78uuu lumière des étoiles

Dusty:Starlight:Culture



Time for my close up
2005-03-10   5:01 p.m.

It was sort of hard to imagine this week ending, and it was sort of hard to imagine what on earth could happen that hadn't already - barring, of course, any dramatic national disasters.

It was a busy and stressful week, true - a Uni week before spring break always is. But it was the kind of week that one just has to sit back and laugh at. The most climactic moment had to be the sight of my program director running, and I mean running, across the campus in my direction, yelling my name, trying to alert me at the last minute that I'd find a news crew from NJN in the classroom I was about to enter. "Could you have told me about this oh, I don't know, yesterday? Or, at least, an hour ago?" I asked, all the while still trying to sound polite and diplomatic. She was extremely apologetic, quite salty about it all herself; apparently the network, which I knew had been interviewing people from our department last week for a piece on the Suffrage movement or something, called the night before, asking if they could film some of my class. She thought I'd say yes, so said yes for me. It's not that I would have said no, it's just that, as I told the boss, "well gee, I would have worn lipstick today, or something."

In fact, I think I would have looked as deliberately feminine as possible - those 15 people who watch NJN news might fall into that conventional assumption that Women's Studies professors must be man-hating lesbians who shun femininity, revel in androgyny, and deplore all that is glamorous. Yes indeedy, I'd show them!

But alas, my opportunity has come and gone. I watched the clip; it was heavily edited - 45 minutes of footage became only a few minutes - and they didn't include my interview, but what was shot really did present a nice picture of our class. We looked interested, happy, pensive, and like we were having a blast. Not everyday is such a party, believe me, but something about the mix of personalities and the way the students and I seem to gel has made this a really great semester so far; I'm glad the camera captured that. I hope they do wind up using the footage for "a future project", as they said they might. Oh, and props to my students who snickered when camera guy 1 asked before class if he could get a shot of "the token male", and I said "which one? There are a token 9 here." Hollah!

So why run such a piece on NJN now? Because it's Women's history month, silly! It's that time of year when we depart from real history to remember that women are and always should be in a separate, auxiliary category, as nothing they've ever done has been important enough to study in, say, December or June - or to study from December through June. Oh and the same goes for Black people - see also: African American History Month.

Ok, ok, enough with the smarmy-ness. I'm happy we got on and our program got a boost of attention - if not from the community, then at least from the administration. We're a rapidly expanding program, and we need money for food like any growing child does. Hopefully we'll be able to get a little more in next academic year, so we can kick a little more out in terms of speakers, organized events, and more classes.

Yee-haw, here comes a week off for me. I'm writing and writing and writing; I'll have time to send more out this week. I'm off to my friend Barb's for dinner & a pint - then I'll sack the bookstore for something new to distract me when I should be writing.

xox