English Department News

Faculty

Professor Cheri Buck-Perry: What’s in a Metaphor?

By

Way back in mid-February–before toilet paper started flying off the shelves, we all started mask-wearing, and graduating students tuned in to a virtual commencement ceremony–15 new members were inducted into UP’s Sigma Tau Delta Honor Society. Though it’s hard to imagine now, students and faculty from the English Department gathered to share a meal and celebrate their love of literature with one another. Near the evening’s end, those in attendance also had the pleasure of hearing keynote speaker Professor Cheri Buck-Perry’s closing remarks.

Professor Buck-Perry is well-known throughout the English Department and all of UP for constructing innovate, hybrid courses in the core curriculum, especially courses which aim to explore the rich intersection between academic disciplines. It is not surprising, then, that her keynote speech investigates the metaphor: what it means, its connective power, and its pervasiveness in our lives.

So, whether you’re still on The Bluff or are quarantining elsewhere, please enjoy reading Professor Buck-Perry’s words from that evening (below):

Good Evening!

It’s a treat to address a room full of literature lovers. Most often when I’m in front of a group at UP I’m attempting to convince students, in majors other than English, that they really do want to read that 300-page novel or those finely designed poems. So, I want to take advantage of this opportunity to celebrate—celebrate your accomplishments, and to celebrate one small aspect of language that I hold dear and that will hopefully resonate with you as well. The next few minutes then will be about raising a glass, exclaiming “Whoop! Whoop!” as we say in my house when we have something to celebrate, and skipping around the room as we delight in the power of language to shape existence.

Specifically, which aspect of language might inspire skipping around a room, you might ask? For me, metaphor, or comparative constructions and the sort of thinking they entail. (You should know that I’m using the term “metaphor” very broadly to include a host of comparative constructions such as simile and personification)

We’re all familiar with metaphors, of course, as devices to describe one thing in terms of another as Mary Oliver does when she sees ocean waves in winter “gush pearls from their snowy throats.” But metaphoric constructions are much more than descriptors. At times, metaphors offer mini-stories within stories. In other instances, metaphors are tiny instruments for seeing, encouraging us to find “similarity in the dissimilar” (as Aristotle noted in the Poetics). In these instances, metaphors become a mode of comprehension—our minds scurry back and forth between two conceptual spheres and carry bit of each world into the other. The word’s history demonstrates this transference—in Greek, metaphor means to “bear” or “carry over.”

And while we appreciate these morsels in literature, cognitive linguists know our everyday language is soaked with metaphor. James Geary, author of I is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor, tells us we “utter about one metaphor for every ten to twenty-five words, or about six metaphors a minute” (a shockingly high number). For the most part, we unconsciously
employ these “conventional” or “dead” constructions, as linguists label them, until savvy word artists shake us awake with their “imaginative” or “live” creations.

Overall, these tiny language morsels are demonstrative of what word artists are capable of—crisp, garden-fresh ways of perceiving, and consequently, innovative ways of relating to the world around us.

I’ve long been a fan of metaphor in literature, but as the parents in the room will agree, having a child expands and reframes what you already think you know. Thanks to my son Nikolai, I’ve gained another set of ears to hear the everyday, extraordinary world. Children are naturals at figurative thinking. They personify as they wave and shout “goodbye swings!” when
leaving a playground, as if the metal contraption were a dear friend. They notice that the letter “A” is a tent, or that clusters of white blossoms on trees in the springtime look like popcorn, or see that a bagel half sliced in two emerges as a butterfly.

Even now, as an adult, my basketball loving son has kept me attuned to everyday metaphorical music. Attending his games gives me the pleasure of seeing him excel at a sport he loves and the chance to savor basketball lingo. Players zoom from “coast to coast,” or shoot from “downtown,” or they “make it rain.” A few years ago, Nikolai and I were watching the Portland Trailblazers win a tough game and the commentator noted the remarkable ability of Damian Lillard (star Blazer player) to remain composed under pressure. He said Damian was as “cool as the other side of the pillow.”

Storytellers, poets, and basketball commentators are individuals who haven’t, thankfully, outgrown the ability to see the world creatively, and they’ve given us works full of delicious comparative constructions. I’ve brought along a few, yes, only a few of my literary favorites to celebrate.

The first examples come from William Faulkner’s classic short work “A Rose for Emily.” Late in the story the narrator describes the mourners that attend Emily’s funeral, including “the very old men . . . on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs . . . confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches.”

Time is a slippery concept—often conventionally pictured as a commodity such as money. We know we need to “budget” our time, and not “waste” it by “spending” precious minutes on activities that are not “worth” our “investment.” Faulkner’s passage first presents a metaphor that describes time as a “diminishing road”—not currency, but still an image that constrains it to units, a linear succession of moments. The second metaphor, however, presents a scene I can’t forget—time as a “huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches.” While the second comparison contains a mild “dig” at the old who are confused, I think Faulkner, is offering up something fresh, something else to try on. I like the idea of time pooling in an open space; my imagination ignores what Faulkner likely had in mind and invites me into a green subalpine meadow near Mt. Rainier ringed with fir, scattered with huckleberry and lupine. I tire of thinking about time in terms of units, divisions, and Faulkner’s metaphor gives me a new means to experience this abstraction; he gives me the freedom to wander eras and instants in a meadow.

The poet H.D. also immediately comes to mind when I consider my favorite literary metaphors. Published in 1914, her poem “Oread” serves readers a singular experience. (Dr. Larsen kindly included the small piece on the handout. It’s nice to refer to). Oread, a mountain nymph, is the poem’s speaker:

Whirl up, sea—
Whirl your pointed pines,
Splash your great pines
On our rocks,
Hurl your green over us—
Cover us with your pools of fir.

I imagine Oread, (or all of us, if we step into her shoes and take up this script), standing on a rocky outcropping facing the immense ocean, her (or our) command booming into the wind—“Whirl up sea/ Whirl your pointed pines/Splash your great pines”—wait, what? The sea doesn’t have pines. Yes, on some days the sea might look gray-green, but how will it splash up and cover the forest behind us with “pools of fir”? We must swivel around to look behind us at the hillsides blanketed in Douglas Fir rippling in the wind like a body of water. Which way should we imaginatively face? Towards the water? The forest?

Generally, cognitive linguists refer to the two domains in a metaphoric construction as the “target” and the “source”—the intended subject and the object from which attributes are “sourced.” In H.D.’s poem, the speaker addresses the sea in terms of the forest, but the conceptual spheres are so close that one can’t maintain ascendance; the two spheres of reference overlap, ooze into one another, fuse. Or, to put it another way, we as the speakers of the poem are invited on our rocky outcropping to take it all in, to expand our scope of vision to see the pointed tips of the waves as pines, the watery undulation of the firs on the hillside, and to marvel at the interconnectedness of the whole scene.

