The University As Text : Women and the University Context

Students adapted well and usually managed to resist the most enthusiastic offer to become personally involved in the content of the class, the content never being more important to the students than the project of learning the the essence of the university itself. [...] THE BASIS OF THE ARGUMENT This work is supported by historical and current feminist scholarship that challenges the tradition of the university as a context in which the representation of women is marginalized. [...] THE UNIVERSITY CONTEXT The structure that serves to keep people, ideas, and disciplines apart at the university is epitomized by the hierarchical order, the style of discourse, the depersonalization, the use of power and technology as ends rather than means, and confusion between human beings and objects. [...] For ex- ample, in this study, I simply read literally and figuratively what I see 16 The Context for Reading and Writing around me at the university; to narrow the topic, I choose part of the context to read; and in the act of reading I begin what I think is the most problematic aspect of all—how I will read. [...] Implicit in the notion that we read differently according to our gender is the understanding that the experience the reader brings to the text is at least as significant to the interpretation as the reading event itself.