Read last week’s post from Melissa.

Let’s pick up where we left off, shall we? I had graduated with my PhD in English but had realized that a tenure track academic job was not for me. What does one do, then, to prepare oneself for a new career path? Again, I must echo what Staci emphasized—reach out to your networks.

As I mentioned, the head of the high school to which I had applied was a colleague of mine from graduate school (we had met through Syracuse University’s graduate student organization). After the dust settled from my daughter’s birth and my dad’s death, I reached out to this colleague to see what steps he would recommend to prepare myself as a candidate for independent school jobs. He suggested that I do whatever I could to gain experience working with older adolescents, as well as applying to be a client with the most well-known independent school placement agency: Carney Sandoe & Associates. With this advice in mind, I reached out to CS&A and, luckily, they accepted me as a client.

Working with CS&A, I crafted and collected my job materials (a statement of purpose that explained my shift in educational focus, my transcripts, resume, and letters of recommendation), posted them on their website, and waited for CS&A to send my materials out to independent schools who had hired the firm to help fill vacant positions. Like academic hiring, there are key points in the year when jobs are posted. For independent schools, it is the winter and early spring for a start date in August. I also sent out applications to jobs advertised on the National Association for Independent Schools website. I was teaching three classes at Syracuse at the time and only had daycare three days a week, so between that and job applications, I just could not find the time in my schedule to add on an activity that put me directly in contact with high schoolers. Nevertheless, I still received more possible interest from employers than I ever had on the tenure-track job market. But no campus interviews or job offers.

By the end of my first real independent school hiring season, however, I felt heartened by the fact that despite my lack of experience working with high school-aged students, I was still clearly an appealing candidate. Again, I reached out to my social network. Through my previous Weight Watchers (now WW) group, I had befriended a local high school social studies teacher. I reached out to her to see what she would suggest in terms of how I might begin building my resume experience, and she enthusiastically offered many suggestions, including substitute teaching. I was still teaching two classes at Syracuse, but luckily I was able to place my daughter in full time care and reserve my days off of campus for substitute teaching. I signed up with 4 local districts—two public (including the district in which my friend was employed), one private, and one a newly created charter school—to give myself as much and as varied teaching experience as possible.

And what an experience it has been! Occasionally it is very boring—teachers often design lessons for substitutes that involve little of their own input as one cannot guarantee their sub will be familiar with the material. Yet I have found that I truly enjoy meeting new students and learning new things as I engage with them and their materials. It is very rewarding to return to a school and see students with whom I have previously interacted. And, as my reputation has grown as a competent substitute, I have had the opportunity to return to the same classrooms and work with the same students.

*

My years as a teacher have taught me that regardless of the age of one’s students, a classroom runs best when students feel respected, supported, and appreciated as individuals.

And despite the difference in age between students one encounters in college and those in middle and high school, my training as a college professor has done quite a bit to prepare me to teach in this setting. Working with students from a variety of age ranges, disciplines, and intellectual needs at the college level, I have learned to navigate a diverse classroom setting. Teaching dense, theoretical material to undergraduates has taught me how to convey complex ideas in a manner that is comprehensible to non-specialists. And perhaps most importantly, my years as a teacher have taught me that regardless of the age of one’s students, a classroom runs best when students feel respected, supported, and appreciated as individuals.

I won’t lie: being a substitute teacher is at times frustrating. As school districts are often short on substitute teachers, they are willing to hire people at all levels of competence and expertise. Because of this, then, it is often assumed that I will not know what I am doing and have no experience. It’s an odd feeling—to be surrounded by people and students who have quite low expectations. I am often met with a slight look of confusion when I say I have a PhD: a look that says “why are you here then?” But when I explain, faculty and students are often very interested and kind. And throughout the past 6 months I have met many encouraging educators—two of which were generous enough to write me letters of recommendation.

*

I have already learned the lesson that one can find meaningful employment outside of academia.