Perhaps these language constructions have come to mean so much to me because they are emblematic of my own life experience. Like so many of us, really, I am, or have been a resident of multiple, dissimilar domains—physical environments, cultural traditions, ways of thinking, religious and secular spheres, and more. For example, I was born and raised in the
startlingly bright Colorado sunshine and thin high elevation air, a landscape dominated by a blue dome where the Rockies gnaw at its edge. Now, I’ve taken root in the Northwest where the air is moist, heavy, a presence to lean against; giant trees crowd the sight lines to gray sky, and I’ve become a passionate lover of moss. I grew up in a conservative culture that when not working still embraced doing—my childhood home was filled with footballs, bats, gloves, snow boots, sleds, skis, but not books. Now I spend my days conversing with texts, living inside stories, savoring individual words, discussing ideas with students and colleagues in a university dedicated to intellectual doing.

I come from a family of Nebraska and Iowa farmers, mechanics, truck drivers, and one accountant. Only one of my parents obtained a college degree and my father paid for his own education, mostly by roofing—exhausting work that involved carrying roofing tiles up ladders and installing them in the summer sun. After acquiring that dearly bought college degree, he landed an entry-level position in the accounting department of a large Denver hospital and then climbed a corporate ladder to an administrative career that afforded him the luxury of paying for his daughter’s college education. So, you can imagine his skepticism when I told him I wanted to pursue a graduate degree in English.

One conversation we had remains lodged in my memory. I’d recently finished a Medieval literature course which included studying Beowulf in both the Old English and in translation. He asked, in his kind and gentle way, why it was important to study such works. He wanted to know what practical value to attach to old texts. Remember, for him, education was a means to a specific end—higher education meant learning a set of skills that could take a person from the roofing crew to the executive suite. I don’t remember how I answered, what words I strung together, only the ache of not being able to adequately explain or transmit my enthusiasm and wonder.

Now, many years later, I might be able to give a more articulate answer to my father’s question, and it would likely pertain to the beautiful metaphoric compounds, called kennings, that permeate Beowulf. Kennings, or metaphorical expressions such as “whale-road” for the ocean, “ring-giver” rather than king, or “storm of swords” to capture the terror of battle, give listeners a rich, aesthetic experience.

More importantly, works that are alive with creative, imaginative comparisons like Beowulf, are precious because of what they ask our minds to do—repeatedly stretch to different domains or spheres, then connect them. These constructions ask our mental muscles to negotiate tension; to extend an imaginative bridge between things that are alike and unlike, and
then travel that span to take in the new view.

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, authors of the book Metaphors We Live By, liken this imaginative bridge building ability to a primary sense. They write:

Metaphors are not merely things to be seen beyond. In fact, one can see beyond them only by using other metaphors. It is as though the ability to comprehend experience through metaphor were a sense, like seeing or touching or hearing, with metaphors providing the only ways to perceive and experience much of the world. Metaphor is as much a part of our functioning as our sense of touch, and as precious.

In other words, the study of literature and metaphors has mattered to me, specifically, practically, because it has given me the intellectual equipment to link the dissimilar spheres that make up my world. Practicing metaphoric thinking over the years has helped me develop, in the words of Anthony Doerr, a “muscular and nimble imagination” for bridge building, and I’ve gained a “precious new sense” for living. Studying literature has shown me a way to embrace and create my life, to quilt together all the disparate pieces into meaningful patterns.

That’s something to celebrate. So, a toast, a celebratory cheer, a “Whoop! Whoop!” to you, and to developing “compound” ways of thinking and being in a world that so desperately needs bridges instead of barriers.
Thank you!

By Cheri Buck-Perry

New Year, New Home: English Faculty Make the Move to DB Hall

By

How the English Department is adjusting to life in the newest building on campus

Dundon-Berchtold Hall opened its doors to students this week and held its first classes on Monday, finally fulfilling the demand for additional classroom space to meet the needs of the growing student population. Crews have been working through the summer to get the new building ready for classes this year, and thanks to their hard work, Dundon-Berchtold, or “DB” hall is officially open. Made possible by a donation from Amy Dundon-Berchtold and 1963 alumnus Jim Berchtold, the space provides 63,000 square feet of new classrooms, student lounges, conference rooms, and a lecture hall dedicated to the late author and long-time editor of UP’s Portland Magazine, Brian Doyle.

Dr. Hiro and Dr. Hersh show off their matching first-day-of-school outfits in the new English Department hallway

But the most exciting part of the new building for English faculty is the office space. On Thursday, August 15th, professors and staff made the move from the third floor of Buckley Center to the first floor of Dundon-Berchtold, bringing with them office supplies, furniture, art, boxes of files, personal knick knacks, and lots and LOTS of books. While they are getting used to everything from the fancy thermostat to the new view outside their windows, one of the most significant differences between the Buckley Center and DB Hall has been the amount of students who pass by their offices on their way to and from class. Once tucked away up three flights of stairs and a far distance from classroom space, the English hallway is now livelier than ever with the bustle of students who, the professors hope, will use this accessibility to visit their English professors’ office hours more often.

Dr. Hersh’s new office wins the prize for ‘most colorful’

The staff is also excited about the height of the building’s walls and the “Hogwartsian aesthetic” of the space. Visiting for the first time, I could not help but be struck by the tall ceilings and vast amount of extra space in the new offices compared to the ones left behind in Buckley Center. Professors are also excited about the open layout of the classrooms, which, combined with the new technology, will make them especially conducive for working in groups. This will be a big plus for their classes, they predict, because of the significant role that peer-to-peer discussion plays in English courses. Additionally, these spaces will help cultivate the teamwork skills in students that employers value so much in the modern professional environment. Classrooms and offices aside, DB hall is jam-packed with other amenities for faculty and staff, like a brand-new, full-size kitchen in which to store and prepare meals. Students seem particularly taken with the building’s fancy bathrooms. Scroll down for a peek of the new digs!

The first floor student lounge is already a popular hang out spot
The shared faculty kitchen (already stocked with desserts)
Rheannon Van de Voorde, our new Office Manager for the Departments of English and International Languages & Cultures, sets up shop in DB 103
Dr. Swidzinski settles into his new office
A sunny second floor study space equipped with televisions to make group work easier than ever
Books, books, and more books, pictured here already impeccably organized by genre, author, and usability by Dr. Swidzinki

Wondering where your professor is? Here’s a list of the new office numbers for the English Department faculty:

  • Cara Hersh – Room 105
  • John McDonald – Room 106
  • Sarah Weiger – Room 107
  • Cheri Buck-Perry – Room 108
  • Patrick Hannon – Room 109
  • Genevieve Brassard – Room 110
  • Joshua Swidzinski – Room 111
  • Molly Hiro – Room 112
  • Lars Larson (chair) – Room 114

What do you think of the new building? Leave your questions and comments below!

