Issues Involving a 'Gender Autobiography' Assignment

This WMST-L discussion from December 2005 begins by considering the 
advisability of using a "gender autobiography" assignment in the Intro to
Women's Studies course.  The discussion expands, however, to consider as
well the role of faculty members in whom students confide, especially
when the confidences involve matters of abuse.  For additional WMST-L files
now available on the Web, see the WMST-L File Collection.

 
I'm working on a syllabus for an undergraduate course I'm teaching
next semester ("An Interdisciplinary Introduction to Women's
Studies").  I'm thinking of having my students do a "gender
autobiography" in which they would use journaling, prose, poetry,
narrative, collage, photography, or other means to document their own
recollections and thoughts about their own development as gendered
subjects.  My idea is that I would collect these Gender
Autobiographies throughout the semester to offer feedback and
commentary and that at the end of the semester students would present
the entire Gender Autobiography as the "final project" to demonstrate
their own growth over the semester.  (The impetus for the idea is the
"screening journal" that film classes often require of students.)  In
other words, I would like the students to both reflect critically on
whatever material we might be covering as well as to engage their own
lives vis-a-vis that material.
 
I looked through WMST-L archives and found some helpful guidance but
I'd like to know if anyone else out there is doing anything like this.
How did you structure the project?  How did you grade it?  What are
the drawbacks or positives about the project?  How central was it to
your course (i.e, 10% of the grade? Took the place of a final
project/paper? Something in-between?)  I'm even open to criticism
about how I'm naming the project.  Is there a better way to frame the
project so as to encourage students to focus on more than "just
gender?" (i.e., to be certain that they engage race, class, geography,
sexuality, etc).
 
I'm a graduate teaching assistant, so I welcome input from all levels
-- undergrads, graduate students, faculty, and independent scholars.
Please reply off-line to milton  AT  ku.edu
 
Milton W. Wendland, J.D.
MA Cand, American Studies
Grad Cert Cand, Women's Studies
University of Kansas
Lawrence, Kansas
 

Getting students to reflect on their gender(s) in autobiographies has its 
problems, and I gave up on doing that kind of assignment for several reasons:

1. It forces students to reveal personal secrets. That can be harmful to them 
personally, and/or force the teacher to respond in a counseling way that 
we're not qualified to do.

2. By burrowing into students' personal secrets, we may be violating rules 
for human subjects research. Some universities have Institutional Review Boards 
that look on such projects warily.

3. I never found a way to grade such projects adequately. There wasn't any 
way to separate what the student revealed from the "intellectual" assignment 
that needed to be graded. If, for instance, a student who was raped gets a C, 
does that mean her rape is only of C importance? 

4. Women students are often very skilled at sharing personal
anecdotes.  They're not skilled at intellectual analysis (without
jargon). We can teach them to see their lives in larger frameworks if
we give them the frameworks, rather than telling them to continue to
focus on their own lives.

Just a few thoughts. The one day gender log (How many times are you reminded 
of your gender in one day, and how?) works well, because it's 
anthropological/sociological observation, not primarily personal musing.

Fiona Shepherdess
LSU

I have to agree with what Fiona wrote. Although I know it's very 
important for students to process the class materially personally as 
well as intellectually, I don't feel the classroom is necessarily the 
place to do that; nor am I the best person to hear it. I make a point of 
acknowledging this early on in the course, and recommend strongly that 
students find a good friend or peer to vent their feelings with, after 
some of the more difficult material. I also make sure they know about 
counseling resources on campus.

On the other hand, one of the best solutions to this dilemma I've seen 
is done by Estelle Freedman at Stanford. She requires students to meet 
weekly outside class in small groups of four of five, in whatever 
informal setting they choose (lounge, dorms, etc.). She offers 
guidelines and discussion topics to get the groups started, and requires 
a short evaluation at course end, but otherwise, it's up to the 
students. She's had good success with it. More details are on her 
webpage at http://ebf.stanford.edu/FS101/2001/assignments.html#Initial 
if you're interested; she also published a short article on it in the 
1990 NWSA.

s.

