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I was a child racked with nightmares.  I spent many nights whispering for my dad in the night, sweating and stricken to my bed, wondering why he couldn’t hear me.  I would dart down the hall to his bed and shake him awake  “Daddy!  Daddy, can I sleep with you?”  I would gladly crawl into his bed, cuddle with my stuffed animal, and fall peacefully asleep.  When I began to grow too old to be sleeping in my dad’s bed any longer, we had to have a talk.  “It’s not real,” he said.  “It’s all in your head.  Just tell yourself in your nightmare that it isn’t real and I promise you won’t be scared anymore.”  So my nightmares came less frequently and less intensely.  I befriended the witch that hexed me and the ugly creature that always chased me turned out to have a sweet spot.

As with all new classes, I came into this class somewhat terrified and overwhelmed and possibly hoping that it would provide me with a space in my schedule where I at least felt somewhat comfortable in the sense of already having an idea about what counts for feminism and what counts for feminist theory. I was also looking forward to learning much more about feminist topics and the ways in which they play out in the world at large.  I feel like this class gave me all of those things, while also pushing me to be more self-aware and more adventurous/creative in my approach to acadedmic work, as well as inspiring me to action as opposed to only working with theory.

In thinking about the edges of my individual learning, I think this class highlighted three posible areas of needed growth for me.  The first, and possibly most important to me, is that it continuosly challenged me to reconsider how I speak, what I speak to, and to whom I address my comments.  It helped me to feel way more comfortable with being unsure and with being criticized, and it also helped me to think through how to have a productive conversation across various levels of understanding, which has led directly to my final project of attepting to institute a changing conversation about gender on our campus and in our community.

the notification system...

Over the past month or so I have been posting regularly about a new HBO program which provoked a lot of public attention, long before it even aired.  I was interested in the show, and I was even more interested in what people in our course thought about it. But my “call to discourse” fell flat, so I have decided to take up the project myself. Now my primary interest in the show was not actually the topic, but the fact that the creator/director/writer was a female, liberal arts college graduate and only four years older than I am.  Go Girls. I am not sure if it is widely understood how rare this is—look up any of your three favorite television programs, and chances are extremely high, regardless of the topic that the “creator/writer/director” of the pilot episode is male. And if you happen to watch a show conceived by a woman, chances are further likely that she has a male partner/co-creator. Shows about Girls, written by girls, created by girls, and directed by girls simply do not exist. The stories we watch and television every day are stories coming from a definitively male perspective. This is not meant as an inciting, insightful statement. It is nothing but and “is”.

When I began this project I decided I was going to write about the controversy over the cesarean rate in the United States. I have heard nurses and friends talk about the trend of rising rates in cesareans, and from the conversation I’ve realized it’s a very controversial topic. I am interested in women’s health, so I started asking my health care providers what they thought of the c-section rate in the U.S., and I started seeing a trend that people’s view on c-sections often has do with a more general outlook on obstetrics. Many of the people who I came across that didn’t approve in the increasing rate of c-sections had other complaints about how obstetric units are run. People who disproved of the c-section rate often felt that medicine practiced in hospitals is too ‘interventionalist’ and treats birth like there is going to be an abnormality, when in general births are normal. Of the people that told me they didn’t think there was something wrong with the c-section rate, they often had the outlook that giving birth outside of a hospital puts the mother and baby at unnecessary risk of being without a physician.  After talking about birth and doing a bit of research I decided I wanted to not only do my paper on c-sections, but also on births in hospitals versus non-hospital births. I interviewed two ob/gyn’s and two certified midwives to try and get their opinions on the matter.

After examining the transformation of the science writing genre from the research laboratory to mass media, I gradually explored the humanities and the space available to the class here on the Serendip platform and in our bi-weekly class meetings. I had no prior background in the humanities before taking the Literary Kinds course and was only left with some baggage from high school and the Emily Balch freshman writing seminar. The initial challenges lie not on the content of the readings, but were at the heart of the culture of the English classroom and the backgrounds of the authors we have been reading.

The Literary Kinds course became a new experiment, appearing disguised under the humanities discipline but gradually resembled those in the science laboratory in its approach to learning. I was making observations on the intellectual and individual relationships that were formed in class and began testing a melting pot of diverse ideas and backgrounds. My initial hypotheses on the expectations and type of work were rapidly rejected. My philosophies on the humanities discipline have inevitably evolved to dismiss the stereotypes I have heard and admitted.

   The military has been traditionally defined as a masculine institution; actually it may be the most prototypically masculine one of all social institutions. Therefore, whenever women soldiers appear in public, they seem to be standout since people tend to think that for women to participate, either the military has to be perceived as transform to make it more compatible with how women are, or women have to be perceived as changing in ways that make them more suited for military service. Many changes have occurred in the past several decades. This period has witnessed a mushrooming of attention to women’s contribution to the army. More and more women soldiers are allowed to actually fight on the frontline or engage in violent and dangerous tasks. It seems that society started to recognize female’s ability as protectors of their countries, giving them space to choose whatever they want, including stepping on battlefields. Many people perceive this phenomenon as a huge progress of feminism, while others cast doubts on it. Interested in this issue, I would like to focus on female soldiers, especially Chinese women soldiers, in my webevent.

“I don’t know where I end or where I begin. All I know is that I’m delicious.” 

OUROBOROS

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1- Open 1st Attachment

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P.S: If this isn't working for you, I've supplied a doc. version. The interior links won't open, but everything has been laid out for you. You won't get the exacat same feel, but hopefully you'll enjoy it just the same!

Whist ruminating over my web events and the material and discussions of this class, I thought hard about how I have grown as a feminist.  This was my first class that had anything to do about feminism.  I wanted to know what feminism was about, how it was defined and just get a taste of it.  I think I had a naive notion in my mind that I could take one class of feminism and get a fuller understanding of it.  While I feel like I do have a better understanding as to what feminism is, I also think I've become more confused.  But what I've also gained from this class is the acceptance of this confusion.   (which always happens when you take the time to learn more about a subject).  At the beginning of the year, I felt like I didn't know enough to make any statements or say anything.  I felt I was talking more towards the end of the year.    I really appreciate that this class has made me bolder and not afraid to express my opinions.  As a learner, this helps me to explore ideas more since I am not as afraid to venture into different topics and vocalize my opinions.