and saying our names and majors. She said her major was Women’s Studies. I was like “ooh cool, maybe she’ll be a possible buddy”. Now I just am not even interested in trying to pursue possible convos. She more than likely met no harm, but the fact that she just couldn’t STOP THE CONVERSATION was ridiculous to me. 

Eventually I turned to her and said basically what I’ve been saying. I first asked if they were Republicans from the clip, she said yes. I said it was more than likely a tactic to play to racists while feigning ignorance because “raccoon” in reference to people is racially charged. She said she knew that. 

And then she kept asking and asking and saying “Raccoon” and I probably started imagining it but the stress on the last syllable always seemed more pronounced when she said it and I just felt more and more uncomfortable, particularly because I was the only Black person (really the only POC in general) in a class of 8 people. 

The AG agreed it was racially charged and said that. And when she kept going he kind of made a noise and shrugged as if to say “Why won’t she just drop it”. 

Eventually it did just end. After awhile I said “Yeah, it’s just rhetoric, that’s your answer” or something like that and then asked him to explain the strawman argument (he had started to explain it, and then stopped himself and moved on to ad hominem arguments. But I wanted to learn more about the strawman because it’s the only one I never fully understood). 

Perhaps I’m making mountains out of mole hills, but I cannot help how I feel and it just felt uncomfortable. We’re not a politics class or a class studying Race or anything of the sort. It’s not a class where I expect derogatory terms to be thrown around, even unintentionally. So it was just weird. And the fact that we pointed out it was racially charged, specifically to Blacks, and I was the only Black lass in a small class….it just felt like way too much and completely unnecessary. Everyone was basically thinking it should be dropped. The professor repeated himself over and over again that it just seemed like a rhetoric tactic, not really an argument w/ fallacy.

So, before writing this post I went to find the clip. It’s about 7 minutes. At 6:14 “raccoon” is said. It’s fleeting. If I hadn’t dealt with the conversation prior to watching the clip, it probably wouldn’t even have been the item with the most staying power. It’s so weird that she seemed so fixated on it. And really was barely relative. And we didn’t even get to find out what an ad baculum argument was. 

Here’s the clip: The Poor’s Free Ride is Over

TL;DR: Girl in class asked barely on topic question about politicans referring to the poor as Raccoons. Kept pushing even after the professor answered her question. I felt incredibly uncomfortable with the repeated usage of “Raccoon” re: poor people especially with the Republicans history of using racially charged terms and then feigning ignorance. Pointed out to girl that it was racially charged and probably why they used it. She said she knew it was racially charged. She kept asking. Eventually all I could hear was the “coon” and as the only POC in class felt super uncomfortable.

Books for School

(So I had my first two days on Thursday and Friday. I realized now that I didn’t even post about what classes I have or how my first experience at RIC was like. To answer the latter, it’s okay. Facilities not as good as Hofstra obvs, but better than CCRI, also obvious.)

I’m taking a Bio Lab/Lecture. So I needed a Bio textbook. That’s not interesting.

Tuesday classes were canceled last week and I only have Intro to Logic on Tuesday nights (as opposed to Thursdays as well as is the case with Bio and Non Western Worlds, or Fridays as well as is the case with Western Lit. Logic is a 3 hour class and therefore only meets once. Or, rather, it only meets once so it’s a 3 hour class)

I’m taking a Western Literature course, as is required. The books for that course are as follows (and will be read in this order):

Classic Fairy Tales

The Tempest

Robinson Crusoe

Foe by Coetzee

No-No Boy by John Okada

Classic Slave Narratives

Rotten English, a literary anthology

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell

Great Short Stories by American Women

I asked the professor if there was an overarching theme. She said a theme, not necessarily the larger theme, is language in post-colonial literature as is most exemplified by Rotten English. Who is to decide what is “appropriate” and “literary” forms of writing etc etc

I am also taking a Non Western World’s class. My class is the Caribbean section.

The books for that class are as follows:

A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid

The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat

Reyita, The Life of a Black Cuban Woman in the Twentieth Century by Maria de los Reyes Castillo bueno

Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat.

We’ll also be reading a few articles/stories/speeches that are online and that she has posted in the E-reserve, those are as follows [I’ll post links for the ones available on the web, can’t post links for ones in the E-Reserve]

For Tuesday I have to read Derek Wolcott’s “The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory” (if you want to read that for yourself, here’s the link, it’s a novel prize winning lecture or something [haven’t read it yet]).

 I have to read 2 chapters of Richardson’s The Caribbean in the Wider World (chapter’s 1 and 2, which are “The Creation of the Caribbean” and “A Colonized Environment”, respectively)

The History of Mary Prince, the entire thing. You can find it here

Chapter 3 of The Caribbean in the Wider World, which is “Plantations and their Peoples to 1900”

We’ll be watching the film Sugar Cane Alley

Mintz, “From Plantations to Peasantries in the Caribbean”, which is chapter 4 from Caribbean Contours

Rogozinski, “The Dominican Republic and Haiti” from A Brief History of the Caribbean

We’ll be watching “Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti”

Then we’ll be watching “In the Times of the Butterflies”, to coincide with our reading of Danticat’s Farming of Bones

After which we’ll be watching the film “Mirrors of the Heart”

and reading Naipaul’s “The Baker’s Story” and Chang’s “Light in the Shop”.

Harris, “Devils and Decorum”  (chapter 1) from Carnival and Other Christian Festivals

And lastly we’ll be watching “H2 Worker”. 

I’m pretty excited for the Caribbean course. Doesn’t seem like I’ll get to learn much about Jamaica (although I don’t know, maybe the articles/short stories she has posted will have something about Jamaica). But there’s a term paper due and maybe I’ll do it on something having to do with Jamaica.