~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~
Susana L. Gallardo
Instructor of Women^-s Studies
San Jose State University
One Washington Square
San Jose, CA 95192
(408) 924-5740
prof  AT  chicanas.com

 I have to say I am astonished by what I'm hearing in some of these posts. 
What I"m hearing in these posts is a polarized, implicit understanding of 
feminist education as either/or purely analytical or therapeutic. In my 
opinion, neither pole points to an adequate or sustaining feminist pedagogy. 
Women's studies/feminist thought classes are potentialy hotbeds of 
*consciousness-raising*--thus for earthshaking changes in women's --and some 
men's --world-views. Feminist classes can and should empower students to 
transform themselves and the world.  Feminism is not just an object of study 
and analysis, but something we do, what we practice and live. My  classes 
(taught in a philosophy department) are at once densely theoretical and very 
emotionally involved--and engaged with relating new understandings to ideas 
about strategy and action. Consciousness-raising,  is NOT therapy, but as I 
discuss it, a process of reflecting on what we already know 
implicitly--bringing background understandings out into the foreground of 
explicit reflection; thus, from this perspective, analysis of experience is 
crucial to feminist analysis and pedagogy, generally. (Not all students are 
receptive to this process, but MANY MANY, including those with a barely 
choate understanding of feminism to begin with, are receptive, and they 
often absolutely flower intellectually as well as personally).
Women students *do* need to develop intellectual skills, but not at the 
expense of connecting feminist thought to their lived experience--and yes, 
this happens only or primarily in the classroom, in the context of a 
learning *community.*

Kathy Miriam
kmim  AT  earthlink.net

Sent: Saturday, December 17, 2005 6:34 PM

>I have to agree with what Fiona wrote. Although I know it's very important 
>for students to process the class materially personally as well as 
>intellectually, I don't feel the classroom is necessarily the place to do 
>that; nor am I the best person to hear it. I make a point of acknowledging 
>this early on in the course, and recommend strongly that students find a 
>good friend or peer to vent their feelings with, after some of the more 
>difficult material. I also make sure they know about counseling resources 
>on campus.
>
 

I don't dispute the necessity for emotional involvement in WS material, but I 
think Kathy Miriam's language--very abstract and academic--reveals that her 
approach is not what I'd call therapeutic or emotionally intense. That's not a 
criticism, just an observation.

If her post reflects her approach in class, then what she does is translate 
emotional reactions into a more theoretical language (words ending in -IZE and  
_TION, passive-voice constructions and the like). If she does that, then 
she's making the personal into the political and intellectual, which is exactly 
what I support. The purely personal (what Deborah Tannen calls "troubles talk") 
isn't sufficient, and consciousness-raising just begins with the personal, and 
then goes into the general.

Fiona Shepherdess
LSU

Hi Milton,
I know you asked us to respond off-list, but the subsequent 
discussion has moved this a bit beyond your own class and into 
feminist pedagogy, so I thought I'd respond to all.

While I understand the concerns of those who are not trained as 
counselors and do not want to be pushed into that role in an 
assignment, I do think that there are ways to configure your 
assignment so that the students are challenged to apply the 
theoretical ideas they are learning in class to their personal 
experiences *and* (if you wish) to protect yourself from the kind of 
confessional writing that folks are concerned about.

First, however, I'd like to note that I've read some very troubling 
confessional material in highly theoretical papers written for 
advanced and graduate courses. I think that sometimes we are going to 
be put in the position of hearing troubling facts of some students' 
experiences, no matter what we do.  Also, I think the description of 
Estelle Freedman's assignment (posted by Susana) sounds like a lot of 
fun, but I don't think it addresses many of the concerns stated in 
previous posts--I would be very reluctant to suggest that a peer 
group would be better able to handle someone's confessional 
information about a traumatic incident than I would. I doubt that's 
Freedman's intent, either.

