Revisiting the Corridors of Pretention
I have really enjoyed this week workwise. It has been a rewarding and engaging experience spending 7 hours a day, 5 days in a row, discussing science ideals and ideologies and how they relate to our work with a group of 9 other ph.d.students from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. They were a very relaxed bunch of people - open and constructive - and not afraid to reveal their doubts and fears, which made the discussions much more lively and engaged, I think. I am sure this atmosphere were in part also the result of the laid-back, yet attentive attitude of our two lecturers who supervised us the entire week.
Looking back, the only thing which really bothered me during the course was the grudge against Comparative Literature Students (Litteraturvidenskabsstuderende), one of the lecturers and some of my peers seemed to hold. It made me emphasise several times in public that I do no longer see myself as belonging to Comparative Literature, but that I see myself as a researcher of Digital Culture. Not that I want to disown my own theoretical background, just that I do not want to be counted as one of those arrogant and self-contained Comparative Literature Academics whom I have unfortunately met quite a few of. My own reaction surprised me, and looking back one may wonder why one day I had no problem going to the Department of Film & Media Studies, knocking on the doors of my fellow colleagues there to have a chat with them, but the other preferred to walk silently and hurriedly down the teachers' corridor at the Department of Comparative Literature. - Perhaps it is because my colleagues at Film & Media Studies actually acknowledge what I do, whereas some of my colleagues and former teachers at Comp. Lit do not. Let alone some of my fellow students (some of whom still haunt the place) who made it quite explicit that they thought my object of study was inferior as were my insights, back in those silver days when I was writing my Masters.
I could not help smiling when I read Tinka's perceptive description of the environment at University of Copenhagen Amager where you find those departments. This is very much how I experienced it too this week - watching the new versions of all those Turtle Neck males, some very cool and often condescending, like those who used to make me feel so small and insignificant. Now I watch them, while feeling older and wiser and assured that there is actually sense, relevance and intelligence in my research, promising myself that I will do my part to keep the IT University alive as a place where students and researchers alike walk down the corridors without having to pretend to be someone they are not, without wanting to leave them as quickly as possible.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 22:28