The English Major: Embracing Wonder and “Why?”

By

As our resident medievalist,  Dr. Cara Hersh  helps animate older texts for newer audiences, persuading contemporary students to take a closer look at the simultaneously age-old and currently relevant insights distilled in some of her favorite works. She enables thought expansion and rhetorical rabbit holes through her job, and opts for an English department mindset while outside of the classroom. 

Hersh’s keynote speech from the Sigma Tau Delta induction ceremony this past Monday, March 25th, urges English students and faculty to use our reading brains to the best of our abilities, believing our skills help us see the world in an empathetic state of wonder. No, this isn’t a plug for the hit OPB radio show, but a call to arms for the disenchanted. Her brand of teaching and seeing the world rests in a commitment to details and consideration; it functions as a tool for learning across space and time. She shows her students how to pause and ask more profound questions, even if they begin with a simple “Why?.” Dr. Hersh dignifies the power of language in a contagious way. I genuinely enjoyed charting sentences in her “Otherness” class, and cannot recall another time when I was shown how to appreciate the sum of a work’s parts in conjunction with its wholeness. In effort to wholly approach the world, Hersh asks us to remember how literature captivates us and sharpens our abilities to look at things from left-field. Read her keynote speech below for a dose of inspiration and that contagious magic she brings to her courses. 

The Wonder of Wonder 

Dr. Cara Hersh 

Most of you, at some point in your college career, have probably had to answer to the now cliched question—why did you want to become an English major?  And—what are you going to do with an English major?   As the sole humanist in a scientifically minded family and as a Jewish humanist who spends her time studying medieval Catholic texts I have gotten my fair share of questions over the years. It’s taken me awhile to answer these questions with substance, and I don’t have just one satisfying answer to them.  Today, though, I’d like to try to respond to these questions and share with you all one answer that has felt particularly compelling to me in recent years.  To those who wonder about my ostensibly esoteric career path commit I reply:  I immerse myself in this pursuit, and take immense pleasure in doing so, because of wonder itself.   

In the last five years or so I have come to really appreciate how wonder, for me, is one answer to the  question “what’s so great about literature?”  We might assume that wonder is a trans-historical affect—haven’t all humans wondered about something in their world?  Wondering about wonder from the perspectives of both a parent and a medievalist have led me, however, to realize that wonder is historical.  It seems to me that wonder is not some timeless emotion like love, jealousy, or anger, that supposedly transcends all time periods.  Instead, wonder diminishes over time and it must, I suggest, be reinvigorated through deliberate strategies that involve fiction—in our own lives, in our reading, and when we learn from one another in our literature classrooms. 

I became hyper-aware of wonder when my son turned four and I was answering a lot of “why?” questions. I loved these moments of wonder and wrote down a lot of them:  why can’t dogs go to restaurants?  Why don’t flashlights flash?  Why are there boys and girls?  Why doesn’t food go down your airtube (and I’ll add that approximately 99 percent of the questions I answered at that point involved the gastrointestinal track)?  Constantly answering questions such as these (often times thanks to the assistance of Google) made me extremely aware of the strength of wonder in the young—I once wrote down all the “why” questions my son asked me over one fifteen-minute breakfast and had about two pages worth of questions. 

It also made me cognizant of how little we all wonder as we get older.  I am guilty of this decrease in curiosity, as are we all.  I want to ask as many “why”questions as my son does, but I don’t.  In class, I want my students to bombard with me with “why” questions, but that doesn’t always happen.  William Wordsworth speaks to this diminishment in the poem, “My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold A Rainbow in the Sky” as he points out the universal decline in geeking out about phenomena such as rainbows in our adult years. 

So, here’s where my medievalist perspective comes in.  Just as we are more apt to wonder as children, so too, I argue, were medieval subjects more prone to wonder than we are.  Just as adults wonder less, so, too does the modern world.  The Middle Ages more emphatically embraced phenomena that compel wonder—think about the medieval belief in miracles, marvels, and monsters, for example.  We tend today to look negatively on these magical moments of wonder and, according to the modern narrative of disenchantment, the Middle Ages was a time of superstition and ignorance (of “enchantment” in pejorative sense). These crazy beliefs, we tell ourselves today, were replaced during the Enlightenment with rationality, secularism, and individualism, which disenchanted the world (in a positive sense).  As Max Weber states of the disenchanted period in which we now live “one can, in principle master all things by calculation”—we tell ourselves that we can understand the world around us better because of disenchantment. 

Of course, the Enlightenment brought about many amazing things and rationality is an incredibly productive impulse in our modern world.  Science, engineering, and mathematics have benefited and will continue to benefit so many of our lives.  But so can wonder.  We need to cultivate wonder in our collective and individual histories.  

So what can we, and do we, wonder about it?  How is wonder still available to us?  One thing that has stayed consistent since the medieval period is the types of events and phenomena that provoke us to wonder.  We wonder, I suggest, at things that we can’t quite incorporate or encompass in our preset mental categories of how the world is ordered.  We wonder at mystery, at paradox, at hybridity.  In the Catholic medieval tradition this would have included the hybridity of god and man, of mother and virgin, etc. What do you wonder about?  When I have asked students like you to share what causes them to stop and wonder they point to similar moments of hybridity or paradox.  They wonder at recent research that shows that trees can communicate with each other, that machines can do all the amazing things they can do (think Artificial Intelligence), or about the complexity and mysteries of our own human minds.   

Literature, is of course, the perfect instrument of wonder.  Think about poetry—poets, freed from the constraints of plot, can constantly surprise, delight, and invoke wonder by mashing incongruous ideas, words, and sounds together.  We can wonder at the miracle that the Beowulf poet—who wrote from a position of not being able to imagine in any way a 21st-century readership, can still communicate with us and provoke us. We can wonder at the magic of written language—essentially black squiggles on a page, communicating across time and space.  We can wonder at the magic of watching a play or a scary movie and being genuinely scared about something that we also know is not real. 

Ok, so what can wonder offer us—why wonder?  I propose that wonder offers us an ethical system—one that is incredibly compelling to me. First, wonder is non-appropriative.  When one wonders about something, one does not try to master it like one does when being rational, but rather is bowled over by its awesomeness, indecipherability, or paradoxical nature.  Some of my favorite descriptions of what wonder is includes Iris Murdoch’s claim that wonder promotes a “unselfing,” Simone Weil refers to the wonder response as a “radical decentering” and Elaine Scarry claims that wonder can make us a feel an “opiated adjacency”—in other words we are sidelined when we feel wonder but it is a pleasurable sidelining.  As the medieval writer Bernard of Clairveaux analogized, wonder is like a golden goblet filled with liquid—we can consume what is in the goblet and understand part of it, but we eventually give back the goblet itself—we can’t master all of it.  This ethos of ceding control, I argue, can be incredibly ethical as we may shift our relationship to nature, animals, and other humans. Instead of solely trying to control the world around us we should also passively wonder at its awesomeness.  

