2008 Woodie Awards
Sounding off...from the English Department
Issue date: 1/24/08 Section: Opinions
I was born in a country that is not the United States and immigrated when I was three years old.
I was in high school in the late 1980s, dressing in color-coordinated Gap clothes, listening to Top 40 music, and imagining my future at an Ivy League college.
I was a college student in the early 1990s, at an elite liberal arts college, where my peers started challenging me when I assumed that my world view (developed in suburban New Jersey) was the only or best one.
After that, I was a graduate student in the Midwest, which made me realize how "East Coast" I really was.
I turned thirty in San Francisco, a "straight" woman living in the Castro district, which has the highest number of gay male residents in the country, according to The New York Times (on January 15, 2008).
Now, I am among a world-class faculty at one of the top colleges in the United States and am waiting to hear about my tenure decision.
I feel highly privileged for the variety and richness of experiences that have led me to this exciting moment. And I feel even luckier that I am an English professor at Union College. For instance, in a meeting earlier today with three students taking one of my classes this term, I reveled with them in the pleasures of being part of a group who loves talking about the intricacies of literary texts.
But some days, even on this campus, it feels like the joys of my job (e.g., sharing my pleasure in intellectual thinking, my passion for books, my love of humanity, my investment in diversity of all sorts, and my commitment to social justice) are overshadowed by the struggle to convince other members of our community that my perspective on the world is intrinsically worthwhile.
As an active member of Union's community who is committed to respecting points of view and experiences that are not necessarily in the majority, I ask the following of all of us:
Be open to members of our community who are not already familiar to you.
Try to actively empathize with life experiences and opinions that are not identical to your own.
If you find yourself in danger of forgetting, ask how you feel when you are not part of the majority.
Remembering this, regularly step out of your comfort zone and reach out to others- including peers in a classroom, your professors, other members of your Minerva house, and the person behind you, for whom you will make a practice of holding the door as you step in to a campus building on a cold day.
Yes, I am a utopianist . . . but this is more than appropriate at a college founded on the highest ideals of inclusiveness.
Anupama Jain,
Department of English
I was in high school in the late 1980s, dressing in color-coordinated Gap clothes, listening to Top 40 music, and imagining my future at an Ivy League college.
I was a college student in the early 1990s, at an elite liberal arts college, where my peers started challenging me when I assumed that my world view (developed in suburban New Jersey) was the only or best one.
After that, I was a graduate student in the Midwest, which made me realize how "East Coast" I really was.
I turned thirty in San Francisco, a "straight" woman living in the Castro district, which has the highest number of gay male residents in the country, according to The New York Times (on January 15, 2008).
Now, I am among a world-class faculty at one of the top colleges in the United States and am waiting to hear about my tenure decision.
I feel highly privileged for the variety and richness of experiences that have led me to this exciting moment. And I feel even luckier that I am an English professor at Union College. For instance, in a meeting earlier today with three students taking one of my classes this term, I reveled with them in the pleasures of being part of a group who loves talking about the intricacies of literary texts.
But some days, even on this campus, it feels like the joys of my job (e.g., sharing my pleasure in intellectual thinking, my passion for books, my love of humanity, my investment in diversity of all sorts, and my commitment to social justice) are overshadowed by the struggle to convince other members of our community that my perspective on the world is intrinsically worthwhile.
As an active member of Union's community who is committed to respecting points of view and experiences that are not necessarily in the majority, I ask the following of all of us:
Be open to members of our community who are not already familiar to you.
Try to actively empathize with life experiences and opinions that are not identical to your own.
If you find yourself in danger of forgetting, ask how you feel when you are not part of the majority.
Remembering this, regularly step out of your comfort zone and reach out to others- including peers in a classroom, your professors, other members of your Minerva house, and the person behind you, for whom you will make a practice of holding the door as you step in to a campus building on a cold day.
Yes, I am a utopianist . . . but this is more than appropriate at a college founded on the highest ideals of inclusiveness.
Anupama Jain,
Department of English
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