/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.2205598]

so guys i took a women writes course at my university
BTW I'm a guy
course had not description but I thought, "hey how bad could it be, British Lit. was about British authors, Women's Lit. is just women writers."
11 weeks in and the course is hell
its a feminist Lit course but that not the worst part
everyday we are supposed to talk about the readings in class i get all ready and do all the readings, but guess what we talk about.
EVERY FUCKING THING BUT THE READING
in said class we talk about
>psychology
>how as a man every point i bring up is WRONG
>womens studies
>gender roles
>queer theory
>womens roles out of context from the texts
> how women have been oppressed
> the deeper meaning of the text
> how it is wrong to read them any other way than a women would
>why it is wrong for a man to ever edit a womens work
>why editing women at all is wrong
>why men will never understand womens power over men

we talked about grades today
i have 98% in the class and the closest grade to me is a 79% from a WOMENS STUDIES MAJOR

Moral of the story being a man is best if you want good grades

Any other good college lit stories /lit/ bros?

[Anonymous No.2205604]

>everyday we are supposed to talk about the readings in class i get all ready and do all the readings, but guess what we talk about.
>EVERY FUCKING THING BUT THE READING

it's funny that they would just go and reinforce stereotypes like that

[Anonymous No.2205606]

OP here
reading really isn't to bad
i actually like some of it

[Anonymous No.2205615]

I took a women's studies course two years ago, OP. The thing is, they grade you on doing the reading, because that's somewhat legitimate scholarship. Class discussions, however, revolve around stereotypical feminist topics because that's all you can expect undergrads to do, being undergrads.

In any case, it's a good way to find out how other people think. These are your peers, OP. Study them. And being able to perform a feminist reading of a text is useful, the same as performing a Marxist reading.

>why men will never understand womens power over men
Care to explain further?

[Anonymous No.2205620]

Have you written any papers yet? I had a course like this once and entertained myself quite a bit by constantly bothering the professor with questions about how I could possibly presume to critique or analyse anything we studied when the single consistent lesson throughout the semester was my inability to do so without subjugating all to the almighty and jealous phallus.

[Anonymous No.2205623]

>>2205615
This person is spot on. You can glean value from this. Discussion of the reading is pretty useless because half of an undergrad class will not have read the readings in time to contribute meaningfully.

My class once started to discuss how Chinese Canadians should learn English instead of staying in their enclaves. The discussion was meant to be about First Nations and their sexuality in relation to the government.

Both the discussion and the topic made me facepalm pretty hard in regards to any English department's undergrad society.

Make sure you get good grades, OP. Go to law school.

[Anonymous No.2205627]

>>2205623
>law school
Bad idea, there's too many lawyers in America right now. Starting a business is a better idea if you can get a hold of capital.

>>2205620
That DOES sound entertaining. Although in my class I just chose to write about the Scott Pilgrim comic books which was also fun.

[Anonymous No.2205640]

I took a women's studies course once.

I could not believe when I learned about "male bias," which is essentially saying "it's wrong because a man said it."

Like we learned about Freud, and how his theory of "penis envy" was sexist and wrong.

Now there are a lot of different ways to criticize Freud and his theories; there's lots of papers dissecting and critiquing his ideas and methods and pointing out why they're flawed, but to the class there was only one reason Freud was wrong: male bias. And then they had the fucking nerve to talk about "womb envy," which is exactly the same fucking thing as penis envy, only with the genders reversed, and because "womb envy" was created by a woman it has no male bias and is therefore correct.

If we started talking about "female bias" and rejecting ideas just because they were from a woman, and not for actual valid reasons, do you think women would grin and bear it?

[Anonymous No.2205641]

>>2205640
But that's not what male bias is, male bias is refusing to understand or accept non male viewp-

Very clever.

[Anonymous No.2205642]

>>2205640
>If we started talking about "female bias" and rejecting ideas just because they were from a woman, and not for actual valid reasons, do you think women would grin and bear it?

But we do.... and they do grin and bear it.

My god, man. I don't take anything out of a woman's mouth very seriously. I treat them like children. It's very condescending.

[Anonymous No.2205646]

What you do OP is refer to texts, excepts and quotes and attach the name of a female author to the quote. After much discussion on how what you referenced is correct you halt the discussion and apologize that the quote was actually from [male author], continue to discuss how you agree with what the class said about the quote.

[Anonymous No.2205648]

>I don't take anything out of a woman's mouth very seriously. I treat them like children. It's very condescending.

[Anonymous No.2205649]

>>2205648
Yeah I laughed hard at that line too.

Mostly because I can picture it so vividly.

[Anonymous No.2205656]

>>2205642
I treat small men the same way. It's hard to take anyone seriously when they're that short and you tower over them so much.