We are in the middle of the 2019 hiring season and I have yet to hear from any potentially interested employers. This again has given me pause—what if this is not the career for me? Yet the beauty of being off the tenure track is that I now feel like I have the freedom to pivot and/or change course. I have already learned the lesson that one can find meaningful employment outside of academia. Who knows—I might even find something outside of direct classroom instruction. I am no longer tethered to a path with one, appropriate end. So, while I can’t leave you with a success story where I change course and land the perfect job, I can leave you with this lesson: no perfect job exists. There are jobs that suit you better than others at different times in your life, and if you’re lucky you find one that suits you for quite a while. I know I’ll find one eventually, and you will too. I do not regret earning a PhD—it has made me a stronger writer and thinker, has introduced me to wonderful people, and affirmed for me something I always knew: that I deeply enjoy and excel at cultivating meaningful relationships with others. I’ll find something, and you will too. And a PhD can be but one pathway for getting there.

Thanks everyone! Best of luck on your journeys—whatever they may be and wherever they may take you.

Melissa Welshans has a BA in English with Honors from George Mason University (2007) and a PhD in English with an emphasis on Renaissance literature from Syracuse University (2017). She is currently a Part Time Instructor at Syracuse University and a substitute teacher for a variety of school districts in the Syracuse area.

The post Back to School Shopping: Exploring Independent School Teaching appeared first on Broadly Textual Pub.

Read last week’s post from Staci.

I begin this blog post with the title “We’re All Smart Enough” because, as has at least been part of my experience of graduate education, there is a perception that only the best and brightest get the coveted tenure track job in higher education. But I’m here to tell you—if you’re in a PhD program, you are one of the best and the brightest. You ARE smart enough. And deciding that you do not enjoy parts of the work, or do not want to make certain lifestyle choices to try and get that tenure track job, has nothing to do with intelligence.

This was my struggle. Due to my own insecurities regarding my intelligence (hello Imposter Syndrome!) I was convinced for many years of my graduate program that my self-worth was tied to my intellect, and that my intellect was only demonstrable by publishing, graduating, AND landing a tenure track job. My sense of self-worth ebbed and flowed with my successes. Rejected from a journal? I’m an imposter. Accepted into a conference? Maybe I’m ok at this.

The cycle went on, and eventually was exacerbated by the emotional roller coaster that is the tenure track job search. Request for materials? Maybe I’m good enough! Rejected by my “dream job”? Utter failure. While a great deal of therapy, anxiety medication, helpful mentors, and the support of family and friends helped to mitigate these emotional trials, I too—like Staci wrote the last two weeks—hardly stopped to think if maybe this wasn’t the best career for me.

The constant bright spot in my education, however, was teaching. I loved walking into a classroom, meeting new students, and working with them to understand complex texts. Even on its worst days, teaching was a part of graduate school that did not cause me existential angst. I was good at it AND I enjoyed it.

Truth be told, I entered graduate school mostly because I wanted to teach college students. I had decided in 11^th grade that I would get a PhD because although I loved helping my peers and those younger than myself understand concepts in our coursework, I loathed high school; why would I condemn myself to a career where I would spend my days there?! The solution? Teach at a college!

*

I measured my worth against my publication record. In my estimation (and in that of professional standards) I was always found wanting.

But as I quickly realized, being a tenure track professor is far more than teaching. It’s research—publications, conference presentations, and research grants—that universities (i.e. university administrators) value, and it’s also these things that place you above the pack while on the job market regardless of the school that is hiring. And frankly, those were the activities that I enjoyed the least. Don’t get me wrong—I like researching and discovering new ways to interpret literature. But the angst I felt when it came time to present a published argument about those discoveries was anything but healthy. I measured my worth against my publication record. In my estimation (and in that of professional standards) I was always found wanting.

