End of Course Self-Evaluation

Throughout this semester, I have thoroughly enjoyed being an active participant in this course, and I hope that my contributions have been valued by my classmates and professors. I’ve tried to contribute to online conversation by responding to more posts than I created independently: only if I had a topic that I specifically wanted to broach online did I create my own post rather than contributing to someone else’s conversation. In class, I have tried to participate to the best of my ability without controlling class conversation. I will admit that not all of my comments have been fully-formed during in-class discussions, but I have tried to express myself fully and to provide salient information to class discussions. I have worked hard to contribute to the learning of others by providing new information and analyses both online and to class: if I have been discussing similar themes in another class or have found something outside of class, I will make a concerted effort to bring this information to the appropriate forum. In addition, I’ve helped a few of my classmates find information for their web events; I happen to have had a fairly decent knowledge base regarding gender theory coming into the class, and where I thought I could contribute productively to someone else’s learning, I offered to.

            By far, my favorite reading for this course was excerpt from Paul Farmer’s Pathologies of Power. As someone who hopes to work in medical anthropology for a more inclusive program of public health both in the US and abroad, I was very interested to see a medical anthropologist whose interests in improving health translated into an NGO. Anything that dealt with structural violence tended to be interesting to me. I also really liked the section on abortion billboards and the notion of “speaking for” various groups. On another line of thought entirely, I really liked the Riki Wilchins book: despite hearing terms like postmodernism, tautological, and ontological in various classes, it was really nice to have those terms concretely defined for me. In my opinion, it was great primer for gender theory.

            I tended to like the scientific portion of the course less, but I found the way in which we were taught to question the authority of scientific authors to be useful not just for this class, but for other classes, as well. The areas that I struggled with most were those that dealt with statistics: almost anything from PNAS presented a challenge that was not insurmountable, but took longer than I think it reasonably would have for most other members of our class. In addition, while I found Karen Barad’s work interesting, I don’t think that I ever really grasped the finer points of her work. I’ve found the idea of interconnectedness between sciences and social justice interesting, but I think I’ve run up against the most trouble understanding anything that deals with hard sciences. (I will admit, however, that I happen to have a good degree of anxiety surrounding natural sciences. This is certainly not the fault of the course.)

            The subjects of authority, but as a reader and as a writer, are probably where I’ve grown most. In learning to both question the authority of those whose works we read and creating work that allows others to question our authority has been an experience that I have not had in any other classes. As a writer, I have grown most in my style of writing: looking back on my writing, I can plot a fairly strong trajectory between assuming that my writing should speak for me, to asserting my own unique positionality within my writing. I was definitely moved in the direction of postmodern writing from this course, and it has affected how I’m writing for my other classes: I’ve taken my positionality into account in the writing of my thesis in a way that I would never have thought to before taking this class. I have worked hard on all of my online postings to contribute to class learning, and to write in a manner that best expresses the direction in which I’ve been moving as a result of this class. I hope that my work has shown a progression that, while reflecting hard work during the whole semester, also reflects a greater inquisitiveness towards levels of authority, and determining the levels of authority encoded in the position of various individuals, including myself.