Metacommentary On Ge Class Women's Studies
Kelsey Galati
WMST 340
Metacommentary
As my last upper division GE, it would be an understatement to say that I was tired of the regular, fact-reciting, GE courses. I’d taken one too many courses that were based on memorization of facts, all of which were forgotten twenty minutes after the test. For these reasons, I decided to make my last GE class Women’s Studies 340. Not only had I heard the material was motivating, but also that there wasn’t a final at the end of the semester, a huge bonus. Coming to the end of this course, I can say with confidence that all the things I had heard were true. This class has raised the bar upon which I base each of my classes’ meaning and significance.
Every text studied in the class has provided me …show more content…
Some came more slowly than others, but as the weeks passed, I began to notice a pattern flowing through each lesson. After listening to the stories of women in situations harder that I can imagine, I realized that it is necessary to question all the history we are told. This is to no fault of the historian who told it. As I said earlier, I believe that everyone has biases when retelling history; there’s no avoiding it. It’s up to us as learners to realize that the history we’re reading is not fact, but fact according to the historian. There were constant examples of these biases and inequalities over the course of the semester that stood out to me. For example, in the essay about prostitution, women were forced to have doctor’s appointments every three days, and any diseases contracted were automatically said to have come from her, not the men. Another example is the story of Ourika. The book was almost hard for me to read, simply because of the brutality she faced. The cruelty of the slave owners throughout the book opened my eyes to the severity and mercilessness that slaves especially slave women, endured. It was also interesting to see that the women did the same jobs as the men. Over time, women were viewed as incapable, yet these women were forced to do the same exact jobs as the men, and were punished just as harshly as the men, if not harsher. The inconsistencies in the logic of women as
WMST 340
Metacommentary
As my last upper division GE, it would be an understatement to say that I was tired of the regular, fact-reciting, GE courses. I’d taken one too many courses that were based on memorization of facts, all of which were forgotten twenty minutes after the test. For these reasons, I decided to make my last GE class Women’s Studies 340. Not only had I heard the material was motivating, but also that there wasn’t a final at the end of the semester, a huge bonus. Coming to the end of this course, I can say with confidence that all the things I had heard were true. This class has raised the bar upon which I base each of my classes’ meaning and significance.
Every text studied in the class has provided me …show more content…
Some came more slowly than others, but as the weeks passed, I began to notice a pattern flowing through each lesson. After listening to the stories of women in situations harder that I can imagine, I realized that it is necessary to question all the history we are told. This is to no fault of the historian who told it. As I said earlier, I believe that everyone has biases when retelling history; there’s no avoiding it. It’s up to us as learners to realize that the history we’re reading is not fact, but fact according to the historian. There were constant examples of these biases and inequalities over the course of the semester that stood out to me. For example, in the essay about prostitution, women were forced to have doctor’s appointments every three days, and any diseases contracted were automatically said to have come from her, not the men. Another example is the story of Ourika. The book was almost hard for me to read, simply because of the brutality she faced. The cruelty of the slave owners throughout the book opened my eyes to the severity and mercilessness that slaves especially slave women, endured. It was also interesting to see that the women did the same jobs as the men. Over time, women were viewed as incapable, yet these women were forced to do the same exact jobs as the men, and were punished just as harshly as the men, if not harsher. The inconsistencies in the logic of women as