The spring before I was set to defend my dissertation, I was pregnant, coming off of another unsuccessful year on the job market, and beginning to do the IMPORTANT work that I should have done much earlier: I was beginning to ask myself whether or not a tenure track job was right for me, and if I wanted to do what was necessary to eventually get a tenure track job. By this time I had successfully published a journal article, a book chapter, and had attended many conferences and workshops, yet still felt immense anxiety and pressure surrounding my research. I was also mere months away from defending my dissertation. So why did it all still make me feel terrible?

One March day, an advertisement for a high school American Literature teacher at a local Independent School came across the graduate student listserv. The product of a rural, public education system myself, I was unaware of “Independent” schools. As I soon learned, Independent schools are those which are run independently by a board of trustees rather than, say, a church diocese or other not-for-profit company.

I did some more research on this (and other Independent) schools and I began to wonder…what if I COULD have a job where my sole focus would be students? What if I COULD compete in a job search where the strength of my teaching portfolio DID make me competitive? Could I teach high school???

Through happenstance, the Head of the Upper School at this institution had been my colleague in Syracuse’s Graduate Student Organization (like Staci wrote—networking!). I reached out to him about applying and eventually was even asked to participate in an on-campus interview—my first EVER. The energy and joy I felt while preparing for my interview was greater than I had ever experienced in three years of searching for a tenure track job in higher education. I did not get the job, but the interview process was enlightening—I had found an educational setting that truly spoke to my own strengths as a professional.

*

It felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders as a new career path opened up before me. I would not have to publish or perish.

After this experience, my attitude started to shift. Maybe it wasn’t that I was not good enough or smart enough. Maybe I just did not like the pressure of publishing. Maybe I just would prefer to do other things. It felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders as a new career path opened up before me. I would not have to publish or perish (a cynical but true turn of phrase among tenure-track faculty hopefuls).

I continued to mull over this new career option as I worked furiously to complete my dissertation and prepared for my daughter’s arrival. I had not yet written academia completely out of my future.

Then, a mere 4 weeks after my daughter was born, I received a phone call: my dad had been killed in an accident on our family farm in Northern Pennsylvania. He was 54. I put my defense on hold as I went to PA to bury the man I had looked up to my whole life, and the person I was most excited for my daughter to know. I grew up on a dairy farm that my family had owned since the 1800s, and in the months after his death, I watched as my amazing step mom dealt with not only incredible grief, but the trials of selling cattle and equipment.

I finished the dissertation. I defended it successfully. But I now had a completely new perspective on what I wanted to prioritize in my life—the life I now knew not to take for granted. And for me, my new priority was choosing a job that would allow me to be geographically close to my family in Pennsylvania, and that would provide me with a lifestyle that enabled me to spend more time (and enjoy that time) with those I love. In the end, it made it easy to walk away from my “dream” of a tenure track academic job, because dreams change. Life changes. That’s ok. And we’re all smart enough.

Thanks for reading! Tune in next week as I discuss what I’ve done post PhD to position myself for a search on the Independent School job market!

Melissa Welshans has a BA in English with Honors from George Mason University (2007) and a PhD in English with an emphasis on Renaissance literature from Syracuse University (2017). She is currently a Part Time Instructor at Syracuse University and a substitute teacher for a variety of school districts in the Syracuse area.

The post We’re All Smart Enough: A Pep Talk for PhDs on the Job Market appeared first on Broadly Textual Pub.

For my first post I thought I would share a (very) condensed version of a paper I presented at Syracuse’s annual Future Professoriate Program Conference in Spring 2013. Last year, a colleague of mine (and, full disclosure, editor of this blog) organized a panel on “embodied pedagogy” and invited me and a fellow colleague to participate. I had never deeply considered the term “embodied pedagogy” before, yet a recent course evaluation had me questioning my physical presence in my classroom and its relationship to my pedagogical strategies. On an evaluation for my British Literature survey course, a student responded to a prompt to “comment on the quality of instruction in this course” with this remark: “She reminds me of Lena Dunham if she were a professor (This is a huge compliment).”

