Congzhi Jiang
Section 1
Week 7
What is a “soul” course? Personally, I think a “soul” course is a course that puts us through some sort of painful realization. The “soul” course cannot be always about something fun to share and talk about. This week, I read Rani Neutill’s essays describing her struggles in academia. There’s no doubt that she loved teaching. It was unfortunate for academia to lose an insightful professor like her. Despite her passion towards teaching, it seemed that she could not fit herself in the environment full of “white-dude” professors and sensitive students who were easily triggered by her teaching style. I was impressed by her experience of teaching sex and cinema in 2014. She confessed that the course nearly broke her. Her intention to offer a “soul” course to the students failed pretty hard. There could be many reasons, but she believed one of the strongest reasons was that she was a woman of color. She believed her ethnicity somehow affected students, including the feminists and activists, not to show authority that she deserved. If this is true, I think the students seemed to internalize the concept of “awakening”. This makes me question myself if I had ever disrespected any professors without being conscious.
[TheLipTV]. (2015, Nov 21). Campus Safe Spaces & Trigger Warnings Run Wild with Rani Neutill. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5dM0QZ-uwc
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