[csaa-forum] battling and rattling around in the ivory tower

[Elspeth Probyn]

hi all,

graeme's example has got me going. i think it is important to take a long view
at what is going on in our unis, what has changed and what remains to change.
first jobs are really tough. mine was in a french language dept of sociology.
i snuck in as the dark horse cos there was in-fighting about the two other
candidates. i gave up a postdoc cos i really really wanted to get into academe
proerly which meant for me a teaching job. it was pretty wild as i had never
taken a course in sociology and my french was barmaid standard. all i remember
was being so lonely that i constantly whistled to myself. speaking english was
verboten. in dept meetings if i ever said anything i'd get sneers about my
french. a couple of years into the job some colleagues would actually refer to
s'thing i'd said but they couldn't or wouldn't pronounce my name, so it'd be
'elle' - she, as in what the cat brought in.

somehow i lasted nearly 7 years there. what i would pass on is the advice my
chair gave me: your only hope is to build up a reputation outside of your
institution. so i traveled madly, which only fueled the snarky remarks. i did
learn some things - it toughened my skin to have constant comments from
nationalistic students about being an anglo and that i should teach in an
anglo uni. however i also had some terrific students who were thirsty for les
etudes culturelles.

blah blah blah water passed under bridges, pages flipped on calendars and me
voila a prof at sydney uni. i am of course glad i made it. sad about all the
relationships that i screwed up from working all the time. i used to tell
students and junior colleagues not to take me as a good role model, because
when you get to the pearly gates no one will ask how many books you've
published. all sorts of new age-y homilies come to mind - life is not a
rehearsal. but no i haven't turned into some goddess of tranquility and
recently i have been getting really steamed about the gender inequity and the
power structure of most of our unis. i wrote a furious col for the hes which
was bumped til next week basically shaming the higher ups. i doubt that it
will have much impact if and when it appears. there seems to be a profound
silence, a vortex that swallows even my very privileged voice - and i do feel
privileged.

i'd second graeme's point about getting on with your own work and interests.
teaching will get easier. the first years of my teaching i was asleep in front
of the tv by 8.30 from just the sheer energy it took. but your students will
give you back energy and experience helps an awful lot. you will get to repeat
courses, tweaking them as you go. be as pragmatic as poss when it comes to
getting publications out. it is a rude shock to go from the type of careful
work you do as a phd to the next stage where you have to be single-minded and
just say to yourself it ain't the best but it'll do for now.

because i was hired when there were very few new positions i didn't have many
colleagues in the same boat. at least  in my uni recently there has been a
little flurry of new hires. hang out with them but please don't enter into the
who is working hardest game. it's soul destroying. i'd say going to the beach
isn't a bad idea - although i know those welsh beaches and brother the water
is cold. say to yourself that you'll work 6 days and then play on the 7th,
hopefully with friends and colleagues who know what you're going thru. and use
old fogeys like me if you need some practical advice. i feel incredibly lucky
in my position, which i am. i'm even happy and am more than willing to spread
some of my knowledge and energy around.

good luck and good wishes to you all, and now i'll get back to trying to
figure out an industry linkage grant on tourism and emotions!
Elspeth.

Graeme Turner wrote:

> 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
>
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--
Elspeth Probyn
Professor
Dept of Gender Studies
The University of Sydney  NSW  2006
Tel - 9351 7389; Fax - 9351 5336
Mobile - 0412 548 762

http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/Arts/departs/gender
http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/gender/GirlCultures/index.html