Would any students or even teachers/profs be willing to give me feedback on my (very) short essay?

It’s an essay about how Bisclavret: The Werewolf (a medieval story) is a queer allegory about coping with human nature being different than what is described in Adam and Eve (i.e cis heteronormative monogamy) which was and is the dominant Christian view of human nature.

Most of the essays on Google/DuckDuckGo that come up when you look up “Bisclavret” are queer essays, including an essay published by the foundation of original author, but my prof told me:

  • you didn’t even talk about the major point of the story which is that Bisclavret is a werewolf

  • I don’t know why you think the king and Bisclavret are engaged in a sexual relationship

  • the connections to homosexuality are tenuous at best

I just want to know if he’s docking my marks based on his personal bias or if I’m genuinely not meeting the rubric. I’m second guessing myself and I’m worried I’m overreacting, I’m very sure that I met the rubric requirements but I feel like he just doesn’t like my analysis or wants to shut it down because it was using a queer lens (white presumably religious cis het male prof from a religious university/college). I’m afraid if I dispute it he will retaliate and grade me even worse but I also feel very discouraged so if I’m not overreacting I want to dispute it.

I can send an anonymized link to a scrubbed essay and the professor’s feedback through DM if anyone wants to help kitty-birthday-sad

  • Llituro [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    21·
    26 days ago

    you didn’t even talk about the major point of the story which is that Bisclavret is a werewolf

    opinion discarded, this guy sounds like a dumbass. if he wants to read book reports, he should go teach grade school. literacy rates are low, he should consider trying to stop contributing to it himself.

  • AcidSmiley [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    10·
    25 days ago

    you didn’t even talk about the major point of the story, which is that Gregor is a bug

    that guy about the entirity of Kafka studies

  • tactical_trans_karen [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    10·
    26 days ago

    If I’m being charitable, he’s ignorant and not exactly college professor level material - the point of college level discourse is the diversity of ideas and discussion. A professor that doesn’t want you to write an interpretation of themes and ideas needs to specify that in the rubric. Otherwise the default assumption is that they’re asking you to think on it and produce a unique take.

    You probably won’t get anywhere in a religious school though. You just kinda need to ask yourself if the juice is worth the squeeze. If you feel you can talk to him, pop in during his office hours and talk about how others see these same things, see what his take is.

      • PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        8·
        25 days ago

        Okay, so I took a look and overall, I don’t think this professor is targeting you or grading you unfairly. I did take a look at the original poem, as well as your arguments, and I do agree that a queer lens could certainly be applied to the poem. However, the way you’re talking about the story makes it sound like an explicitly homosexual text, which it isn’t. I think a lot of that is a product of the assignment being a short response that doesn’t really give you the scope for what is ultimately a pretty complex argument about the text that needs a lot more breathing space, or maybe your research on other scholarship about the poem giving you the impression that a queer theory reading of the poem is a settled fact rather than one interpretation. However, it is also true that there is no explicit homosexuality in the text. I also think he’s right in that it’s difficult to follow your line of argument about what was asked in the prompt re. the view of human nature in the poem. You’re pointing at some different ideas about Adam and Eve, the Old vs. New Testament, a third reconciliation beyond the two. It’s ultimately too overambitious for what the assignment is.

        I also look at the professor’s feedback, and it’s critical while being encouraging. He’s appreciative that you tried something here, although it didn’t quite work and acknowledges some of your writing strengths. If I got this from you, I would think that you were a strong, but still developing academic writer with a lot of interesting ideas that needs some work on the underlying structure and fundamentals of argument and interpretation that will support the more complex analysis you’re trying to do (and a better sense of what’s possible within the scope of the assignment).

        • ChestRockwell [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
          7·
          25 days ago

          As someone who works in pre/early modern lit, this is a good post and the real key I think is here:

          However, the way you’re talking about the story makes it sound like an explicitly homosexual text, which it isn’t.

          I haven’t read OP’s essay, but in general this is the big thing with gender/sexuality and pre modern texts. Noncery aside, foucault-madness reminds us that these things are historically determined. If you want to read homosexual desire into a pre modern texts you need to basically do the work to explain how that desire fits into the material conditions of the medieval period.

          Btw, this is actually rooted in a Marxist approach - sex and desire are not trans-historical but always determined by the material conditions of the historical moment. If you’re gonna read same sex desire into Bisclarivet (which, as you note, is actually a commonplace) you have to do the work to read it into the text and articulate how we see something like same sex desire in a period where this didn’t really have a systematic/ideological/cultural sanction.

          • PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            5·
            25 days ago

            Absolutely no problem. One general thing I’d recommend, not just for this class but any class is dropping by your professors’ office hours maybe once a month or every couple of weeks. Come with a question about the reading or get some feedback on an assignment in progress. Make an excuse if you need to. You will have a much more collegiate relationship with your professors, they will know you more as a person, and it will very much come in handy if you need to ask for a recommendation or something

    • grazing7264 [they/them, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      7·
      26 days ago

      I had to make a formal, public apology for sexual harassment (I told the dude something like “you’re not gay you’ve no right”) for complaining someone wrote a homophobic story in college. That was 12 years ago and I assume things are worse now

      friend-visitor-3 wtf

      I see so many queer/gender studies with PhDs publishing lgbtq+ literary analysis but I haven’t seen any articles about how to navigate the college environment itself as a queer student given that almost every Prof is a cis het white man wielding an immense power imbalance.

      Like how did they manage? If someone can’t even say “don’t write a homophobic story” or write “werewolves are gay” without being reprimanded how did these other queer people survive in the system long enough to get PhDs and become professors themselves?