As a professor, I find myself returning to a similar struggle again and again. I know what I know; and I know what I hope students will gain from the class, in terms of content knowledge, critical thinking, classroom community-making, etc. But often, I don’t know what they don’t know.
This might seem a silly kind of observation. No duh, Sara, you barely know this group of people. Also, this may seem an easy question to answer. And sometimes it is; and I do have part of the answer when I begin a class. My “Intro to Ethics” students, for example, will understand and be frustrated by the way people use the Bible to justify their own positions, but they usually won’t know the term “proof texting,” or easily understand “hermeneutics.” My “Women in Christianity” students will understand sexism and often, the idea of gender as a social construct, but they are usually unfamiliar with the dualistic gendering and ranking of larger social realities, like nature and culture, production and reproduction, etc.
There are obvious differences in academic training—that’s why I’m allowed to teach at a university after all. But I’m not really wrestling with what I can contribute in terms of content knowledge or historical/ theoretical contextualization. I think what I don’t know is what understandings of reality they bring into the classroom and what these realities have allowed them to see. Learning and/or teaching feminist theory and theo/alogy for the last fifteen years at least, I also often take my own reality for granted. I “know what I know,” after all—I just can’t always remember what it was like to learn it. And all of these classroom dynamics can make it harder to catch the realities we can’t yet know or can’t see. Continue reading “What We Can’t See by Sara Frykenberg”
In my genealogy research, I traced my father’s grandmother, Catherine, to her roots on the Iloff farm in Cherry Ridge, Honesdale, Pennsylvania, about two hours north of New York City. Catherine’s parents were Henry Iloff, who emigrated in 1841 from St. Nicholas, Saarland, and Catherina Lattauer who emigrated in 1845 or 1846 from Ober-Floerscheim, Hesse-Darmstadt. They were married February 2, 1846 at St. Matthew’s Church in “Little Germany” on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
I’ve long held that feminism, in order to be true and engaged and practical, must be intersectional. The work of justice for women must also include justice for other marginalized groups. Because many women are also LGBTQ, people of color, people with disabilities, Muslims, immigrants, and others marginalized for identities other than their gender. Paying attention to these intersections—of sexuality, gender, race, class, ability, religion—and acknowledging that many people have multiple intersecting identities for which they are oppressed is vital to the work of justice.
Before coming to the U.S., I felt disconnected from feminist theory. I thought this framework labels women as haters of men and seekers of obscure rights. I was not sure who could identify with it or belong to it. For me, it was just a scholarly concept women used to justify their rights. I could not perceive it as an empowering tool, even if it is being so popular. While there is no problem having the concept to be loud and popular, this loud voice did not speak for me. I could not let it represent me or speak on my behalf. Every time I google it, I see angry faces, naked women, people yelling, women in chains, and much more. Instead of accepting it, I resisted it.
The symbol of the Goddess is as old as human history. The most ancient images of the Goddesses from the Paleolithic era are neither pregnant nor holding a child. In Neolithic Old Europe the Goddess was most commonly linked with birds or snakes and only rarely portrayed as mother. Yet we tend to equate the Goddess with the Mother Goddess. I suspect that images of the Virgin Mary with Jesus on her lap and prayers to God as Father have fused in our minds, leading us to think that the Goddess must be a Mother Goddess and primarily a Mother.
When I was in graduate school, I learned to doubt myself. Despite having won Danforth and Woodrow Wilson graduate fellowships that paid for my tuition and living expenses, I was continually told by professors and male students alike that I would not finish my degree and that if I did I would get married, have children, and never use the degree I had earned. I tried hard to maintain my confidence in myself, but it was difficult when I was the only woman in the program. There was one other woman my first year, but she was older than I was, a nun, and I never saw her in class or at social events. My self-esteem was gradually eroded. If I had not had a fellowship, I would probably have dropped out.
Feminism and Religion 