[Anonymous No.2205705]

>>2205615
they keep saying they have the power because they have the uterus
nuff said

[Anonymous No.2205711]

>>2205620
my paper scores were 100% and 96%
top scores both times

[Anonymous No.2205722]

>>2205615

>like performing a marxist reading

aka jumping through the marxist hoop

it's a terrible thing to see him domesticated like this, especially given the times we live in

[Anonymous No.2205724]

OP is full of shit and hates women

[Anonymous No.2205731]

OP are you on a cell phone? Your post is typed up all kinds of retarded.

I'm curious, however. What readings were assigned to the class? Or at least the ones you liked.

[Anonymous No.2205743]

>>2205640
>>2205641
>>2205705
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG4f9zR5yzY>>2205641

Substitute the racial talk for gender talk. We grin and bear it because the system is and has been fucked up since the dawn of time, and we've been on top the entire time. So, let them be angry, they've kind of earned it, take solace in the fact that your working dollar actually rounds out to a dollar.

Also, I like women writers. It is true there is a male bias, and I take that into account when I read women authors, but I still like to gleam what insight I can from it. Not because we're all evil, daughter-molesting bastards from 1905, but just because we're different. Just like I'll never know what it's like to be a black man in America.

[Anonymous No.2205816]

On the subject of seminars in general, they are just the worst fucking pile of dogshit. By 3rd year in my undergrad film & lit. I just stopped attending film seminars cos of how everyone was basically like a pig gleefully rolling and squealing in their own ignorance and my grades actually went up (not that they weren't already high before, but now it was like silly astronomical grades).

Then I was given a 'penalty essay' for missing two or three seminars for my module with the English dept. which I was actually, for the most part, attending. Their reasoning being that it's the duty of every student in the class to do the reading and then turn up and contribute to the discussion. My rejoinder was that this never happens, with most people not bothering with the reading, and when they do, they rarely care enough about their own subject (often chosen virtually at random as something easy to pass, while they spend uni partying, knowing when they graduate they'll be guaranteed a job by their rich, connected parents) to actually engage with it anyway, resulting in an hour and a half awkward silence filled occassionally by the exasperated tutor/prof.'s simplified exegesis and the strained, compulsary comments of the odd student. I thought my time was evidently better spent getting on with the additional reading, thinking about the texts, and discussing the texts with my friends, some doing degrees like maths yet still being better read and more engaged with the literature we were studying than anyone I'd met on my own course. They didn't see it this way, I had to do the extra essay and it capped a whole 20% of my grade at a 'bare pass'.

[Anonymous No.2205820]

>>2205816

Suffice to say I'm not a fan of academia, especially when this same English department gave in to complaints from the year before me and took Ulysses off its modules, because it was 'too long'. Such a weird mix of treating its students like consumers on the one hand and being firmly authoritarian on the other, each in exactly the wrong area.

[Anonymous No.2205871]

>>2205820
Kinda makes you want to do just enough to get a teachers approval, just so you can get a piece of paper that says you pleased x amount of scholars.

By doing 'par' or alittle better (like most of the slack-wits you mention), you can spend most of your time doing what you want. Drugs, reading, and habitual masturbation (if you are like me). Just don't forget to enjoy the resources of knowledge that academia has.

[Anonymous No.2205896]

welcome to every undergrad arts course tutorial

[Anonymous No.2205965]

OP, I minored in English at a former women's college that recently went co-ed. 7/3 f/m student ratio at my time of enrollment. One of the girls said she was afraid of having male students in her class, "because they are all big and sweaty and I'm afraid I'm going to get raped."

Also you weren't in the cool club unless you were lesbian or gay.

[Anonymous No.2205980]

>>2205816
so they never attempted to follow up on your point that really no one was adequately fulfilling the participation requirement?

[Anonymous No.2206476]

Oh how I hate this shit. Once on an exam I had to write an essay on Lord of the Flies where I had to change the male characters to female characters. As if the book would've been the same, go shit in a bucket feminist professor.

[Anonymous No.2206554]

>WMST
>professor is going on and on about how france is the female chick nation on the planet
>goes on about how they really began to push this after the fall of the colonies, and how their mascot is a female nigger
>goes on that because they use a female image, france is so peaceful and wonderful
>I'm a french immigrant.
>I raise my hand and ask her how my country is peaceful when we literally leaped at the opportunity to bomb libya into nothing. I ask how we can be peaceful when we have a colonial army that basically has the express purpose of fucking up Africa.(FFL)
I ask how french is really representing women when we give Japanese people PTSD from the shitty treatment we give non-french speakers.

