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Emily Czarnik-Neimeyer '09
As a study abroad student at Swansea University in Swansea, Wales, UK for the 2007 fall term, I am loving life here and all that it brings. Every day is new and exciting. I love all the different components of Swansea, from the university campus to the sea to the City Centre to the Uplands. Older and younger citizens alike have been very welcoming of other American students and me, and I feel quite comfortable living as a student in Swansea. In terms of involvement in the community, I am a member of the wonderful Swansea Uni Hiking Club, am working on programming with the Swansea Uni Women’s Society, and regularly volunteer at Swansea Community Farm through the Discovery volunteer organization on campus. The Hiking Club has brought me to hike with a group through such magnificent areas as the Peak District in England, the Gower Peninsula in Wales, Neath Valley in Wales, and the Usk Reservoir in Wales. There are also always university-sponsored social events on and off campus that I regularly attend, from toga parties to international nights. Regarding my classes this fall, I am enrolled in one sociology pre-sessional course called “British Culture and Politics Since 1945,” one anthropology-based sociology class called “Life Worlds I,” and two English-based women’s and gender studies classes. I am actually finished with the pre-sessional course now, but it was an ideal way to become accustomed to the city of Swansea and to learn about British culture and politics since 1945. I plan to travel abroad upon earning my undergraduate degree, years that will perhaps entail volunteering, study, and/or a career. My current academic interest and focus is with the two women’s and gender studies classes here though, in which I find my currently passion and calling. These classes are intriguing to take as a young woman in a Swansea University classroom in Swansea, Wales, UK versus at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin, USA.
The bulk of my academic time and work this semester has ended up being focused on my two women’s and gender studies classes here, entitled “Writing on the Body” and “Gender and Genre, Sex and Text, Medieval to Modern.” I am drawn to and enjoy each of these two classes in different ways. The focus of the “Writing on the Body” class is on socialization, gender, and sexuality and consists of lectures and interactive seminars. Specifically, we have largely learned about gender ideology, gender theory, and androgyny and read such articles as “Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire” by Judith Butler, “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttransexual Manifesto” by Sandy Stone, and “Womanliness as a Masquerade” by Joan Riviere. Required novel reading for the class includes Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve, Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body, and Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. The course of study in this class has also brought me to read Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own,Orlando . This class makes me analyze and reevaluate how I ‘do’ gender in my life based on my sex and culture and how very ambiguous human sexuality can be. The following quote in Judith Butler’s “Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire” article sparked my interest and speaks to such continual analysis of sex and gender: which parallels her writing and topics in
When the constructed status of gender is theorized and as radically independent of sex, gender itself becomes a free-floating artifice, with the consequence that man and masculine might just as easily signify a female body as a male one, and woman and feminine a male body as easily as a female one.
The focus of study in the “Gender and Genre, Sex and Text, Medieval to Modern” class is based on intersections and interactions between gender, genre, and language in literature from the Middle Ages to the present. This class also consists of lectures and interactive seminars. The primary literature of the class is Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Franklin’s Tale in The Canterbury Tales, Thomas and William Rowley Middleton’s The Changeling, Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion, and Dorothy Wordsworth’s Home at Grasmere. This literature is read and analyzed alongside gender theories and brings us as students to identify certain writing styles and genres based on the authors and specific gender topics. The class has also brought me to read such required articles as “Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities: Men in the Medieval West,” edited by Jacqueline Murray, and “Gender Asymmetry and Erotic Triangles” in the book Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, edited by Carolyn G. Heilbrun and Nancy K. Miller. A quote that struck me in the “Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities: Men in the Medieval West” article reads:
For many medievalists, gender continues to be perceived as the domain of women. Just as, too frequently, women rather than men are perceived to “have gender,” so, too, gender studies continue to be conflated and confused with women’s studies. Yet, gender is only meaningful in relational terms. Men and women must be studied not so much in opposition to each other, as in relation to each other. The mutual influence and interdependence that characterize the social relations between the sexes, characterize how concepts of man and woman, masculine and feminine emerge in a given time and place.
Though this class is more challenging to me in the sense that some of the theories and Medieval literature are more difficult to understand and analyze in general and regarding gender-based topics, it has caused me to take more time with the readings. I have also dug deeper into meaning and intersections with gender in the literature.
One of my main objectives upon attending Swansea University through the St. Norbert College study abroad program was to take women’s and gender studies courses, which would allow me to inspect and analyze topics of gender, sex, and literature in a country that I do not call home. I am doing just this and, as a young woman, am increasingly called to and intrigued by issues of women’s and gender studies. Though the main focus of my academic time in Swansea has been with my English-based women’s and gender studies classes, I am also thoroughly enjoying my time with the Uni Hiking Club, Uni Women’s Society, Swansea Community Farm, and Swansea social life. Every day is fresh and filled with new faces and places. I love living in such a multi-cultural school and city as well, which I believe is so very important to learning to live as an understanding global citizen. I would recommend that every student study abroad and that they really immerse themselves in the foreign culture instead of just living like a tourist. I fully plan to volunteer, study, and/or to work abroad following my undergraduate years at St. Norbert College. After all, doing so can be a ton of fun as well!
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