So, here's what I might do:
in the assignment description, require not only that students relate 
an incident in writing, journaling, poetry, etc., but that they also 
analyze it briefly, using the course readings/materials as the basis 
of the analysis. I do something similar to this, and one recent 
student's "event analysis" (for example) was about being in a car 
with a male friend who angrily called the slower driver in front of 
him a "wussy." She described the event in journal form, and then 
analyzed it (in a very short, 2 pp. paper) using Kate Bornstein's 
theory of patriarchal power and Suzanne Pharr's essay "Homophobia as 
a Weapon of Sexism" to show that her friend was being homophobic in 
his behavior, how that (minor, to be sure) incident played into the 
model of a patriarchal social structure offered up by Bornstein, and 
how she was positioned within that social structure as a woman who 
had read this information from class but did not challenge her 
friend's behavior.

This approach asks the students to connect life and theory more 
explicitly. In addition, this kind of analysis-oriented assignment 
tends to (in my experience) garner fewer confessional responses, 
perhaps because the analysis of a traumatic event can be more 
difficult to produce, both emotionally and intellectually.

Echoing another poster, I do always mention to my students both in my 
syllabus and in class sessions that we cover information in WS 
courses that may bring up difficult emotional responses for some 
people, based on experience or belief system, and I mention often the 
wonderful counseling center we have on our campus, where students can 
get professional guidance through a difficult time.

Anyway, Milton, I wouldn't abandon the assignment idea. I do think 
it's a good one. But I might ask for a bit more tie-in to course 
materials.

Oh, and I might call it "identity autobiography" or some such thing, 
which would invite analyses of multiple identity-related issues, 
rather than just gender.

Peace,
Jeannie
-- 
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
Jeannie Ludlow, Ph.D.		jludlow  AT  bgnet.bgsu.edu
Undergraduate Advisor
Women's Studies
228 East Hall
Bowling Green State U
Bowling Green OH 43403

This thread is especially timely for me as I have just finished a
semester where many students disclosed in their journals the most
awful types of sexual abuse. I ask them to use the journals to explore
the readings and class discussion, as the other assignments are more
scholarly in their approach to the material. I do not encourage
disclosing past traumas in class when we talk about violence for a
number of reasons, especially as students then have to live with the
consequences of people knowing intimate details about their
lives. Also, much of the recent trauma literature suggests that simply
talking about the trauma with friends could actually be triggering and
results in the survivor getting caught in a loop of flashbacks. Once
written about in their journals, I cannot ignore the stories and I try
to help the students find some type of help. The problem is that many
students see me as their therapist, a role that is unprofessional for
me to adopt, not least because I have no skills in that area. The
terrible pain that these students are in is almost unbearable to
witness and I am supportive but with limits as they need to get real
help in the form of therapy rather than sitting in my office telling
their stories (which many students want to do). The reality is that
many of the students have little money for therapy and end up with
counselors who are not trained to deal with complex trauma. Boston has
some excellent therapists but they charge $150 an hour, which is way
beyond what my students can afford. So for me the dilemma is that they
do a women^-s studies class that stirs up the past and once out, there
is no going back. Yet, they do not have money to get effective help so
they are left in crisis. How do others deal with this?

Gail

Gail Dines
Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies
Chair of American Studies
Wheelock College
35 Pilgrim Road
Boston, MA 02215
617-879-2336
gdines  AT  wheelock.edu

hello all

have been following this thread with interest.  here is a perspective 
from foreign language teaching, which is emotionally confronting for 
adult students, esp. at lower levels, all the time.

language teaching is very emotionally draining for teachers and 
confronting for teenage to adult students, and, at lower levels, puts 
adult students into kindergarten mode somewhat as they are very 
dependent on the teacher in terms of what they are able to express and 
are learning all over again sthg that had been so thoroughly acquired 
that it felt completely 'natural'.  they have the intellectual and 
linguistic sophistication of adults, but suddenly become emotionally put 
on the spot as they stumble over pronunciation and grapple with trying 
to express even basic concepts, and have to reduce talking about 
themselves to quite rudimentary and 'childlike' expression. 

language is about who you are, how you frame your thoughts and feelings 
and how you relate to others.  children acquire language without really 
thinking about it and without the sort of embarassment and gaucheness 
and being confronted with the need to undo certainties/structures - even 
value systems - that are already well in place.  this can often give 
rise to defensive reactions from students, expressed in all sorts of ways.

