Ellen Cohn

12/20/2013

Reworked Essay

My City of Play

At the beginning of my Bryn Mawr-bound summer, I had a checklist of everything I had to do to prepare myself to begin college. One of the most daunting things on the list was to select my top three choices for an Emily Balch Seminar.  Although each one seemed intriguing, I ended up selecting the “Play in the City” Seminar, largely because of the professor teaching it: Theater has been a big part of my life, and although I do not necessarily want to major in theater, staying within a community which I understand, and which generally understands me, seemed like a great idea. With Mark Lord, the head of the theater department, teaching my Emily Balch Seminar, I figured that I could get to know him without taking a theater class or participating in a main stage production.

I got so much more out of this Seminar than I was expecting. When I initially wrote this essay, I wrote about food, and how my freedom in the city (provided by this course) allowed me to express myself through my travels and the takeaway from those travels. Many times, the choices I made involved food, so I connected the enjoyment and freedom I felt in the city with that of the food I experienced.

In my third Web Event, I explored the two opposing methods of fighting patriarchal inequality: fighting to unbind gender from inequality and using the present inequality to justify more immediate, relief-providing policies. I looked at how Heidi Hartmann switched her perspective in her essays arguing for change in the workplace, an end to labor segregation and the wage gap. On the unbinding end, Hartmann explained the connections between capitalism and patriarchy, and then she argued that ending labor segregation would take down an important pillar holding up patriarchy. To reach the end of labor segregation, however, we must fix the societal expectations and assumptions that justify and perpetuate the segregation.

“I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.” – Stanley Kubrick

…See children as the property of parents to do with as they will, Adult violence against children is a norm in our society. Problematically, for the most part feminist thinkers have never wanted to call attention to the reality that women are often the primary culprits in everyday violence against children simply because they are the primary parental caregivers.  Hooks

Deep in The Heart of Texas -Syllabus

As you walk into this class, you all hold knowledge as to what a city is, a town of significant size. But what and who really make the city? This class will focus mainly on perception and interpretation as we venture through Houston and explore several aspects of what makes Houston, deep in the heart of Texas. As a class, we will analyze what terms like diversity, culture, immigration, and relationships mean to us individually through our experiences of Houston. And with each trip we will discuss how each place manages to keep Houston growing and strong.

Our class is a total of twelve and will take a total of seven trips into the city. Each will be different and will focus on a new aspect of Houston. There will be a van that will take us to each of our destinations. Your trips all paid for thanks to The Brown Foundation. Caminen con esperanza!

Discovery Green

Parks are structured to fit people’s needs. Parks close to schools and family orientated neighborhoods, if not all, most, have a playground for children to enjoy.  Whereas in a part of the city where there’s more commuting and far more exposed, the welcoming factor tends to wane and the importance of appearance is far more critical. 

I love Philadelphia. That’s it. That’s all I have to say.

I know that I should explain that further, that “love” is a stand-in word for not expressing myself more fully. But really, “I love Philadelphia” is the only thing I can think every time I go into the city. It gives me such a sense of home, of connection, that nowhere else I’ve ever been has been able to give me.

In my first essay on this topic, my relationship to cities, I said that I judge cities based on how those around me feel. But after taking this course, I think it goes a little deeper than that.

I like cities when I feel like I can truly let go in them. Of course, this feeling does come from being around those who are comfortable in the city, but it most of all comes from deep play. If I witness others experiencing deep play and letting go of their inhibitions in the city, I’ll also feel like I can do that.

            At the beginning of this class, I understood feminism only through what the popular media portrayed and through blogging websites such as Tumblr. I was not very familiar with feminist theory, the many different kinds of feminism that exist, and the different “waves” of feminism. I did not think to apply feminist theory to different kinds of literary works. Mainly, I had a lot of misunderstandings about what academic feminism is. However, I still identified as a feminist.

            One of the most interesting aspects of the class for me was posting our papers and thoughts on the class on Serendip, which can be accessed by anybody. It made me feel as if my written contributions in the class were contributions to a larger academic conversation. It made me grow a lot in terms of trying to educate myself outside of the classroom, as I felt that I now had a part in helping to continue a large, informed academic discussion on these topics. I was able to turn in most of my work on time, but there were other times I forgot due to so many things I had going on at the time. I guess there was an important lesson for me to learn in trying to balance everything.

Mental Illness and Feminism

            In my first Web Event, titled “Web Event #1: Fear and Self-Representation”, I discussed my personal struggles with fear in the classroom, as well as analyzed where fear comes from and how it interferes with self-representation. I came to the conclusion that my fear resulted in a “self-preserving” performance that did not represent who I truly am, but the person I was okay with others seeing. It was the “me” that could not be criticized or called out for being incorrect. This “self-preserving” performance was difficult for anyone to criticize mostly because it was silent. And it is really difficult to be wrong when you are silent.

            Fear has been a defining factor in my life for almost as long as I can remember. For many years, I have suffered from depression and anxiety. I feel that my anxiety has kept me from being the ideal “strong, intelligent, independent woman” that, it is often supposed, any feminist (and “Mawrter”) should be. I’m surely not alone in this concern. The view of the mentally ill within the feminist movement (as well as in academic spaces such as Bryn Mawr) is not something that is often considered, but can be understood through disability studies theory.