Harvard freshman experience

by philg

A friend’s daughter recently started her non-Asian odyssey through Harvard College ($70,000/year).

While identifying as a cisgender heterosexual female, she elected “gender-inclusive” housing and was matched up with a roommate. She’ll undress and go to bed every night right next to a person who identifies as a heterosexual cisgender male.

What’s she studying that wouldn’t be much the same at State U? “HIST-LIT 90DW: Queering the South: Race, Gender, & Sexuality in the American South”. From the class site:

The course examines the intertwined histories of race, gender, and sexuality in the American South from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 through the present. We will consider how struggles for gender and sexual freedom are linked to race in the modern South. The course proceeds along two tracks: first, we gain knowledge about the lives of women, trans people, and gay people in the South. Second, we consider how African Americans, women, and LGBTQ individuals struggled for freedom and how these efforts changed over time in response to opposition, developments elsewhere in the world, and victories. We will explore the circumstances under which people from different backgrounds come together in pursuit of a common goal and the times when conflicts arise. We will read poetry and novels, manifestos and diaries, and secondary literature written by historians. In addition, we’ll watch videos and listen to music to understand the different ways people queered the South during the last century. The course recognizes that Southerners do not fit neatly into racial, gender, or sexual boxes and so investigates the intersections of identities to lend complexity and verve to the histories of people often forgotten.

Who’s the expert on intersectionality of black, gay, and southern? Andrew Pope, whose biography says that he studied at University of Rochester (NY) and Harvard.

I tried to show off my mastery of English v5.0 by asking the freshman’s younger brother, “How’s zir candy bar?” She admonished, “You aren’t using pronouns correctly. ‘Your’ isn’t gendered.”

[Old Version = v1.0; Middle English = v2.0; Early Modern English = v3.0; English with two gender IDs = v4.0]

Related:

  • Interview with Andrew Pope that talks about the class and that he “read, and excitedly re-read, Jennifer Nash’s Black Feminism Reimagined: After Intersectionality.”

14 thoughts on “Harvard freshman experience”

  1. Compare and contrast.

    Snip 1, from the HIST-LIT 90DW course description:

    “Second, we consider how…individuals struggled for freedom and how these efforts changed over time in response to opposition, developments elsewhere in the world, and victories. We will explore the circumstances under which people from different backgrounds come together in pursuit of a common goal and the times when conflicts arise.”

    Snip 2, from this Letter to the Editor of the New York Times from the former Chancellor of the University of Texas system who also organized and oversaw Operation Neptune Spear:

    “We were reminded that [they] went to war because it believed that we were the good guys — that wherever there was oppression, tyranny or despotism, America would be there. We would be there because freedom mattered. We would be there because the world needed us and if not us, then who?”

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/our-republic-is-under-attack-from-the-president/ar-AAIWos8

    Is our country even on the same planet with itself?

  2. Wait, like she actually shares the same literal room (not just a suite) with a guy? Where was this option when I went to school?

  3. If I were the parent I’d not be paying tution and boarding until the kid fixes her selection of courses and living arrangements.

    • Ken: I think Harvard misleading releases the average cost for those students who actually do receive financial aid. That may be where the $12,000 number is coming from.

  4. Pope’s bio makes him sound like a fraud –“almost” finishing an AA degree, “working for three years at legal aid” notwithstanding that he does not appear to be a lawyer — and then the rubbish of his “Scholarship” if you bother to go to that page. Why are her parents willing to pay I don’t know $10-15K to learn about how this guy looks at the world?

    • One of the few options for someone with a history degree is to do admin/management in a non government organisation but publicly financed organisation where the pay is not good.

  5. Professor Queering doesn’t look black & is not southern. Maybe gay? 1/3 ain’t bad and = expert at Harvard.

  6. I am not entirely convinced that they could teach *anything* to an undergraduate that is worth $70k a year, plus room & board. Let alone this drivel.

    Hard pass.

  7. Wonder how gender inclusive housing is working out. Based on our culture, it would be only men who want gender inclusive housing & women only when the roommate is their boyfriend. The original intent was to expose the comms majors to the engineering majors, but progressiveness is only ballot deep.

    In the lion kingdom’s day, the opposite sex wasn’t even allowed in the same building. College was a weird phase after we jumped from living with our parents to living with only men & before living alone in middle age.

    • I think I figured out the explanation: this kind of progressive living arrangement plus inevitable booze is bound to create sexual, ahem, incidents. Which then will serve to prove that campus “rape epidemic” is real and create more opportunities for running show trials instilling more fear and suppessing these pesky (predominantly male) STEM types who dare to use logic instead of blindly obeying the Party’s dogma.

    • averros, agreed. Letting adults choose their living arrangements is clearly a ruthless scheme to game “rape” statistics. It’s good that if your son was in this situation you’d wisely steer him away from the insatiable desire to bang his roommate.

      Just pray he’s not gay!

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