 |
Commentary:
A Gift and a Revelation
By Julio Alves, Acting Director,
Jacobson Center for Writing, Teaching and Learning; Lecturer,
Department of English
Although I have been teaching first-year
students to write for twenty years now, a fundamental
lack persisted at the core of my teaching until the last
course I developed on women and social change: No matter
how clever and inventive I got with my assignments, I
still felt they had been done before. True, in my classes
students learned to write anyhow, but I wanted to do more than that.
I wanted to give them something to work on that had not been worked
on before, something they might keep working on in other courses,
something that might be truly theirs. And that's what took
me to the Sophia Smith Collection.
Inspired as a student by second-wave feminism, I developed an early, strong
interest in issues of language and gender. Especially as a graduate student,
I read widely in the field of women's history and women's studies,
where the most interesting work on gender ideologies was taking place. Five
or six years ago I recalled a later book, Sara Evans's Born for Liberty (1989) and started thinking about developing a writing course around the ideas
in its second half, on 20th-century American women's history. I mustered
enough courage to approach Sherrill Redmon, director of the Sophia Smith Collection,
with my idea of working the collection into the course. This I did with much
trepidation. Would she throw me out because I'm just a writing teacher?
Because I'm not a historian? Because I want to invite lowly undergraduates -- first-years
at that (and not even history majors in history courses) -- to traipse through
a world-class research facility?
The catalogued papers of 20th-century
women activists from the Sophia Smith Collection became
the centerpiece for a new writing course developed by
Julio Alves, center. Kara McClurken, SSC project archivist,
left, Alves, and Lesley-Ann Giddings '05,
right, struck up a conversation while looking through
papers from one particular collection. Photo by Gregory
Cherin.
My reception couldn't have been more different. Sherrill was enthusiastic,
helpful and supportive, and we quickly settled on a stunning list of 20th-century
activists whose papers were well catalogued and easily accessible, all exceptional
women, some famous, others not, some still living and working, others not:
Jane Addams, Blanche Ames Ames, Mary Ritter Beard, Phyllis Birkby, Ella Reeve
Bloor, Vivion Lenon Brewer, Carrie Chapman Catt, Eleanor Gwinnell Coit, Madeleine
Doty, Elaine Goodale Eastman, Mary Kaufman, Dorothy Kenyon, Lola Maverick Lloyd,
Constance Baker Motley, Jessie Lloyd O'Connor, Frances Fox Piven, Bertha
Capen Reynolds, Margaret Sanger, Rosika Schwimmer, Vida Dutton Scudder, Gloria
Steinem, Alice Morgan Wright.
The course quickly took shape. I had never worked as hard planning a course
but also never had so much fun or been so rewarded. It is, I think, as good
a writing course as I can offer. The first half of the course uses Born for
Liberty and related books and articles to frame the context of 20th century
women's history. The second focuses on biography and critical analysis
of a specific aspect of a subject's activism.
The students' involvement with their subjects is immediate, intense and
emotional: disappointment in Elaine Goodale Eastman's use of her talents
to promote her husband's career at the expense of her own; anger at Margaret
Sanger's apparent abandonment of her children; indignation at Alice Morgan
Wright's lack of reference to her life partner and collaborator Edith
Goode; shock at Ella Reeve Bloor's love life; pride in Mary Kaufman,
a Jewish woman, for her role in prosecuting Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg
and shame at our government's withdrawal of support for the prosecutions;
sadness and outrage at the effect of McCarthyism on Dorothy Kenyon's
life.
Especially with the more contemporary activists also comes the locating of
oneself in recent history and the sometimes shocking realization that rights
and privileges we take for granted today were bitterly fought for not too long
ago: "Gloria Steinem fought for women's right to choose -- I
want to write about Steinem's involvement in the abortion movement!" or "I
registered to vote when I got my driver's license and I couldn't
have done that if not for Frances Fox Piven -- I want to write about Frances
Fox Piven and the Motor-Voter Act of 1994!"
The identification of student and subject is so complete that posteriorly I
remember a student's subject much longer than I do her name. I can't
recall the name of the student who moved to New York and writes to me from
time to time, but she studied Lola Maverick Lloyd; the one at the registrar's
office last week researched Elaine Goodale Eastman; and the one at the Thai
restaurant wrote about Gloria Steinem.
For these students, more than any others I've taught, the writing cannot
but happen, especially the biographical writing, and the investment is palpable.
Fifteen-page final papers are common and written without much prodding. In
fact, I often find myself in the enviable position of having to rein the papers
in, because the students really do get excited. They can't believe they're
actually looking at Mary Kaufman's or Jessie Lloyd O'Connor's
FBI file, or at one of Gloria Steinem's typewritten speeches, or at an
actual handwritten letter to Margaret Sanger from a woman on the Lower East
Side. They write to Frances Fox Piven; they call Judge Constance Baker Motley's
office and the New York State Legislative Library in Albany requesting confirmation
of Motley's voting record as New York state senator or clarification
of what exactly happened to the urban renewal bills she introduced.
For me, a teacher of writing, the Sophia Smith archives have been a gift and
a revelation. I have never enjoyed teaching and reading student writing as
much. Above all the experience has taught me that students learn to write best
and want to write most when they are part of a community of engaged scholars -- teachers,
librarians, archivists.
Secondly, working at the archives has taught me that if I want students to
write, to put themselves in the writing and to keep writing, I must give them
meaningful assignments with a promising future. I knew I was on the right track
when one of my very first students started her presentation by flashing a picture
on the screen and saying, "This is Madeleine Doty, and she is very cool." |
|
