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.