because of the particular function of language in relation to identity, 
socialisation and culture, in communicative language teaching practice 
one creates exercises - even basic drills - that are meaningful to 
students and thus are personalised, simulating real-life situations or 
roleplaying them imaginatively.  one written assignment i give 
lower-intermediate students, to get them to practise past tenses in a 
way that is meaningful to them and not simply a 'grammar chore' 
disconnected from 'the real world', is to narrate an event or dream that 
impacted on them in some way, and in the assignment they have to 
describe the impact.  there is no requirement that the assignment be 
'serious', it can be humorous, there is not even a requirement that it 
be true.  students can make the whole thing up from beginning to end if 
they so choose.  they just have to be convincing :-) - and, of course, 
use past tenses correctly.  sometimes i impose some grammatical 
conditions to give them a more formal structure and make it a bit more 
game-like e.g. 'you must use one subjunctive following an expression of 
doubt or possibility', and so on.....

i find, however, quite consistently, that the female students in 
particular (but also some of the men, who are invariably in the minority 
in the foreign language classroom, like, no doubt, in WS), tell the most 
extraordinary personal stories in very honest ways. 

many of them pour their hearts out - about experiences that range from 
mental illness to sexual assault to exile, immigration and racism.  one 
even wrote about finding empowerment, having been a very shy and 
sensitive young girl, as a mormon youth leader (now *that* was a 
confronting one for *me*!).  i am always astonished and moved by the 
degree of rawness and emotional honesty - as well as analytical skills 
for many - in these stories, as if these young women have just been 
waiting for an opportunity to tell them in a way that enables them to 
take some distance (through a foreign language and in writing rather 
than viva voce) and confidentially, with their teacher.  perhaps if i 
were a male teacher they would not open up so easily, i do not know - 
other teachers on these courses, which i coordinate, have always been 
women.  and maybe some of these stories are made up - but they are 
written with impressive insight if they are.  and i know for a fact that 
many of them aren't.

i know this because many of them come and talk to me out of class about 
difficulties they are having which are invariably related to their 
status as women, in all sorts of ways, from all sorts of perspectives.  
i also get some of the men coming to talk to me about violence within 
their families, or coming out as gay, or chronic mental or physical 
illness, and so on, but the men are often more reticent emotionally, 
they voice such things far less directly and more rarely.  and, quite 
simply, they are not confronted with many of the problems the women 
experience as part of their day-to-day.

in other words, these sorts of issues *don't only come up in WS*.  of 
course, part of this is about the way i teach: i see all my teaching as 
a subversive activity and an opportunity to provide a forum in which 
alternatives to dominant ideology and cultre can be presented and 
students can be encouraged to form and voice opinions and think critically.
but part of it just goes with the territory of being a language teacher 
with undergrad students who are in the process of significant life 
changes (whatever their age or background, or reasons for being there, 
university is a voyage of discovery/rite of passage in many ways), and 
with the territory of being an engaged teacher who cares about one's 
students.

the 2 big differences in WS, as many posters have mentioned, are
1/ there is the added opportunity to encourage political and theoretical 
analysis of these personal experiences, and
2/ the sorts of issues that my students volunteer information about is 
central subject matter in WS (although i do integrate this stuff into my 
courses wherever i can...), so that sort of emotionally confronting 
stuff is going to be right out there, all the time, not just 
occasionally or accidentally, and yes, students do need to be warned 
about this.

re teachers not being counsellors.  i agree.  but when we took up the 
job of teaching in WS (or as feminist teachers in other disciplines) we 
also took up a personal and political responsibility to our students.  
we have a duty of care to our students anyway, but this is amplified in 
WS.  i don't think we can just say 'i'm your teacher not your 
counsellor' any more than we can avoid the personally confronting 
material.  we need to be able to refer students to qualified people 
where necessary but we also need to provide opportunities for them to 
debrief in ways that don't encroach on anyone's boundaries - whether 
this is through peer discussion groups, or in student consultation with 
us, etc.....  otherwise i really don't think we're doing our job.  it's 
not just some abstract sophist discussion we're having in our classes.  
this is about women's lives.