What was I to make of this?

Given my own research interests, I often discuss topics related to feminism and gender within my courses, possibly linking me with the self-proclaimed feminist Dunham. (For one of many examples of her discussing her feminism, you can read excerpts of her interview with NPR’s Terry Gross.) Yet I could not shake the feeling that, along with the contents of my course, my very body was enabling this comparison.

For in addition to her feminism, Dunham is also often discussed in terms of her physical appearance. A brief scandal erupted when New York Times writer Ruth La Ferla commented on Dunham’s “pulchritude” (a word associated with fatness) in relation to Dunham’s appearance at the 2013 Emmy awards, and it is perhaps no surprise that the artist’s rendition of this very photo which recently appeared above a critical essay of Dunham seems to exaggerate, among other features, her weight:

Dunham herself has suggested that one of the most positive aspects of her show Girls is its refusal to hide the bodies of “women who are not a size 0” or restrict them to weight-loss driven plotlines . Dunham’s feminism is linked, for many critics, reviewers, and fans, directly to her body and her refusal to cover it up.

Like Dunham, I am frank about my feminism. And, like Dunham, I occupy a body that does not easily fit into the Western ideal of beauty. What caused my student to compare me to Dunham, I believe, is best described by the scholar Kathleen Rowe in her book The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter (1995).

Taking Roseanne Barr (among others) as a primary example, Rowe argues that women who refuse to bend to the will of patriarchy are “unruly.” Specifically for Rowe, an unruly woman is characterized by her inability or unwillingness “to confine herself to her proper place.” She is often “excessive or fat, suggesting her unwillingness or inability to control her physical appetites,” speaks in an excessive “quantity, content or tone” and “makes jokes, or laughs herself.” Her behavior might even be “associated with looseness and occasionally whorishness” and she is often perceived as a woman on the margins of polite society. I would argue that Lena Dunham, like the subjects of Rowe’s book, challenges patriarchal authority through her unruly behavior. Indeed, the recent outrage over some of her admissions regarding previous sexual experiences in her memoir Not that Kind of Girl underscore my point.

Now what does this all have to do with “embodied pedagogy?” From the tone of my voice and gesticulations to my dress size, my body’s unwillingness to be bound by patriarchal norms of femininity underscores the feminist commitments of my pedagogy. My insistence on voicing feminist challenges to patriarchy, particularly in a potentially unlikely class like a British Literature survey implicitly codes my pedagogy as unruly, for it refuses to limit conversations about gender to sanctioned academic spaces such as our Women’s and Gender Studies Program. Coupled with my occupation of a fat body, I signal as excessive and uncontained. By being a loud, large, female graduate TA who espouses explicit feminist concerns, I embody my feminist pedagogy. Thanks to Kathleen Rowe, I have a lens through which I might understand this at first perplexing, but now flattering, student response.

Melissa Welshans was a PhD Candidate in English at Syracuse University and was working on her dissertation, then titled The Many Types of Marriage: Gender, Marriage and Biblical Typology in Early Modern England. Melissa’s research is concerned with issues of gender and sexuality in early modern England, especially as it pertains to the institution of marriage. In her free time, Melissa still practices her nail art skills.

The post Revisiting Unruly Instruction appeared first on Broadly Textual Pub.

While at the birthday party of a good friend some months back, I was introduced to the new love-interest of a high school classmate. He was a young, charming, gay man, and a pleasure to talk to. Yet, we shared one exchange that serves as the focus of this post.

A couple hours and a few drinks into the party, this man comes closer to me, and in an almost-whisper asks, “can I touch them?”

Yes, THEM. The girls. The twins. Jugs. Boobs. Breasts. Whatever you call them, this stranger had asked if he could take a hold of mine.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I was taken aback. But, because this man was gay, I suspected his question was one of curiosity and not sexual desire, and, because of this (and maybe the drinks), I said ok. After a light fondle (the type you might get from an airport security guard—yes, that happens), this man says to me, “you are not wearing the right bra.”