Second, and this is my favorite ethical argument about wonder— wonder is a system based on joy and this joy stimulates generosity.  For a long time, when people asked me why I spend my life studying literature I answered “ empathy.” I believed (and still believe, of course) that literature allows us to enter into the minds of others and invites us to avoid harm to others because we imagine what it would be like to be in their shoes. However, in some ways, this answer centers on a concept of suffering rather than joy.  Conversely, ethical arguments for wonder rest on the feeling of happiness.  Provocatively, the Latin words consistently used for wonder in the Renaissance period, admiratio, mirabilia, and miracula all “seem to have their roots in an Indo-European word for smile.”  Wondering at things excites us, invigorates us, makes us smile.  And as one scholar on this subject writes, “One must be enamored with existence and occasionally even enchanted in the face of it in order to be capable of donating some of one’s scarce mortal resources to the service of others.” Wonder makes us take joy in the world around us and then compels us to take better care of it.   

For all these reasons, I hope to reverse the timeline of our personal and world histories and advocate for emotional wonder alongside rationality and calculation both in my classrooms and my own life.  I invite you, too, to ask those childlike “why” questions and to embrace the mysterious, magical, enchanted and wonder-full qualities of books.  

 

Favorite Reads of 2018

By

The turbulent year of 2018 is finally coming to a close!

As we journey into winter break, the English Department wants to offer a few book recommendations for you to peruse on the plane and curl up with on the couch. Get ready to update your Goodreads page!

Professor Spotlight: Elyse Fenton

By

Elyse FentonLast November, Elyse Fenton came to University of Portland to read from her wildly acclaimed poetry book Clamor. Her collection caught literary fire after she was not only the first American author to win the University of Wales’ Dylan Thomas Prize, but also the first poet. She’s been interviewed on NPR and BBC. After her reading at the University of Portland Bookstore, she was offered an adjunct position for Fall 2016 teaching the poetry workshop class offered every other year.

Sitting down next to me at the Pilot House, Professor Fenton smiled and explained she was going to go running after our interview, hence her jogging attire. I asked how her Halloween went. “Great,” she replied, “I went as ‘bigly,’ a play on how Donald Trump says ‘big league.’”

Her experience teaching here has been unique, she said. “UP students are the most enthusiastic group of students I’ve taught. They’re willing to try new things and get out of their comfort zones.” As one of these students, I take that as a great compliment.

After living in Massachusetts, Texas, and even Mongolia, Fenton chose Portland to settle down with her family. But just because she’s a transplant doesn’t mean that she isn’t familiar with West Coast antics; she got her B.A. from Reed College and her M.F.A. from the University of Oregon.

Fenton is not only a writer, mother, and professor, but also a high school career counselor. All these identities make for one great resource for students pursuing a writing career but don’t know where to start. I picked her brain for advice and she said what every other teacher has been saying since I can remember: read and write. “Writing is a spectrum, not a vacuum. Be influenced!” She also said that writing only ever gets done when you schedule it. “Prioritize your writing life. Call yourself a writer. Believe in your work enough to put it out there.” Fenton says she balances seasons of writing with periods of PR work, an important aspect if you want to be published. “I accept that I won’t get as much writing done in the summer and use that time to edit and publish.”

 Fenton’s second book of poetry, Sweet Insurgent, is scheduled to come out early next year, so keep your eyes peeled. And after gaining significant recognition in the poetry world, Fenton is now moving on to a new project: her first novel. Fenton said that switching genres can give an author perspective about their past, present, and future work. It also allows her to access different languages and ways of writing. Because she received help with Clamor from critics and peers, she categorizes this first work as a “typical” writing process. She decided to go about her second literary work differently, working on her new novel alone. But she doesn’t forget the help she’s received, saying, “I still keep those voices in my head.”

Professor Fenton is invaluable to the University of Portland community, and we’re extremely lucky that she shares her insights and experience. Her current poetry workshop class, ENG 306, is dynamic, fun, and creative. Her laid-back persona encourages a comfortable environment for deep conversations and writing workshops, a difficult task that seems natural to her.

Check out Fenton’s website for more information about her and her work.

Lunch Table Preview: Swidzinski and Buck-Perry

By

Swidzinski & Buck-Perry

This Thursday, October 27 is our next English Lunch Table!  Be quick to RSVP and score a free lunch and riveting conversation with Professor Swidzinski and Professor Buck-Perry.

I sat down with Swidzinski and Buck-Perry to get a preview of possible discussion for Thursday: Who are they really? What are they reading? What’s up with the Shakespeare authorship conspiracy? What’s the best Bowl at The Commons?

What do students need to know about you, especially if they’ve never had a class with you?
Swidzinski: “I’m the resident poetry person… I don’t have a favorite… but on this day at this hour it’s probably Adrienne Rich, because I was rereading some Adrienne Rich poetry.”
Buck-Perry: “I guess I’m the resident generalist [for teaching ENG 112], that’s why I teach nearly everything. I know a little about a lot.”
(Editor’s Note:  You should also know, Swidzinski always has a killer shirt-sweater combo, and Buck-Perry was proclaimed “a life saver” by a grateful Bio professor who said he owes his career to her.)

What are you looking forward to sharing with students at this lunch: any good books or cool topics?
B-P: “I see this lunch more as getting to know students, not them getting to know us… I just finished The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan.”
S: “I heard that was really good!”
B-P: “Such a book of suffering.”
S: “Right now I’m reading… James Shapiro’s A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599.”
(Here we diverged on a brief tangent about the Shakespeare authorship conspiracy.)
B-P: “I want to hear about how their experience is going. I’m curious about their year.”
S: “What I like is getting a sense of where students are coming from and what they want to do and are looking forward to, not just while they’re in class.”
B-P: And what kind of questions they have. Like how we and our experience might help them.”

What’s your favorite thing to eat at The Commons?
B-P: “I like the Global. And Bowls… I’m a sucker for [the mac salad] opposite the chicken.”
(We discuss the best qualities of various Bowls. In depth.)
S: “I normally just get… I’m usually hungry. Also the department is paying for it, so… I don’t just get a sandwich, I get a plate or a bowl of something… I’ll get the lobster.”

This Lunch Table is on Thursday October 27th, 12pm. 
The first 4 students to RSVP by email to Swidzinski/Buck-Perry/Brassard will be treated to lunch by the English Department.