bronwyn

***********************************************
Dr Bronwyn Winter
Senior Lecturer
Dept of French Studies 
School of Languages and Cultures
Mungo McCallum Building A17
University of Sydney  NSW 2006
Australia

email: bronwyn.winter  AT  arts.usyd.edu.au

***********************************************

Bronwyn Winter wrote:

> 
> re teachers not being counsellors.  i agree.  but when we took up the 
> job of teaching in WS (or as feminist teachers in other disciplines) we 
> also took up a personal and political responsibility to our students.  
> we have a duty of care to our students anyway, but this is amplified in 
> WS.  i don't think we can just say 'i'm your teacher not your 
> counsellor' any more than we can avoid the personally confronting 
> material.  we need to be able to refer students to qualified people 
> where necessary but we also need to provide opportunities for them to 
> debrief in ways that don't encroach on anyone's boundaries - whether 
> this is through peer discussion groups, or in student consultation with 
> us, etc.....  otherwise i really don't think we're doing our job.  it's 
> not just some abstract sophist discussion we're having in our classes.  
> this is about women's lives.

I understand the motivation to help students in need.  However, the 
examples people have brought up in this thread can be linked to a 
variety of serious psychological problems (e.g., sexual abuse and 
posttraumatic stress disorder).  To deal with these serious 
psychological problems effectively, clinical and counseling 
psychologists receive years of education and training in graduate 
school.  Without this training, we risk making things worse, even if 
we're trying to help.  (Without this training, we're not even qualified 
to accurately assess whether or not a particular person in our classes 
needs a psychological intervention!)  --Look at it this way: if a 
student in my class has a bodily injury (related to physical abuse, 
say), should I try to treat the student's injury, because I care about 
the student, or should I leave the treatment to a trained medical 
professional?  I think the same argument applies to psychological problems.

Miles

Miles Jackson wrote:

>  To deal with these serious psychological problems effectively, 
> clinical and counseling psychologists receive years of education and 
> training in graduate school.  Without this training, we risk making 
> things worse, even if we're trying to help. 

> -Look at it this way: if a student in my class has a bodily injury 
> (related to physical abuse, say), should I try to treat the student's 
> injury, because I care about the student, or should I leave the 
> treatment to a trained medical professional?  I think the same 
> argument applies to psychological problems.
>
> Miles

hmmm.......
i sincerely doubt the student would sustain a bodily injury from 
material raised in a WS class, unless students started throwing the 
course readers at each other or summat.

but flippancy aside, the situations are not comparable.

1/ with the sexual assault trauma etc, there is a direct 
cause-and-effect relationship between material taught in class and 
buttons being pushed for students.

2/ a bodily injury to an individual may raise collective and political 
questions about OH & S standards in university buildings but it is not 
connected to wider political questions of male domination. 

3/ as per my previous post, buttons get pushed for students in social 
sciences/humanities/medical ethics etc discussions outside the WS 
classroom too so this is not sthg specific to WS.

4/ i at no point suggested that teachers should be counsellors, any more 
than i suggest we should be doctors or nurses.  but it is ludicrous to 
suggest that we have no role in assisting students in contextualising 
their experience politically and enabling them a space to be heard.
does no-one remember CR groups?  women's only 'qualification' then was 
being women.  so why now do we have to be psychiatrists before another 
woman can talk to us about the personal experience of, for example, rape?

5/ i am very very very wary of overmedicalisation of social and 
political problems.  we have seen this happen with the 
socialworkerisation of women's services that used to be run by activists 
(even where professionals) and women who used the services had access to 
a political framework in which to contextualise their experience as not 
about something wrong with them or that just happened to them because 
they were unlucky or that they now have to spend years in therapy to get 
over.
see celia kitzinger and sue wilkinson, among others, on how feminism 
became depoliticised through therapy.