“Excuse me?” I replied, honestly stunned. Due to their size and my personality, my boobs have always been a source of conversation among family and friends. Additionally, my many years as a Lane Bryant employee eradicated any sense of taboo that might have once surrounded the conversation of mine or anyone else’s busts. I am comfortable with conversations ranging from good-natured teasing, commiseration, awe, and the useful sharing of information. But no one (and specifically no man) had EVER, unsolicited, criticized how I was wearing my breasts.

“You are clearly not in the right bra,” he continued.

“Ok,” I said, growing agitated. Not wanting to cause tension at a friend’s birthday party, I resisted the urge to smack his hand away and yell, “Who do you think you are!?” Instead, I took a different approach. I began to calmly explain to this man that I had actually been a bra fitter for a number of years at Lane Bryant. “Well, have you ever been professionally measured?” Yes, I responded, and I have measured others repeatedly (and occasionally still do with the bra fitting tape I might have from my former job).

“Well, I help my mom with her bras all the time, and can definitely tell you need a different one. They should be up here” he said, adjusting my straps to elevate my chest. I attempted to explain to him that because of my bra size, it is difficult to find affordable options and often I am left with a less successful bra for budgetary reasons. When I told him my bust size (again, something I often share without shame to friends and family) he replied, “You can’t be that size! My mom is only a [insert size], and you look the same!” To this man, regardless of what I had to say, I knew little about my own breasts or how to wear them.

I did a little lift and tuck of the girls which appeased him, and we were able to move on to a different topic. But for the rest of the night, I could not shake the feeling that this conversation was, as many academics are wont to say, “problematic.”

As I mention above, my chest is not a topic I often shy from, but it is an intimate one that is usually only undertaken with family and friends—not the recently-met boyfriends of family and friends. While this individual apparently wanted to be helpful, his delivery repeatedly undermined my own assertions about my body and its presentation, suggesting that his experience with his mother was more valid than my years of both professional and personal experience buying and selling bras.

My source of agitation, I believe, is best articulated through the term “mansplain.” To clarify for those unfamiliar, mansplaining is when a man “explain(s) something to someone, typically a woman, in a manner regarded condescending or patronizing.” This portmanteau gained popular usage after Rebecca Solnit wrote an essay for the Los Angeles Times outlining instances where “Men Who Explain Things” went to great lengths to incorrectly explain information to her upon which she had written well-received books. According to Solnit, some men seem to assume they hold more knowledge than women because of (likely unconscious) gender biases. Mansplaining underscores for women that their knowledge of the world is suspect for no other reason than because they are women.

Perhaps complicating my personal experience was the fact that my mansplainer was gay. Actress Rose McGowan recently caused a stir when she asserted during a podcast interview that “gay men are as misogynistic as straight men, if not more so.” While I would never argue that gay men hold the same cultural privileges as straight men (they definitely don’t), my exchange with this particular individual demonstrated to me that gay men can indeed be guilty of wielding male privilege to the disadvantage of their female counterparts. Tim Murphy’s thoughtful piece for New York Magazine in response to McGowan’s comments considers the complicated relationship that gay men often have with women, whether through their drag performances or friendships. And, while rightly critiquing McGowan’s assertion for its homogenizing effect and lack of recognition for the supportive relationships often shared between gay men and straight women, he also observed that “Gay men are men…And as men, we carry male privilege. If we’re white and well-educated, we carry a lot of privilege.” Because the subject of my story was a man, he assumed my knowledge to be less than his own. And because this man was gay, he assumed an understanding of and access to my body that had not been established. Being gay and being male does not a boob expert make. Until you’ve worked for years navigating the absolutely bizarre brazier world both personally and professionally, get your hands off my breasts.