Honest Post-Grad Advice From Your Friendly English Professors

By

by Olivia Van Wey

It may reside in the intimate setting we create in our classes as lovers of literature or even in the nature of the content that creates a mesmerizing cohesion of the class setting, but somehow over the course of four years inseparable bonds are created between members of the English faculty and their students. These are the people who accepted us when we were first unsure of our choice of major, continuously encourage us when the inkling of an original idea comes to fruition from a classic novel, and genuinely care about our well-being. We love that they help us solve our most immediate quandary and very often leave their office hours wondering how they got to be so knowledgeable. They were once like us, in the beginning, middle, and end of their undergrad years, they graduated, and made it out okay. The big question is, how? How did they get from English undergrads to being our professors? I dared to vocalize this burning question and was not even surprised with the level of honesty they were willing to provide their students in the hope that once again they can be a pool of knowledge on which we can take some information.

Here my fellow English majors lies the holy grail of answers I am sure that you too have been wondering about in how our professors got to be in the positions they are today.

Biggest thank you to Dr. Hersh, Dr. Swidzinski, Dr. Weiger, and Dr. Larson for sharing their journeys to their doctorates and doing so in the most genuine unfiltered manner. To you do we owe our eternal gratitude for your advice and enthusiasm in expanding our minds to think critically in a conversation that started before our time.

professors

1. On the question of what they did after they finished their undergrad years…

Dr. Hersh: I worked for a Human Resources consulting firm in Washington, DC. I did this for two years and then went on to grad school.

Dr. Swidzinski: I did a one-year MA in English literature immediately following my BA. I then worked full-time for a year before deciding to apply to PhD programs.

Dr. Weiger: I spent the year after graduation teaching English as a second language to adults and children in Japan. My partner traveled with me through JET (the Japan Exchange and Teaching program). I spent the first part of my year teaching with a large, private English-teaching firm (AEON), and the second part working with a small company that specialized in teaching preschool-age children.

Dr. Larson: After college, my girlfriend had a car and I had a plan: to spend a year living with spatial mobility. Since we both loved traveling American regions, and had the skills to do office temp work, we followed through on an idea to live in four different cities across a year, and take extended road trips on the way to each. The plan was to do that for just a year, but since I did not get into any of the grad schools I applied to during that first attempt, we spent the second year staying put in San Francisco.

2. On choosing grad school and doing it when they did…

Dr. Hersh: “I wanted to work before going on to grad school. I knew that it was something that I was interested in, but also needed a break from school.  I loved being able to work 9-5 for those two interim years, but working also made me really SURE that graduate school was the right choice. I missed having to think hard about things and the general intellectual feel of literature studies.”

Dr. Swidzinski: In all honesty, I applied to PhD programs largely on a whim and without thinking through the consequences of this choice. I’d done well at the BA and MA level, I was dissatisfied with my current work, and so it seemed a natural step. I made the choice without doing much research, either into the various grad schools to which I applied or the nature of the humanities job market into which I would eventually graduate. Notwithstanding the fact that I’m now lucky enough to have a job, I’m dismayed by how little thought I put into my future at the time.

Dr. Weiger: I decided to go to grad school because I felt at home in literary studies and I knew I had a lot to learn. I felt excited about the prospect of meeting new teachers and peers, as well as testing my abilities. I actually applied to grad school while I was in Japan; that meant I spent a lot of time researching schools in smoky internet cafes and striking up friendships with the lovely ladies who worked at the local FedEx.

Dr. Larson: Grad school (PhD. in English) was my plan upon graduating.  Professors told me Masters degrees can’t take you too far in the weirdly narrow field of English, and so going for the doctorate seemed right, even though at the time the average completion time was eight years.  But I liked the thought of continuing the kinds of work and habits I’d enjoyed in undergraduate years — grad work just struck me as feeling more important than any other daily activity I could be doing.  Scholarship felt more urgent than joining the workforce, pulling in an impressive income, getting a house, or other things many of my peers were doing.  And two years working as an office temp certainly helped cement this belief in grad school’s value.  Getting in took two years: in my first attempt, I got rejected from all eleven places I applied to, but the second year I radically changed my application essay and targeted schools more carefully and ended up getting in to all six places.  Getting in involves a weird mix of strategy and luck.

3. On something you think a UP undergrad should consider when deciding if grad school is right for them…

Dr. Hersh: Graduate school is a big time/financial commitment.  You should be absolutely passionate about the discipline you have chosen.  Make sure that you don’t romanticize what it will be like.  It can be great—but it can also be frustrating, tedious, and even demoralizing at times.  You need to know that you are there for the right reasons to get through the tough times.

I also think that you need to really make sure that you are self-motivated.  Nobody in graduate school is there telling you that there are deadlines or reminding you that things are due.  You need to be really disciplined.

Do a lot of homework.  Visit different schools. Find out what their retention rate is, what their job placement rate is like, and how happy their students are.

Dr. Swidzinski: The average PhD in the humanities will take 6 or 7 years to complete. A PhD forces you to spend the majority (if not all) of your twenties with a very low income and without reliable health insurance. It doesn’t, in other words, leave you with much of a safety net in case something goes awry with your health or your housing. It presents a serious obstacle to those who wish to have children. (You may not be thinking about such things now, but the choice to go to grad school will impact life goals that you haven’t even imagined yet.)

Dr. Weiger: Given that many PhD students go on to careers that are not directly linked to their field of study (and may even be outside academia entirely), I encourage you to consider grad school only if the prospect of being a student for five to eight years — perhaps in a new part of the country or the world — excites you in itself. Do it if graduate school feels like a destination (a place you want to spend a good chunk of your life!), not a means to an end.

Dr. Larson: I have a hard time giving advice about graduate school because my experience is so limited.  Whereas graduate pursuits can take you in all kinds of directions from law to heath care to business, I only have (minimal) insight into the English Ph.D track.  But certainly UP undergrads should cultivate a solid list of reasons for committing to grad school.  The life can be a long haul, and getting through takes a certain single-mindedness.  (For example, on the English Ph.D track, only 50% decide to complete the degree; and for those who finish, during any given year, only 50% of job market candidates secure a long-term job.)  Undergraduates will hear plenty of horror stories from professors about the brutality of the job market, and they’re certainly true.  But what doesn’t get enough lip-service is the fact that this world needs more Ph.Ds — not fewer.  If a person feels that pursuing knowledge for its own sake is a valuable thing to do with several years of what will most likely be a long life, then the job-market prospects should not be the paramount concern.  Life-long learning should.  Graduate school is a fantastic place to continue the process of forging your soul.  If you can get a degree along the path of that noble task, then that’s a bonus.

4. Last minute advice for our graduating English class of 2016…

Dr. Swidzinski: Don’t go to grad school unless you can’t imagine living your life happily otherwise. If you can conceive of any way to be happy without going to grad school, you should probably pursue that path instead.

Dr. Weiger: Enjoy your post-grad time! It is very common for graduate students to begin their programs after taking some time to try out alternate careers, volunteer, explore the world, etc. Rather than worrying, then, about getting off-track, think about pursuing opportunities that seem singular, interesting, valuable, or just plain fun. And of course, you may also need to pursue a less-than-ideal position just to stay afloat. That’s o.k. too!