6/ that said, i agree that significant trauma needs professional 
counselling, and we would be irresponsible not to suggest options for 
counselling should students wish to go down that path, as well as 
recognising our own limitations and those of our role as teachers.  but 
we are equally irresponsible, as teachers and for me, more importantly, 
as feminists, if we don't provide the students space to have a voice - 
this may be the first time they've talked about it.  and some of them 
may already have been in therapy - some sent there in a semi-punitive 
way by parents when they were traumatised kids from incest and didn't 
know how to tell mummy that daddy, or older brother, or uncle fred, or 
cousin elias, or next door neighbour, was raping them.

bronwyn

-- 
***********************************************
Dr Bronwyn Winter
Senior Lecturer
Dept of French Studies 
School of Languages and Cultures
Mungo McCallum Building A17
University of Sydney  NSW 2006
Australia

email: bronwyn.winter  AT  arts.usyd.edu.au

***********************************************

I have been reading this thread with interest since I also
wrestle with these issues.


Here are some thoughts that came to mind:

1) I agree with other posters - I wouldn't completely abandon the
idea of journaling.  I've best seen it done when students are
given direct questions/issues to discuss (not left wide open) and
it is made clear that you are looking for relation to texts &
course material (even say explicitly - "connect this to xyz".
When I was TA'ing this summer, students had to write weekly "body
exercises" in which they were given a particular thing to write
about.  Making it clear that you are not looking for "dear diary"
types of responses helps.  Also, you might call it something
other than "journaling" since I think that reminds of
diary-writing and lends itself to more personalized content.  We
are fighting the perception that women's studies is forum for
talk/writing therapy so students may feel that disclosing certain
experiences are the best way to earn a good grade.  Making clear
this is not the case might circumvent this problem.

2) I am so torn with this idea of how to help students who
disclose in their work or in person.  Unlike others who have
posted here, I am quite comfortable acting as a *peer*
counsellor/listener *outside* the classroom.  Sure, I'm not
"professionally" (aka medically or university) trained but I am a
trained feminist, anti-oppression peer counsellor.  At the
beginning of the year, I tell students that I am a collective
member at my university's women/trans. center (now renamed Centre
for Women and Trans People).  I think this signals that I can act
as a counsellor.  I'm also not comfortable with the idea that we
should always be pointing people to "professional" help.  Perhaps
it is the anti-psych. sentiments of the Centre where I'm a
collective member because we believe that people can receive help
or support through other means.  Plus, the counselling center at
this university has some oppressive practices - like calling in
security or authorities to take people away or being
transphobic.... unless you can personally vouch for a place, it
can be dangerous to send students to particular offices for help.

But also, I've been thinking lately - we can't assume where
students are at.  They  may disclose something that they have
already come to terms with.  Or they may not be ready or need
"help".  Again, perhaps it's my experience working at the Centre,
but people in crisis have various needs ranging from immediate to
long-term.  Let me provide an example :  a student may write
about what I call an eating disorder but it may be useless for me
to refer her/him to someone if that same person is facing
eviction from housing.  So unless a teacher speaks directly to a
student to discern what is going on, I've come to believe writing
"You might consider talking to someone about this or visiting
xyz" in the margins of a student paper is next to useless.

Often, people are just looking for someone to listen to them.
Sometimes we jump to quickly to want to act & help fix the
problem.  (I know I'm guilty of this).  But just having the
outlet - either through writing or office hours discussion - can
be just as helpful.


I will taking part in a workshop in 2006 where I'll be focusing
on students-in-crisis / teacher-as-counsellor.  If anyone has
reading suggestions, I'd very much appreciate them.  (I'm looking
specifically for feminist, anti-oppression material)


Jennifer


*********************************************
Jennifer Musial
School of Women's Studies - Graduate Programme
CWTP (Centre for Women and Trans People at York University)
Collective Member
York University
Toronto, Ontario  M3J 1P3
*********************************************

As anyone who has done oral history work or anthropological fieldwork or 
other related types of research can tell you, a major problem is 
informants/interviewees/"subjects" saying what they believe the 
interviewer/researcher/etc. wants to hear.  I can't imagine this isn't also 
an issue in women's studies classes, especially those that put a premium on 
personal stories that support the worldview being presented in those 
classes.

