Over the course of this senior seminar class I went through periods of confusion and understanding. Initially I was extremely confused when I found out the class was going to examine reenactments. I asked myself “what does this have to do with feminism?” This was followed by a period of thinking that I had it all figured out. Just as I thought I completely understood what the course was about I was confronted with material that confused me all over again. This was cyclical; I had periods of confusion that seemed to be answered by periods of understanding that were just greeted by more confusion. Though it could be frustrating at times, this is why the course was so effective. Even though I got frustrated when I thought I understood something but I found out that I really didn’t, I was determined to go forward and try to gain an understanding of the concept.
The idea of “intellectual pleasure” was central to this class. It was different than any other course I’ve taken so far. Although it was more difficult it was also more pleasurable. It was difficult in that we as students weren’t given specific structure and instructions for assignments. Throughout our academic careers we were told exactly what to do and how to do it. This course immersed us in an intellectual environment where we had to think for ourselves. While it was difficult it was also liberating and much more rewarding. The thoughts and ideas I produced were my own, not mere regurgitations that I had to show off in order to let the professor know I did the work. Instead we took the knowledge we acquired and did something with it by formulating new concept and relating concepts that we learned to women’s studies and feminist theory. There was a sense of academic maturity and integrity in this course. Students were trusted to be able to write papers and be prepared for discussion without specific instructions and assignments. This gave me a sense of enjoyment and freedom that I never experienced in any other college class.
At first I had no idea what the argument for this course was supposed to be. When I learned that we were going to be looking at reenactments in this course I had no idea what this had to do with women’s studies. Before I took this class I associated the word “reenactment” only with the recreation of historical events. I never looked at reenactments as simply recreations of anything. After I reexamined what reenactments are I was able to relate them to women’s studies. In fact, the whole course seemed to focus on exactly what I had done with reenactments, to reexamine knowledge and reality. Even reality had a whole new meaning now. There was no longer one reality, there were multiple realities. During this course I was cast into a whole new way of thinking. Things that seemed certain were no longer certain; there were new possibilities about what anything could be. I started asking questions like “what is real?” Could I even know what is real? Is reality for me reality for everyone else? Everything was jumbled up and I loved it. I was and still am confused, but finding what might be the answers is definitely intellectual pleasure.
Though this course was called “Feminism and New Knowledge Environments: Examining Reenactments”, it seemed more about alternative knowledges to me. We looked at what reenactments are: artificial representations of knowledge meant to replicate the knowledge as close to the real thing as possible. Reenactments can be powerful tools in representing these knowledges. We looked at Colonial Williamsburg as an example of this. In Richard Handler and Eric Gable’s The New History in an Old Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg, the presentation of historical reality was questioned. Handler and Gable discussed the recent effort to present a more accurate representation of colonial history at Colonial Williamsburg. They look at how Colonial Williamsburg is a mix between a pedogogical museum, setting and a tourist attraction. These two features of Colonial Williamsburg are often at odds with each other and have created criticism about how history is presented there. Reenactments are a popular sight at Colonial Williamsburg and many people accept these reenactments as accurate retellings of the past. The authors of The New History at and Old Museum critique the way history is presented at the park. They look at how Colonial Williamsburg used to present a glossed over and idealized version of colonial history and left out issues such as slavery. Colonial Williamsburg now includes exhibits and reenactments about slavery in order to include the negative aspects of colonial history and present a seemingly more accurate version of it.
Handler and Gable’s text really helped me connect historical reenactments with the more general concept of reenactments that we used in this course. This text showed me how powerful reenactments are in terms of convincing people what reality is. It also helped me better understand how the interests of those in power can influence what is seen as reality. This is where the concept of authoritative and alternative knowledge comes in. In Handler and Gable’s text Colonial Williamsburg’s original presentation of colonial history was a simplified and glorified version. This can be considered the authoritative knowledge. In other words this is the knowledge that mainstream white America sees history as. As people tried to make Colonial Williamsburg more accurate in its portrayal of colonial history and to include all people, alternative knowledge began to be included in the park. There was more information on African Americans in colonial America and on slavery. The history presented at Colonial Williamsburg became less idealized but included more alternative knowledge so that different perspectives on colonial history were presented.
