WK12-DQ

1. "If gender is a matter of nurture and not nature, the character conventionally assigned men and women in novels reflects history and culture rather than nature, and novels, poems and plays are neither timeless nor transcendent." (page 264) Let's leave this one pretty open...how do we feel about this? Why bother looking at canonical works through a gender lens if this is true? rlf
 * Gender:**

2. "They (Critics) worry that reading literature in relation to society will, by rendering literature's meaning more particular, reduce it //to// the particular. But it is also possible to argue just the opposite, that uncovering the social and cultural assumptions of literary language actually complicates reading." (Page 264) So what do we think?? Do we argee with the Critics? Are we just complicating the reading?? I feel this is something that in some form or another we have touched on each week, does it change when talking about gender? cp

3. Suppose that we grant the basic assertion that gender is a construct; are there ways in which reading literature can deepen our knowledge of particular human experiences, past, present and future?


 * Class:**

1. What are the implications of choosing the "academy" as a site for class analysis? 1. b. What does "materialist" connote in Marxism generally, or this article specifically?

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2. O'Hara offers us Jon Elster's model of class as a more "flexible empirical" object (416) than Marx's. [What is the problem with applying Marx in the original form? What is Elster's post-marxist "rational choice" model? 417] How superior Elster's model of class is to Marx's or how different it is from Bourdieu's. =====

3. What are some of the implications of thinking about academia through //class?// What kinds of questions, issues, or approaches might it raise for pedagogy?