DP 

Bronwyn and Jennifer make many good points.

I'd also like to say, compassion and respect from a listener (along with 
appropriate sense of boundaries) are sometimes all that's needed from 
someone who brings up experiences of personal trauma. Unfortunately this 
seems to be a rare response in this society. People who have long been 
silent sense when they will not be judged, and perhaps that's one of the 
reasons why these stories come forth in women's studies classes. Encouraging 
silence around personal experiences related to what is being taught 
theoretically doesn't make sense to me, and describing such accounts as 
"confession" seems contrary to goals of women's studies. Certainly the 
recounting of a traumatic experience of racism or homophobia would never be 
called "confession."

There has been pressure on women's studies to put a damper on "connecting 
the dots," and speaking honestly and personally, in the name of 
professionalism. But what is so needed is more respect throughout society 
for people who survive sexual oppression and trauma. That's where the 
pressure should be applied.

Adriene Sere
adriene  AT  saidit.org

I concur with he points raised by Adriene Sere.

A number of the concerns mentioned in this thread have arisen for 
me.  During the women's health senior seminar I teach students frequently 
relate the health issues under discussion to their own health and events in 
their own lives. Generally this seems to deepen engagement with topics, 
broaden student understanding and reinforce the importance of listening to 
what women have to say about their health.

In this last semester, what seemed a large number of students, related 
their experiences with mental health issues.  The students themselves were 
surprised by the number of their peers whose lives were touched by such 
issues.  They responded to each other with respect, compassion and 
patience, shared their knowledge about local services and gave feedback 
about the cost and quality of services.  Through the shared class on line 
journal, and in the one scheduled discussion of women and mental health 
they shared a variety of perspectives on the stigma attached to those 
seeking treatment for mental health issues, as well as views on medications 
and alternative therapies based in their experiences as well as in response 
to issues raised in set readings.  They made distinctions between their 
knowledge, gained as service users, potential and actual consumers of 
health products and as critical thinkers who must negotiate patriarchal 
cultures.

Now that the semester is over students in the class have been looking for 
ways to keep the lines of dialogue between them open and want to maintain 
and broaden the on-line journal system we used to include other women's 
studies students, alumna and professors.

One situation that I did not anticipate, that made me very uncomfortable, 
was that a student related information about the abuse of a minor by a 
third party.  This disclosure set in train a difficult process of 
supporting and talking with the student, referring them for support to 
counseling services and reporting to appropriate "authorities" to follow up 
on the situation.  The only recent specific preparation I had received to 
deal with this situation was a workshop on sexual harassment that had 
outlined my responsibility as a teacher to report incidents of which I was 
aware.  While the situation disclosed was not sexual harassment I was aware 
that I had a responsibility to intervene in the interests of my student and 
the minor, that I was not as well prepared to do so as I would have liked 
and that I may well have had to go against the wishes of the student in 
reporting the matter.

I assume that many of the subscribers to this list would have a similar 
responsibility to report certain things they become aware of in the 
classroom, whether it is sexual harassment or child abuse, and I believe we 
also have a responsibility to prepare ourselves to be able to try and do so 
without causing further harm. As a minimum I plan to place notices in the 
on-line journal system that I am required to report certain things so that 
if students do make such disclosures they are aware of what actions I am 
required to take. 

Caroline Denigan writes:
><snip>
I assume that many of the subscribers to this list would have a 
similar responsibility to report certain things they become aware of 
in the classroom, whether it is sexual harassment or child abuse, and 
I believe we also have a responsibility to prepare ourselves to be 
able to try and do so without causing further harm. As a minimum I 
plan to place notices in the on-line journal system that I am 
required to report certain things so that if students do make such 
disclosures they are aware of what actions I am required to take.


Hi all,
Caroline is right: I'm at a state university in Ohio. According to 
the sexual harassment prevention training (required) I've had and the 
faculty training by the Campus Coalition Against Sexual Offenses 
(optional), I am--as a state employee--required to report to campus 
security any knowledge I have of illegal activity involving my 
students and/or situations in which a minor is in danger. This report 
can be "anonymous" (which means that I don't name the source who told 
me--not that I don't give my own name) and must contain all relevant 
information. My understanding is that, if the situation merits 
further action, campus security will advise me of that.