This examination of authoritative and alternative knowledge fits into the women’s studied curriculum by looking at how knowledge is controlled and acknowledging that what is seen as true for one person may be wrong to another. This includes what we know about gender. I focused what I learned in this course on gender and its social construction. This is because I see the current expectations and “rules” about how males and females are supposed to act as problematic. This is why I used gender and reenactments as the subject for my reenactments paper in this class. I seem to be able to relate most of what I learn in women’s studies to gender. It was a natural step for me to look at gender as a reenactment of social norms.
When I read Stacy Roth’s Past into Present: Effective Techniques for First Person Historical Interpretation, I found that many of the performance methods used in historical reenactments are used in everyday life. I saw that people perform their gender and overemphasize it much like people do in stage performances. In many of my other women’s studies classes we talked about the idea of “doing gender.” This course’s focus on reenactments has a lot to do with this concept, the idea of recreating an idea and exaggerating it to get the point across. But then I thought to myself, “whose ideas?” This is where alternative and authoritative knowledge comes in. The gendered ideas that a lot of people try to recreate are based on the authoritative knowledge that males and females look, act, think, and are different. The alternative knowledges about gender allow for similarities among males and females and allow for alternative gender identity.
This brings me to what I see as the overall argument of the class. This course seemed to be a lesson in questioning what we think is real. This course made me question if reality even exists. This course taught me to question everything and to think about if what I see is what is real or if it is a reenactment. Is what I’m seeing really the way the world is or is it a reenactment of things we are expected to do or how things are supposed to be? This course was also a lesson in questioning what we learn. Did the courses we took throughout our educational lives include alternative knowledges or did they leave out other perspectives? This course was designed to make us think. Although I learned a lot in the class I’ve come away from it with more questions. This course prepared us as women’s studies majors to go out and question the patriarchal society we live in.
This course prepared me to be a feminist in that it helped me learn how to criticize current society and make sense of the process in which I criticize it. It helped me understand why I think the things I do. I always knew that I rejected the authoritative knowledge that women act differently than men because of some innate difference. I never knew about the concept of authoritative knowledge versus alternative knowledge. Learning about this helped me make sense of my criticism in order to better understand it and provide more ways to back up what I think.
One book that we read that illustrated this point well was Steven Johnson’s Everything Bad is Good for You. In this book Johnson takes the mainstream and authoritative knowledge that things such as playing videogames and watching TV is bad for you and turns it around to say that there are many great benefits to those activities. This is exactly the kind of questioning of authoritative knowledge this course aimed to teach us. Johnson also formulates a viable alternative knowledge much like we had to do in our reenactments paper. This text really helped me understand the idea of alternative knowledges and the importance of that knowledge.
Another book that we read in the class was Remediation: Understanding New Media by Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin. This book illustrated how media affects us in many ways. Bolter and Grusin use the word “remediation” to describe how old forms of media such as photographs and writing are recycled into the newer forms we have today such as computer games and the internet. This concept of remediation means that the media we have today is a reenactment of past forms of media. When you think about it, media itself is a reenactment of an original object or idea. Bolter and Grusin’s book helped me understand reenactments outside of the historical context and to broaden my view of what reenactments are and how they affect me in my daily life.
When I think about what role I played in our discussions throughout the semester I have to admit that I could have done a lot more. I had a lot of problems with attendance this semester. I don’t really have an official excuse for my absence throughout the semester, but I was dealing with a lot of personal issues that made focusing myself on my classes difficult. When I was in class I tried to be a part of the discussion. I tried to offer a critical view of authoritative knowledge while being open to the various alternative knowledges presented by my classmates. When I added to the class discussion I often talked about gender identity and expression. I consider this my contribution to the class. The students in the class had various backgrounds and brought unique insights to the class. My background as being a woman who is dissatisfied with the expectations of me as a female member of society allowed me to connect the concepts in this course with gender identity and expression.
I mentioned before that I had numerous instances of missing class. I made up for this by keeping up with the syllabus and with the readings. I also kept in contact with classmates in order to ask them what I missed. Although I kept up with the readings I’ll admit I wasn’t very faithful to my blog. This is again due to my inability to get myself motivated this semester. I regret this not only because it is going to affect my grade in the course but also because I missed out on some very interesting discussions.
Overall I found this course to be intellectually pleasurable. Unlike a most classes I’ve taken in college I was given freedom to get what I wanted from the course. By being given no specific instructions I was able to write and think about what mattered to me most. This class has been more rewarding than a lot of other classes I’ve taken because of this. I was able to make this class be about what I wanted it to be. We were provided with tools for thinking about it but were given the freedom to decide what to use the tools on.
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