Melissa Welshans is a PhD Candidate in English at Syracuse University and is currently working on her dissertation The Many Types of Marriage: Gender, Marriage and Biblical Typology in Early Modern England. Melissa’s research is concerned with issues of gender and sexuality in early modern England, especially as it pertains to the institution of marriage. In her free time Melissa practices her nail art skills and snuggles with her husband and their two cats. 

The post Get your Hands off my Boobs: Mansplaining and (Gay) Male Privilege appeared first on Broadly Textual Pub.

When I finally left the Folger, the march had finished and individuals were making their way out of DC. Yet what remained in their wake was the trash. Heaped in garbage bins up and down the streets were mounds of signs, flyers, stickers and other protest paraphernalia from that day’s rally.  I first encountered the one below on the corner of 2^nd and C street, SE, a block away from Independence Avenue. As I continued making my way to the Capitol South Metro stop, I came upon a large, discarded mass of signs apparently left by protestors afraid or unwilling to take them into the Metro station. There, gleaming under the setting winter sun, they lay discarded. As I made my decent down the escalator, I could see signs and flyers littered across the tiled floor, soaked in snow and mud from the previous day’s snowstorm; an overall-clad metro employee worked diligently to pick up the signs and place them in an already overflowing trash can.

I am positive that the amount of trash left by this protest is not unique.  In fact, the conservative internet was abuzz with critiques of similar trash heaps left behind by climate protesters in New York City in September. Those critiques highlight the apparent hypocrisy of a protest which championed environmental stewardship, yet left masses of trash in its wake.  Upon seeing the litter left by those attending the March for Life, I was taken aback by a similar sense of hypocrisy. A mere two weeks before the protest, Pope Francis had delivered his New Year’s Address to the Vatican Diplomatic Corps which included, among other things, a critique of “the throwaway culture.” This culture, wherein individuals frequently throw away “food and despensible objects” with impunity, upholds the value system that encourages women to discard unborn fetuses like food waste, the Pope claimed.

In this same address, the Pope also noted that “the greedy exploitation of environmental resources” is also a “threat to peace,” and that Catholics are called to pursue “policies respectful of this earth which is our common home.” In his New Year’s address Pope Francis called for an end to a culture of excessive trash and an increase in environmental activism. On that January day, I could not help but read the streets around me, littered with the snow-soaked signage of that day’s protest, as symbolic of the contradiction between the protestors’ message and its aftermath. If the individuals present were protesting the “throwaway culture” that can lead to abortions, they were doing so in a way that no doubt provided local landfills with an influx of trash.

The current protestors in Hong Kong have been praised, among other things, for their demonstration of environmental stewardship. As one protestor told the New York Times, “In this protest, we want to show our citizenship and our will to have a democratic government. Although this cleanup is a small thing, it is something that shows the values that all Hong Kong citizens should have.” For demonstrators in Hong Kong, their commitment to reducing conspicuous waste underscores their activist commitments; they see the connection between environmental rights and human rights.

Whatever the protest, it is worth considering the message conveyed by protest paraphernalia both during the active protests and after. The trash left by those marching against global warming in effect fueled the right’s criticism of the movement. Similarly, I could not take seriously a march that championed the sacredness of life, yet seemed to care so little for the planet on which future lives will live—or the lives of those who would spend over-time hours restoring the city to its pre-march condition.  Yes, posters and signs are an effective means of communicating a message at a particular moment in time. But it behooves us to consider where those signs end up when we are done.

Melissa Welshans is a PhD Candidate in English at Syracuse University and is currently working on her dissertation The Many Types of Marriage: Gender, Marriage and Biblical Typology in Early Modern England. Melissa’s research is concerned with issues of gender and sexuality in early modern England, especially as it pertains to the institution of marriage. In her free time Melissa practices her nail art skills and snuggles with her husband and their two cats. 

The post Leave your Message, not your Trash appeared first on Broadly Textual Pub.

