I know that earlier in the semester we had talked about issues that
come in with activism and teaching, in that there is an aspect of monetary gain
with that job. I think that it would be
still an important aspect of teaching to insert gender related information to
humanities courses. Recently I have been having issues with another major being
art history. While I do really love the major I have a major issue with their
pedagogy. I understand completely the need for a canon especially teaching
dense and at times redundant material. I think that it is a place where one can
create change. Just in my own interpersonal interactions with people in the
department I feel a strange tension of elitism, which I find to be bizarre
(especially since it is predominately taught by females). If you look at the
history of art, it has been completely elitist and classist from the very beginning.
But not only does it have those aspects to its history in it is inherently a
very sexist and racist.
I have not had a class maybe besides the feminism in art course where
any professor stated the fact that there are barely any women artists. It is
just taken for granted. There is the insertion of the female artists such as Gentileschi
and Leyster, but I think it would be a very good discussion to have to talk
about the lack of women artists in the field. And that if you ask maybe any
random person to list maybe 3 women artists besides O’Keefe and Kahlo (although
both are important), it is almost impossible to name any. And a part of me
wishes that someone that teaches the intro classes would insert this as a
reading material for their class.
But in general what do you guys think about insertion of discussion about gender in classes that doesn't necessarily related to the women and gender studies department?
I think it would be phenomenal to insert discussion about gender in classes, especially those in the humanities or soft sciences. For example, as I mention in class frequently, my electoral politics course always touches on the differences between male candidates and female candidates, male voters and female voters, etc. It is extremely necessary because as a course that teaches a form of science in examining human behavior, we have to understand that human behavior is different for males and females.
ReplyDeleteAnother example, in my public relations courses, we always touch on how public relations is a pink collar career, dominated by women (women hold about 70% of the jobs in PR)! Nevertheless, the average pay of a male PR professional and a female PR professional is about a $30,000 difference, which is absolutely ridiculous. Also, a majority of higher up, CEO positions are given to males.
This being said, I think there should be an insertion of discussion about gender in classes because in the real world, GENDER MATTERS. I think people like to believe that gender has no impact, but it does, and it is definitely something that should not be avoided.