More Thoughts on Academia

I sent out graduation announcements today finally. Spent about $6 on postage sending a stack domestically, two to Canada (for my mum's side of the family), and one to Japan (my former host family). I included a note in the one to my host family because they don't speak English and I also wanted to let them know that I'm going to be back in Japan soon. I'm definitely visiting them ASAP because they're wonderful. My homestay experience was awesome.

Anyway, I've been totally finished since Tuesday, when my final paper for Apocalyptic Lit was due, so now I have more free time than I know what to do with. It's kind of weird. So I've been thinking about my college experience and, because I'm a list-y person, I'm going to mention the classes that have been the most influential (or just the best). Not going to do a bunch of explanation, but over the course of the last four years I took 30 classes on the Willamette campus and three at TIU. A couple of them sucked (I'm looking at you, intro to literary theory, AKA hell on earth), but some were fantastic.

So, without further ado, my top 5 Willamette courses. In no particular order.

1. Japanese. [All of them, but particularly during JSP and with Fujiwara-sensei]
2. Literature and Sexuality.
3. Shakespeare: The Comedies.
4. Avant Garde as Critical Tradition. [This was a film studies course, if you can't tell]
5. History, Sexuality & Power.

And then there were the classes at the other end of the spectrum. Like the aforementioned lit theory. It was English 202 and the nightmare of my English career. It serves a valuable function because it's the class that, as the name suggests, introduces all potential English majors to the theorists who will stalk you for the rest of your time in the discipline. It was in lit theory that I first read Derrida, Saussure, Lacan, de Man, Butler... it was the kind of course that covered a lot very quickly, so we'd be better prepared to read this stuff later. I've actually got my lit theory book with me and I know most of these names now. Clearly, I learned something here.

I do have to say, though, literary criticism/philosophy is frustratingly male-dominated. There are 47 essays in this book and only 12 of them are by women. All but two of those are feminist theory. So this book, which is widely considered an excellent intro to lit theory, only recognises two women who write about something other than gender. One of them is bell hooks with an essay called "Postmodern Blackness" and the other is Martha Nussbaum with something about literature and philosophy. I'm not knocking feminist and gender theory at all (I'm really into it, myself), but the fact that only two women managed to make it into this book with something else is pathetic.

There's also no queer theory. The Foucault they picked is about structuralism, they have Butler's feminist theory, and they left out Eve Sedgwick and Adrienne Rich (not to mention other, less well-known, theorists) entirely. I need to stop looking at this book, it's starting to annoy me.

So, on that note, I think I'm going to call it a blog entry. I want to go sell a book back and if I don't get moving I'll never get around to it.