Alison Reed (senior, ECLS)

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In “Professor Replacements Reshape Courses,” Emily Jensen writes that “many of this semester’s junior and senior ECLS majors [. . .] are finding themselves at the mercy of a strange education.” I wonder if by “strange education,” she refers to the highly qualified professors whom Occidental College is fortunate enough to have teaching some of the department’s most rigorous courses.

Jensen states that ECLS 490 (Senior Comps) underwent a “fairly smooth transition,” since it is typically “less focused on one specific professor,” thus leading her to conclude that “it has not been too much of a stretch to welcome Adjunct Professor Julie Prebel” [emphasis mine]. Contrary to the degrading implications of Jensen’s language, Professor Prebel has in fact taught nine undergraduate courses at Occidental alone.

The notion that a published scholar and recipient of the Joan Webber Prize for Outstanding Teaching at the University of Washington has been asked to teach a class in Montag’s absence hardly seems controversial to me. True, Prebel revised the syllabus. So, we’re not reading Spinoza and Agamben. I’d like the reader of Jensen’s article to consider the seamless ideologies underpinning her attack on Prebel’s authenticity. Could Prebel’s otherness speak to the patriarchal values inscribed in a male-dominated history of academia? Jensen notes that ECLS 390 “has been taken over by Visiting Scholar Professor Filippo Del Lucchese (Ph.D. University of Pisa). A personal friend of Montag’s, Del Lucchese is an expert on European moral and political philosophy.” While Professor Prebel’s educational history is omitted from considerations of her suitability for teaching ECLS 370, Del Lucchese is cited as an “expert.” Prebel, in contrast, “specializes in cultural studies, historical approaches, feminist approaches and the history of science.” The subtle distinction between expertise and specialization illuminates a not-so-subtle stab at Professor Prebel; while expertise implies mastery, specialization connotes the application of a general body of knowledge to the particular. Last time I checked, a Ph.D. from the University of Washington can in fact render you an expert in your chosen field, and at the very least qualifies you to teach a course on literary criticism.

From Saussure to Foucault to Butler to Spivak to Haraway, Prebel’s class would no doubt stimulate a student with a genuine interest in theory. The scope of Prebel’s syllabus renders Jensen’s unwillingness to deem her qualified laughable. Who’s to complain about reading Derrida, Marx, Deleuze, Althusser, Lacan, and Kristeva? Since when was a thorough reading of these and other theorists not absolutely necessary to an undergraduate (or graduate) education in ECLS? Many students seem to think the course is only valuable when Montag teaches it.

I would like to suggest that Professor Prebel’s so-called “different perspective” is primarily one of gender. Prebel is, after all, a teacher by trade, so why are we to question her suitability for teaching? By delineating Prebel’s aptness for instruction to her more facilitative role in ECLS 490, Jensen exposes some gendered assumptions about authority and the academy.

Alison Reed (senior, ECLS)

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