Joan Wilking "Proper Dress"

Hi again. If anybody needs a copy of the story, it is in an envelope hanging from my office door in ILCS S317. And remember next class will be in ILCS 105 (if we are lucky).

As for this story, as you can see it is very short but not exactly simple. The author is a poet and has written short stories and poems in the past several years; if you google her you will find many websites that mention her work.

You will probably want to understand what type of class the story is describing: public schools in the US often have a program for "gifted and talented" students, which can involve more creative and less traditional kinds of learning. Often the students set their own goals and teachers help them reach the goals, rather than teachers setting the same goals for all the students. There are also often non-traditional styles of education that emphasize experience over memorization. So this class seems to be a special class like that (though of course this class is only a fictional one; I'm sure no teacher would ever really do this!).

Next, you will need to get some of the connotations of the burqa. A good place to start might be an online catalog where you can buy one, but you can also use Google to find out more: when I googled the word I found some interesting news stories such as these from Radio Netherlands and MSNBC. The most famous women's group in Afghanistan, RAWA, also has a good website with a lot of information about how they resisted the Taliban and how they continue to work for women's equality there. As we discuss the burqa, let's be very clear about the fact that requiring women to wear burqa is a fundamentalist Muslim practice and not all Muslim people (not even a majority) believe women should be forced to wear burqa.

But obviously the story is not set in Afghanistan but the US. Maybe some reading on religious fundamentalism (see Wikipedia again; I just discovered that page and you can see I really like it!) would help you understand the story better. I do think the author is making some kind of statement about American culture.

The other popular culture references in the story include the scent of patchouli, which in US and European cultures often has particular implications; see the Wikipedia definition. Likewise the fabric the teacher uses to make the burqa suggests she was a hippie in her youth. Please email me or hit the comment button if you have other questions about things like that!

• So how does this story contrast with Girls Town?
• What does it say about gender and violence? Gender and power?
• How is the space of that class re-defined and re-organized to create an alternative social order?
• Why does the author include the hints about the teacher's past as a hippie?
  
• Why do you think the teacher designed the burqa assignment? What could have been her teaching goals? Did it succeed?
  
• Explain the motives for the different students too.

Girls Town (1996)

Hi everybody! First, remember three things.

1. Next class is November 17, because of the holiday and my conference trip.
2. And it will be in a new room, ILCS S105. That is Institute for Language and Culture Studies, or 言語文化部　in Japanese. If you are taking Paul Stapleton's class you probably already know it. This map has it as number 53. The room, S105, is on the first floor in a quite old building next to the North Cafeteria.
3. The video is available to watch at the HUSTEP office with Maruyama san. Another copy of it is also available in the box on my office door (ILCS S317) if you borrow it for 24 hours only. Please sign the list if you take the tape and return it within 24 hours.

OK, on to the movie. It is about high school girls who are friends and who learn about their friend's rape after she commits suicide. Their reaction is to begin talking more honestly about their own experiences with men, and they are all upset at what they learn. If you understand the basic story, then don't worry if you don't get every word or every sentence. The girls speak very naturalistic teenage slang, at least from that time and place (New Jersey in the 90s), so it is difficult for some older adults to understand too. It is also pretty rough language, using a lot of curse words that are usually inappropriate except in the company of close friends your own age.

But you can understand the bigger questions that the girls face: what does violence do to friendships? How do girls or women deal with violence from men they date? Is violence ever acceptable as a form of revenge? Each of you might have different opinions about this, so think about it before class.

This movie is described on the Internet Movie Database here, with lots of links to more information: you can read lots of user comments and external reviews if you click those links in the left sidebar. Think about how each character deals with Nikki's suicide and the violence they hear about from their friends. What do they do to try to stop the sexual harrassment and violence against women? Does it work?

These girls are pretty tough at school, they listen to hiphop music, skip classes, fight, and smoke cigarettes and marijuana. Why do you think the movie shows them as tough girls?

How do the different spaces of the movie create the social relationships of the characters? For example, the girls' rooms at home, the school bathroom, the baseball dugout are sort of private spaces for them. Walking on the street or in the park is more public; how is it different for them?

I'll add more soon.