[csaa-forum] Rebecca and the beach

[Graeme Turner]

Hi Rebecca, (and anyone else listening should know that I must take some of 
the blame for Rebecca's condition: she was once one of my students, and a 
very highly valued RA on Fame Games!)

I am a little leery of doing this, knowing how it might come across, but I 
do think this is a topic where the old lags should contribute. Not to be 
quietistic, or  patronising (because God knows, we have all found ourselves 
in some pretty terrible jobs from time to time) but just to try to 
reinforce your patience and determination.

So, before we get too depressed about managerialism, shortage of funds 
etc., I'd like to share my memories of what the university was like when I 
started. Of course, to start with, there was no such thing as cultural 
studies. What there was, was literary studies, which had no theoretical 
content and in which one was judged by how vigorously one vibrated when 
brought into close proximity to a classic text. This was, as Eagleton 
correctly observed, an ideology and when you taught it, that's what you 
were teaching. The University was run by God-Professors most of whom were 
male; virtually all the female staff in my department at Sydney (with the 
exception of Leonie Kramer!) were on rolling short-term contracts, or 
employed as teaching assistants (full-time teaching load, half-time PhD 
enrolment, no continuity of appointment, suck up to the professors or else 
you're out).  Everybody was Anglo - pretty specifically, actually, since 
just about everyone was either English or had a British PhD. Working class 
accents were only really acceptable if they were British (Howard Jacobsen, 
then a tutor now a famous novelist, actually affected a Liverpool accent at 
the time, probably to cash in on the popularity of the Beatles!). Junior 
staff had no input into the syllabus. In my Department, there was a fight 
between the two professors which resulted in two parallel courses being 
run; anyone below that level had a choice as to which they taught, but no 
input into what was taught. As a student, I only ever received one essay 
back from the English Department in my whole four years there -- it was a 
fail, by the way, and the tutor told me I displayed no aptitude for this 
kind of work. Staff displayed very little sense of having responsibilities 
to their students; the idea of using something like pedagogy to ensure a 
tutorial worked would have seemed very foreign. One professor was reputed 
to routinely begin his tutorials with the remark 'Any questions?'. If there 
were none, he would declare the class closed. Despite the presence of 
Germaine Greer in an office in the main quad, finishing off The Female 
Eunuch,  sexual harassment was routine; tutors regularly preyed upon their 
students and were the object of resentment among the male undergraduates 
who wished they had their power. When one of the two professors who ran the 
competing courses left, classes in this program were subject to visits from 
the remaining professor ensuring that nothing with which he disagreed was 
being said.  Needless to say, the kind of material cultural studies deals 
with every day was absolutely out; indeed this professor objected to 
teaching D.H.Lawrence because he was so common and anyway none of his 
characters ever seemed to have a job!  The class-based ideologies 
underpinning an Arts education were visible and no-one even bothered to 
disavow them.

I won't continue this old fogey rant, but the simple point is that there 
are far worse options than we have now. Of course, I recognise that the 
first year of teaching is infuriating -- for just about everyone. 
Particularly because your colleagues seem to know so little. In my first 
job I redesigned the whole curriculum, unrequested, and presented this to a 
staff meeting for their approval. I remember being deeply hurt that no-one 
seemed to appreciate what a helpful gesture this had been. So, I did it 
again in my next job (and my next, and the next.....). Eventually, I did 
get what I wanted -- although the design had changed quite a bit since 
then. The point is, it is helpful to look on this as a long haul. Even 
though it looks, from the outside, as though the conditions for change and 
intervention are there, they aren't. They have to made, each time, and they 
have to be  constructed politically as well as intellectually and 
pedagogically. So this first couple of years has to be seen as if it is a 
continuation of the PhD. That was a process of learning how to complete a 
large intellectual project; this is a process of learning how to complete a 
much larger and more diffuse intellectual and political project, and it 
takes a long while to see where the gaps and tolerances in the institutions 
actually are. (They will be there, though.)

The consolation is that you still have your students to yourself. I think 
it is easy in these days of research performance indicators to 
underestimate how important that relation is, and to overlook how valuable 
your teaching is to them at this stage in your career. Also, they are also 
the first real audience for your ideas -- not as big as an op-ed perhaps, 
but certainly the place to try them out. For what it's worth, my view is 
that it is better to leave the institution pretty much alone for the first 
few years and focus on getting yourself on top of your teaching -- because 
that will be the way to feel that you are doing something worthwhile. In 
the meantime, you will be gathering knowledge and power. Then you might not 
have to resort to going out to sit on a Welsh beach quite so often.
Cheers
Graeme Turner