ENLT 2552

If you are not a Gender Studies major, DO NOT take this course!!! This was by far my least favorite class this semester. There were 20 people in the class - 2 of them were guys, and 18 were girls. There were maybe 4 minority students in the entire class. There was barely any diversity of opinions in the class, and this led to a lot of my frustration with it. I haven't taken other gender studies courses, so I'm not sure if this is a problem with the department as a whole, or just this specific course. The content we discussed was almost always an application of certain things that were just taken to be true, where in actuality, they were theories or intangible issues that are not accepted as fact by the general public (the general public being non-gender studies majors). I felt as though everyone in the class had an extremely liberal viewpoint, and I often felt as though my more moderate views were unwelcome. While writing the essays, I always felt as though I had to cater to Fraiman's specific view, and never offer my own arguments, for fear of getting shot down (or just getting a bad grade -- I got a B+ in the class, so I guess she figured out I was BS-ing my way through). An example of this is gender fluidity -- we often discussed how oppressive or unfortunate it was that the character could not be accepted just "as they were" because of their nonconformity to gender roles. I would have loved to have discussed varying views of gender, or arguments for and against gender fluidity, but it was accepted as fact by all and used as a doctrine for the class. One time in class, I suggested that feminism was about giving women equal autonomy to choose what they wanted to pursue in life, whether that be being a homemaker or having a career. I argued that women should not be coerced into pursuing either option and should be free to do as they wish. Professor Fraiman immediately (and rather passionately) shut me down by saying that that was not a central tenant of feminism at all and that there was a stigma associated with every single option available to women.

It seemed as though explanations for characters' distress were always along the lines of "because they live in a patrirachal society" or "because homosexuality was not approved" (sidenote: why is it neccessary to have literally all of the characters as lesbians, and/or with extreme homoerotic undertones? The class is "Women in Literature" not "Lesbians in Literature" - which I'm sure would have merits as a class by itself, but is not what I was looking for at all). It seemed as though we often just sat around and complained about how oppressive everything is to women, which is hardly what I wanted or expected to be doing in an academic class.

Towards the end of the class, we sat around and looked at pictures by Muholi during a lesson that was supposed to be a lesson on "lesbian intimacy" -- but in actuality was an extremely uncomfortable experience, because the images we saw were considerably pornographic and had absolutely nothing to do with literature. An example: two naked women laying on top of each other. The woman on top was white, and the woman on the bottom was black. This was supposed to represent white supremacy in society and the victimization of blacks. Then we went on to discuss "oh wait, the women are naked. Is this porn? What is porn? What is art?" The lesson was absolutely and completely inappropriate and unfitting for an undergraduate English class.

What I thought was going to be an intellectually stimulating survey of the portrayal of women in classic works of literature turned out to be a liberal, out-of-touch, unwelcoming club of women complaining about the patriarchy and reading about lesbians and their strife. Avoid this class at all costs. Please. Take any other second writing requirement you can.

I really enjoyed this class both for the books we read and the professor I had. Fraiman is very intelligent and expresses herself eloquently. Some people in the class did not like that she talked so much, but I enjoyed it. The books we read were awesome! Authors included Atwood, Mernissi, Gordimer, Bechdel, Adichie, Lessing, Lahiri, and Munro. We also studied Opie's photography, a sculpture by Walker, and the first episode of Orange is the New Black! The class is discussion based, and everyone is assigned one day to lead the discussion with a partner. There are three essays that you can do well on if you pay attention to what she wants (focused, close analysis that stays "within the text"). Overall, I enjoyed this class and would recommend it to anyone interested in a great selection of literature and art.