This is true whether I am meeting with the student as teacher or 
advisor or mentor.  So, if a student tells me that a roommate was 
sexually assaulted at an off-campus party, I am supposed to call 
campus security and say that I am anonymously reporting that a 
student who lives in XYZ residence hall was assaulted last weekend at 
an off-campus party--even if I don't know the name of the assaulted 
student, have no evidence for the incident beyond my student's 
account, and do not supply the name of the student who told me. I 
believe, but am not sure, that this information is used in two ways: 
in figuring our State-mandated crime statistics report; and as 
corroborating evidence, if a student later comes forward to report 
the incident. Now, if a student in my office is visibly upset or says 
to  me, "Can I tell you something?" or "I thought you might be able 
to help me with a problem," I immediately stop the student and 
explain the requirement. This has caused a few awkward moments, when 
a student was about to ask me how to get help with a research project 
(smile), but I figure it's better to be honest about this at the 
beginning of the situation.

Most of the time, the student chooses to tell me about the situation anyway.

The troubling thing about this requirement is that so few of my 
colleagues know about it. The sexual harassment prevention training 
does mention it, but only briefly, and in that context it might sound 
like they mean "illegal sexual harassment" rather than "any illegal 
activity at all."

Peace,
Jeannie

P.S. in earlier posts, when I called these potential conversations 
with students "confessional," I meant in the sense of telling 
something that is potentially embarrassing or humiliating--*not* an 
admission of guilt. If anyone read that as disrespectful of any 
person who has been traumatized, please do accept my apology.



*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
Jeannie Ludlow, Ph.D.		jludlow  AT  bgnet.bgsu.edu
Undergraduate Advisor
Women's Studies
228 East Hall
Bowling Green State U
Bowling Green OH 43403

I would second Adriene Sere's comments, and add one more twist to the
question of dealing with students' disclosures.  In the last few semesters
when I have made extensive use of online discussion boards in my WMST
classes, I've found that a number of students disclose relevant experiences
in that forum -- whether it be of sexual assault, having had an abortion,
having struggled with an eating disorder or what have you.  I give them the
option of posting anonymously (through me, so I know who they are but the
other students don't) -- some take advantage of this and others don't.

This has turned out, in almost every instance, to be a wonderful thing both
for the disclosing students personally (at least those who have mentioned
it to me) and for the class pedagogically.  For one thing, it is great to
see how supportive, compassionate, *and* insightful the other students
typically are in response to these disclosures -- not only praising the
discloser's courage, etc., but often offering connections between what
they've disclosed and aspects of our course material, feminist theory, etc.
(The discloser often does this too, by the way; in fact they almost always
do.)

It's nice because whatever tendency the student might have otherwise have
to approach me and see me as a counselor figure is obviated in this context
-- they certainly know their classmates are not counselors!  That's not to
say students never do disclose to me personally; they do, but somewhat less
often than, say, when I was teaching during grad school.  (I would
attribute the decline partly to the availability of this other forum where
they can disclose, and perhaps also to my having been closer to their age
then and thus more approachable.)

Rebecca Whisnant

  I agree with everything Rebecca says.  I, too, use a
  discussion board and my class of 25 posted over 600
  messages this semester.  I also have a class book as
  a final project.  Essentially, each student writes a
  personal essay (or poem).  I collect these, write an
  introduction and table of contents, and have them
  bound.  I distribute them at the end of the class so
  that each student has a reminder of the class to
  take with them.  I give the students the option of
  using a pseudonym but most students (all this
  semester) use their real names.  They frequently
  write about their rapes, their eating disorders,
  their emotional or physical abuse, their mental
  health problems, etc.

  You can find more detail about this assignment in

  Kahn, A. S., & Davis, S. L. (2003). A book of our
  own: The personal essay in psychology of women
  classes.  Teaching of Psychology, 30, 72-73.

  Arnie

Arnie Kahn, Psychology MSC 7401
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, VA 22807