For my first post I thought I would share a (very) condensed version of a paper I presented at Syracuse’s annual Future Professoriate Program Conference in Spring 2013. Last year, a colleague of mine (and, full disclosure, editor of this blog) organized a panel on “embodied pedagogy” and invited me and a fellow colleague to participate. I had never deeply considered the term “embodied pedagogy” before, yet a recent course evaluation had me questioning my physical presence in my classroom and its relationship to my pedagogical strategies. On an evaluation for my British Literature survey course, a student responded to a prompt to “comment on the quality of instruction in this course” with this remark: “She reminds me of Lena Dunham if she were a professor (This is a huge compliment).”

What was I to make of this?

Given my own research interests, I often discuss topics related to feminism and gender within my courses, possibly linking me with the self-proclaimed feminist Dunham.(For one of many examples of her discussing her feminism, you can read excerpts of her interview with NPR’s Terry Gross.) Yet I could not shake the feeling that, along with the contents of my course, my very body was enabling this comparison.

For in addition to her feminism, Dunham is also often discussed in terms of her physical appearance. A brief scandal erupted when New York Times writer Ruth La Ferla commented on Dunham’s “pulchritude” (a word associated with fatness) in relation to Dunham’s appearance at the 2013 Emmy awards, and it is perhaps no surprise that the artist’s rendition of this very photo which recently appeared above a critical essay of Dunham seems to exaggerate, among other features, her weight:

Dunham herself has suggested that one of the most positive aspects of her show Girls is its refusal to hide the bodies of “women who are not a size 0” or restrict them to weight-loss driven plotlines . Dunham’s feminism is linked, for many critics, reviewers, and fans, directly to her body and her refusal to cover it up.

Like Dunham, I am frank about my feminism. And, like Dunham, I occupy a body that does not easily fit into the Western ideal of beauty. What caused my student to compare me to Dunham, I believe, is best described by the scholar Kathleen Rowe in her book The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter (1995)

Taking Roseanne Barr (among others) as a primary example, Rowe argues that women who refuse to bend to the will of patriarchy are ‘unruly.’ Specifically for Rowe, an unruly woman is characterized by her inability or unwillingness “to confine herself to her proper place.” She is often “excessive or fat, suggesting her unwillingness or inability to control her physical appetites,” speaks in an excessive “quantity, content or tone” and “makes jokes, or laughs herself.”  Her behavior might even be “associated with looseness and occasionally whorishness” and she is often perceived as a woman on the margins of polite society. I would argue that Lena Dunham, like the subjects of Rowe’s book, challenges patriarchal authority through her unruly behavior. Indeed, the recent outrage over some of her admissions regarding previous sexual experiences in her memoir Not that Kind of Girl underscore my point.

Now what does this all have to do with “embodied pedagogy?” From the tone of my voice and gesticulations to my dress size, my body’s unwillingness to be bound by patriarchal norms of femininity underscores the feminist commitments of my pedagogy. My insistence on voicing feminist challenges to patriarchy, particularly in a potentially unlikely class like a British Literature Survey implicitly codes my pedagogy as unruly for it refuses to limit conversations about gender to sanctioned academic spaces such as our Women’s and Gender Studies Program. Coupled with my occupation of a fat body, I signal as excessive and uncontained. By being a loud, large, female graduate TA who espouses explicit feminist concerns, I embody my feminist pedagogy. Thanks to Kathleen Rowe, I have a lens through which I might understand this at first perplexing, but now flattering, student response.

Melissa Welshans is a PhD Candidate in English at Syracuse University and is currently working on her dissertation The Many Types of Marriage: Gender, Marriage and Biblical Typology in Early Modern England. Melissa’s research is concerned with issues of gender and sexuality in early modern England, especially as it pertains to the institution of marriage. In her free time Melissa practices her nail art skills and snuggles with her husband and their two cats. 

The post Unruly Instruction: Pedagogy, Feminism, and the Unruly Woman appeared first on Broadly Textual Pub.