coldhearted scientist وداد

I am recovering from a fit of depressive pique I had over a question of academic identity, really. I see this now having pondered that post by Squadromatico, which is not only about what parts of life one gave up, or what parts of one’s ambitions remain unrealized, but more profoundly about what parts of one’s identity one renounced to become an academic.

I have a friend who remade himself entirely. I, on the other hand, did not since I always was one; before I started school I knew I was going for the Ph.D. and had already asked what a good first step toward preparation for it would be (the answer was to learn French).

My fit of pique had to do, ostensibly, with the language program in my department, which is a war zone. It always is, in any department, but usually the war is between the students, who do not want to learn, and the faculty, who want them to, or between factions believing in different methodologies. Here it is about those things, but also about time spent per class, which is an issue since instructors teach 16-21 hours a week and research faculty, 9-12 with a very broad range. We want to do it right but nobody has time, and we have different ways of saving time, which means in practice that the students do not understand the program since from their perspective it has no goals. And we cannot agree on a single way of saving time, and we cannot admit that we need to save time since that would mean the administration could decide not to allow overloads, which would mean some would have to sell their houses. As you can see, the problem is already very complex, but this is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

The real problem is identity. The instructors are committed to their image as good teachers and as language acquisition experts, but do not have the kind of expertise in SLA that one can have with more training, or if one reads Hispania. The professors have more training, but less authority since we are not devoted entirely to language teaching and are not considered martyrs to it. The prevailing view is that number of years of experience trumps other kinds of expertise, and some instructors actually believe that the Ph.D is awarded for two years of coursework beyond the M.A. So professional identity is the issue in this battleground.

I want my expertise recognized so that I can have a voice in what and how I am to teach. On the other hand language teacher is not important to me as a professional identity; I am willing to be considered a Hispanist or a literature professor or something like that, but I do not identify as a Spanish teacher. Indeed, I feel that to do so would be dangerous: what one wanted to project, I was always taught, was that one was anything but a Spanish teacher. Especially as a woman you had to emphasize everything else you could do, and not that.

So it is easiest, especially given how much else I am expected to do, not to be a Spanish teacher at all. And forsooth, in most jobs I have had, it was not necessary: one might teach language classes, but ruling over them was a highly competent czar who decided what the program goals, methods, and policies were. He or she gave you a document explaining these and was available as a resource person, and you followed policy; during the rest of the day you were you and did other things. For the instructors, that situation would be insulting, however, as it implies that the language czar is the greater expert; this is intolerable. They are in battle not for their professional identities.

I would cede power instantly to a language czar, but do not want to cede decision making power on an issue that affects my day to people with less expertise than I or whose agenda may not be my own. So I am in the fray, but being in the fray means I have to assume the identity, Spanish teacher — the piece of my practical identity I was taught I should not show.

The meaning of it is that I must strategically revise myself. I never studied in a national language department and my homelands are not nation-states but federations: Comparative Literature, Latin American Studies. I do think one has to have more than one discipline, not less than one, to be interdisciplinary so I would not say I am not a Hispanist, but Spanish professor is only one of my hats and not the main one. I may have to assume it strategically. I might join the AATSP again.

Axé.