Dr. Larson: I’d advise graduates to remember that random forces shape so much of our identity, intellectual development, peer group, and success.  We are neither masters of our fate nor captains of our soul.  (Though isn’t it pretty to think so?)  We are beneficiaries (or unfortunates) of legacies that began many generations ago; we have brains that are hard-wired for our own self-enhancing deceptions; and we are deeply vulnerable to the attractive narratives of others.  Twenty years from now, your personality won’t be all that different from who you are today.  And much of our future success or failure will have shockingly little to do with us.  Graduation feels like a dramatic precipice, but that’s just somebody else’s narrative talking.  What we can do, then, is to think more long-term about our lives and what will still matter across that long ride; seek fresher, more original language and plots for conceiving the arc of our lives; dance with randomness more comfortably and confidently; and to enjoy our ice cream while it’s on our plate.  Grad school is far more hyper-specialized than the undergraduate experience, but it can still keep us engaged with the essential value of thinking our way through life.

 

 

 

 

An English Professor in China

By

by Jacqueline Ott

Dr. Orr and I sit in his office in BC on a strangely beautiful Friday afternoon, having a typical conversation for an English student and her professor: aka, why Don DeLillo is the greatest writer of modern times, the looming horror that is life after school (“That’s why I never left!” says Dr. Orr), and, more specific to this January day, the minute and grand details of the chance to teach American Literature in China.

016

This past Fall semester, Dr. Orr was granted by Fulbright the opportunity to teach two graduate classes in Changchun, China. “Both classes were for second year master students, looking specifically at the late 18th century and early 19th century American Literature. I also got the chance to guest lecture at five different universities in cities all across China. But besides that time teaching, I spent time working with a tutor on improving my Chinese, learning calligraphy, and taking walks. Until the temperature was below -5° that is.”

012

As any student who has had Dr. Orr in the past could tell you, there is no doubt that his students in China came out of his class with a greater understanding of, but more importantly a greater appreciation for, American Literature. The learning experience went both ways, with Dr. Orr leaving China understanding new things about both Chinese and American culture: “Teaching American Literature to non-Americans forced me to become aware of the kinds of things that I take for granted, and made me see both American culture and literature from the outside” This learning experience extended to even small details in texts, with Dr. Orr pointing out that so much of American texts feature details that one would be unable to place without a firm background in American history and culture.

037

Although this was Dr. Orr’s first opportunity to teach in China, this trip was certainly not his first experience with the country and its people. The first time Orr visited China was with his wife in 2005, after he “talked his way into a trip there with E-Scholars”. Before this trip, Orr knew very little about China and its people, but upon his arrival became increasingly interested: “China seems to me like a new planet to study. I got there and was instantly so interested in it. When I get interested in something, it’s all I want to learn about.” China became a way for Orr to learn about a world that was “not [his] culture in so many ways, but in some ways so similar”. Orr says he wants to get as close he can to understanding the Chinese culture completely, and with his study of the language, and his experiencing of the country through his travels, he is certainly on his way.

On this particular Friday afternoon, Orr loosely quoted his favorite travel writer, Paul Theroux: “I was a stranger before I was a traveler.” If you talk to Dr. Orr, about this trip or his many others, you can see this is exceedingly true.

A Preview of Fall 2015 Upper-Division English Courses

By

by Erika Murphy

Give me the splendid silent sun

with all his beams full-dazzling

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

in Just—

spring when the world is mud—

luscious the little

lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

e.e. cummings, Chansons Innocentes

 A little Madness in the Spring

Is wholesome even for the King.

Emily Dickinson, No. 1333

Here in the English department, spring means the arrival of flowers bright, sun warm, and classes new for the fall. Professors share what to expect from their courses:

Fr. Hannon on his section of ENG 311: Advanced Writing

 pen

What are some the writing skills students can expect to gain in this course?

Students will demonstrate the ability to write clear, cohesive, daring, sentences.  They will be able to write the kind of creative nonfiction that will delight the reader.  Also they will be able to use the elements of fiction to tell true stories.

What’s one of your favorite things about this course?

I love how students take risks in their thinking about writing and in their willingness to stretch themselves and even astonish themselves by going to dark and unfamiliar places.  And by dark I don’t mean sad or depressing or scary, but daring.  To me this class is about the adventure of writing and how to get to really great writing sometimes we have to have real guts to go where our thinking takes us. So maybe writing is supposed to be a little unnerving!

Anything else you’d like students to know?

To fall back on a (somewhat) tired cliché: the destination is the journey.  I love student/writers who are serious AND PLAYFUL, gutsy and appreciative of the tradition, and more than anything else, who love to stretch themselves.

***

Prof. McDonald on his section of ENG 311: Advanced Writing

What are some the writing skills students can expect to gain in this course?

Students will gain insight into their own writing process, become more aware of their own styles, and think about language critically.

What’s one of your favorite things about this course?

I get a chance to participate in the workshops with my own writing, and get writing done when we do in-class writing. I love going to class on writing days knowing I will be sitting there, thinking and writing, and possibly sharing.

What’s something you hope students will get from this course?

I hope it encourages them to get in a regular habit of writing.

Anything else you’d like students to know?

You have to share your writing with large and small groups!

 

Prof. Victoria Olivares will also be offering a section of ENG 311.

*** 

Dr. Hersh on ENG 317: Composition Theory and Practice

 writingassistants

What are some the writing, and perhaps tutoring, skills that students can expect to gain in this course?

This course provides concepts, practice, and experience to assist in the improvement of others’ writing.  We not only discuss the qualities of effective writing, but explore the best ways to inspire effective writing in others.  The class melds theory with practice as we discuss debates on how to teach writing and experiment with and hone these techniques ourselves.

What’s one of your favorite things about this course?

I love the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of the course.  Students who take English 317 come from every nook of UP’s academic world and are really invested in good writing.  We all thus work together and share best practices for teaching writing.  I learn a ton about writing myself from the students in this class!

What’s something you hope students will get from this course?

I hope that students not only benefit from the knowledge that they are teaching others how to write effectively, but are self-reflective about their own writing strategies and learn about themselves as writers from the course.

Anything else you’d like students to know? 

A majority of the students who take this course are nominated Writing Assistants, but we encourage anyone who is interested in the learning how to teach writing or edit writing to enroll in the course.

***

Newly Hired Dr. Swidzinski on ENG 325: Eighteenth Century British Literature

pamela 

What are some of the major authors/works that you will be teaching?

The 18th century invented the thing we call the novel, so we’ll spend some time studying early experiments in the form. These will include Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina, and Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, which set off a firestorm of controversy about the morality of fiction when it was first released. (Pamela was greeted by many readers as something comparable to Fifty Shades of Grey.) At the same time, the 18th century was a golden age for satire (in prose and verse), so we’ll study some of the most famous satirical writings of the period, such as Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock.