>SHE FUCKING SNAPS THE DRY ERASE MARKER SHE IS HOLDING IN HALF, STARES AT ME, AND THEN CONTINUES TALKING LIKE I SAID NOTHING

[Anonymous No.2206672]

>take regular English
>gender theory is still included
>Seminars consist of discussing the theory reading and applying it to relevant texts
>The females on the course are sensible and no less well-adjusted than the males, if anything they are better students due to a higher % of students who actually do the reading and work
I'm kinda glad I didn't go ahead with the idea of spending a semester in the US, that sounds like hell

[Anonymous No.2206750]

>gleaned that even taking a Lit course would be a waste o' my time, I'm well read. Let alone major in it...
>sneak into a Milton 200 course per the invite of a cute English major girl
>prof mentions Aquinas in the first minute
>oh damn, sounds good to me
>ignore his doctrines as Milton applied them in Paradise Lost
>leads a team through their own presentation on some section
>I look up from annotating a copy of La Commedia, the part where Dante is applying Aquinas' philosophy
>"OK class, so how does the relationship between Adam and Eve in Paradise compare to the 21st century relationships between men and women?"
>The girls take over the discussion, tossing in their clichés everywhere
>Oh yea, it's like Twilight because -
>Keep on reading about il poeta and Beatrice while shitstorm uprises
>Leave class
>Girl who invited me approaches me
>"So what'd you think?"
>I suggested she read Milton on her own, outside of class, and take notes independently, she'd learn more than sitting through a whole semester of this class
>We quit talking for a while
>Asks me later on why her other English prof would ask her to write an essay on Paradise Lost as an entire work without reading it to its entirety
>Tell her it's not cheating, nobody writing on a book can analyze every line, not even those who annotate books while reading them to their entirety analyze every line
>Switch subject to Keats' negative capability
>I respond that yes, I've read that Eliot used a negative capability on the paradox of good/bad for The Waste Land, though the important parts are what he implies about love in the poem
>She says that The Waste Land wasn't about love
>mfw

[Anonymous No.2206757]

>>2206672

Male here.

took a 19th century brit lit class. 1st day of class professor (female) says it's also 'cross referenced' as a 'gender studies class' (having Emily Bronte, Elizabeth Brownning etc on reading list make it that, I guess) tho not a word about this in the catalog.

Hated it. Constant 'modern' readings (or 'interpretations') of very basic works. Disparaging established WASP critics like Edmund Wilson.

My beautifully written paper (which another professor, who'd studied at Cambridge had pronounced superb) was given a B- and was full of negative comments. I got a look at a classmate's paper after the semester ended. Despite being crude and anecdotal and using lots of websites as sources, it was given an A- and had lots of smileys.

I rarely rage but did for a moment after. Also felt royally swindled.

[Anonymous No.2206763]

>>2206757


*The classmate was a girl, forgot to add. In fact, I dated a couple of girl a year or so later & both had done very well despite obviously not being the brightest bulbs.

[Anonymous No.2206773]

>by in a non-enflish country
>in english class
>class is awfully vocal-oriented since it's an advanced level
>teacher always wants us to debate touchy subjects
>be all sorts of racist, sexist, troll and have a radically different opinion than everybody else concerning everything
>get everyone mad with my glaringly opposing points of view
> be the best english-speaking student in class
>they can never muster the vocabulary to respond adequately
>they all get buttmad
>teacher just trollfaces-jpg throughout the whole thing, thoroughly enjoying the comotion
>mfw

[Anonymous No.2206778]

>>2206773

be in a non-english-speaking country*

I splergd

[Anonymous No.2206781]

>>2206773

youre so making that up

[Anonymous No.2206817]

>>2206781

why would I? I dont flat out say "I HATE NIGGERS" nor anything like that. I dont see how it can be seen as so far-fetched as to be made-up

[Anonymous No.2206863]

>>2205743

I have to respectfully disagree here. Whilst I avoided the gender studies people in college and through word of mouth basically confirmed the conclusions reached thus far in this thread, I did take an African-American Studies course because my college required me to take a liberal art every year even though I was dual-majoring in bio and biochem and thus my course load was somewhat heavy. Thus, I decided to challenge myself and learn about stuff I didn't really know anything about rather than take hurr Japanese Pop Culture durrr Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Our professor was this amazing bipolar late '60s obese Black guy who was originally from Georgia (teaching in Boston) who gave a really fair and nuanced view of Black problems and Black thought. He never disparaged any other race, ethnic, or religious group but always focused on the problems of individuals. Our final paper was on Black artists, and when I told him I wanted to do mine on Hendrix, he said, "Thank Christ, not another damn rapper."

About 70% of the class were Black freshman that, to quote Chris Rock, expected to get a B just for showing up. He failed as many of them as he could. He was so fucking fed up apathetic Black youth and conversely was genial and friendly and loved to engage in discussion anyone who would discuss racial issues, no matter their race or gender.

He was one of two professors out of the dozens I had who would ever come up to me and say hi and engage me outside of class, talk about genetics, sociobiology, human migration, &c. Obviously this is my personal experience and doesn't describe every class but at least Black history is something worth studying (not hurrr everything is secretly about dicks and dicks are never erotic).

[Anonymous No.2208464]

bumping so i can read it later

[Anonymous No.2208506]

>>2206750
>>I suggested she read Milton on her own, outside of class, and take notes independently, she'd learn more than sitting through a whole semester of this class

this is true for all humanities courses in college.

what took you so long to figure it out?