What are some of the major themes and ideas that you will be tracking?

One major theme has to do with experiments. Benjamin Franklin described his period as an ‘age of experiments’ and he meant this in the broadest of senses: not only were there scientific and political experiments, but literary and cultural ones too. So we’ll explore how this culture of experimentation gave rise to new literary forms; and, perhaps more importantly, we’ll ask how it made room for traditionally marginalized voices to write about gender, class, and race in exciting new ways.

What’s one of your favorite things about this course?

The 18th century is a beautifully messy century. No one kind of writing (novel, poetry, drama, etc.) stands apart and reigns supreme; instead, they all jostle and compete with one another, as well as with other, more ephemeral kinds of writing (essays, farces, sermons, diaries, etc. etc.). I love that the course compels us to embrace this messiness and to draw meaningful connections across vastly different genres and disciplines.

What’s something you hope students will get from this course?

I hope they’ll develop an appreciation for the rich diversity of 18th-century literature, and that they’ll discover new ways to think about the Enlightenment and its continuing (political, cultural, and literary) relevance.

Anything else you’d like students to know?

I have been known to bring cookies to class.

***

Dr. Brassard on ENG 338: European Literature in Translation

 entre

What are some of the major authors/works that you will be teaching?

The authors and texts will be among my all-time favorites, and from France, Germany, Scandinavia, and Russia primarily. Must-reads include Lafayette’s The Princess of Cleves, Laclos’s Dangerous Liaisons, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Chekhov’s stories, Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, Mann’s Death in Venice, and Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. 

What are some of the major themes and ideas that you will be tracking?

I taught a version of this course over ten years ago in graduate school, and the title was “Love, Sex, and Death in European Literature,” so you should expect gender and class to be prominent as major themes. The texts range from the 17th to the 20th Century, and involve much social and cultural change on the Continent, so we will trace such changes trans-nationally and across periods.

What’s one of your favorite things about this course?

I’m thrilled to offer this course at UP for the first time, in part because it allows me to share the “French” part of my culture and interest with students who may not be familiar with French classics. I also think these books and authors may not be typically taught in American high school and college but are well worth the time and attention. I read most of these books on my own (outside a traditional classroom setting) because they were recommended by friends or mentors, and they made a lasting impact on me, so I hope some of them at least may have a similar impact on students here.

What’s something you hope students will get from this course?

English Majors at UP have often said in the past that they wish to read literary works outside the more traditional British and American canons, so I see this new course as a direct response to past student demand and I hope students will come away with an expanded sense of what classical literature can be, beyond the Anglophone canon.

Anything else you’d like students to know?

Take this class! If you like fiction (the primary genre covered), texts with compelling and maddening characters, and authors internationally recognized as significant and timeless, you will enjoy European Literature in Translation.

*** 

Dr. Weiger on ENG 363: Environmental Literature

 walden

What are some of the major authors/works that you will be teaching?

We’ll begin in the nineteenth century with authors including William Wordsworth and John Clare, and move from those British Romantics to some American ones including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, and Henry David Thoreau. Walden (by Thoreau), will be a centering point for us, from which many of our other texts radiate. Other major authors of study will include twentieth and twenty-first century writers Rachel Carson, Michael Pollan and Wendell Berry.

What are some of the major themes and ideas that you will be tracking?

Like many writer-naturalists before us, we will allow ourselves to wander through the boundaries of our subject in an approach that opens up the various thematic, contextual, and theoretical possibilities within each text. We will consider questions including: What makes a text an example of “nature writing”? Is there a particularly “environmental” way of reading and writing? How do race, class, and gender inflect environmental literature? What does environmental literature offer us in thinking through and attempting to resolve environmental crises? These questions bear on many of the College of Arts and Sciences core questions, including: How do relationships and communities function? What is the role of beauty, imagination, and feeling? What is a good life? and, finally, What can we do about injustice and suffering?

What’s one of your favorite things about this course?

One of my favorite things about this course is that it attracts English majors as well as students from other disciplines, notably Environmental Studies. I love what happens when we put our minds together!

What’s something you hope students will get from this course?

In this course, I try to make sure that contemporary environmental writing has a strong presence, so our feature research and writing assignments incorporate current writing on the environment in major environmental publications (both print and online). My hope is that students can inhabit the roles of literary scholars, writers, and difference makers simultaneously — that they really become a part of important conversations regarding the environment. 

Anything else you’d like students to know?

Hikers, naturalists, and outdoor-enthusiasts are very welcome, but you can definitely be an indoor-type and enjoy this course!

*** 

Dr. Larson on ENG 470: City Life in American Literature

middlesex 

What are some of the major authors/works that you will be teaching?

We’ll cover American writers from the past two centuries during a time when the nation went from rural to radically urban. The best writers invented a vocabulary to articulate those cultural changes: short works by Walt Whitman, Ed Poe, Nate Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Anzia Yezierska, Frank Norris, Dorothy Parker, John Cheever, and Nathanael West usually fill the first half of the semester. Then a number of larger, more contemporary works put us in dialogue with our own times. Haven’t decided on those yet, but in past years we’ve read such works as Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex, Anna Deveare Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles, Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin, etc. Throughout, a number of theoretical texts will provide concepts to help bridge the primary works.

What are some of the major themes and ideas that you will be tracking?

The course uses our urban desires and fears to explore the politics of identity, the politics of growth, and the politics of power. In other words, we’ll be asking how cities shape who we are, who we can be, and what we can do. We’ll also expand the notion of the urban, to find how inextricable it is from other spaces like the rural or suburban.

What’s one of your favorite things about this course?

Teaching this course is one of my favorite experiences. Just as I like walking around in order to get my mind in motion, I love the spaces literature allows us to think through. Since we happen to live in a vibrant city, the course invites us to bring together our experiences with Portland(ia) — the local, the immediate, the now and here — with the worlds and words on the page. We’ll open a dialogue between our own sharp experiences/ bewilderments, and those of these gifted literary observers.

What’s something you hope students will get from this course?

Even though many of us come from rural backgrounds, the urban is now a part of us (given our current location) and will continue to influence us in the future, now that over half of our human species lives in cities. This is both good news and bad news; we’ll explore why. The course is a blend of American history, sociology, linguistic ferment, and wicked good storytelling.

Anything else you’d like students to know?

We’ll be looking at American authors and mostly American settings so as to work with a relatively familiar context. But having spent the past half year in India, and having read up on various international cities, I hope to connect our studies with the planetary dimension, so the course can inform the scale that matters most: our global urban future. Ultimately, I think we come away from a course like this better equipped with strategies to feel at home in the universe.

***

Dr. Hiro on ENG 473: African American Literature

beloved

What are some of the major authors/works that you will be teaching?

Quite a few of the African American authors we’ll read students may never have heard of–Charles Chesnutt from the late 19th century; Nella Larsen from the 1920s; Ann Petry from the 1940s. But the familiar big names will be there too–Frederick Douglass (slave narrative), Langston Hughes (poetry), and of course Toni Morrison (Beloved).

What are some of the major themes and ideas that you will be tracking?

Well, the class is quite deeply connected to American history of the period: we need to learn something about slavery while reading slave narratives; about the failures of Reconstruction when reading late 19th-century literature; about contemporary ways of framing race by the end of the class. So thinking about race relations and what it’s meant to be African American through all of these moments is a key part of the class.

What’s one of your favorite things about this course?

First, I’ll say that this is probably my favorite of all the upper-division courses I teach. There are a couple of reasons for that (beyond the simple fact that I love African American literature): one, I like the self-reflexive nature of this body of literature; African American authors are always thinking about what it means to write African American literature–what should this literature be, look like, do? Second, because it’s a 400-level class, we work on the skills involved in conceiving, drafting, and revising a research paper, and I love supporting students as they refine these skills.

What’s something you hope students will get from this course?

An admiration, even passion, for African American literature, and a more nuanced, complex, historical way of thinking about race, racial identity, and racism.

Anything else you’d like students to know?

If you’ve never taken a 400-level class before, this is a great one to begin with. I first conceived of it as a research course for first-year students, so it definitely does not presume you already know everything you need to know about doing research in English.

***

Back from India

By

by Erika Murphy

Dr. Molly Hiro is a favorite English professor at UP, married to fellow English professor Dr. Lars Larson. The two, both on sabbatical this year, won Fulbright awards to travel and teach in India. They decided to temporarily uproot their family to a country of festival-loving, vibrant-color-wearing people.

Can you share why you traveled to India?

Honestly, the choice to go to India was secondary to the choice to try to leave the U.S. The academic sabbatical offers a rare opportunity to change your perspective radically by occupying unfamiliar geographic space (if you can make the finances and housing and all work out). I really wanted a break from my familiar, taken-for-granted surroundings, especially because I never studied abroad as a college student (apart from a brief summer program in France). When it came time to specify where to go, India stood out as a nice combination of accessible (because English is so broadly spoken and the people are famously welcoming) and remote (in terms of mere distance, as well as culture and religion).

What are some of the most surprising things you experienced?

One of the most surprising parts of my family’s experience (I went to India with my husband, also an academic, and our two school-aged daughters) was how much we enjoyed ourselves. We imagined that relocating to a developing country would involve so much deprivation and discomfort (power outages, heat, bugs, bureaucratic nightmares, traffic, pollution, in-your-face-poverty) that it would be the sort of experience that we’d look back on fondly but would find less than pleasant in the moment. But none of those discomforts–though they were there at times–compared to the excitement and rewards of getting to know a new place, of absorbing its strangeness, and of growing closer as a family as a result.

Another surprise, and a somewhat more disheartening one, was the nature of higher education in India, or at least in the institutions we got to know.  Everything was so top-down: professors lectured, students rarely did anything but listen (albeit with great attention and respect), grades come almost entirely from tests involving recall of the professors’ lectures, rather than from papers that would demonstrate students engagement with and ownership of the material. Any attempts to reform this system (and “student centered learning” has grown as a catchphrase in India) are stymied by the fact that most university teaching is done in English, and most students are fluent only in their native languages (Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, etc.).  So, asking students to speak up in class or write extensively in a language they can’t even speak fluently isn’t easy.

It’d be especially interesting to know about more about the female life in India.

Well, I don’t really feel too well equipped, after only five months in India, to speak to this too authoritatively. On the whole, though, I’d say that gender norms and dynamics were much more conservative in the city where I lived (Mysore, about the same size as Portland, but a medium-sized city–even a comfortable “town”– by Indian standards).  In bigger “Tier One” cities, you’ll see much more diversity in terms of women’s lives (housewives in saris to CEOs of companies), but in Mysore, the norm seemed to be for women to stay home with children, do the cooking and laundry, etc. (yet of course there is a much greater reliance on “servants” in India so sometimes you’re paying another women to do these household chores). The English M.A. students at University of Mysore included maybe half women, and some of the best students were surely female. But our colleagues told us that most of the female students, after they complete their M.A.’s, don’t pursue a career in university or teaching but go home to their villages and become mainly wives and mothers.

Gender stratification seems to be strengthened or supported by religion and culture. There are all these various festivals that require women to do x while men do y, and then of course there are Indian weddings–for most young people, still arranged marriages, and the weddings are almost always paid for entirely by the bride’s family, and involve a dowry from bride’s family to groom’s, etc.  This is why there is still an alarmingly high incidence of female infanticide and/or aborting of female fetuses in India.

Then of course there is the “rape culture” which you hear about a lot now, after a few high-profiled gang rapes in the last few years. No doubt, I felt the male gaze a LOT more in India than I do here, and there’s much more permissiveness it seems around male looking at and touching women without permission (groping…I didn’t experience this but know people who did). A bright spot here, though, is that there seems to be a major backlash against this permissiveness and e.g., the Times of India reported daily about women’s groups, protests, and legislation being created to protect women. So I think things are changing.

On the whole, I think women probably have less freedom overall in India than here, but they’re much less constrained than in some Middle Eastern or other more strongly patriarchal cultures. As I reminded people whom I talked to there, India has had many charismatic female leaders, including a female head of state (Indira Gandhi)…all we have is the hope of Hillary in 2016, right?

What is the dress like?

For women, much more conservative than here.  Again, this is not true for the big cities, but in most smaller-sized communities, few women wear jeans; the older women wear saris and the younger generation some version of a loose flowy top over leggings or pajama style pants. (Salwar Kameez) I wore my usual clothes but slipped leggings beneath skirts or dresses, rarely showing much more leg than ankles.  Indian women may be discouraged from showing skin, but WOW, they are so much better at embracing color than we are. I could pass time just watching the gorgeous, brilliant fabrics passing by on the streets.

Any personal lessons you carry with you in your life today?

I learned a lot about what privileges we have as Americans, and how incredibly insular we are as a country, so clueless about what happens around the world. Supported by their religious beliefs, many Indians are amazingly open to letting things happen as they will.  I’ve always been a bit of a control freak, so after observing Indians’ attitudes, I’m working on ceding some control and trusting what will come.

Any words for college women who are travelers themselves?

Mainly I’d say: don’t be afraid to go to places like India. I think the news about violence against women has been blown out of proportion. Europe’s great, but India will provide you an intensity of experience you couldn’t have imagined.  Not to mention that it is so affordable to travel there!

To read more about Dr. Hiro’s experiences abroad, check out her blog! Here’s a post on being a woman in India:https://pdxtomysore.wordpress.com/2014/12/09/being-female-in-india/